PAKISTAN Special

BY: COL(RETD) DANIEL SMITH

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and its aftermath seem all too familiar:

A prominent politician of a “third world” country is killed by “unknown foreign parties.”

The dead politician either was at odds with the ruling party or power center or had recently offended an ethnic or sectarian minority.

The assassination threatens to or actually paralyzes the country’s political life.

At least titular control of the political party of the deceased former leader passes to the next of kin, with results very uncertain for weeks or months.

International pressure forces the country’s head of state to accept international “technical” assistance in the investigation. 

In the end, nothing is proven, nothing is resolved.

 

Even in death, life moves on in these situations, sometimes with added tragedy.

Indira Gandhi: In October 1984, when India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was killed by two of her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for ordering the Indian army’s assault on the Sikh’s Golden Temple in Amritsar , more than 1,000 rioters were dead within hours. Indira’s son Rajiv succeeded his mother. (Rajiv was later killed by a bomb while campaigning in 1991 in Tamil Nadu by suspected agents of Sri Lanka ’s rebel Tamil Tigers who resented Rajiv’s dispatch of troops when he was prime minister to intervene as “peace-makers” in the island’s civil war. Sonia, Rajiv’s widow, was instrumental in rebuilding Rajiv’s Congress Party and led them to victory in 2004. But as she was foreign-born, she was unable to become prime minister.)

Kabila, Hariri:In January 2001, just days after finally dislodging armed opposition from Kinshasa , The Democratic Republic of Congo’s new leader, Laurent Kabila, was shot in the presidential palace. His son, Joseph, inherited a war-torn country that, seven years on and with a 17,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping force in the country, is still verging on state failure.

In February 2005 in Lebanon , former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, also preparing for an expected electoral win, dies in a massive car bomb explosion detonated as his motorcade passed. Syrian agents are the prime suspects, and the UN Security Council passes a resolution demanding an international investigation. Three months later, his son Saad, who had succeeded his father as party leader, was elected to Lebanon ’s parliament.

Musharraf and Blame: And that brings us back to December 27, 2007 in Pakistan, the day Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi – less than two weeks before the January 8 parliamentary elections.

The government of President Pervez Musharraf is blaming Islamic extremists in general, and al-Qaeda in particular, or at least an al-Qaeda-inspired group for her assassination.

It could hardly do otherwise. The alternatives, which range from “mere” incompetence to active collusion with or even direction of extremists, aren’t just bad. They’re disastrous.

To Bhutto’s supporters, who had expected that the January 8 election would restore an anti-Musharraf majority civilian government after nine years of military rule, the key question was how the assassins could get close enough to kill her with a handgun. Widespread rioting broke out almost immediately, eliciting responses by heavily armed police and, in some instances, the Pakistani army.

And More Blame: Spokespersons for the Musharraf government, thrown on the defensive by accusations that government-provided security for Bhutto was not only lax but totally non-existent, gave conflicting accounts of the cause of death. Then they were entirely discredited by video footage of the attack obtained from a number of private citizens who had come to see and hear the former prime minister. Moreover, in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview aired January 6, Musharraf blamed Bhutto for ignoring threats to her life and taking unnecessary and provocative risks.

It was almost a case of “protesting too much” on his part. The rumor mills were already working overtime in alleging government collusion if not conspiracy based on the fact that Rawalpindi , where the assassination happened, is a garrison town. If the army could not provide physical security in Rawalpindi, was there any safe place in Pakistan ? The early conspiracy theories were then reinforced when, an hour after the assassination, Pakistani authorities washed the murder scene with high-powered hoses, destroying any possibility of finding forensic evidence.

Yet, days later, Musharraf announced that Britain’s New Scotland Yard would provide technical assistance to Pakistani investigators as the latter tried to piece together what happened and why the 100 security personnel present at the campaign stop (as asserted by Musharraf in a meeting with Western correspondents) did not thwart the assassination.

