No, I didn't kill her, but . . .

Musharraf rejects U.N. inquiry on Bhutto

PARIS (Reuters) - Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf ruled out a U.N. inquiry into the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, as demanded by her party, saying that Pakistan should not be compared to Lebanon.

"It is not possible. Is another country involved?" he said in an interview with Le Figaro newspaper published on its website on Friday. "Pakistan is not Lebanon."

Bhutto's party has called for a U.N. inquiry into her death comparable to one into the 2005 killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, whose death was blamed by many Lebanese on Syria. Damascus denies involvement.

Musharraf said Pakistan had its own institutions to manage the inquiry into Bhutto's assassination, and noted they would also be helped by British police.

He said there was a campaign by al Qaeda to undermine Pakistan but denied his country was about to fall apart.

"They do not have the capacity to destabilize the country, but their suicide attacks create disorder and dishearten the population. However Pakistan is not on the verge of disintegration."

He also said Pakistan's economy would survive if the United States decided to cut financial aid -- as suggested by some politicians unless Pakistan does more to fight terrorism and restores full civil rights.

"Do you think Pakistan would die if it didn't receive this money? Our economy is doing well," he said.

"Over the last 6 years, we have received a total of around $9 billion. More than half for fighting terrorism ... If the Americans don't want to pay any more, they should ask other people to help them. But the fight against terrorism would suffer," Musharraf said.

Original article posted here.

Blame the victim aka "Anyone but me"

Musharraf: Bhutto bears responsibility for death

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf conceded that a gunman may have shot Benazir Bhutto but said the opposition leader exposed herself to danger and bore responsibility for her death, CBS News said on Saturday.

Musharraf was also quoted as telling the CBS "60 Minutes" program to be broadcast on Sunday that his government did everything it could to provide security for Bhutto, who was killed last week in a gun and suicide-bomb attack after a political rally.

"For standing up outside the car, I think it was she to blame alone. Nobody else. Responsibility is hers," Musharraf said in the interview taped on Saturday morning.

Pakistan's government has said Bhutto died when she struck her head on a handle on her vehicle's sunroof -- a contention widely derided in Pakistan where many people suspect Musharraf's government of complicity. The government has also blamed al Qaeda for the attack.

Musharraf was asked by CBS, which provided excerpts of the interview, whether a gunshot could have caused Bhutto's head injury. He replied, "Yes, yes."

The questioner asked, "So she may have been shot?" and Musharraf said, "Yes, absolutely, yes. Possibility."

Bhutto's widower called on Saturday for a U.N. investigation of the killing.

In an opinion article in the Washington Post, Asif Ali Zardari urged that a caretaker government be named to oversee national elections that were postponed until next month and he outlined other standards for assessing their legitimacy.

"Democracy in Pakistan can be saved, and extremism and fanaticism contained, only if the elections, when they are held, are free, fair and credible," he wrote.

Zardari is the new co-chairman of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, alongside their son Bilawal.

Musharraf, a U.S. ally in its battle against terrorism, postponed the general election from January 8 to February 18, and the PPP is expected to benefit from a wave of sympathy for Bhutto.

Musharraf, whose re-election as president in October is still disputed by the opposition, will need support in the next parliament and looks likely to have to renew efforts to reach an understanding with the Bhutto's party, analysts say.

CARETAKER GOVERNMENT

Zardari has said the PPP would take part in the vote. But the elections, he said in the Post, must be conducted under a "new, neutral caretaker government, free of cronies from Musharraf's party."

He also called for an independent election commission, monitoring by trained international observers with access polling stations and an ability to conduct exit polls, press freedom and an independent judiciary.

He urged that the United States and Britain join the push for a U.N. probe. Britain has sent a team from Scotland Yard to help the government of nuclear-armed Pakistan investigate the killing, and Washington has endorsed the step.

However, Zardari said, "an investigation conducted by the government of Pakistan will have no credibility, in my country or anywhere else."

Bhutto had complained to an acquaintance shortly before she died that the Pakistani government was not meeting her security pleas.

CBS asked Musharraf whether he believed the government did everything possible for her security. "Absolutely," he said. "She was given more security than any other person."

Original article posted here.

Well, this explains a lot

Bhutto broke her agreement with the CIA, she wanted to talk with the Islamists

According to the manar newspaper the CIA in coordination with Musharraf’s ISI [International Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan] are behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Musharraf briefed the Americans that Bhutto contacted the Islamic movement in Pakistan to reach an agreement for reconciliation leading to future stability of the country and breaking Pakistan link with American war-on -terror.

This explanation seems logical, few days ago two British diplomats were expelled from Afghanistan for conducting talks with the Taliban [check out this link also, very funny and true said about the Americans:

The Americans have a way of painting this black and white,……For them it’s like a cowboy film - you’re either a good guy or a bad guy.]

