Bhutto's Assassination

Britain’s Channel 4 News has obtained video footage of the assassination, and 3 gunshots are clearly heard, and her hair and scarf are disturbed, and then the suicide bomb goes off.

Jane Perlez, on the New York Times (repost on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer), notes:

...Athar Minallah, a board member of the hospital where 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 Bhutto had died by hitting her head on a lever of her car's sunroof during the attack....

...Pakistani and Western security experts said the government's insistence that Bhutto, a former prime minister, was not killed by a bullet was designed to deflect attention from the lack of government security around her. On Sunday, photographs in Pakistani newspapers showed a man apparently pointing a gun at her from just yards away....

...Minallah distributed the medical report with his open letter to the Pakistani news media and The New York Times. He said the doctor who wrote the report, Mohammad Mussadiq Khan, the principal professor of surgery at the Rawalpindi General Hospital, told him on the night of Bhutto's death that she had died of a bullet wound....

Syed Saleem Shahzad on the Asia Times reports on "Al Qaeda's" claim of responsibility:

"We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat mujahideen.” These were the words of al-Qaeda’s top commander for Afghanistan operations and spokesperson Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, immediately after the attack that claimed the life of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto on Thursday (December 27)....

...“This is our first major victory against those [eg, Bhutto and President Pervez Musharraf] who have been siding with infidels [the West] in a fight against al-Qaeda and declared a war against mujahideen,” Mustafa told Asia Times Online by telephone....

...On December 6, a Pakistani intelligence agency tracked a cell phone conversation between a militant leader and a local cleric, in which a certain Maulana Asadullah Khalidi was named. The same day, Khalidi was arrested during a raid in Karachi. The arrest, in turn, led to the arrest of a very high-profile non-Pakistani militant leader, which, it is said, revealed an operation aimed at wiping out “precious American assets” in Pakistan, including Musharraf and Bhutto....

...Bhutto was the only Pakistani leader who regularly spoke against al-Qaeda....

The Associated Press and the Telegraph both have transcripts up of an al-Qaeda intercept, between senior al-Qa'eda leader Baitullah Mehsud and Maulvi Sahib, intercepted AFTER the assassination.

RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Goncharov offers this analysis:

... Bhutto's return to Pakistan last October was a triumph and a scandal at the same time. On the day of her return when the escort was moving along one of the central roads of her native Karachi to the greetings of numerous supporters, two explosions killed more than 140 people. Bhutto was not harmed, but Pakistani security-related services were said to be involved in the terrorist attack. President Pervez Musharraf was also suspected. These suspicions have not been cleared to this day.

But it was at least absurd to suspect Musharraf of involvement in Bhutto's assassination. He had a much bigger stake in Bhutto's heading the cabinet after the parliamentary elections. He could not fail to understand that her party was bound to win the elections after an eight-year exile, and possibly, by a landslide. For this reason, Musharraf desperately needed an alliance with the PPP. Pakistan's main sponsors - the United States and Britain, who regard Bhutto and the PPP as democracy incarnate, would have never forgiven Musharraf any other coalition.

Finally, by giving up his general's uniform, Musharraf managed to consolidate the power of a civil president, as well as his personal power; he actually precluded any encroachments on it on behalf of his military and civilian opponents. He set up a national command department to ensure the security and reliability of nuclear facilities. One can imagine what powers the department has received with the presence of nuclear weapons in the country and the threat of the extremist forces coming to power.

The president headed the new department, while the prime minister was appointed his deputy. In this context, Musharraf also made Bhutto his supporter. This position of his was shared by his supporters.

Literally, a day before Bhutto's assassination, Pakistani Ambassador to Russia Kamal Kazi told me that Bhutto was going to be the next prime minister and that other options were unlikely. We talked about the role of women in modern Pakistan, and the ambassador said that his guests would be able to see the Pakistani Prime Minister without a veil. It was clear whom he meant....

Professor M.D. Nalapat, vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and professor of geopolitics at Manipal University, provides this analysis on UPI Asia Online:

...The skepticism over her longevity was because of the threat she represented to both the Punjabi component in the Pakistan army and to the continuation of the military's monopoly over state power.

While President Pervez Musharraf avoided challenging the latter, since 9/11 he has quietly but systematically sought to reduce the suffocating grip of the Punjabis over the army, giving better representation to Mohajirs, Balochis, Pashtuns and even a few Sindhis in the higher reaches of both the military as well as the civil administration. Had there been a teaming up between the wily Musharraf and the mercurial Bhutto, especially after he was made to quit as army chief, the two may have succeeded in leveraging anti-army sentiment in Pakistan enough to send the soldiers back to their barracks.

