Category Archives: Pakistan

NEWS, FEATURE & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Pakistan’s complex political landscape

Next-gen Taliban
By Nicholas Schmidle, New York Times, January 6, 2008

The intelligence officer I met in Dera Ismail Khan, whose area of operations included the Taliban-ruled enclave of South Waziristan, maintains that his contacts with the militants were severed long ago. “We can hardly work there anymore,” he told me. “The Taliban suspect everyone of spying. All of our sources have been slaughtered.”

I asked [Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam chief, Maulana Fazlur] Rehman, who used to refer to the Taliban as “our boys,” if he still considered the Taliban, even those who might be firing rockets at his house, his boys. “Definitely,” he replied. “But because of America’s policies, they have gone to the extreme. I am trying to bring them back into the mainstream. We don’t disagree with the mujahedeen’s cause, but we differ over priorities. They prefer to fight, but I believe in politics.”

Mushahid Hussain, secretary general of the pro-Musharraf faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, told me that no one can negotiate the politics of the North-West Frontier Province better than Rehman. “We know that we need a bearded, turbaned guy out there,” Hussain told me. It is perhaps a measure of how inextricable Islamism and politics have become in Pakistan that even the United States would deal with an anti-American like Rehman. In September, he had the first meeting of his 30-year political career with an American ambassador. What did Rehman and Anne Patterson, the American envoy, discuss? “She urged me to form an electoral alliance with Benazir Bhutto and Musharraf,” he told me a few days after the meeting. “I am not against it. But politically, because of the American presence in Afghanistan and rising extremism, it is a bit hard for us to afford.” Plus, the fact that the Americans thought Bhutto could tackle the Taliban had simply baffled him. “She has no strategy in those areas, and nothing to do with those people,” he said.

When asked if Patterson’s meeting signaled a change in American attitudes, an embassy spokeswoman said it “reflects our approach to democratic politics in Pakistan” and was “part of a process of talking to all those who represent political movements in Pakistan, across the spectrum.” The U.S. has given more than $5 billion to Pakistan in the past few years to fight Islamist militants, but recent reports suggest that the aid has not been effective. Late last month, Congress put restrictions on some military aid and called for the restoration of democratic rights. [complete article]

Democracy gets small portion of U.S. aid
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, January 6, 2008

Two years before Benazir Bhutto was assassinated while leading her Pakistan People’s Party in its campaign against the rule of President Pervez Musharraf, the Bush administration devoted this much new aid money to strengthen political parties in Pakistan: $0.

The entire U.S. budget for democracy programs in Pakistan in 2006 amounted to about $22 million, according to State Department documents, much of it reserved for aiding the Election Commission — an entity largely controlled by Musharraf. That $22 million was just a small fraction of the $1.6 billion in aid the United States gave Pakistan that year, and it was equivalent to the value of jet engine and helicopter spare parts that Pakistan purchased in 2006 with the help of U.S. funds.

In the past year, as Musharraf’s grip on power became increasingly fragile, the Bush administration has scrambled to build contacts with the opposition and to provide expertise to opposition parties. The money devoted to democracy programs in the 165 million-person country was almost doubled in the fiscal 2008 budget, to $41 million, but that is still less than the $43 million set aside for such efforts in Kosovo, the former Albanian enclave of Serbia with a population of 2 million. In the region, U.S. democracy programs aimed at Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Egypt are all larger than the effort in Pakistan. [complete article]

At the heart of Pakistan, life keeps a normal beat
By Jason Burke, The Observer, January 6, 2008

The presence of a Western journalist provokes rowdy debates. The collective answer to the question ‘Is the West anti-Islamic?’ is that governments are, but people are not. Razzaq, the teashop owner, answers the question of whether the dozen or so men there feel themselves to be Pakistani, Sindhi or Muslim. ‘We are Muslim and then Pakistani,’ he says to general approbation. The television, momentarily ignored, is tuned to a satellite TV station broadcasting in the local Sindhi, not Urdu, the national language.

Faith and politics are intertwined with local identity, too. Radical Islam that probably led to the killing of Bhutto is seen as foreign here, where the folksy, pluralistic Barelvi strand of the faith is dominant.

‘We are not extreme,’ said Maja Ali, Old Jatoi’s storekeeper. ‘We are Sindhis. We are secular and democratic people. We are not sectarian. We are not like people in other parts of Pakistan.’ The regional pride is sometimes hidden, but always there in the background. When one of the rare local supporters of Benazir Bhutto blames ‘the Punjab’ for her death, he is at the same time accusing the army, dominated by Pakistanis originating in the eastern province, and expressing a long-standing resentment against the politically and economically dominant north.

But the political debate does not last long. The villagers return to topics of more interest: the cricket, inflation and the interesting stories about the barber’s wife who, everyone agrees, is as beautiful as the heroine of a Bollywood movie, the highest possible praise. [complete article]

See also, It’s troubled, but it’s home (Mohsin Hamid).

Editor’s Comment — It’s not that the United States needs to be spending more on “democracy promotion” in Pakistan or anywhere else. Such efforts can rightly be regarded as intrusive. The need is simply to spend less on butressing governments that suppress the rights of their own people to self-determination. The will of the people has to be expressed — guess what? — by the people.

NEWS, ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: How stable is “stability”?

Ghosts that haunt Pakistan
By John F. Burns, New York Times, January 6, 2008

The legend cultivated by Pakistani politicians like Ms. Bhutto and her principal civilian rival, Nawaz Sharif, cast the generals as the main villains in stifling democracy, emerging from their barracks to grab power out of Napoleonic ambition and contempt for the will of ordinary Pakistanis. It is a version of history calculated to appeal strongly to Western opinion. But it has been carefully drawn to excuse the role the politicians themselves have played in undermining democracy, by using mandates won at the polls to establish governments that rarely amounted to much more than vehicles for personal enrichment, or for pursuing vendettas against political foes.