Remember when Karzai told the CNN that he was being held back from serious peace negotiations by the US?, Bhutto was convinced that Bin Laden is dead [watch Al-Jazeera video], so there is no need for the US fake so called “war-o-terror”.

Maloy Krishna Dhar [author of Fulcrum of Evil ISI - CIA - Al Qaeda Nexus], in his article agrees with this conclusion.

Original article posted here.

Tariq Ali on the sad state of affairs in Pakistan

My heart bleeds for Pakistan. It deserves better than this grotesque feudal charade

By Tariq Ali, Pakistan-born writer, broadcaster and commentator

Six hours before she was executed, Mary, Queen of Scots wrote to her brother-in-law, Henry III of France: "...As for my son, I commend him to you in so far as he deserves, for I cannot answer for him." The year was 1587.

On 30 December 2007, a conclave of feudal potentates gathered in the home of the slain Benazir Bhutto to hear her last will and testament being read out and its contents subsequently announced to the world media. Where Mary was tentative, her modern-day equivalent left no room for doubt. She could certainly answer for her son.

A triumvirate consisting of her husband, Asif Zardari (one of the most venal and discredited politicians in the country and still facing corruption charges in three European courts) and two ciphers will run the party till Benazir's 19-year-old son, Bilawal, comes of age. He will then become chairperson-for-life and, no doubt, pass it on to his children. The fact that this is now official does not make it any less grotesque. The Pakistan People's Party is being treated as a family heirloom, a property to be disposed of at the will of its leader.

Nothing more, nothing less. Poor Pakistan. Poor People's Party supporters. Both deserve better than this disgusting, medieval charade.

Benazir's last decision was in the same autocratic mode as its predecessors, an approach that would cost her – tragically – her own life. Had she heeded the advice of some party leaders and not agreed to the Washington-brokered deal with Pervez Musharraf or, even later, decided to boycott his parliamentary election she might still have been alive. Her last gift to the country does not augur well for its future.

How can Western-backed politicians be taken seriously if they treat their party as a fiefdom and their supporters as serfs, while their courtiers abroad mouth sycophantic niceties concerning the young prince and his future.

That most of the PPP inner circle consists of spineless timeservers leading frustrated and melancholy lives is no excuse. All this could be transformed if inner-party democracy was implemented. There is a tiny layer of incorruptible and principled politicians inside the party, but they have been sidelined. Dynastic politics is a sign of weakness, not strength. Benazir was fond of comparing her family to the Kennedys, but chose to ignore that the Democratic Party, despite an addiction to big money, was not the instrument of any one family.

The issue of democracy is enormously important in a country that has been governed by the military for over half of its life. Pakistan is not a "failed state" in the sense of the Congo or Rwanda. It is a dysfunctional state and has been in this situation for almost four decades.

At the heart of this dysfunctionality is the domination by the army and each period of military rule has made things worse. It is this that has prevented political stability and the emergence of stable institutions. Here the US bears direct responsibility, since it has always regarded the military as the only institution it can do business with and, unfortunately, still does so. This is the rock that has focused choppy waters into a headlong torrent.

The military's weaknesses are well known and have been amply documented. But the politicians are not in a position to cast stones. After all, Mr Musharraf did not pioneer the assault on the judiciary so conveniently overlooked by the US Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, and the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. The first attack on the Supreme Court was mounted by Nawaz Sharif's goons who physically assaulted judges because they were angered by a decision that ran counter to their master's interests when he was prime minister.

Some of us had hoped that, with her death, the People's Party might start a new chapter. After all, one of its main leaders, Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the Bar Association, played a heroic role in the popular movement against the dismissal of the chief justice. Mr Ahsan was arrested during the emergency and kept in solitary confinement. He is still under house arrest in Lahore. Had Benazir been capable of thinking beyond family and faction she should have appointed him chairperson pending elections within the party. No such luck.

The result almost certainly will be a split in the party sooner rather than later. Mr Zardari was loathed by many activists and held responsible for his wife's downfall. Once emotions have subsided, the horror of the succession will hit the many traditional PPP followers except for its most reactionary segment: bandwagon careerists desperate to make a fortune.

All this could have been avoided, but the deadly angel who guided her when she was alive was, alas, not too concerned with democracy. And now he is in effect leader of the party.

Meanwhile there is a country in crisis. Having succeeded in saving his own political skin by imposing a state of emergency, Mr Musharraf still lacks legitimacy. Even a rigged election is no longer possible on 8 January despite the stern admonitions of President George Bush and his unconvincing Downing Street adjutant. What is clear is that the official consensus on who killed Benazir is breaking down, except on BBC television. It has now been made public that, when Benazir asked the US for a Karzai-style phalanx of privately contracted former US Marine bodyguards, the suggestion was contemptuously rejected by the Pakistan government, which saw it as a breach of sovereignty.

