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The ABC's Current Affairs Lateline telecasts Fatima Bhutto's Exclusive Interview on yesterday    night.Sada-e-Watan Sydney is presenting Transcript of the Interview with the Thanks of ABC.

ALI MOORE, PRESENTER: To be a Bhutto is to be born into a troubled Pakistani political dynasty, a divided family whose history shadows that of the country itself.

The widower of the late Benazir Bhutto is Pakistan's current president, but he's denounced as a criminal by Benazir's own niece, Fatima Bhutto. Fatima, the daughter of Benazir's brother Murtaza, is no less critical of her late aunt. Murtaza was assassinated 11 years before Benazir.

Now, Fatima Bhutto has written the story of her father and her family and she's one of the most outspoken critics of the current regime in Pakistan.She's in Australia as a guest of the Sydney Writer's Festival. I spoke with her earlier.

Fatima Bhutto, welcome to Lateline.

FATIMA BHUTTO: Thank you for having me.

ALI MOORE: Very early on in your book you express outrage at US drone attacks on Pakistani soil. You write "Never before have we allowed a foreign country to carry out strikes on our soil".

You've never held back your criticism of American involvement in Pakistan. What was your response to the strike against Osama bin Laden?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, it was more of the same. It wasn't surprising for anyone who's been watching the last few years, where you have American operations on Pakistani soil almost daily, if not weekly.

ALI MOORE: Not always though involving, I suppose, operatives physically on your soil?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, you know, that's questionable. We know, thanks to the Hot Pursuit agreement that was signed by General Pervez Musharraf - the former president - and General Stanley McChrystal, that it's on the books between America and Pakistan that America can enter our country at will.

They can engage in kill-or-capture operations on our soil. And our Government will always reserve the right to deny that they knew anything about it while still giving the green light.

ALI MOORE: How high do you think that knowledge would have gone?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, it ought to have gone to the highest level of government, certainly.

ALI MOORE: What does this mean for Pakistan's relationship with the US? The Pakistani parliament's just passed a resolution calling for a permanent halt to US drone strikes and threatening to block supply routes to troops in Afghanistan.

FATIMA BHUTTO: We know from WikiLeaks that this is all lip-service, that the Pakistani prime minister had said when he was told that drone strikes would be carried out on his country, that America was free to do so - and that they would make a bit of noise in Parliament about it but really they would leave the road wide open, or the skies wide open.

So this seems to be more of the same again. If the Pakistani government truly wants to end drone strikes, they've started a bit late actually. Some 2,000 Pakistanis have been killed since the Obama White House began this ferocious campaign against our country. And now to say that they're upset seems disingenuous.

ALI MOORE: This resolution that was passed happened after parliament was briefed by top military officials, and it's been reported as a united front between the military and the civilian rulers.

FATIMA BHUTTO: Mm hmm.

ALI MOORE: How significant is that united front - indeed, does it exist?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, we don't ... (laughs) I don't think we can know really whether it truly exists, but certainly we know that this is a government and this is a state - or rather, this is a political establishment - that serves and operates on its own levels.

It doesn't really connect to the Pakistani people. The Pakistani people have been complaining about these drone strikes since they began, since 2005, 2006. And never before have the military or the government bothered to put a united front up to support the concerns and the suffering of those affected by the drone strikes till now.

ALI MOORE: But I wonder- I guess the question is, has the military in some way been damaged by this? Is this an opportunity for the civilian government to perhaps take more authority?

You write that the military has always called the shots in Pakistan.

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, I'm not sure that's true in this case because the military was the first to issue any statement after Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan.

It took the prime minister two weeks to address his country and when he did so, he did so in English, which meant that large portions wouldn't have understood a word he said.

And the president has yet to say a word. In fact, the only thing he has said was to write an op-ed for the Washington Post - again, also in English. So it's not very clear that the civilian government is taking the reins at all, not from inside Pakistan at least.

ALI MOORE: So in your view, the military does still pull the strings in Pakistani politics?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, they've always pulled the strings and are they pulling any more strings at the moment? I'm not sure that's true but they've been the only ones really coming out to speak.