Repercussions: Repercussions of the assassination will reverberate in Pakistani society long past the new date – February 18 – for the parliamentary election that was to have been held January 8. The media have concentrated on White House and Pentagon meetings about the security of Pakistan ’s nuclear arsenal. Reportedly, some U.S. officials are said to believe that Pakistan’s army and Musharraf himself might be more receptive to operations by U.S. Special Forces or CIA agents in Pakistan should “actionable intelligence” on Osama bin Laden surface. Given that U.S. pressure on Musharraf contributed to setting in motion the series of events that brought Bhutto back to Pakistan for the January 8 elections, it’s not surprising that ordinary Pakistanis, the Pakistan military, and Musharraf’s inner circle have flatly rejected further U.S. meddling.

 

Two other less obvious repercussions that would directly affect regional as well as global policies of the Bush administration have largely gone unremarked. In the short term until February 18, should unrest in Pakistan continue or intensify because of new assassination attempts, successful or not, Musharraf may opt to pull army troops away from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. That would permit Taliban and al-Qaeda adherents greater freedom to cross into Afghanistan and attack NATO and indigenous security forces.

Pakistani Peacekeepers: Another possible effect could be felt at the United Nations. The question is whether Islamabad will continue to be willing and able to supply large numbers of troops for the 20 current operations run by the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations. With 10,623 troops, observers, and police detailed to UN peacekeeping, Pakistan is the largest source (just under 13% of the total deployed “blue helmets”) of manpower for these efforts. It may come down to whom would Pakistan want to offend least – the United States in Afghanistan or the UN around the globe – should Islamabad decide to move more forces into internal security.

As of now, however, nothing suggests either a unilateral or a coordinated retrenchment from UN peace operations. As recently as March 7, 2007, Musharraf continued to be positive about continuing Pakistan ’s 47-year involvement in UN missions. Speaking at the Pakistan-hosted international conference on effective UN peacekeeping, held at Pakistan’s National Defense University , Musharraf quoted Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder, that “Pakistan will never be found lacking in extending material and moral support to the United Nations in upholding the principles of the UN Charter.” He followed that observation by noting that UN force commanders, past (18 missions) and present (six missions), always praised the professionalism of Pakistani soldiers.

Nine Months Later: But these were thoughts enunciated nine months before Musharraf took off his general’s uniform, nine months before Bhutto’s assassination, nine months before Musharraf’s world turned upside down.

Now he may find himself confronting a unified opposition, with Bhutto’s political movement joining forces with the Pakistan Muslim League headed by Pakistan’s other returned former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who was thrown out of office and out of Pakistan by Musharraf’s coup. February 18 may indeed be interesting.

 

 

The language loved by Bush and Musharraf has translated into a global disaster bringing death and misery to millions

BY: SIMON JENKINS
Nothing and nobody can stop bombs going off. No citizen, no police force, no army, no government and no global military alliance can prevent a determined suicide bomber from blowing himself up. It will happen and innocent people will die as a result, horribly, as they do on the roads, from drugs and alcohol, or from natural disasters - again without responsible authority being able to stop it.

What is recent is the admission of this truism into the mainstream of government under the rubric of "terrorism". This week two outgoing presidents, America's George Bush and Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, defined their terms of office in relation to terror. Bush did so in his final state of the union message on Monday and Musharraf that same day in London during a charm offensive prior to next month's elections.

To Bush, the "war on terror" is the ruling mantra of his politics of fear. Since 9/11 gave a prop to his weakening presidency, his language has scaled new heights of alarmist rhetoric. It has validated every internal repression and every external war. "He who is not with us is against us," he cries. Terrorists everywhere are "opposing the advance of liberty ... evil men who despise freedom, despise America and aim to subject millions to their violent rule".

As the sociologist Ulrich Beck has written, "properly exploited, a novel risk is always an elixir to an ailing leader". By declaring a threat so awful as to be intolerable, a politician can limit the liberties of a free society in the name of risk-aversion. Musharraf utters hardly a sentence that does not contain the word terror. Pivotally close to the base from which 9/11 was apparently launched, his dictatorship has been indulged by London and Washington for a full seven years. This week Gordon Brown hailed him as a "key ally on terrorism", enabling him to take comfort in sacking his judiciary and curbing his media. Had the war on terror been used only as a metaphor for better policing, like rhetorical "wars" on drugs, poverty and street crime, it might have passed muster. Bush and Musharraf have found the military metaphor too potent to resist and duly carried it into literal effect. The result has been a disaster for their countries, and incidentally for themselves.

