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If the Bhutto name is not used to risk something substantial, then it becomes part of the veneer of celebrity activism rather than of genuine solidarity.
By PROFESSOR JUNAID S. AHMAD
From the start: when Fatima Bhutto rails against the ‘genocide’ in Gaza, she finds her rhythms—moral urgency, lyrical indignation, a refusal to look away. Yet when you turn the lens back to Pakistan—its stolen elections, its silenced protestors, its military-state apparatus crushing dissent—her voice goes quiet.
One might say: her indignation appears selective, or at least inconveniently quiet where it would cost something. This is not just frustrating; it is rich in irony. A woman who once seemed the inheritor of a legacy of resistance—against dynasties, against state violence, against impunity—now appears to channel that fire almost exclusively at distant injustice, rather than at the injustice in her own backyard.
Let’s look at what the expectation was. Fatima, daughter of Murtaza Bhutto and granddaughter of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, carries a family name born of opposition to the entrenched military-political elite in Pakistan. Her memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword, was itself an indictment of internal betrayals and a brutal state system. So, when she deploys the same moral clarity to Gaza—’only the innocent die in war,’ she wrote—many of us cheered. Yet simultaneously the domestic scene in Pakistan—rigged elections (early 2024), brutal suppression of popular movements, the military-civil complex that continues to dominate and silence—is getting little from her in terms of the same sharp prose, the same uncompromising challenge.
One cannot help but ask: if she truly believed in the ‘us’ she invokes in her recent tweet about Pakistan’s existential question in the recognition of Israel, then how is the ‘us’ represented in the daily lives of Pakistanis whose votes were stolen, whose protests were thwarted, whose women languish in jail, whose mediators of power are unaccountable and brutal?
How odd that she demands that Pakistan refuse to normalise with Israel—or states complicit in Gaza’s destruction—when she declines to insist that Pakistan refuse to normalise with its own regime of intimidating generals, pliant politicians, and unresponsive civil institutions. Why plead with the rulers to back away from one recognition while giving the rulers a free pass on the structural recognition of their own dominance?
It’s not enough to decry atrocities abroad while failing to target one’s own state’s violence and duplicities.
The credibility of moral outrage depends on consistency.
This lack of symmetry matters. It’s not enough to decry atrocities abroad while failing to target one’s own state’s violence and duplicities. The credibility of moral outrage depends on consistency. When you invoke the Bhutto-legacy of resistance you set a standard. If you abandon it at home, you undermine it abroad.
Make no mistake: Pakistan’s regime today is a totalitarian nightmare. Elections were rigged and nullified in February 2024; the people do not forget the night raids, the rhetorical rigmarole — the murdered and bruised souls of those who dared protest for Palestine within Pakistan while the state took every opportunity to demonstrate its brutality.
The intersection between Kashmir, Afghanistan, Pakistan’s internal security policy, and its relationship with the US and the Gulf powers—all feed into a ruthless domestic repression which remains under-discussed by many liberal voices. Why then does the mild rebuke to normalisation appear front-page while the regime’s violence is reduced to whispers?
Perhaps it is the comfort of distance: Gaza is far enough away to criticise safely; the state in Pakistan stands much closer—and much stronger. Could it be that fear anchors the silence? Or convenience? Or perhaps the fact that speaking up at home means risking everything: blacklisting, barred entry, harassment, even worse. It is true: the cost at home is far more real. But if the Bhutto name is not used to risk something substantial, then it becomes part of the veneer of celebrity activism rather than of genuine solidarity. And this is where many of us feel betrayed: because we believed Fatima would channel the intellectual fire of her father and grandfather with the same audacity at home as she does abroad.
And yes, one might respond: she is based abroad; the pressures at home are heavy. But keynote: many dissidents worldwide operate from exile precisely so they can beef out the domestic tyranny from afar. Indeed, the vantage point of exile is not a barrier—but often an advantage. So, the question remains: why has she not persisted in exposing the full thick network of complicit elites, paramilitaries, generals and foreign patrons that underpin Pakistan’s regime?
Consider the hypocrisy of calling for Pakistan ‘not to recognise Israel’ when one offers no equivalent public walk to encourage Pakistanis to not recognise or normalise the military-establishment paradigm that has long held sway. The ‘normalisation’ she talks of in Gaza carries weight only if the speaker also rejects normalisation at home—rejects the ‘business as usual’ of elites exploiting ordinary Pakistanis. Why do we not see Fatima Bhutto drilling into that core? Why do we not hear her lament the women in Pakistani jails, the activists silenced, the protests dissipated, the stolen votes and squeaky elite compacts behind them? Because what we want isn’t just words about the genocide in Gaza—it’s the same words we want turned inward.
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This is not to say one cannot or should not speak out for Gaza. Quite the opposite: we need those voices and thankfully have more of those, in all corners of the globe, since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. But when the same voice, the same platform, uses its fire for all but the home-front tyranny, we are left asking: are you being selective? Are you engaged merely in virtue signalling? Are you using the suffering of the distant ‘other’ to enhance your own moral positioning, while conveniently stepping around the sufferings of the ‘us’ you define but do not act for?
Let’s end on a provocative note: the absence of Fatima Bhutto’s full-tilt critique of Pakistan’s ruling classes speaks loudly. It speaks of fear or comfort or misaligned priorities. It speaks of how a regime can win not only through tanks and courts but through silencing voices that might demand accountability. Today, Pakistan’s military-political elite flaunt their impunity—while exiled critics, even those from storied political families, can choose to speak about Gaza but not about the paramilitary patrols in Karachi, or the vote-rigging in Islamabad, or the deep state’s covenants with foreign powers. The cost of speaking is there, yes—but if a voice keeps avoiding it, it becomes complicit by omission. The legacy of a Bhutto is not just eloquent rhetoric; it is brave confrontation—for all injustice, near and far.
Fatima Bhutto still could return to that trajectory. She still could channel her formidable prose against Pakistan’s tyrannies—with ferocity equal to her Gaza commentary. Because Pakistan too is bleeding. And because words mean something only when they bite back at power—especially at home. If she chooses silence now, the very legacy she claims becomes an emblem of what was lost: a promise of resistance unfulfilled. And that would be the real tragedy.
Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID), Islamabad, Pakistan. He is a member of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), Movement for Liberation from Nakba (MLN), and Saving Humanity and Planet Earth (SHAPE).