ALI MOORE: Two years ago you called Pakistan a country which seemed to be hell-bent on self-destruction. Do you still describe it like that?

FATIMA BHUTTO: This is a state that seems hell-bent on self-destruction. It seems to be a political system that is so destructive it cannot even provide the most basic amenities for its people.

So the price of wheat, for example - wheat is sold in Pakistan now above international prices. We are an agricultural country; we're a rice-growing, wheat-growing country that can't afford to feed its own people anymore.

That either comes from incredible incompetence or a combination of incompetence, corruption and self destruction.

ALI MOORE: And you think it's the latter?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Most likely, yes.

ALI MOORE: Then what gives you hope?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Because that's the state and that's the government and we know that, you know, in any place the government are not necessarily their people. And Pakistanis are a nation of survivors.

They're a nation of people who persevere in the face of a state that doesn't provide justice, that doesn't provide education, that doesn't provide health.

They come together to take care of each other. This is how it's always been in Pakistan and it's a curse, really, the politics of the country that such a strong people have been saddled with such weak rulers.

FATIMA BHUTTO: But it sounds almost defeatist, as if that is the way it will be. How do you change that? I mean, you look at what happened around you and what's happened in the Middle East - your former homeland of Syria. You look at Egypt, you look at Bahrain.

Do you see anything that perhaps sparks a light and makes you think about what could happen in Pakistan?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, in Pakistan- It's not defeatist because we know what keeps the system running is vast amounts of foreign aid. When the state or the military, or both, receive billions and billions and billions of dollars in American money every year, it's incredibly difficult for nascent, progressive democratic secular forces to fight that kind of money.

And looking at the Arab Spring, you know, we've got the objective conditions in Pakistan too. We have unemployment, we have inflation, we have food inflation, we have something like 60 per cent of our population under the age of 30. It all exists and it is a concern - why hasn't this happened in Pakistan?

ALI MOORE: Well, in theory you have democratic institutions?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, in theory, in the same way, they had them in Egypt.

You know, we have a president who, like the president before him - like our last dictator - was never elected to public office. He doesn't have any mandate from the people. He was simply selected.

The joke in Pakistan is not that we have elections, but rather we have selections. If it weren't true it would be more funny, potentially.

ALI MOORE: So why hasn't there been an Arab Spring, if you like, in Pakistan?

FATIMA BHUTTO: We think you have several reasons, perhaps. One is illiteracy. You have a population that is according to official figures something like 40 per cent literate. And the qualification for literacy in Pakistan is simply the ability to sign your name. So those are very inflated numbers.

You have incredible interference in Pakistan's politics. So whenever anything happens that slightly unnerves America, for example - you know, an envoy is sent, a secretary of state is sent, phone calls are made and things are pulled back.

And we saw this happen in 2009 with the Lawyers Movement that was building steam again. And as it was building steam and it looked like the army was not going to intercede and was going to allow the protest to go forward, David Miliband called up the heads of political parties, secretary of state Hillary Clinton made her own phone calls and the movement ended.

ALI MOORE: Is it as simple as withdrawing all foreign aid, of saying Pakistan stands on its own two feet? And can you in any sense imagine that would happen given the geographical significance of Pakistan to countries like the US?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, the aid that goes to Pakistan - and it's billions and billions of dollars worth of aid money - doesn't reach anyone except the state. We are a nuclear-armed country that missed our millennium goals to eradicate polio because we couldn't refrigerate the vaccines. That's the effect of corruption in Pakistan.

This is a government that before it took office was facing corruption charges in Switzerland, in the United Kingdom, in France and in its own country, and was estimated by the New York Times to have taken somewhere between $2 billion and $3 billion in their previous 10 years.

So we have to wonder then how we can be assured that any money that goes to Pakistan will reach its people. And we saw during the floods that happened at the end of last year, the most devastating natural disaster in Pakistan's history, almost no money come to the country because no one felt confident that that money would reach flood victims.

So if we're serious about Pakistan, if we're serious about changing the dynamics of this country, then we cannot keep funding governments that are grossly corrupt and violent.