The west's Afghan adventure is now devoid of coherent strategy. Soldiers are dying, the opium trade is booming and aid lies undistributed. Command and control of the war against the Taliban is slipping from the most bizarre western occupying force since the fourth Crusade to a tight cabal around the Afghan ruler, Hamid Karzai, who is fighting to retain a remnant of authority in his own capital. 

Karzai's exasperation with the west has led him to refuse the services as "coordinator" of the former Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown. The latter may have cut a dash in the subsidy swamp of Sarajevo, but in Afghanistan he would have been a boy on a man's errand. Karzai knows well that his fate lies not with the patronising platitudes of western proconsuls but in the hard graft of provincial warlords, drug gangsters and Taliban go-betweens.

These go-betweens have had their status massively boosted by the war on terror. Bush's demand in 2001 that Musharraf "join the war" sent Pakistani forces into the border territories, breaking old treaties and driving the Pashtun tribes into the eager arms of Taliban leaders. This undoubtedly saved Osama bin Laden's skin from the fury of the northern Tajiks, committed to avenge his murder of their leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud.

Musharraf, at America's bidding and with $10bn of American money, has done what even his craziest predecessors avoided, and recklessly set the Pashtun on the warpath - increasingly in thrall to a revived al-Qaida. The result is a plague of suicide bombings and killings in the heartland of his benighted state. From the law courts of America to the mosques of west London and the mountains of the Hindu Kush, the war on terror has been lethally and predictably counter-productive. It embodies the new stupidity in international affairs.

Nobody disputes that there are killer cells at large in the world, most of them proclaiming various Islamist creeds. It is the job of intelligence agencies and the police to catch as many as they can. After a hesitant start, they appear to be quite good at it. Some bombs will get through but they will not be deterred by draconian laws, any more than by machine gun-toting policemen in Downing Street and Heathrow. Robust societies can handle this admittedly intermittent threat. Only weak ones will capitulate to it.

The menace of these killers lies not in their firepower but in their capacity to distort the judgment and commitment to freedom of politicians too cowardly to bear on their shoulders the burden of risk. In two weeks' time, the fragile democracy of Pakistan will defy the bombers and hold an election prior, it is hoped, to some version of democratic rule. Such communities will defy a probable burst of terror bombs only if their leaders stop setting "terrorists" on a pedestal and using language that exaggerates their capacity, as Bush puts it, "to oppose the advance of freedom".

It is leaders, not bombers, who have the power to balk the advance of freedom. Already those leaders have used the war on terror to introduce the Patriot Act, Guantánamo Bay and a $1.5 trillion war in Iraq. In Pakistan they have used it as an excuse for emergency rule, the imprisonment of senior judges, and the provocation of unprecedented insurgency in the north-west frontier territories. In Britain leaders have used the war as an excuse for 42-day detention without trial, the world's most intrusive surveillance state, and not one but two contested military occupations of foreign soil.

This so-called war on terror has filled the pockets of those profiting from it. It has killed thousands, immiserated millions and infringed the liberty of hundreds of millions. The only rough justice it has delivered is to ruin the careers of those who propagated it. Tony Blair was driven to early resignation. Bush has been humiliated and Musharraf's wretched rule brought close to an overdue end. It may be an ill wind that blows no good, but it is hardly enough.

BY: SHAFQAT MEHMOOD
The easiest explanation is that Al Qaeda or Pakistani Taliban killed her and this is what the government has been pedaling. In twenty four hours, it not only determined the exact cause of Benazir Bhutto death but also solved the case. Baitullah Mehsud, we were told, is the culprit and there are tapes to prove it. I wish the interior ministry had shown similar efficiency in protecting her.