Now both Hillary Clinton and Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, are pinning the convict's badge on Mr Musharraf and not al-Qa'ida for the murder, a sure sign that sections of the US establishment are thinking of dumping the President.

Their problem is that, with Benazir dead, the only other alternative for them is General Ashraf Kiyani, head of the army. Nawaz Sharif is seen as a Saudi poodle and hence unreliable, though, given the US-Saudi alliance, poor Mr Sharif is puzzled as to why this should be the case. For his part, he is ready to do Washiongton's bidding but would prefer the Saudi King rather than Mr Musharraf to be the imperial message-boy.

A solution to the crisis is available. This would require Mr Musharraf's replacement by a less contentious figure, an all-party government of unity to prepare the basis for genuine elections within six months, and the reinstatement of the sacked Supreme Court judges to investigate Benazir's murder without fear or favour. It would be a start.

Original article posted here.

Lining up to defend a killer

US presidential candidates pledge support to Pakistani dictator

By Patrick Martin

The response of the leading US presidential candidates to the December 27 assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto has been to pledge continued American support to the Musharraf military dictatorship, with little more than lip service to the democratic rights of the people of Pakistan.

While offering a variety of criticisms, either of US government policy or of their rivals for the presidential nomination, both Democrats and Republicans embraced the basic framework of the Bush administration’s approach, which views the Musharraf regime as the most reliable guarantor of the interests of US imperialism in the region.

Not one of the candidates so much as mentioned the likelihood that the military regime itself organized the murder of Bhutto, either on direct orders from Musharraf himself or by sections of the military-intelligence apparatus, which maintains close ties to Islamic fundamentalist groups.

The Republican candidates cited the apparent suicide bombing as another example of terrorist attacks going back to 9/11, and each sought to posture as the future commander-in-chief most determined to continue the Bush administration’s “war on terror.”

Former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Senator John McCain of Arizona, who have focused their campaigns on terrorism and the war in Iraq, respectively, were the most fervent in seeking to whip up popular fear for their own political benefit.

Giuliani rushed out a statement calling the Bhutto assassination a “reminder that terrorism anywhere—whether in New York, London, Tel Aviv or Rawalpindi—is an enemy of freedom.” His campaign also unveiled a new television commercial including footage of the 9/11 attacks.

McCain openly sought to exploit the event politically, raising the Pakistani events repeatedly in campaign appearances in Iowa. He boasted of his personal acquaintance with Bhutto and Musharraf, declaring that Bhutto’s murder “may serve to enhance those credentials or make people understand that I’ve been to Waziristan, I know Musharraf, I can pick up the phone and call him.”

He told reporters in New Hampshire that he continues “to believe Musharraf has done a pretty good job, done a lot of the things that we wanted him to do.” McCain called the Pakistani dictator “personally scrupulously honest,” although he heads one of the most corrupt regimes on the planet, in which top military officers routinely end their careers as multimillionaires.

Another leading Republican, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, issued a self-contradictory statement asserting that no one knew who was responsible for Bhutto’s assassination, while at the same time blaming “global, radical, violent jihadism.”

The Republican frontrunner in Iowa, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, provided the most parochial response to the Bhutto killing, attempting to link it to the issue of illegal immigration in the United States, an issue on which he has been under fire from his rivals for being insufficiently reactionary.

He claimed that unrest in Pakistan was particularly troubling because “we have more Pakistani illegals coming across our border than all other nationalities, except those immediately south of the border.”

Huckabee followed up this bizarre assertion—the total number of Pakistanis detained for illegal entry into the US was only 660 over the most recent four-year period— by warning, “the immigration issue is not so much about people coming across to pick lettuce or make beds, it’s about people who can come with a shoulder-fired missile and can do serious damage and harm to us.”

On the Democratic side of the presidential contest, there were equally brazen efforts to use the Bhutto assassination to score points based on past experience in national security matters. Former senator John Edwards announced that he had spoken with Musharraf on the telephone after the killing, while Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, cited his own past declarations that nuclear-armed Pakistan is “the most dangerous nation on the planet.”

One Democrat, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, called for Musharraf to step down and urged the Bush administration to halt all military aid to Pakistan. He went so far as to link Bhutto’s murder to Musharraf’s declaration of martial law, but when questioned by reporters, Richardson endorsed the consensus view that Al Qaeda terrorists, and not Musharraf, were responsible for the assassination.

Richardson said, “Some of my Democratic opponents have misplaced faith in Musharraf. Like the Bush administration, they cling to the misguided notion that Musharraf can be trusted as an ally to fight terrorism.” This formulation suggests that Musharraf’s main offense was an inadequate military effort against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants in the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, not his brutal suppression of the democratic rights of the Pakistani people.