William Dalrymple, a British author who has written widely about India and Pakistan, put it bluntly in an article for Britain’s left-of-center Guardian newspaper in 2005. “As Pakistan shows, rigid, corrupt, unrepresentative and flawed democracies without the strong independent institutions of a civil society — a free press, an independent judiciary, an empowered election commission — can foster governments that are every bit as tyrannical as any dictatorship,” he wrote. “Justice and democracy are not necessarily synonymous.” [complete article]

Musharraf apparently riding out crisis
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2008

In the first days after the Dec. 27 attack, the already unpopular Musharraf’s grip on power seemed to hang in the balance. Riots raged for three days in Karachi, Bhutto’s hometown, and across her home province of Sindh.

Much of the fury over the killing of the former prime minister and one of the most popular politicians in the country’s history was aimed directly at one man: the president. In a dozen cities, demonstrators shouted slogans such as “Musharraf, dog!” and “Musharraf, killer!”

But a scant week later, analysts and observers said the Pakistani leader appeared to have weathered the storm, methodically taking a series of steps aimed at shoring up his position, at least in the short term. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Remember who said, “it is the practice of democracy that makes a nation ready for democracy, and every nation can start on this path”? Of course President Bush was talking about Iraq and the Middle East and it was four years ago. Pakistan isn’t in the Middle East, neoconservatism is festering in the garbage can of history, and the word on everyone’s lips is not “democracy”; it’s “stability.”

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Sibel Edmonds claims nuclear secrets have been sold

For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets
The Sunday Times, January 6, 2008

A whistleblower has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — According to Australia’s Luke Ryland (via The Brad Blog), the “well-known senior official” is Marc Grossman. For detailed background on Sibel Edmond’s efforts to make her story known, see David Rose’s Vanity Fair article from 2005, An inconvenient patriot.

ANALYSIS & OPINION: Pakistan’s future (and past)

Should America dump its man in Pakistan?
By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy, January 3, 2008

The assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto killed the Bush administration’s last hope that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf could simultaneously defeat al Qaida and the Taliban and return his country to democratic rule.

Now, Pakistani experts said, the administration faces a tough choice: Press its unpopular and isolated ally to resign or share the blame as Musharraf drags his nation toward a violent implosion that could give Islamic extremists a more extensive haven in western Pakistan than the one they already have.

“Musharraf has become a symbol of everything that is wrong,” said Ijaz Khan, a Peshawar University professor of international relations. “He can no longer be part of the solution. This is what Washington must understand. [complete article]

Bhutto’s deadly legacy
By William Dalrymple, New York Times, January 4, 2008

Within her own party, she declared herself the president for life and controlled all decisions. She rejected her brother Murtaza’s bid to challenge her for its leadership and when he persisted, he was shot dead in highly suspicious circumstances during a police ambush outside the Bhutto family home.

Benazir Bhutto was certainly a brave and secular-minded woman. But the obituaries painting her as dying to save democracy distort history. Instead, she was a natural autocrat who did little for human rights, a calculating politician who was complicit in Pakistan’s becoming the region’s principal jihadi paymaster while she also ramped up an insurgency in Kashmir that has brought two nuclear powers to the brink of war. [complete article]

Analysts: Scotland Yard may find little to do in Pakistan
AFP, January 3, 2008

Scotland Yard’s investigators may not have much to work with in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, leading to an inquiry that raises more questions than answers, analysts say.

They say the arrival from London of one of the world’s most famous police squads is likely to make little difference in a country with a long tradition of political murders and an equally long tradition of failing to solve them. [complete article]

A look into Pakistan’s political future
By Hassan Abbas, Asia Times, January 4, 2008

Hassan Abbas, a research fellow at the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program, Harvard University, and a former Pakistani government official who served in the administrations of prime minister Benazir Bhutto and President Pervez Musharraf, shares his thoughts with Kaveh Afrasiabi on how the general elections on February 18 will pan out. [complete article]

OPINION & ANALYSIS: Pakistan’s chaotic stability

Crisis, what crisis?
By Jason Burke, The Guardian, January 2, 2008

How long will it be until Pakistan implodes? Take your pick of the analysts: a week or so as opposition parties take to the streets to complain about the postponement of elections, just announced; two weeks if the elections take place and the country descends into chaos; a few months and the mullahs will have poured down from the North West Frontier Province, seized Islamabad and the nuclear button; a year or so and Pakistan will have become another Afghanistan. Or perhaps it won’t implode at all.

The latter seems the most likely to me. On my first trip to Pakistan, in 1993, the country was as unstable as ever. Nawaz Sharif’s first government had fallen. Benazir Bhutto was back in power. Everyone was talking about a default on the country’s debts, rampant militancy, war, political chaos, inefficiency, corruption, and so on. Living there in the late 90s, I heard the same refrain every day. Clearly the events of the last week have shaken many – and rightfully given the strategically critical nature of the world’s second largest Muslim state – but perhaps the thing we should wonder at most is the astonishing fact that Pakistan successfully manages to keep itself together – apart from the inevitable and logical splitting off of eastern Pakistan to form Bangladesh in 1971 – not its manifest and manifold problems over 60 years of history. [complete article]

A revenger’s tragedy
By Ziauddin Sardar, New Statesman, January 3, 2008

Quite what motivation Musharraf’s government would have for assassinating Bhutto, it is hard to discern. He expected her to provide legitimacy for his presidency. Indeed, the very fact that she was eager to participate in the elections put a democratic sheen on his clinging to power. Her death not only weakens Musharraf’s position further, but may actually write the final chapter of his rule.

