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News Of Bhutto's Death Staggers Local Pakistanis

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By KAREN BRANCH-BRIOSO, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 28, 2007

TAMPA - Rana Younas got the call early Thursday from a nervous friend - a Pakistani-American like him - from Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.
Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was dead, shot by a suicide bomber just 12 days before national parliamentary elections.

"It really shouldn't happen like that," said Younas, owner of Apna Bazaar, near the University of South Florida. "That is sad, very sad for democracy - and for everything - in Pakistan."

Younas, 57, a native of Pakistan's Punjab province whose mother and brother still live there, said he was no fan of former Prime Minister Bhutto, whose administration was plagued by corruption charges. "But again, that does not mean somebody has to kill her. She was trying for democracy," he said.

The news came to locals in many ways: phone calls, news alerts or word-of-mouth in places such as Younas' grocery.

No matter how they felt about Bhutto, the reaction was the same.

"I'm so shocked, even right now," St. Petersburg lawyer Neelofer Syed said, hours after the news came to her in an alert e-mailed to her cell phone. "It's like my brain has stopped working. I didn't expect that. It was expected there was going to be a lot of problems and a lot of attacks and things like that, but I could never in my wildest dreams imagine something that drastic."

Syed, 32, left her native Lahore, Pakistan, seeking political asylum in 2001. As a young lawyer there, she helped win a case that established the right for women to marry without their parents' permission.

She supported Bhutto's return from exile to seek a return to power with the Pakistan People's Party founded by Bhutto's late father.

"Somebody had to come, and right now we had no better leaders," said Syed, who thinks President Pervez Musharraf's administration should have done more to protect Bhutto.

"The government could have prevented this. ... How could it happen? I have absolutely no idea. They could have done a better job providing security."
Sharada Srinivasan, who was 12 in 1947 when British India split into the Muslim state of Pakistan and her largely Hindu nation of India, had watched Bhutto's final speech on Indian TV early Thursday.

She had no idea that the speech had been Bhutto's last when she walked into Apna Bazaar to buy groceries.

"I learned this from the shop manager. It was a shock," said Srinivasan, 72, a retired doctor and a Hindu who has lived in the United States for 28 years. "Such a brave lady, fighting for the country's freedom. Being a lady in a Muslim country, she was fighting like a lion for her country."

Sabahat Khan, an Apollo Beach real estate agent, got the news during a conference meeting. She raced to her computer to Google the latest news.

"This is very unnecessary. Very un-Islamic, to begin with," said Khan, 29, who came to the United States a decade ago with her husband, Amir Khan. Her family still lives in Pakistan.

"My fear is that as it is, things were not very calm and peaceful because of the upcoming election," Khan said. "And this will make it worse."

Younas, the owner of Apna Bazaar, fears unrest in Pakistan. Younas' friend, California businessman Aziz Lakhani, was concerned about that when he called with the news early Thursday from Islamabad.

"He is really nervous. This was the first time he went back to visit after 18 or 19 years," said Younas, who had also been planning to visit Pakistan soon.

Not anymore.

"Now, I'm scared to go because of the violence," he said. "I don't feel safe."

Reporter Karen Branch-Brioso can be reached at (813) 259-7815 or kbranch-brioso@tampatrib .com.

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