The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has raised
two important questions. Who killed her and why?
And what happens next to the Pakistan People’s
Party and by corollary to Pakistani politics?
Most Pakistanis are by instinct inclined to
believe that the “agencies” did it. This is the
easy explanation for anything that happens in
this country which is either inexplicable or
unpalatable. All political assassinations in
Pakistan remain inexplicable since the truth
about them has never been investigated or
investigated but not made public. But the truth
of Ms Bhutto’s assassination may also be
subliminally unacceptable to many Pakistanis
because a religious or “Islamist” element may be
at its unpleasant core.
This response is also partly due to the
ubiquitous role of the “agencies” in ordering
Pakistan’s political contours since the 1980s,
including making and unmaking governments and
elections. So we can hardly be blamed for
suspecting the “agencies” or clutching at
half-baked theories. Certainly, the political
opposition to President Pervez Musharraf would
like everyone to think so. It suits the
politicians’ purpose because it discredits the
Musharraf regime and seeks to exploit the
widespread anger and outrage at the killing of a
popular leader to try and overthrow him.
But if the “agencies” have done this at President
Musharraf’s bidding, why is no one asking about
their motives for doing so, or whether this suits
him in any way, considering that it is likely to
provoke a popular movement to undo his regime?
Indeed, why is no one wondering whether there is
some non-agency link between Ms Bhutto’s
assassination and the assassination attempts on
the lives of President Musharraf (two), the
former corps commander of Karachi, Ahsan Saleem
Hayat (one), the former prime minister Shaukat
Aziz (one) and the former interior minister Aftab
Sherpao (two)? Surely, the “agencies” did not
target these gentlemen.
Of course, Ms Bhutto did not make any
explanations easier following the assassination
attempt on her on 18 October when she pointed to
“remnants” of the Zia regime in the Musharraf
administration, including some former “agency”
people. Apparently, she had been given to
understand as much, but by whom and why we will
never know.
There may also have been an element of political
opportunism in her accusations at the time. She
was trying to distance herself from President
Musharraf to regain her credibility because most
Pakistanis were unhappy at the prospect of a
“deal” between her and him. Indeed, she was seen
as being let off the hook regarding the
corruption cases against her in exchange for
agreeing to work with him at a time when he was
terribly unpopular both for his political
blunders regarding the judiciary and also for his
pro-US stance on the “war against terror”. Most
Pakistanis saw this war an unjust American war
and not a just Pakistani war.
Later, however, Ms Bhutto saw the writing on the
wall and changed tack. She started to say that
the biggest threat to Pakistan lay in religious
extremism and terrorism, a clear allusion to the
Al Qaeda network that was trying to lay down
roots in Pakistan’s tribal areas as part of its
global strategy after Iraq to reclaim Afghanistan
and make Pakistan a base area for Islamic
revolution.
Shortly before she returned to Pakistan, Daily
Times reported a statement by Baitullah Mehsud,
an Al Qaeda-Taliban warlord based in Waziristan,
saying that he had trained "hundreds of suicide
bombers" and was determined to kill Benazir
Bhutto because she was an American agent. The
story was based on an interview given to Daily
Times by a sitting member of the Pakistan senate
who has been a conduit for Masud’s statements and
who had recently met him.
The story was not denied for two weeks and
disregarded until the assassination attempt
provoked widespread outrage in Pakistan and
refocused attention on Al Qaeda. But sections of
the media sympathetic to Al Qaeda’s anti-American
aims and objectives now quickly pounced on Daily
Times and accused it of wilfully carrying an
erroneous report. The senator was dragged to a TV
studio and made to recant his statement and much
was made of the motives of Daily Times in airing
such a story. Later, a statement from Baitullah
Masud was floated denying involvement in the
assassination attempt on October 18. Last month,
however, Baitullah Masud gave up pretences and
formally announced himself as the head of the
Taliban Movement of Pakistan.
Why is it difficult to believe that the same
Islamist network that tried to eliminate
President Musharraf, Shaukat Aziz, Aftab Sherpao
and Benazir Bhutto on October 18 may be
responsible for her murder on December 27? The
first three have overtly been involved in the
“war against terror” while Ms Bhutto had pledged
many times to wipe out the extremists and
terrorists if she was returned to power. All were
seen as “American agents” or “puppets”.
In the case of President Musharraf, it was later
revealed that “rogue elements” in the “agencies”
or “forces” may have been involved as Al Qaeda
“supplementaries” or “accessories” in the
assassination attempts on his life. Indeed, in
many of the Al Qaeda attacks on the armed forces
and paramilitary forces, especially those in
Islamabad and Rawalpindi, low-level “insider”
elements with contacts with the Lal Masjid, which
was part of the Al Qaeda network, are known to
have been involved. How else can one explain the
Al Qaeda attacks on ISI busses in Islamabad in
which civilian employees of the agency have been
killed?
Clearly, Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan
doesn’t just comprise Arabs and Uzbeks and
Tajiks. It also comprises Pakistanis; and among
such Pakistanis it comprises Pathans and Punjabis
and possibly Urdu speakers who constitute the
Pakistani Taliban. Certainly, it is known that a
number of Pakistani sectarian and jihadi Sunni
organisations have joined the Al Qaeda Network
after the government launched efforts to disband
them since the “peace process” started with
India. So Al Qaeda is now as much a Pakistani
phenomenon as it is an Arab or foreign element.
There is not much room for doubt on this score
any more. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the number two Al
Qaeda man, has already gone public in his
exhortations to Pakistanis to overthrow the
Musharraf regime. Indeed, last September Bin
Laden declared a jihad against the Musharraf
regime. Now, following the assassination of Ms
Bhutto on December 27, an Al Qaeda spokesman and
Afghanistan commander Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid
telephoned the Italian news agency AKI to make
the claim that his organisation had killed Ms
Benazir Bhutto "because she was a precious
American asset". This should have reminded
Pakistanis that their country is in the midst of
a global war against religious extremism. But the
tragedy is that it hasn’t.
There is no inconsistency between what Ms Bhutto
said on October 18 after the assassination
attempt on her life about remnants of the Zia
regime gunning for her and what she said in
Rawalpindi on December 27 about terrorists and
extremists targeting her minutes before one of
them succeeded in eliminating her. Now Al Qaeda’s
primary targets are President Musharraf and
Maulana Fazlur Rehman and its sole objective is
to destabilise Pakistan and sow the seeds of
anarchy by scuttling its halting transition to a
moderate democracy.