Security experts in Pakistan have little doubt who is behind the assassination. “I am convinced that the intelligence services were involved,” says Ayesha Siddiqa, author of the highly acclaimed book Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy. Only through the collusion of the security services could both a gunman and a suicide bomber have got so close to Bhutto, she says. Other analysts agree. There seems to be a general consensus that renegade current and former members of the ISI are working with religious extremists to spread a reign of terror.

Benazir Bhutto is the highest-value victim so far, but it is not just the PPP that is being targeted. Almost all Pakistani politicians are under threat. Hours before Bhutto’s assassination, an election rally organised by the Muslim League, the party of the other former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was attacked by unknown gunmen. Four party workers were killed. The Muslim League blames a pro-Musharraf party, the PML(Q), for the incident. But Musharraf allies are themselves under attack.

On 21 December, the day of the festival of Eid ul-Adha, a suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Charsadda District, near Pesha war, during Friday prayers. The intended victim, the former interior minister Aftab Sherpao, escaped unhurt but the blast killed more than 50 people. Even religious politicians, such as Maulana Fazlur Rahman, head of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Islamic Party of Religious Leaders), who has close ties with the Taliban, have received death threats. “The truth is that anyone can be bumped off in Pakistan,” says Imran Khan, the former cricketer and leader of the Movement for Justice Party, and it can simply be “blamed on al-Qaeda”. [complete article]

Pakistan: Restore democracy
International Crisis Group, January 2, 2008

In the next two months, Pakistan must work towards the following outcomes, with the strong and consistent support of the international community:

* Musharraf’s resignation, with Senate Chairman Mohammadmian Soomro taking over under the constitution as acting president and appointing neutral caretaker governments at the national and provincial levels with the consensus of the major political parties in all four federal units;
* postponement of the polls, accompanied with the announcement of an early new election date. The Election Commission announced on 2 January a postponement to 18 February but said nothing about other necessary changes needed if this step is to contribute to restoration of democracy in Pakistan,
* full restoration of the constitution, including an independent judiciary and constitutionally guaranteed fundamental freedoms of speech, assembly and association and safeguards against illegal arrest and detention;
* reconstitution of the Election Commission of Pakistan, with the consensus of all major political parties; and,
* the transfer of power and legitimate authority to elected civilian hands. [complete article]

Musharraf denies role in Bhutto’s assassination
By Griff Witte, Washington Post, January 3, 2008

Bhutto’s followers have focused their suspicions on several people with either past or present ties to Musharraf, four of whom Bhutto had named in a letter to the president as enemies plotting to kill her. One of those she implicated was Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, a former chief minister of Punjab province and a likely candidate to be prime minister if Musharraf’s allies do well enough in next month’s elections to form a government.

But Musharraf said the allegation that Elahi, or anyone else from the government, had participated in the attack was baseless and that Scotland Yard investigators whom he had invited to probe the matter would not be pursuing that possibility.

“I would like to know how she died, ultimately,” Musharraf said. “But I will not like anyone to go on a wild goose chase and start creating a disturbance.”

Sherry Rehman, spokeswoman for Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, accused Musharraf of trying to set the terms of Scotland Yard’s investigation before it even began. “It’s not for him to decide what’s a wild goose chase,” she said. [complete article]

EDITORIAL: The vanishing facade of democracy

The vanishing facade of democracy
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 2, 2008

The undemocratic tendencies of Pervez Musharraf have never deeply offended President Bush. Even after declaring a state of emergency, firing the Supreme Court and jailing most of his political opponents, Bush claimed that, “truly,” Musharraf was “somebody who believes in democracy.” Bush, on the other hand, is somebody who truly believes in loyalty. This is the glue that holds together the edifice of his own power. Musharraf might be Bush’s most dangerous friend but the fear of what might happen if the general feels betrayed indicates why, in the name of democracy, the president has so far only asked his friend to set aside his military uniform but not relinquish the presidency.

According to Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer, National Security Council staff member and now a Brookings fellow, when Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte went to Islamabad in September, “he basically delivered a message to Musharraf that we would stand by him, but he needed a democratic facade on the government, and we thought Benazir was the right choice for that face.”

The message from the Bush administration to Musharraf over the last seven years has been consistent: the appearance of democracy (or at least the promise of democracy) is more important than democracy itself.

Now, after it turns out that democracy will need a new face in Pakistan, we learn from Bhutto’s aides, that there is damning evidence that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, have been busy laying the groundwork for rigging the upcoming parliamentary elections. Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has prepared a detailed report that Benazir Bhutto herself planned to share with two members of Congress in a meeting due to take place the day she was assassinated. The PPP trusted Senator Arlen Specter, a Republican, and Democratic Congressman Patrick Kennedy, rather than representatives from the Bush administration which they regard as too closely aligned with Musharraf. From The Independent we learn that:

The report compiled by the PPP apparently includes information on an alleged “safehouse” being run by the ISI in a neighbourhood of Islamabad called G-5, from which the rigging operation was run. “It was compiled from sources within the [intelligence] services who were working directly with Benazir Bhutto,” said Mr Lashari [a member of the PPP election monitoring cell].

The report names a recently retired ISI officer who has allegedly been running the rigging unit and claims he worked in tandem with another named senior intelligence officer. It also claims that US aid funds were being used for the projects.

At the heart of the scheme, the report says, was a project in which ballot papers – stamped in favour of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q), which supports Mr Musharraf – were to be produced by the intelligence agencies in about 100 constituencies. Mr Lashari said the effort was directed at constituencies where the result was likely to be decided by a small margin, so it would not be obvious. “They diverted money from aid activities. We had evidence of where they were spending the money,” he added.