Since the 1950s, those in uniform have controlled Pakistan's civilian institutions, ensuring that these were melded with the military into a seamless system of preference and privilege to a military that has made jihad a lucrative industry. Especially since anti-U.S. passions rose after the Iraq war in 2003, but dating back to the earlier attempt by Musharraf to put the Taliban out to dry in Afghanistan , the Baloch and Pashtun components of the Pakistan army turned against their chief, to be joined by the Punjabi component shortly thereafter.

While the Baloch and the Pashtun were reacting to the "retreat" from Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq, the Punjabi component turned negative to Musharraf more than two years after the post-Saddam occupation of Iraq made the United States an object of hatred in the Muslim world. This was because, by mid-2005, they were convinced that Musharraf was seeking to eliminate their overwhelming clout in the armed forces. From that time onward, the Punjabi component silently linked hands with those elements in Pakistan's civil society that wanted Musharraf to quit as army chief.

From the end of 2003, the process of rendering ineffective the writ of Pervez Musharraf within the Pakistan army developed -- a trend that accelerated in 2005. By the end of that year, his writ had largely ceased to operate in the services, with obvious consequences for NATO's war in Afghanistan.

It is likely that it was after his backers in the Pentagon and the U.S. State Department were convinced that Musharraf had become an ineffective asset that the plan to yoke him to a civilian public figure was implemented. With characteristic disregard for the ethnic chemistry of the army, the individual chosen as the other half of this pair was Benazir Bhutto. Unfortunately for U.S. policymakers, being Sindhi, Bhutto was regarded as an outsider by the dominant Punjabi component of the Pakistan army.

Also, despite an awareness that she had the Bhutto family trait of heated rhetoric that was seldom translated into reality, her numerous public vows to eliminate the jihadis went down badly in an army that has made jihad into a profitable enterprise, whether it be the battle against the Soviets in Afghanistan or the shadow boxing against the Taliban seen since 9/11. Added to the billions in U.S. taxpayer money have been the profits from the drugs trade, which in South Asia is run out of Pakistan.

Among the voting public, Bhutto's open embrace of U.S. policies and the influence of her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, soured her appeal. By contrast, her rival Nawaz Sharif gained in popularity, having clearly gained the covert backing of the Punjabi establishment in the army, as had deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chowdhury when he challenged Musharraf. Sharif kept up verbal sallies against the unpopular Musharraf, a man that the Punjabi generals were delighted to see run down.

The background noise of anti-Musharraf rhetoric, coupled with more than a nudge from the White House, forced the former commando to doff his uniform and emerge in the unaccustomed role of "civilian head of state," with a Punjabi general, Ashfaq Kiyani, taking over as army chief.

Although Kiyani has the right atmospherics to please the United States -- including a clean-shaven chin and a repertoire of "anti-jihad" buzzwords -- his friends say the new chief's commitment to "winning back the strategic loss suffered in Afghanistan" is total, and therefore that he would place emphasis not on counter-insurgency operations but on the fool's errand of identifying and winning over so-called "moderate Taliban," a process tailor-made to enable the militia to recoup and regroup to a strength sufficient to launch a country-wide assault against NATO in Afghanistan by mid-2009.

Unlike the 1990s, when she helped insert the Taliban into power in Kabul, this time Bhutto seemed a genuine convert to a policy of going after the jihadis, lest they paralyze the machinery of the state with multiple attacks. She was also likely to have reinforced Musharraf's subtle moves to reduce Punjabi influence in the military, aware that she was disliked within this group, and that therefore its potential for trouble needed to be eliminated.

Small wonder that Bhutto was provided with a vehicle with a sunroof to transport her at that final rally in the Punjabi heartland, or that Inter-Services Intelligence-linked spokespersons are seeking to muddy the details of the manner in which she was taken out. Photographs that appear to show a shooter and a suicide bomber reveal that the former fitted into the close-cropped, dark-spectacled stereotype of the intelligence operative.

Although television footage showed him as well as a gun dropped on the ground after the killing, rather than seek to apprehend him, the army-controlled Pakistan administration has gone into overdrive with a theory that very conveniently places the blame on "al-Qaida."

While the suicide bomber may indeed have been linked to the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi or other presumed "al-Qaida" affiliates, it needs to be remembered that almost all these groups have close operational links to the Pakistan military, as does the head of the Intelligence Bureau, retired brigadier Ijaz Shah, who was openly accused by Benazir Bhutto of seeking to eliminate her. Although Musharraf may have wanted Shah to be replaced, since the end of 2005 he has had to cover for the Punjabi component in the army in order to retain some semblance of salience within that institution, and Shah is one of the numerous anti-Bhutto protectees of this faction.