The two Democratic frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, each used the Bhutto assassination to argue that the Bush administration had become too preoccupied with the war in Iraq to conduct an effective foreign policy in Afghanistan, South Asia or the world in general.

Clinton noted her past acquaintance with Benazir Bhutto, and criticized the Bush administration for a policy that “put way too much emphasis on Musharraf instead of dealing with broader Pakistani society.” But she declined to endorse Richardson’s call for the removal of Musharraf.

Clinton’s husband, former president Bill Clinton, addressed the issue in apocalyptic language, telling a meeting in Iowa Saturday that unforeseen catastrophes like the Bhutto killing made it necessary to select “a leader who is strong and commanding and convincing enough ... to deal with the unexpected.”

“There is a better than 50 percent chance that sometime in the first year or 18 months of the next presidency, something will happen that is not being discussed in this campaign,” he said. “And if you’re not ready for that, then everything else you do can be undermined. You need a president that you trust to deal with something that we will not discuss in this campaign.”

Obama cited the Bhutto assassination to bolster his argument that Ms. Clinton was too closely associated with the Bush administration’s foreign policy because of her vote in 2002 to authorize the war in Iraq. “I’ve been saying for some time that we’ve got a very big problem” in Pakistan, Obama said. “We were distracted from focusing on them.” The war in Iraq had “resulted in us taking our eye off the ball” in terms of the struggle against Al Qaeda, he concluded.

Despite his posture as a candidate of “change,” Obama’s position is virtually identical to that espoused by the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, John Kerry, who argued that the war in Iraq was a diversion from the more important “war” against Al Qaeda and terrorism, which a Democratic administration would wage more effectively than the Republicans. Last summer Obama caused a brief political stir when he advocated a US invasion of Pakistan to capture Osama bin Laden and destroy Taliban and Al Qaeda forces hiding out in the border region.

All of the major presidential candidates, Democrat and Republican alike, stand on a common platform of defending American imperialism. Some Democrats, like Richardson and Obama, emphasize diplomacy and dialogue; others, like Clinton and the Republicans, are more open supporters of military action. But their fundamental goal is the same: upholding the strategic and economic interests of the American financial aristocracy.

Original article posted here.

Relevant information regarding Bhutto hit

Bhutto sought to tar security services

SAEED SHAH

Naudero, Pakistan — On the day she was assassinated, Benazir Bhutto had planned to reveal damning new allegations of the involvement of Pakistan's intelligence agencies in rigging the country's coming elections.

She was due to meet two visiting U.S. politicians to hand over a report compiled by her Pakistan Peoples Party. The document detailed an operation the party said was run by the notorious Inter-Services Intelligence agency to fix the polls in the favour of President Pervez Musharraf.

The report was "very sensitive," according to Sarfraz Khan Lashari, a member of the PPP election monitoring group, and the party wanted to initially share it with trusted U.S. politicians rather than the country's administration, which has strongly backed Mr. Musharraf.

"It was compiled from sources within the [intelligence] services who were working directly with Benazir Bhutto," Mr. Lashari said yesterday, speaking at Ms. Bhutto's house in her ancestral village of Naudero, where her husband and children continued to mourn her death.

Enlarge Image

Asif Ali Zardari, left, husband of slain former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, addresses a news conference with his son Bilawal Zardari, top, as Bilawal was nominated Chairman of Bhutto's People's party in Naudero near Larkana, Pakistan on Sunday. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil)

Last Thursday, the day she was killed, the two-time former prime minister was due to meet Arlen Specter, a Republican senator, and Patrick Kenď nedy, a Democrat congressman.ď She was assassinated as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi early that evening. It is unclear whether the two U.S. lawmakers had any indication that they were to be provided with the report.

After Ms. Bhutto's death, Mr. Specter told reporters: "Our foreign policy had relied on her presence as a stabilizing force.

"I knew her personally. ¡K She was, as you know, glamorous, beautiful smart," he said. "Her loss is a setback. But you have to face what is. And now, without her, we have to regroup."

The document included information on a "safe house" being run by the ISI in a central neighbourhood of Islamabad called G-5, which was the alleged headquarters of the rigging operation.

It named a recently retired army brigadier who served in the ISI as the head of the unit. It said that he was working in tandem with the chief of a civilian intelligence agency, a man Ms. Bhutto had previously said was plotting to kill her.

The report said that U.S. aid funds were being used for the election-fixing. Ballot papers, stamped in favour of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, which supports Mr. Musharraf, were to be produced by the intelligence agencies in around 100 constituencies.

"They diverted money from aid activities. We had evidence of where they were spending the money," Mr. Lashari said.