Is it possible that the Bush administration already knew of, or had received intimations that Musharaff’s intelligence services had such a scheme in operation? Even before Bhutto’s assassination and while expectations of vote rigging remained high, the administration had no qualms about sending an assistant secretary of state up to Capitol Hill to assert in the face of deep skepticism that, “I do think they can have a good election. They can have a credible election. They can have a transparent election and a fair election.”

The aroma of complicity (which it should be noted necessitates neither foreknowledge, nor support, but simply acquiescence) is perhaps evident in the way Washington responded to Bhutto’s assassination. First came the chorus that this was the dastardly work of al Qaeda, or one of its allies, the Taliban leader, Baitullah Meshud, who is effectively the Amir of South Waziristan. Then some intelligence sources started pulling back from that line and instead suggested that this was the work of al Qaeda infiltrators in the lower echelons of Pakistan’s intelligence services. What no administration official was willing to concede was that the jihadists might in this instance have been acting as minions for high-ranking intelligence officers.

Ever since 9/11, President Bush has been a captive of his own for-us-or-against-us logic when it comes to dealing with Pervez Musharraf. If Musharraf could not be painted as an ally, the risks of turning him into an enemy seemed too daunting to contemplate. In Musharraf’s hands, nuclear deterrence became a principle with new meaning as it served to deter threats to a regime rather than a state.

Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal continues to protect Musharraf’s power for as long as Washington is paralyzed by the fear that nuclear material could slip out of his control and fall into the hands of al Qaeda. What Bush wants us to view as the Musharraf nuclear insurance policy is in fact a nuclear protection racket. Fearful of the mayhem that the boss’ removal might unleash, we have funneled billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan’s military, no strings attached, all in the tenuous name of keeping the neighborhood safe.

To those with a firm grasp on power, democracy must always appear risky and threatening. Democracy necessarily entails the dispersal of power and challenges the claims of those who would make themselves the guardians of power. Yet the pledge that all such guardians effectively make with the people they claim to be serving amounts to this: Trust me, because I can’t trust you.

NEWS: Things go up and down

Pakistan’s days of rage leave cloud of uncertainty
By Somini Sengupta, New York Times, January 2, 2008

The highway that leads from Benazir Bhutto’s ancestral village to this, her hometown, is one long road of ruin. Here and there along a stretch of 200 miles lie twisted hulks of tractor-trailers, their contents spilling out on the highway, casualties of the riots that broke out after Ms. Bhutto’s assassination last Thursday.

On New Year’s Eve, as the last light of 2007 fell from the sky, piles of coal still smoldered on the pavement. Rotten oranges littered the road. A consignment of pickup trucks that the United States had bought for Pakistani law enforcement officials fighting militants had been picked clean; brakes, steering wheels, batteries had been carted away.

The truck drivers, most of them ethnic Pashtuns from the faraway tribal areas of the northwest, waited in vain for rescue here in the southern ethnic Sindhi heartland. One of them had his left ear caked with blood; the mobs had pelted him with stones and then burned his coal truck, costing him his only source of income.

The road was a perfect emblem of the mood of this country, as it ushered in a new year under a thick shroud woven of rage and uncertainty. [complete article]

Pakistan elections delayed until Feb. 18
By Carlotta Gall, New York Times, January 3, 2008

Pakistan’s election commission announced Wednesday that parliamentary elections would be postponed until Feb. 18, a delay of six weeks, after the death of the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and the riots that have damaged some election commission offices and paralyzed parts of Sindh Province. [complete article]

NEWS & OPINION: The liability of dictatorship

False messiah of Pakistan
By William M. Arkin, Washington Post, December 31, 2007

Whether Benazir Bhutto was killed by a bullet to the head, shrapnel or a blow that resulted as her driver sped away from the scene, the challenge for the United States remains the same: how to pursue U.S. interests and the cause of international security in a country virtually everyone now labels “the most dangerous place on earth.”

Conventional wisdom goes that the terrorism threat is so great, with Pakistan just a hair’s breadth away from breakdown and nuclear chaos, that the U.S. must defer to the dictator in Islamabad to hold it all together. But the reality is that Bin Laden’s “al-Qaeda” is not the primary domestic or international threat in Pakistan, the nuclear arsenal is not that vulnerable, and relying on General Pervez Musharraf to deliver security and stability means continuing a failed policy. It’s time to change course. [complete article]

Elections face possible delay as Pakistani tensions grow
By Jane Perlez, New York Times, December 31, 2007

The most experienced opposition politician in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, upped the ante in the coming confrontation with the ruling party on Monday, calling for President Pervez Musharraf’s immediate resignation and the formation of a government of national consensus.

The attack, the most stinging public rebuke of the president from Mr. Sharif since his return from exile, was delivered amid strong indications that the government would postpone elections scheduled for Jan. 8 because of the chaos following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the other leading opposition leader.

While the government will not decide officially until Tuesday, officials with the Pakistani election commission said the voting would probably be delayed until the end of January or early February, despite Washington’s entreaties to hold it as scheduled. [complete article]

See also, Delayed election will be disaster for Musharraf (Zahid Hussain).

Pakistan may not make it
By Peter Galbriath, The Guardian, December 31, 2007

Since Musharraf has certainly read the handwriting on the wall and yet still intends to stay in power, there is not much foreign leaders can do, in effect, to encourage his departure. Many Pakistanis – and most Sindhis – believe Musharraf and the army had a role in the Bhutto killing, which took place in a garrison city. Musharraf cannot be trusted to conduct an impartial investigation of the murder of his top rival. He has sacked Pakistan’s independent-minded judges and imprisoned its lawyers.