While these explanations are convenient let us look at Mr Mehsud's motives. There is little doubt that Benazir Bhutto hated Al Qaeda/Taliban and had vowed a relentless struggle against them. But, how was this any different from what Mr Musharraf has been saying and doing. What extra measures would she have undertaken that are not being used now. The only instrument available to her for crushing the extremists was Pakistan army and it is already engaged in a war against them. What was the extra that Ms Bhutto would have brought to the table that scared Al Qaeda/Taliban so much that they were determined to eliminate her?
Let us be clear. The October 18 attack on her procession, the day she arrived back in Pakistan from exile, was a serious assassination attempt. She survived because the armored truck protected her. What her killers learnt from this was that while a bomb may fail because of the protective measures, it disables the vehicle and makes it necessary for the target to be shifted to another vehicle. The process of shifting, which in Karachi was actually filmed by a TV crew, and further transportation in a non-amour plated vehicle, became the weak link in the security measures.

On December 27, the murder attempt included a suicide bomber, plus one or more shooters. In fact, for such a serious attempt, up to a dozen people may have been involved. Even if she had not come out of the hatch to wave to her supporters, they would have exploded the bomb and then attacked her while she was being shifted and transported in an unprotected vehicle. Her coming out just made it easier for the killers and the sequence was reversed. They were determined to get her this time.

I am not ruling out the Al Qaeda/Taliban as the suspects but the relentless desire to kill her requires a bigger motive than the fear of a focused drive against them. The state is already taking them on and I don't believe holding its punches. What else could Benazir have done? It is this that makes the easy explanation of their involvement suspect. They may have wanted her dead but it was probably in a general sense, just as they want all their opponents dead. Their going after her again and again lacks a specific focused motive.

If not the Pakistani Taliban, then who else? For this, one has to look at a bigger scenario that may sound conspiratorial but dealing with a tragedy like this, everything needs to be discussed. There is a body of opinion in this country that believes that United States is looking for an opportunity to take out our nuclear programme and dismantle the effective strength of our armed forces. Some columnists keep harping on this and one Ahmed Quraishi articulated this in an article that has been widely circulated.

His thesis is that movement against Musharraf after March 9, was sponsored by the US and everyone was paid including lawyers, journalists, judges etc. He further goes on to add that the real target was not Mr Musharraf but the Pakistan Army and by extension its nuclear arsenal . Also please remember that while referring to this period, Mr Musharraf keeps talking of conspiracy without actually explaining what it was. I don't know how much he subscribes to the Quraishi view, but the ire against Geo is allegedly because it tows the American line. Sponsored articles on the net actually accuse the channel of being directly in the Americans pay and of working against the interest of Pakistan.
This worldview that America is out to destabilize Pakistan and take control of its nuclear weapons, is bolstered by the statements of US leaders and reporting in the American media. Newsweek famously declared Pakistan the most dangerous country in the world, and op-ed articles in The Washington Post and The New York Times have called for US troops to go and 'secure' Pakistan's nuclear weapons. One piece by Frederick Kagan was particularly absurd and spoke in detail about how a million troops would be required for the invasion.

Other articles in prestigious papers also talk of how Mr Musharraf would not allow American special forces to operate in Pakistani tribal areas. Some hint at the involvement of the Pakistan army in the nuclear proliferation activities of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. Almost everyone talks of Pakistan as a failing state with nuclear weapons. The implication being that the west can't sit back and let this dangerous place slide into chaos. In other words, the sum total of American opinion reaching Pakistan, fuels the paranoia that is already present in certain circles within the country.

Ms Bhutto stepped into this cauldron by saying all the things that would make the paranoiacs mad. She said that under certain circumstances she would allow the American forces to target terrorists in the tribal areas. She said that she would make Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan available to the International Atomic Energy Commission for questioning. Both these statements touched very sensitive nerves. She also spoke often to American diplomats and officials of the state department and they in turn made no bones of the fact that she was their favourite candidate for Prime Minister.