The Punjabis within the army would like to see any sympathy wave for Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party dissipate enough to enable their nominee, Nawaz Sharif, to win the elections. Unless the Jan. 8 elections are postponed, they are unlikely to be able to damp popular pressure for a withdrawal of the army to the barracks....

The GlassHouse Blog on political and other happenings in Pakistan has an interesting backgrounder on the exile of Nawaz Sharif to Saudi Arabia, from August 17, 2007.

The Pakistani ISI has extensive history with al Qaeda and the Taliban (CIA, Saudi and UK monies and weaponry were funneled through the ISI to the Afghanis Soviet resistance in the 1980s; the former Pakistani ISI Chief General Mahmoud Ahmad had been one of the "money men" who had wired funds to the 9/11 "hijackers"). UPI reported on December 21, 2007, that the Pakistani ISI with Al-Qaeda were behind the threats to attack the Kamakhya temple and other religious places in Assam (India), and blow up the All Assam Students Union (AASU), the offices of the BJP's (Bharatiya Janata Party) Assam unit, and kill AASU adviser Samujjal Bhattacharya. It has been published (here) that the AASU is thought to have connections with RAW (the Research and Analysis Wing is India's foreign intelligence agency). India Interacts reported:

...A letter addressed to the BJP state unit president Ramen Kalita, by eight persons claiming to be ISI and al-Qaeda active members in Assam, threatened "to bomb out the main BJP and AASU offices like the World Trade Centre (in USA)".

"Your offer to (Bangladeshi writer) Taslima Nasreen to stay in Assam is against Islam and its tenets. If you don't stop your activities immediately, a powerful bomb will be exploded in your main office," cautioned the letter made available to the media on Friday.

The letter dated December 11, hand-written on plain paper in immigrant Bangladeshi style Assamese and received by post on Thursday, alleged that the BJP under Kalita's leadership was "resorting to mental and physical torture of local Muslims.

"Samujjal Bhattacharya's death is also certain for his activities as AASU advisor", the letter threatened....

Ahmed Quraishi describes the strange bedfellows the US has found for itself, and the political machinations in Pakistan, in the Great Game, for The New Times (Bangladesh), on December 12, 2007:

...it all really began almost three years ago, when, out of the blue and recycling old political arguments, Akbar Bugti launched an armed rebellion against the Pakistani state, surprising security analysts by using rockets and other military equipment that shouldn't normally be available to a smalltime village thug. Since then, Islamabad has sat on a pile of evidence that links Bugti's campaign to money and ammunition and logistical support from Afghanistan, directly aided by the Karzai administration and India, with the US turning a blind eye....

..."We have indications of Indian involvement with anti-state elements in Pakistan," declared the spokesman of the Pakistan Foreign Office in a regular briefing in October. The statement was terse and direct, and the spokesman, Tasnim Aslam, quickly moved on to other issues.

This is how a Pakistani official explained Aslam's statement: "What she was really saying is this: We know what the Indians are doing. They've sold the Americans on the idea that [the Indians] are an authority on Pakistan and can be helpful in Afghanistan. The Americans have bought the idea and are in on the plan, giving the Indians a free hand in Afghanistan. What the Americans don't know is that we, too, know the Indians very well. Better still, we know Afghanistan very well. You can't beat us at our own game."...

Larry Chin and Michel Chossudovsky both discuss the events in light of the Bhutto assassination at Global Research.

Here and here provide some history on the author Taslima Nasreen.

Note that the US sanctions on financial interactions with Iranian banks has essentially put enough pressure for India to hold up on the the Iranian LNG (liquid natural gas) pipeline project (the State Bank of India isn't transacting business with Iran). Any pipeline would necessarily have to cross Pakistan: "Pakistan could earn as much as $500 million in royalties from a transit fee and save $200 million by purchasing cheaper gas from this pipeline project." Jun Yang and Gurdeep Singh (Dow Jones Newswires, on Gulf Times) report that:

...“We can expect immediate impact for energy projects such as the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline and the Iran-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline, which could be shelved as the government struggles to maintain internal security,” said Chietigj Bajpaee, a research analyst at London-based consultancy Global Insight....

Arnaud de Borchgrave (UPI editor at large had these interesting insights on October 25):

...Radical groups pollute Pakistan's political scene. Since Sept. 11, 2001, when Musharraf, under U.S. pressure, dumped his Taliban proteges, extremist groups, once encouraged by the all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency for the "liberation" of Indian Kashmir, were ordered to shut down. Many of them had offices in the major cities that were closed only to reopen with a different name a block or two away.

The most ominous warning of all for Bhutto came from the federal railways minister, Sheik Rashid Ahmad. He accused her of "raising the flag of imperialism (i.e., Bush administration support), which means she "will have to face suicide attacks. We have already conveyed to her that the ground realities have changed(since she was last in her country eight years ago)."