The US and Britain should take the lead in demanding a UN investigation: the facts in this case are every bit as compelling as those that led the UN to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Harriri. The Bhutto killing is tearing Pakistan apart. A UN investigation can help calm passions, but only the permanent departure of the army from power can provide a hope – and it is only a hope – of saving the country. [complete article]

New questions arise in killing of ex-premier
By Jane Perlez, New York Times, December 31, 2007

New details of Benazir Bhutto’s final moments, including indications that her doctors felt pressured to conform to government accounts of her death, fueled the arguments over her assassination on Sunday and added to the pressure on Pakistan’s leaders to accept an international inquiry.

Athar Minallah, a board member of the hospital where Ms. Bhutto was treated, released her medical report along with an open letter showing that her doctors wanted to distance themselves from the government theory that Ms. Bhutto had died by hitting her head on a lever of her car’s sunroof during the attack.

In his letter, Mr. Minallah, who is also a prominent lawyer, said the doctors believed that an autopsy was needed to provide the answers to how she actually died. Their request for one last Thursday was denied by the local police chief. [complete article]

EDITORIAL: The knot of uncertainty tightens

Who knows?
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, December 30, 2007

“Benazir Bhutto was so fearful for her life that she tried to hire British and American security experts to protect her,” The Sunday Telegraph reveals. Her entourage even approached Blackwater. They might have been able to protect her life but they would have destroyed her image. She was even directly receiving confidential U.S. intelligence about militant threats to her life. The intelligence was clearly inadequate.

Whenever a dramatic and unexpected event occurs, some journalists try and find out what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. Many more pick up the phone and hunt down some well-respected “expert” who’s only too happy to pump some certainty into a mighty void. Bruce Riedel, a former defense and intelligence official and currently senior fellow at the Brookings Institute is just such a person. The day Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, Riedel was quick to assert that this “was almost certainly the work of al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda’s Pakistani allies.” How did he know? He didn’t, but how many news editors would find fault in quoting the opinion of a Brookings sage? Three days later, many of the fast-talking experts are now starting to sound a bit foolish — Riedel’s own certainty quickly backed off into a “hunch” — so the only expertise still worth noting is that which underlines the uncertainty rather than makes the pretense of knowledge. Only now are the papers finding column space for a more considered and circumspect analysis. From an assassination which supposedly had “al Qaeda” written all over it, the signature is now acknowledged as being quite hard to decipher. As the Los Angeles Times notes:

Several analysts said the use of a handgun in addition to explosives is a departure for militant groups in Pakistan. “This is not by any means a signature killing by Al Qaeda,” security analyst Nasim Zehra said. “A targeted shooting, even in combination with a familiar suicide bombing, makes it look more like a political killing than one by some militant group.”

While facts remain hard to come by, a number of possibly useful observations can be made. Western politicians want to characterize Bhutto’s death in symbolic terms — this was an attack on democracy, an attack on the freedom and power of Muslim women, or some such pernicious act. But to see that as the effect is not to discern the intent. Much more likely this was first and foremost a successful attempt to prevent Bhutto becoming prime minister. This was indeed a political assassination and suspicion should fall first on those whose power is threatened rather than on those whose ambitions are expanding.

The jihadist signature was that the attackers gave up their lives, but it now seems unclear that that was the intent of the gunman. The fact that he wore dark glasses at least suggests that he might have entertained the hope that he was going to make a getaway. What his handlers hadn’t told him was that as soon as he completed his mission, a jihadist foot soldier — unknown to the gunman — was going to make sure that the assassin would never tell his tale.

As for what we can now say about the Bhutto family, the perpetuation of the dynasty and of the Benazir legend are upper most in their minds. The mystery surrounding her death provides yet more grist to their political mill.

Will we ever know the identity of the gunman in shades? Was he driven by dreams of an Islamic state or did he perhaps see himself as a latter day Carlos the Jackal?

NEWS & OPINION: The measure of American influence

U.S. strives to keep footing in tangled Pakistan situation
By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, December 30, 2007

For the Bush administration, there is no Plan B for Pakistan.

The assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto dramatically altered Pakistani politics, forcing the largest opposition party to find new leadership on the eve of an election, jeopardizing a fragile transition to democracy, and leaving Washington even more dependent on the controversial President Pervez Musharraf as the lone pro-U.S. leader in a nation facing growing extremism.

Despite anxiety among intelligence officials and experts, however, the administration is only slightly tweaking a course charted over the past 18 months to support the creation of a political center revolving around Musharraf, according to U.S. officials.

“Plan A still has to work,” said a senior administration official involved in Pakistan policy. “We all have to appeal to moderate forces to come together and carry the election and create a more solidly based government, then use that as a platform to fight the terrorists. ”

U.S. policy remains wedded to Musharraf despite growing warnings from experts, presidential candidates and even a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan that his dictatorial ways are untenable. Some contend that Pakistan would be better off without him.

“This administration has had a disastrous policy toward Pakistan, as bad as the Iraq policy,” said Robert Templer of the International Crisis Group. “They are clinging to the wreckage of Musharraf, flailing around. . . . Musharraf has outlived all possible usage to Pakistan and the United States.” [complete article]

Bush’s best-laid plans
By Andrew J. Bacevich, Los Angeles Times, December 30, 2007

Faced with the prospect of “losing” Pakistan, what should the world’s sole superpower do? Despite Musharraf’s flaws, should Washington back him to the hilt as the only alternative to chaos? Or should Bush commit the United States without reservation to building a strong democracy in Pakistan?

To pose such questions is to presume that decisions made in Washington will decisively influence the course of events in Islamabad. Yet the lesson to be drawn from the developments of the last several days — and from U.S. involvement in Pakistan over the course of decades — suggests just the opposite: The United States has next to no ability to determine Pakistan’s fate.