An ISI spokesman could not be reached for comment. However, a source within the agency dismissed the allegations as "a lot of talk but not much substance."

The Peoples Party is still deciding whether to make the report public and so the allegations cannot be investigated. Independent observers from non-governmental organizations have pointed to a series of abuses in the campaigning period, such as the use of state resources by the pro-Musharraf parties.

Although intelligence agencies have a long history of involvement in Pakistan's electoral politics, there had not been detailed allegations of their intervention in this campaign until now. In the last election in 2002, it has been widely charged that the ISI used blackmail tactics to get candidates to switch parties to the side that backed Mr. Musharraf.

In the 1990 election campaign, the then chief of the ISI, Mirza Aslam Beg, gave out the equivalent of $2-million to the opponents of the Peoples Party, he has admitted in court. This time, Mr. Lashari said, the ISI "must be spending more than ten times as much."

Mr. Lashari, who used to teach environmental economics at Britain's Cranfield University, said that the current effort was directed at constituencies where the result was likely to be decided by a small margin, so it would not be obvious.

Mr. Musharraf has been highly critical of those who allege that his regime is involved in electoral manipulation. "Now when they lose, they'll have a good rationale, that it is all rigged, it is all fraud," he said last month. "In Pakistan, the loser always cries."

Original article posted here.

Video of the Bhutto assassination. Not much room left for bullshit spin and lies.

Video: 'The most conclusive evidence' Bhutto was shot

David Edwards and Katie Baker

On Sunday, UK's Channel 4 news broadcasted a new video of the Bhutto assassination which they say "provides the most conclusive evidence yet that Benazir Bhutto was shot."

Although the Pakistani government officially claims that Bhutto died from hitting her head on the sunroof as she ducked into her car, evidence in the video drastically contradicts that account.

The video shows a large crowd swarming around Bhutto's car. A clean-shaven man in sunglasses is visibly watching, concealing a gun; behind him stands the suspected suicide bomber dressed in white. As the video rolls, the man in sunglasses moves closer to Bhutto's car and fires three shots. Directly after, the suicide bomber detonates his device and chaos ensues.Reporter Jonathan Rugman points out how, as the gunman fires, Bhutto's hair is lifted and her shawl seems to rise as she falls inside her car.

"These images ... apparently [contradict] the official version of events," Rugman asserts.

"As more such images come to light," he says, "they will fuel the anger of protesters both here at the scene of the crime and around the country who feel that they've been lied to by the government and that there's been a deliberate coverup of what amounts to a massive security failure to protect this country's best known politician."

Authorities initially said that Bhutto died from bullet wounds, and a surgeon who treated her said the impact from shrapnel on her skull killed her. But, Rugman points out, no blood was found on the bulletproof car -- and, every other passenger in the car survived. The video clearly shows three policeman to the left of the car, doing nothing to hold back the crowd. Was the government trying to cover-up a security lapse? Those close to the president say that was not the case.

"We do things here [quite differently]," says Senator Tarif Azeem, a friend of President Musharraf, citing Bhutto's want to "be amongst the crowd" as the reason why she stood through the sunroof without much security around her.

Officials have rejected calls for independent foreign inquiry, although they have offered to exhume her body if requested. According to Rugman, the government's actions suggest they may be hiding something.

"[The truth] really matters in a country where scores of people have died in protests against Mrs. Bhutto's death and indeed against the circumstances of Mrs. Bhutto's death," Rugman says, adding that the "great fear" in Pakistan is that the assassination will go unsolved.

This video is from Channel 4 News, broadcast on December 30, 2007.

Original article posted here.

Not good PR for our "Intelligence" agency

48% of news readers say CIA assassinated Bhutto

From: Mathaba

In an online poll conducted by Mathaba News following the assassination of Pakistan female opposition leader Benazhir Bhutto, results show only 20% of readers believe Al-Qaida is responsible.

22% of those voting held Musharaf, the current leader of Pakistan responsible, while 48% thought the C.I.A. had the leader assassinated.

The poll further reveals that western media do not ask such questions of readers, perhaps afraid of what the results may show to the general public, probably preferring to conduct such polls away from media publicity.

It presents a challenge to U.S. media such as C.N.N. to ask similar questions, giving the options to their readers to choose options which may be unpalatable, concerning their leaders and government institutions.

13% of respondents expressed no opinion or "did not know". As the poll simply asked "Who assassinated Bhutto?" and not "Who do you think assassinated Bhutto?", the results show a very high level of mistrust of western intelligence agencies among the general news reading public.

The CNN poll run at the same time, asked readers simply if Bhutto's body should now be exhumed for a post-mortem, giving only 2 options "yes" or "no".

Original article posted here.