ALI MOORE: Of course, just to remind the audience that you're talking about a government where the president is the widower of your late aunt, Benazir Bhutto, a man who you describe as a criminal. Do you still hold hope of getting justice for your father and his execution?

FATIMA BHUTTO: I don't hold much hope of getting justice under this government. Since president Zardari took office he's not only acquitted himself in my father's murder case in the middle of an ongoing murder case, but in the three other murder cases he was standing trial in.

Justice, I think, is not something most Pakistanis expect in this day and age. We look to other means to get justice, through memory, through survival but not through the courts, which seem incapable of handing down justice.

ALI MOORE: You blame your late aunt and Zardari for the death of your father.

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well my aunt was prime minister at the time that her brother, who was a serving member - an elected member - of parliament, was killed. And it was her government not only that condoned that sort of violence. At the time her brother was killed, some 3,000 men were murdered in very much the same way in Karachi under operations sanctioned by the prime minister.

But certainly they played a role in the cover up after the fact.

ALI MOORE: You write about your father, you were very close to him. As you say, for many years while you were in exile it was just the two of you. He was all yours. But he wasn't a saint, was he?

FATIMA BHUTTO: No, I don't think anyone was, and the story of this family is one that's built around myths. They're built up to be lions. You know, we have this tendency in Pakistan to make immortals out of men.

ALI MOORE: But have you done that in your book? I mean, there's nothing in that book to tell us, to quote William Dalrymple, that your father had a reputation for being trigger-happy. His bodyguards were rough. He was alleged to have sentenced to death several former associates.

FATIMA BHUTTO: All those claims against him were made by the dictatorship of General Zia-ul Haq, that filed some 90-odd cases of treason and sedition against my father.

All of those cases carried the death penalty. Until now, 15 years after his death his name has been cleared. He still has lawyers representing him in all those cases. He's never been found guilty of any of those.

And that was part of the myth. You know, there was a myth created around this family that one member was democratic, one member was not democratic. One member was temperate and tolerant, and one was violent and trigger-happy, as you say.

Though, in fact, if we look at the history of Pakistan that violence was seen very much in democratic governments, not just Benazir's but certainly in her father's as well.

So part of the book was to take apart some of these myths, not just of my father but certainly of those that came before him.

ALI MOORE: Is the best way to get justice to enter politics yourself?

FATIMA BHUTTO: No, not at all. That seems to be the worst way to get any kind of justice, I think...

ALI MOORE: But there are many who expect you to run at the next general election.

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, I think they've been expecting that for a while because we've so destroyed our political culture that it's no longer become about platforms or ideas, it's just become about blood, it's become about names.

But, you know, I think Pakistan has to choose now whether it wants to side with dynasty or democracy, but in Pakistan's case it certainly can't have both.

ALI MOORE: Not even with the right person?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, 30 years of dynasty in Pakistan has shown us that there is no such thing as the right person when you bring dynasty into the equation because dynasty is the polar opposite of democracy.

ALI MOORE: You're very outspoken. Do you ever fear for your safety?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Um ... you know, I think a lot of Pakistanis fear for their safety. I think at the moment we know that violence has become part of the political ethic of Pakistani, and if your voice is inconvenient that is the easiest way to remove it. But that doesn't just pertain to me. I think that's- you see that every day in Pakistan.

ALI MOORE: But you'll never leave?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, it's home and we know if we leave, in whose hands we leave it and...

ALI MOORE: But you said you wouldn't go into politics, so what difference would it make?

FATIMA BHUTTO: Oh, I don't think politics is the only way to make change. It's certainly not the best way to make change in Pakistan.

And if you look at where change is coming from, it comes from ordinary Pakistanis. It doesn't come from Generals, and it doesn't come from dynasts, it comes from journalists and lawyers and activists and women.

That's the hope for Pakistan, always.

ALI MOORE: Fatima Bhutto, many thanks for taking the time to talk to us.

FATIMA BHUTTO: Thank you.

Syed Zafar Hussain and Miss Fatima Bhutto at the Walsh Bay on the evening of Tuesday, 17 May 2011

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