How the crisis touched off by Bhutto’s assassination will end is impossible to predict, although the outcome is likely to be ugly. Yet this much we can say with confidence: That outcome won’t be decided in the White House. Once again, as Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “events are in the saddle, and ride mankind,” with those events reducing the most powerful man in the world to the status of spectator.

At the beginning of his second term, Bush spoke confidently of the United States sponsoring a global democratic revolution “with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” Ever since that hopeful moment, developments across the greater Middle East — above all, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and on the West Bank — have exposed the very real limits of U.S. wisdom and power.

Now the virtual impotence of the U.S. in the face of the crisis enveloping Pakistan — along with its complicity in creating that crisis — ought to discredit once and for all any notions of America fixing the world’s ills. [complete article]

FEATURE & OPINION: After Benazir

After Benazir
By Declan Walsh and Jason Burke, The Observer, December 30, 2007

Speaking again to this newspaper not long before her death – this time by phone from Dubai – Bhutto had voiced her concerns. They were not with the militants but with those inside the security establishment – the same people whom her husband blamed for the Karachi attack.

‘I’m not worried about Mahsud,’ said Bhutto. ‘I’m worried about the threat within the government. People like Mahsud are just pawns. It is the forces behind them that have presided over the rise of extremism and militancy in my country. They feel threatened now that their infrastructure will be rolled back when democracy is restored.’

The reality was that Bhutto’s return was deeply threatening to powerful interests in a Pakistani establishment increasingly dominated under Musharraf’s rule by the army and the intelligence agencies.

It was marked by a hatred towards the Bhuttos within a core section of Pakistan’s military – one that runs back to the coup against Bhutto’s father in the late 1970s. This group were less threatened by her threat to roll up the extremists than her promise to give western countries access to the disgraced scientist Khan, who operated a nuclear weapons supermarket from Pakistan for much of the 1990s. The fear was that Khan might implicate powerful figures in the army who had supported his illegal activities.

Deep down, Bhutto considered these people the real enemy: ‘I’m talking about the retired military officers who fought the jihad, who created the Afghan mujahideen, and later morphed into al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The real threat comes from them; it doesn’t come from their puppets or their pawns. They have a lot of supporters within the echelons of administration and intelligence.’ [complete article]

Pakistan’s flawed and feudal princess
By William Dalrymple, The Observer, December 30, 2007

Her neighbouring heads of state may have been figures as unpredictable and potentially alarming as President Ahmadinejad of Iran and a clutch of opium-trading Afghan warlords, but Bhutto has always seemed reassuringly familiar to Western governments – one of us. She spoke English fluently because it was her first language. She had an English governess, went to a convent run by Irish nuns and rounded off her education with degrees from Harvard and Oxford.

‘London is like a second home for me,’ she once told me. ‘I know London well. I know where the theatres are, I know where the shops are, I know where the hairdressers are. I love to browse through Harrods and WH Smith in Sloane Square. I know all my favourite ice cream parlours. I used to particularly love going to the one at Marble Arch: Baskin Robbins. Sometimes, I used to drive all the way up from Oxford just for an ice cream and then drive back again. That was my idea of sin.’

It was difficult to imagine any of her neighbouring heads of state, even India’s earnest Sikh economist, Manmohan Singh, talking like this.

For the Americans, what Benazir Bhutto wasn’t was possibly more attractive even than what she was. She wasn’t a religious fundamentalist, she didn’t have a beard, she didn’t organise rallies where everyone shouts: ‘Death to America’ and she didn’t issue fatwas against Booker-winning authors, even though Salman Rushdie ridiculed her as the Virgin Ironpants in his novel Shame.

However, the very reasons that made the West love Benazir Bhutto are the same that gave many Pakistanis second thoughts. Her English might have been fluent, but you couldn’t say the same about her Urdu which she spoke like a well-groomed foreigner: fluently, but ungrammatically. Her Sindhi was even worse; apart from a few imperatives, she was completely at sea. [complete article]

OPINION: Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are vulnerable

What about the nukes?
By Graham Allison, Newsweek, December 28, 2007

The assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto reminds us starkly of an unanswered question most of us would prefer to forget: how secure are Pakistan’s nuclear weapons? Could Al Qaeda or another terrorist group acquire a warhead or enough radioactive material to create a dirty bomb?

Over the years I have had the opportunity to discuss the loose nukes issue with Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf on three separate occasions. On each he insisted that there is no possibility that corrupt custodians or terrorists could steal the country’s nuclear weapons and materials. But in the third of these conversations, which occurred in December 2003, just a week after terrorists came within a second and a half of blowing him up, I managed to penetrate his standard defense. How plausible is it, I asked, that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is more secure than the president of the country himself? His answer: well, there you may have a point. [complete article]

EDITORIAL: The cover-up

The cover-up
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, December 29, 2007

If the Pakistani government is not engaged in a cover-up, they’re certainly doing a good job of making it look like a cover-up. First the crime scene was immediately hosed down removing any evidence. Then, after Benazir Bhutto had been pronounced dead, there was no autopsy. Then, after it had been widely reported that she had died from gun shot wounds, the Pakistan Interior Ministry claimed that she had not been shot — that she had died from a fractured skull resulting from her head hitting a lever.

But now Sherry Rehman, a close aide to Bhutto who bathed her body after her assassination, says, “There was a bullet wound I saw that went in from the back of her head and came out the other side.” And following the verbal testimony now we have the visible evidence: the image of a young man aiming a pistol at Bhutto moments before she died.

Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema, says, “This is not an ordinary criminal matter in which we require assistance of the international community. I think we are capable of handling it.” And the White House demurely says, “If Pakistani authorities ask for assistance we would review the request.” In Washington and Islamabad there seems to be much more interest in chanting the al Qaeda mantra than in finding out who was really behind the assassination.