Her American connection thus became her bane as far as the paranoiacs were concerned. As Benazir's political fortunes rose, they saw her as a Trojan horse for American interests who would allow American forces ingress into Pakistan and expose our nuclear program. These people saw her as a clear and present danger to the very survival of the country and a big enough reason in their mind to eliminate her. This is why they tried again and again until they succeeded.

The difficult part to prove is who 'they' are. I find it hard to believe that Mr Musharraf or our state institutions are involved in any of this. They may have had misgivings about her but that did not extend to seeing her as traitor or someone who would compromise our national interest. In any case, the Prime Minister would only have been one element of the tripod of power and they could checkmate her as and when they desired.

If the state establishment is not involved then who? It has to be the shadowy groups who have connection with the state but operate independently. They also have 'soldiers' in the shape of elements who worked closely with them in the past during the Afghan and Kashmir proxy wars. While the state has stopped sponsoring them, they have not disappeared. It is they who I believe are prime suspects in the tragic murder of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto.

BY: SHELDON RICHMAN

"The assassination of Benazir Bhutto was not an attack on this brave woman alone; it was an attack upon democracy, freedom and the United States ." This statement by Asa Hutchinson, former undersecretary of homeland security, was typical of the reaction of the American political and media establishments.

The claim that the assassination was an attack on democracy and freedom is dubious because Bhutto's two spells as prime minister of Pakistan were not notable for either one. Whether it was an attack on the United States depends on what that means. It certainly was not an attack on the American people. How could it be construed that way, unless one has such an imperialist notion of "our interests" that nothing can happen in the world without impinging on them?

But if by "United States " we mean the policies of the current administration, then indeed it was such an attack. Bhutto, after all, favored bringing U.S. military forces into Pakistan , according to Michael Scheuer, a former CIA analyst and region specialist. If that's an option President Bush planned to exercise, the loss of Bhutto is a grave blow to his policy.

It is during a crisis that the establishment hoists its true colors for all to see. With few exceptions, the most prominent voices in politics and the news media are chanting in unison that Bhutto's assassination proves that the United States needs to be more involved in Pakistan than it has been.

Could the United States be more involved? American presidents have been meddling in Pakistani politics for a long time. After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan regarded the brutal military dictator Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who had come to power by overthrowing — and later executing — Bhutto's father, the elected prime minister, Zulifqar Ali Bhutto, as a key ally. Once again the U.S. government used the Cold War as an excuse to back a despot.

Shortly before the current Pakistan president, Pervez Musharraf, staged a coup and named himself chief executive, Bill Clinton had pressured then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to get Musharraf, who was then the head of the army, to pull his forces out of the part of Kashmir controlled by rival India . Sharif was thus perceived as a puppet of the United States . That could not have helped his fortunes.

Since 9/11, of course, Musharraf has been crowned a key ally in Bush's "war on terror." Some $10 billion in cash and arms has poured into the dictator's coffers. The largess did not slow down when Musharraf suspended the constitution, sacked the Supreme Court, declared martial law, and arrested lawyers and civil-libertarians — all to fight terrorism and protect democracy.

When even Bush couldn't escape the fact that the Pakistanis were outraged about Musharraf, his administration tried to engineer an unlikely political marriage between the dictator and Bhutto. Whether her death came at the hands of Musharraf's security forces, parts of which have notorious ties to radical Islamic elements, or al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the murderers' opportunity has the mark of bumbling U.S. interventionism all over it. Before someone calls this a "blame America first" point of view, note that former Bush UN ambassador John Bolton told Fox News, "We in effect helped — helped — precipitate this dynamic that led to her tragic assassination."

What is so fascinating is how impervious the political and media establishments are to the lessons of reality. After all that's happened, the dominant voices still insist that Bush redouble efforts to determine Pakistan 's future. The arrogance and pretense of knowledge displayed by such people are astounding. Haven't they learned that America's political leaders can't possibly know what they would need to know to run Pakistan ? Their meddling here creates one mess after another — how can they hope to succeed there?

But Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world, we're told incessantly. If that's true, it's all the more reason for the United States to keep its hands off. Intervention only creates and provokes enemies. That endangers the American people, precisely the opposite of what the Bush administration says it wants to do.

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation.