Not many political leaders credit their obstetrician with their success in the opening pages of their autobiography. But then, as Benazir Bhutto points out, prime ministers do not generally give birth while in office, let alone have to rely on keeping the date secret for fear that opponents will time election campaigns to coincide with it.

Bhutto, twice Prime Minister of Pakistan, who has lived in exile in London and Dubai since 1999, has relaunched the account of her life that she published 20 years ago, as she plans to re-enter her country’s politics. President Musharraf, in a battle to fend off opposition from fundamentalists, the judiciary and parts of the Army, has reached out to her as perhaps his only chance of survival. Last week, apparently on his orders, corruption charges against Bhutto were dropped, removing the main obstacle to her return.

It is clear that Musharraf and Bhutto — fierce opponents since he seized power in a military coup in 1999 — now need each other. He needs the support of the liberal, secular Pakistan People’s Party to ensure that he continues as President after elections later this year, and to hold the Taleban sympathisers at bay. Today the next hearing of his dismissal of Chief Justice Iftikar Chaudhary will take place, a process that has sent opposition to Musharraf to new heights. Bhutto needs Musharraf simply to allow her back in.

What is less clear is whether she really represents a new chance in the deepening turmoil, or whether she is merely that constant of Pakistani political life — the least-bad option, for now.

Her autobiography is an extraordinary document. In the first page, she asserts that “I didn’t choose this life; it chose me”, sees in her history a mirror of Pakistan’s “turbulence, its tragedies and its triumphs”, and compares herself to Queen Elizabeth I. The style resembles that of Musharraf’s own autobiography last autumn, in which he scans the country in vain for anyone who could rival him as a soldier or leader. For its participants, Pakistan’s politics is more than a profession. It is a life, and so, presumably, it will generate yet more of these chronicles.

But bombast aside, Bhutto’s account is moving, and a reminder of the cost of trying to insert democracy into a country more used to military rule. It is dominated, inevitably, by her account of the imposition of martial law in 1977 by President Zia ul-Haq, and of the night that her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was arrested on a trumped-up murder charge.

Never resist a military coup, he told her — useful advice in Pakistan, but it didn’t save him. He was hanged in 1979 and she took over as leader of the party. The endearing pictures of her sitting crosslegged on her bed at Harvard University, under hippyish posters, gave way to ones of her campaigning in front of crowds of thousands.

The new version also contains explicit warnings that, despite her love of the US after her four years at Harvard, she is wary of the overbearing impositions of the superpower. The shrewdest part is her analysis of America’s mistake in backing the Islamist and authoritarian Zia ul-Haq, and her comparison with its support for Musharraf. She is absolutely right; the crisis that Pakistan faces stems from Musharraf’s refusal to step down as head of the Army, and his repeated deferral of a full return to democracy. The US has been shortsighted in hoping that he can continue to deliver peace without addressing those reforms.

Does that make Bhutto the answer to Pakistan’s problems? Her record as Prime Minister does not give cause for great confidence. In her first stint, from 1988 to 1990, she was penned in by the Army and intelligence services and can legitimately claim that she had her hands tied. But in the second, from 1993 to 1996, she had fewer excuses. Her Government did push through some of the liberal reforms that she intended but was also plagued by a cloud of accusations of financial mismanagement (from which Musharraf’s Government has been comparatively free).

In any case, it does not look as though Bhutto is about to be prime minister again; under the Constitution, no one can serve a third term. But if Musharraf could strike a deal with her party, that would tackle some of the worst threats. It would mark an end to his dangerous courtship of the religious parties, which has boosted their influence above their natural level of support. It would also require him to step down as head of the Army.

It is hardly a done deal. But in a very difficult year for Pakistan, the possibility of the President bringing a large, secular political party into the centre of power is one of the few encouraging signs.

Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of the East, Simon & Schuster, £12.99 paperback, 442pp.

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