NEWS: Bhutto’s party: Qaeda story being used as a diversion

Bhutto aides question militant link to killing
AP, December 29, 2007

An Islamic militant group said Saturday it had no link to Benazir Bhutto’s killing and the opposition leader’s aides accused the government of a cover-up, disputing the official account of her death.

The government stood firmly by its account of Thursday’s assassination and insisted it needed no foreign help in any investigation.

“This is not an ordinary criminal matter in which we require assistance of the international community. I think we are capable of handling it,” said Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema.

Bhutto’s aides said they doubted militant commander Baitullah Mehsud was behind the attack on the opposition leader and said the government’s claim that she died when she hit her head on the sunroof of her vehicle was ”dangerous nonsense.”
[…]
Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party accused the government of trying to frame Mehsud, saying the militant — through emissaries — had previously told Bhutto he was not involved in the Karachi bombing.

“The story that al-Qaida or Baitullah Mehsud did it appears to us to be a planted story, an incorrect story, because they want to divert the attention,” said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Bhutto’s party.

After the Karachi attack, Bhutto accused elements in the ruling pro-Musharraf party of plotting to kill her. The government denied the claims. Babar said Bhutto’s allegations were never investigated. [complete article]

EDITORIAL: Who killed Benazir Bhutto?

Who killed Bhutto?
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, December 28, 2007

The fact that al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for assassinating Benazir Bhutto really means nothing. After all, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, al Qaeda’s liason to the Taliban, can be confident that the Pakistani government is not going to deny his claim. Indeed, Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema told a news conference today, “We have intelligence intercepts indicating that al Qaeda leader Baitullah Mehsud is behind her assassination.” (The Interior Ministry also claims Bhutto was not shot!) Bhutto herself believed that Mehsud might have been behind the October bombing from which she escaped unscathed soon after her return to Pakistan. Mehsud had been quoted in the Pakistani press as having promised to “welcome” Bhutto with a suicide bombing. What received less attention was that the Waziristan tribal leader denied making any such threats to Bhutto. As Rahimullah Yusufzai reported in The News on October 18:

Though it is clear that Baitullah Mehsud hasn’t threatened Benazir Bhutto with suicide bombing, one should keep in mind that anyone intending to launch such an attack would not brag about it publicly. Benazir Bhutto has provoked the militants and Jihadis with some of her recent pro-US and anti-al-Qaeda and anti-Taliban statements and one should, therefore, not rule out the possibility of suicide bombings targeting her. But that could happen once she is in power and has the authority to order military operations against the militants. At present, she doesn’t possess the authority to cause harm to the militants and it appears that the latter would prefer to wait and see as to how she acts once she is in power.

Political pragmatism might not be what one would expect from an Islamic extremist, but tribal leaders such as Mehsud, even though they impose a harsh form of Islamic rule should be seen as territorial commanders. As such, they are not averse to deal-making. Whatever promises Bhutto might have made to her American friends, Mehsud and his allies would have had good reason to adopt a wait-and-see approach rather than follow the script that says that Bhutto, the Western-friendly, democratic Muslim woman, would, once in office, remain an implacable foe. After all, as prime minister of Pakistan she once led one of only three governments in the world that recognized the Taliban government of Afghanistan.

What is interesting about the Interior Ministry’s claim about Meshud’s involvement in Bhutto’s assassination is that although Bhutto herself lent credence to the claim by connecting Meshud with the October bombing, she also named others — names that we can be sure no Interior Ministry spokesman will ever link to her assassination: former Chief Minister Chaudhry Parvez Elahi, former ISI chief Hamid Gul, Hassan Afzal, former Deputy Chairman of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), and Intelligence Bureau chief Brig (Retd) Ijaz Shah. Given that only a matter of weeks ago, Bhutto saw these men as a threat to her life, it appears a bit premature for so many analysts to have confidently concluded that al Qaeda is the culprit.

See also, Bhutto said she’d blame Musharraf if killed (CNN) and Who killed Benazir? (Noah Shachtman).

OPINION: The politics of chaos

Benazir Bhutto and the politics of chaos
By Patrick J. Lyons, New York Times, December 28, 2007

The question has been raised by many, and all the more ruefully after her assassination: Given how unstable her country was and how dangerous it would be for her, why did Benazir Bhutto return to public opposition politics in Pakistan?

Steven R. Weisman, who covers international economics for The New York Times, was the paper’s New Delhi bureau chief in the mid-1980s, and covered Ms. Bhutto’s return to the country and to prominence in the tumult and violence of 1986. He put some thoughts about what she was thinking then, and now, into a memo shared with The Lede:

“Benazir not only understood that Pakistan was a chaotic country, she often seemed almost to court chaos as an ally,” Mr. Weisman writes. “I believe that, in effect, was her strategy in her current return.” [complete article]

OPINION: Replacing Bhutto

The dangerous void left behind
By Ahmed Rashid, Washington Post, December 28, 2007

[Benazir Bhutto’s] longest-running battle was not with the extremists but with the army, whose leaders never trusted her. She was too secular, too worldly and perhaps too wise. Bhutto was killed leaving a political rally in Rawalpindi, just two miles from where her father, prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was hanged by another military dictator 30 years ago. The tragedy of the Bhutto family — her brothers also died violently, one poisoned, one shot, and her husband spent seven years in prison — has become part of the saga and struggle by Pakistanis to create a viable democratic, modern state.

Yesterday, her party’s stalwarts were on the streets, accusing Musharraf and the military of perpetrating the latest murder of a Bhutto. That is extremely unlikely, not least because last night the government itself was in despair.