Nice clean shave and glasses for Bhutto assassin. Muslim extremists going "Intelligence Chic"

First photos of Bhutto's assassins

The picture, according to the Pakistani news channel, was taken by an amateur photographer (Reuters Photo) ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani TV news channel has aired photographs of two men it said were involved in the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto after an election rally in Rawalpindi on Thursday. One of the two grainy photos -- which Dawn News channel said were clicked by an amateur photographer -- showed a youth wearing sunglasses aiming a pistol at Bhutto's back while she waved through the sun-roof of her bulletproof vehicle to her supporters. The other picture, apparently taken before the shooting, showed the same youth standing next to another man who had a white cloth wrapped around his face. Dawn News described the second man as the "suspected suicide bomber". The position of the youth with the pistol in the photo coincided with the position of the shooter seen in video footage of the attack on Bhutto released by the interior ministry on Saturday. In that footage, the face of the shooter is obscured but his hand can be seen holding a pistol that is used to fire three to four shots towards Bhutto. Original article posted here.

Keep walking, keep moving, nothing to see here . . .

Revealed: Pakistan hosed away scene after Bhutto attack

John Byrne

May have violated law by skipping autopsy

Despite official reports by Pakistan's interior ministry claiming that the government had intercepted congratulatory messages sent by al Qaeda surrounding the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, a motley of strange occurrences has sparked new suspicion of the government's official story.

On Friday, doctors at Rawalpindi General Hospital, where she died, said that Bhutto had been killed by shrapnel to the head from an explosion, not by two bullets that Bhutto supporters cited in the aftermath of the attack. Bhutto, 54, was killed as in the aftermath of a shooting and suicide bombing as she left a political rally in the city of Rawalpindi.

The government soon changed their story, saying she'd been killed by hitting the sunroof of her LandCruiser after she'd stood up to wave to a crowd. Doctors said there were no bullet marks on the former prime minister's body, and released a limited x-ray of what they said was her skull.

More alarming, however, to Bhutto supporters was the fact no autopsy was conducted prior to burial. The official line -- according to Pakistan's interim prime minister Mohammadmian Soomro -- was that Bhutto's husband had insisted no autopsy be performed.

But according to veteran lawyer Athar Minallah who spoke to McClatchy Newspapers Friday, "an autopsy is mandatory under Pakistan's criminal law in a case of this nature."

"It is absurd, because without autopsy it is not possible to investigate," Minallah told McClatchy's Saeed Shah and Warren Strobel in a little publicized piece. "Is the state not interested in reaching the perpetrators of this heinous crime or there was a cover-up?"

Autopsies are generally not conducted in Islam unless ordered by a court, because the religion calls for burial as quickly as possible. It's unclear whether Bhutto's circumstances would have warranted an exception.

According to the reporters, "the scene of the attack also was watered down with a high-pressure hose within an hour, washing away evidence."

Shah, who reported from the scene Thursday, wrote in a second piece that police rangers charged with protecting her "abandoned their posts" shortly before the bombing, leaving just a handful of Bhutto's own bodyguards protecting her.

"Police officers had frisked the 3,000 to 4,000 people attending Thursday's rally when they entered the park, but as the speakers from Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party droned on, the police abandoned many of their posts," Shah wrote. "As she drove out through the gate, her main protection appeared to be her own bodyguards, who wore their usual white T-shirts inscribed: 'Willing to die for Benazir.'"

Some of Bhutto's supporters were suspect of the "sunroof theory."

A "senior official" of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party called the claim "false," saying he'd seen at least two bullet marks on her body after the attack.

"It was a targeted, planned killing," BPP's Babar Awan said. "The firing was from more than one side."

Another newspaper also asserted witnesses saw her shot.

Multiple reports said Bhutto had shown disregard for her personal safety by waving to the crowd.

"In her enthusiasm, she got carried away, and exposed herself in ways" she shouldn't have, a former State Department official told Shah.

Pakistan indicated Saturday it would delay January elections because of turmoil caused by Bhutto's death. Protests and looting have left at least 38 people dead.

Updated to include background on autopsies as regards Islam.

Original article posted here.

More context for the Bhutto hit

Robert Fisk: They don't blame al-Qa'ida. They blame Musharraf

Weird, isn't it, how swiftly the narrative is laid down for us. Benazir Bhutto, the courageous leader of the Pakistan People's Party, is assassinated in Rawalpindi – attached to the very capital of Islamabad wherein ex-General Pervez Musharraf lives – and we are told by George Bush that her murderers were "extremists" and "terrorists". Well, you can't dispute that.

But the implication of the Bush comment was that Islamists were behind the assassination. It was the Taliban madmen again, the al-Qa'ida spider who struck at this lone and brave woman who had dared to call for democracy in her country.