This perennial Cabinet minister ran a jihadi training camp in the 1980s. He also served in the previous military government under President Zia ul-Haq. As Musharraf's information minister, he was known as a champion spin doctor who
affects an always-in-the-know image. This time he inadvertently validated Bhutto's claim that some elements in Musharraf's government collude with militant radicals assigned to sabotage her political comeback.

Ahmad is a close friend of retired Gen. Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief who acts as strategic adviser to the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal coalition of six politico-religious extremist parties that governs two of Pakistan's four provinces (Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier province). Gul hates the United States -- and anything Washington favors -- with a passion. He assisted the creation of the Taliban in the early 1990s and to this day believes the Sept. 11 al-Qaida attacks were a plot engineered by Israel's Mossad, the CIA and the U.S. Air Force. ("How come no fighters were scrambled to take on the planes you say were hijacked?" he asked this reporter.)

From al-Qaida and Taliban sanctuaries in the tribal areas on the Afghan border to Karachi, a teeming port city of 15 million some 600 miles away, there are tens of thousands of fanatics who would love to see Bhutto dead....

...Despite the newly acquired accoutrements of modernity, a large part of Pakistan is still stuck in the past. More than half its 160 million people are illiterate. And aligned against Bhutto's return to power are renegade ISI cadres; the nationwide MMA coalition of extremists throughout the country; supporters of the late military dictator ul-Haq, who seized power from Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and then ordered him executed by hanging (Zia himself died in a mysterious plane crash in 1988 and Benazir became prime minister in a restored civilian government); and the countless flat-Earth clerics and their followers who regard a female leader as an abomination....

US sanctions on Iran are discussed here and here.

Abbas Maleki (director of the International Institute for Caspian Studies in Tehran and a senior research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Iran’s deputy foreign minister from 1985 to 1997), MIT Center for International Studies, noted (on AlterNet, October 30, 2007, that the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project:

... is immensely important to the on-going peace process between India and Pakistan. A number of observers of the India-Pakistan conflict have termed this project as the mother of all confidence-building measures between India and Pakistan and named it the Peace Pipeline....

...the Bush administration has been trying to pressure both (India and Pakistan) to back off the deal....

...Regarding Iran and its domestic situation, historically with the exception of the IGAT-I project, under which Iran exported natural gas (via pipeline) to the former Soviet Union in the 1970s, all other projects seeking to export gas from Iran have somehow fallen victim to political conflicts....

Hassan Abbas comments on her blog (Sunday, December 18, 2005): "...Pakistan has not yet established control over the province of Balochistan and especially the Mengal-dominated Khuzdar territory through which the Iranian pipeline will pass. The last time President Musharraf showed the flag in the province by visiting the Marri-dominated Kohlu region, the visit was followed by a rocket attack on the FC helicopter carrying its IG."

Blood borders How a better Middle East would look by Ralph Peters was published in the Armed Forces Journal, in June of 2006, and presented discussion of the "new middle east" ... see the complete article (including the maps, which the Armed Forces Journal no longer keeps with the article) here on Mir Azaad's The Government of Balochistan in Exile blog (Wednesday, July 05, 2006).

Here and here are a bit of the history of the US's efforts to get a pipeline built through Afghanistan (note the participation of Enron). Note that Enron's pipeline would have traversed the Punjabi region of Pakistan.

So, there exists a government in Pakistan that has been ineffective in securing the region with the most petroleum assets (Balochistan), and through which any pipeline from Iran to India will necessarily traverse. They have been ineffective in routing the Taliban/al Qaeda forces that utilize their "northwest territory" (Pushtun and Punjabi areas). We have the Enron-Punjabi pipeline's dreams buried in Pakistan, unfulfilled. The military in Pakistan is controlled by the Punjabis, who would feel a significant reduction in power and influence and affluence should the Balochs gain their freedom from Pakistan, or if any pipeline would traverse the Balochistan region. That military's intelligence service is the connection to "al Qaeda". The ISI may have gotten inklings of some "student/student association" activities, some Indian activities, all under the nose of the US (Pakistan's sponsor), and the ISI & Al Qaeda have threatened to eliminate (murder) those Indian students & associations. Bhutto herself threatened to eliminate the "jihadists" and also to "reorganize" the Pakistani military and ISI.

It would appear that Pakistan's patron has wearied from a significant lack of results, and destabilization/regime change may be in play. What of Nawaz Sharif, and his backers - the SAUDIS? Are we seeing the beginning of the Balkanization of Pakistan ... And perhaps the most radical of thoughts .... partition dissolved ... Punjab and Sindh go back to India, Pushtun to Iran, and Balochistan is freed.