Pakistanis now fear that anyone who speaks out will be silenced

Benazir Bhutto’s son has none of his mother’s glamour, says Christina Lamb, but he must now do his dynastic duty in a country cruelly deprived of its only pro-Western, liberal leader and in which no one feels it is safe to criticise the establishment

On top of the bus carrying Benazir Bhutto from Karachi airport last October, at the start of the journey that had been planned as her triumphant return from exile but was to end so tragically, I fell into conversation with her amiable cousin Tariq, who told me his wife had begged him not to board. As we waved at the cheering crowds holding banners of Bhutto and her late father, I asked if he had ever been tempted to give up farming and go into the family business. He laughed grimly. ‘No way’, he said. ‘Our family is cursed. All the Bhuttos who get involved in politics end up dead — my uncle, Benazir’s father; both her brothers….