Of course, given the childish coverage of this appalling tragedy – and however corrupt Ms Bhutto may have been, let us be under no illusions that this brave lady is indeed a true martyr – it's not surprising that the "good-versus-evil" donkey can be trotted out to explain the carnage in Rawalpindi.

Who would have imagined, watching the BBC or CNN on Thursday, that her two brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, hijacked a Pakistani airliner in 1981 and flew it to Kabul where Murtaza demanded the release of political prisoners in Pakistan. Here, a military officer on the plane was murdered. There were Americans aboard the flight – which is probably why the prisoners were indeed released.

Only a few days ago – in one of the most remarkable (but typically unrecognised) scoops of the year – Tariq Ali published a brilliant dissection of Pakistan (and Bhutto) corruption in the London Review of Books, focusing on Benazir and headlined: "Daughter of the West". In fact, the article was on my desk to photocopy as its subject was being murdered in Rawalpindi.

Towards the end of this report, Tariq Ali dwelt at length on the subsequent murder of Murtaza Bhutto by police close to his home at a time when Benazir was prime minister – and at a time when Benazir was enraged at Murtaza for demanding a return to PPP values and for condemning Benazir's appointment of her own husband as minister for industry, a highly lucrative post.

In a passage which may yet be applied to the aftermath of Benazir's murder, the report continues: "The fatal bullet had been fired at close range. The trap had been carefully laid, but, as is the way in Pakistan, the crudeness of the operation – false entries in police log-books, lost evidence, witnesses arrested and intimidated – a policeman killed who they feared might talk – made it obvious that the decision to execute the prime minister's brother had been taken at a very high level."

When Murtaza's 14-year-old daughter, Fatima, rang her aunt Benazir to ask why witnesses were being arrested – rather than her father's killers – she says Benazir told her: "Look, you're very young. You don't understand things." Or so Tariq Ali's exposé would have us believe. Over all this, however, looms the shocking power of Pakistan's ISI, the Inter Services Intelligence.

This vast institution – corrupt, venal and brutal – works for Musharraf.

But it also worked – and still works – for the Taliban. It also works for the Americans. In fact, it works for everybody. But it is the key which Musharraf can use to open talks with America's enemies when he feels threatened or wants to put pressure on Afghanistan or wants to appease the " extremists" and "terrorists" who so oppress George Bush. And let us remember, by the way, that Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded by his Islamist captors in Karachi, actually made his fatal appointment with his future murderers from an ISI commander's office. Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban provides riveting proof of the ISI's web of corruption and violence. Read it, and all of the above makes more sense.

But back to the official narrative. George Bush announced on Thursday he was "looking forward" to talking to his old friend Musharraf. Of course, they would talk about Benazir. They certainly would not talk about the fact that Musharraf continues to protect his old acquaintance – a certain Mr Khan – who supplied all Pakistan's nuclear secrets to Libya and Iran. No, let's not bring that bit of the "axis of evil" into this.

So, of course, we were asked to concentrate once more on all those " extremists" and "terrorists", not on the logic of questioning which many Pakistanis were feeling their way through in the aftermath of Benazir's assassination.

It doesn't, after all, take much to comprehend that the hated elections looming over Musharraf would probably be postponed indefinitely if his principal political opponent happened to be liquidated before polling day.

So let's run through this logic in the way that Inspector Ian Blair might have done in his policeman's notebook before he became the top cop in London.

Question: Who forced Benazir Bhutto to stay in London and tried to prevent her return to Pakistan? Answer: General Musharraf.

Question: Who ordered the arrest of thousands of Benazir's supporters this month? Answer: General Musharraf.

Question: Who placed Benazir under temporary house arrest this month? Answer: General Musharraf.

Question: Who declared martial law this month? Answer General Musharraf.

Question: who killed Benazir Bhutto?

Er. Yes. Well quite.

You see the problem? Yesterday, our television warriors informed us the PPP members shouting that Musharraf was a "murderer" were complaining he had not provided sufficient security for Benazir. Wrong. They were shouting this because they believe he killed her.

Original article posted here.

Time Magazine as the example of the propaganda mill at work. Brainwashing minions and selling conformity.

Bhutto Conspiracy Theories Fill the Air

By SIMON ROBINSON/LAHORE

A Pakistani man holds a copy of the English-language daily Khaleej Times featuring a frontpage story on the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in Dubai, 28 December 2007.

If you believe the rumors that zip around Pakistan in the aftermath of one of the country's depressingly regular outbreaks of violence, it's all America's fault. Or India's. Or Israel's. Or it's those Afghan-based militia who keep sneaking across the border. Fueled by cheap cell phone calls and the rise of 24-hour television news channels, gossip about who is to blame for Pakistan's woes runs from the reasonable to the ridiculous.