The classic use of a sniper to cut her down as at least one suicide bomber blew up her vehicle bore the hallmarks of a Pakistani suicide squad expertly trained by the al-Qaeda terrorists who are ensconced in northwest Pakistan.

Her death only exacerbates the problems Pakistan has been grappling with for the past few months: how to find a modicum of political stability through a representative government that the army can accept and will not work to undermine, and how to tackle the extremism spreading in the country.

If the elections are canceled, it is imperative that Musharraf drop his single-minded desire for power and establish a national government made up of all the country’s leading politicians and parties. Together, they may agree on how to conduct an orderly election while trying to beat back the specter of extremism that is haunting this benighted land. But Musharraf may not survive the fallout of Bhutto’s death. His actions have not been honorable, and none of the political opposition is willing to sit down with him. It is unlikely that they will accept Musharraf’s continued presidency.

If rioting and political mayhem worsen, if the opposition refuses to cooperate with Musharraf and the United States finally begins to distance itself from him, then the army may be forced to tell Musharraf to call it a day. If that happens, it will be even more imperative that the world supports a national government, elections and a speedy return to civilian rule — and not another military dictatorship. [complete article]

Editor’s note: The following two articles were published a week before Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.

Aitzaz Ahsan replacing Benazir Bhutto in Washington?
By Zaid Hamid, AhmedQuraishi.com, December 20, 2007

The United States is silently patronizing another candidate for the post of Prime Minister or Senate or opposition leader in the next Pakistani parliament.

He is Washington’s ‘back up man’ in Pakistan. He can replace Benazir Bhutto in case she tumbles on the way due to any reason. Aitzaz Ahsan is the next horse Washington and the CIA are betting their future on in Pakistan.

He has so far shown the required defiance to President Musharraf and is well projected within the U.S. administration as well as in the media and liberal society in the country.

Why a ‘back up man’ for Mrs. Bhutto is becoming a necessity for Washington?

The answer is simple.

Mr. Musharraf has scuttled the “conspiracy” to throw him out of power, in which at least the U.S. media played a crucial role. Washington also exerted unbelievable pressures to ease Mr. Musharraf’s supposed replacement, Benazir Bhutto, in power in Islamabad. But that entire plan has been scuttled. And Mr. Musharraf is in fact consolidating his power. He might even end up having enough majority in the next parliament to change the constitution and transform Pakistan into a presidential democracy. From the American standpoint, Musharraf needs to be restrained, since his ouster does not seem possible for the time being.

Mr. Ahsan’s ambitions have extremely offended Mrs. Bhutto and her frustration is so obvious that it is even being noted on the streets. Mr. Ahsan remains part of PPP but the party leader continues to feel seriously threatened by him as he is now the next U.S. candidate to replace her in case she fails to deliver. [complete article]

Can a democrat like Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan answer these questions?
By Ahmed Quraishi, December 20, 2007

Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan, a Pakistani politician turned rights activist, is successfully pandering to an American audience that knows zilch about Pakistan, or about Mr. Ahsan’s own history. He can wow the Americans all he wants, but only we, the ordinary Pakistanis, know Mr. Ahsan’s undemocratic history within his own political party. Welcome again to Pakistan, where the hero-of-the-month is just another feudal politician fighting for his pie. [complete article]

See also, Anti-Bhutto army factions behind murder? (B. Raman), Sharif’s party to boycott elections (AP), and Nawaz Sharif holds Musharraf responsible for Bhutto killing (Indo-Asian News Service).

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Bhutto assassination

Bhutto: “She has been martyred”
By Aryn Baker, Time, December 27, 2007

Just days before parliamentary polls in Pakistan, leading Prime Ministerial contender and anti terrorism crusader Benazir Bhutto was shot dead during an election rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, near Islamabad. “She has been martyred,” said party official Rehman Malik. The Associated Press, citing Malik, reported that Bhutto was shot in the neck and the chest before the gunman blew himself up. At least 20 bystanders were killed in the blast. Bhutto was rushed to a hospital But, at 6:16 p.m. Pakistan time, she was declared dead.

“How can somebody who can shoot her get so close to her with all the so-called security?” said a distraught Husain Haqqani, a former top aide to Bhutto, shortly after news of her death flashed around the world. Haqqani, who served as a spokesman and top aide to Bhutto for more than a decade, blamed Pakistani security, either through neglect or complicity, in her assassination. “This is the security establishment, which has always wanted her out,” he said through tears. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The evidence here certainly places the security establishment — and thus Musharraf — under suspicion. The use of explosives looks like an effort to obscure who might be responsible — both by means of killing witnesses and by providing the media and government officials with a label they have no hesitation in using: suicide bombing. To call it a suicide bombing is to instantly place this event within the narrative of Islamic extremism.

Back in November, after her return to Pakistan, Bhutto wrote:

It has now been more than two weeks since the horrific assassination attempt against me and the police have still not filed my complaint. They filed their own report without taking statements from eyewitnesses on the truck targeted for the terrorist attack which resulted in the death of more than 158 of my supporters and security guards.

Soon thereafter, I was asked by authorities not to travel in cars with tinted windows — which protected me from identification by terrorists — or travel with privately armed guards.

I began to feel the net was being tightened around me when police security outside my home in Karachi was reduced, even as I was told that other assassination plots were in the offing.

If Musharraf now postpones the upcoming election or bans political rallies, what will be the Bush administration’s response? Another lame statement about looking forward to Pakistan’s return to the democratic path? One thing we can reasonably assume is that neither from Washington nor any other Western capital are we now likely to hear any demands for an independent inquiry into Bhutto’s death. In November Islamabad adamantly rejected any assistance from forensic teams of the FBI and Scotland Yard. Will similar offers now even be made?