Liaqat Bagh is a public park in central Rawalpindi, and it looks the part: trees, benches, families taking the evening air. What it does not look like is what it is — the location of two separate prime ministerial assassinations, fifty-six years apart, making it one of the most politically significant pieces of public space in South Asia.
Most visitors come simply to use the park. The Benazir Bhutto memorial near the main gate marks the spot where she was killed in 2007, and it draws a steady trickle of visitors who know the history. The rest of the park continues as it always has. There is something very Pakistani about this: enormous historical weight carried quietly, without museums or guided tours, in a place where children are still flying kites.
A story
On 16 October 1951, Pakistan's first prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan was shot dead while addressing a public meeting in what was then called Company Bagh. The assassin was killed immediately by police, and the circumstances of the killing were never properly investigated. Fifty-six years later, on 27 December 2007, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated at the same park after a campaign rally. She had returned to Pakistan to contest elections after years in exile. A suicide bomber attacked her motorcade as she left; she died shortly after. The park was renamed Liaqat Bagh in honour of the first assassination, and the site of the second is marked by a small memorial. Two of the most consequential political killings in Pakistani history, the same patch of grass.