In the 24 hours since a lone attacker assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the rumor mill has again been working overtime. In Karachi, amid reports of rioting and sabotage, stories circulated that the city's water supply had been poisoned and people were afraid to drink it. There were also the conflicting accounts of how Bhutto died — from bullet wounds or from a bomb blast that followed or from fracturing her skull against her car's sun-roof as the assailant blew himself up. In the confusion of reports, many Pakistanis are pointing the finger of blame at President Pervez Musharraf and his allies in Washington.

There is no evidence to suggest that Musharraf or Pakistan's security forces were connected to the attack. On jihadi websites, al-Qaeda claimed the assassination was their work and intelligence officials in both Pakistan and the U.S. agree that Islamic extremists from al-Qaeda or the Taliban were probably responsible for the devastating attack. But as Musharraf's popularity has slipped badly, moderate and religious Pakistanis alike have begun to blame him for the increasing chaos in their country — and to trace every incident directly to his rule and his high-profile allies. "This assassination was fabricated by the present government," says Liaqat Baloch, a senior official in Jamaat-e-Islami, one of Pakistan's main Islamic parties. "It is part of the American strategy to scare people that Pakistan is falling apart."

At a time when Pakistan does indeed seem to be falling apart, it may seem absurd and even pointless to repeat such allegations. But the sentiments provide a powerful insight into how angry Pakistanis are at their President and how mistrustful they are of the U.S. At the least, says retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, the former director general of Pakistani intelligence organization Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), "it's very convenient for the security forces to call it a suicide bomber because they can cover up the possibility someone else was behind the attack." Gul, who has become a harsh critic of Musharraf over the past year, believes America is partly responsible for its current predicament. "If America continues to act selfishly and unwisely, well, there is hardly any good that has come out [of their help] either for the U.S. or Pakistan, and this will continue."

[As ISI chief, Gul helped run the Afghan mujahideen as a force to counter and eventually defeat the Soviet Union in the 1980s; later he helped establish the Taliban in Afghanistan. He also organized the guerrillas fighting the Indian army in the sections of Kashmir held by New Delhi.]

With such mistrust, rumors thrive. On the streets of Lahore Friday afternoon, many blamed Musharraf and the U.S. rather than Islamic extremists for Bhutto's demise. White-haired Mohamed Sharif, 61, who runs a sidewalk barber's shop using a rusty old metal table and a worn mirror, says the "rumor is that America is involved in this with Musharraf's help." A passerby butts in with his agreement: "America and the government are in the same direction, they are allies," says Sabir Hussain. "If the government is doing this it is on the order of America."

Lahore is a stronghold of opposition leader and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and is home to plenty of Bhutto supporters as well. In a place that's so heavily anti-Musharraf, innuendo seems to feed on itself. On the city's main street, lined with policemen holding batons and wearing anti-riot gear, two teenagers out for a walk say they have also heard about a possible government connection to the attack but cannot offer any evidence to back up the claims. "My mother told me not to talk about this topic on my mobile or telephone because the government may tape it," says Hafiz Jamshaid, 18, a computer science student at a local college.

Across town, in a park in the tony neighborhood known as Defense Housing Authority, or DFA, four business associates discussed Pakistan's future after their regular afternoon walk. "People are afraid to air their opinions but as far as I know America sent Benazir and later killed her with the help of Pervez Musharraf," says M.A. Mohamed, who runs a car parts company. "I can confirm this idea." His friend and colleague Talat Mumtaz interjects: "No, no. no, America likes Benazir. Why would they kill her? You're being ridiculous."

"No one knows what are the facts," complains Constable Jafar Hamid, proudly showing off his English as he guards a McDonald's outlet, closed against possible rioting. So where do all the rumors come from? "We don't believe in one thing, we don't think like a nation," he says. "Everybody has his own opinion and that is part of the problem." With reporting by Khuda Yar Khan/Islamabad

Original article posted here.

Benazir's own niece knew that she was a fraud

Aunt Benazir's false promises

Bhutto's return bodes poorly for Pakistan -- and for democracy there.

By Fatima Bhutto

KARACHI -- We Pakistanis live in uncertain times. Emergency rule has been imposed for the 13th time in our short 60-year history. Thousands of lawyers have been arrested, some charged with sedition and treason; the chief justice has been deposed; and a draconian media law -- shutting down all private news channels -- has been drafted.

Perhaps the most bizarre part of this circus has been the hijacking of the democratic cause by my aunt, the twice-disgraced former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. While she was hashing out a deal to share power with Gen. Pervez Musharraf last month, she repeatedly insisted that without her, democracy in Pakistan would be a lost cause.

The reality, however, is that there is no one better placed to benefit from emergency rule than she is. Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law. Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real arrest, in real jails.)

Ms. Bhutto's political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf's regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.

It is widely believed that Ms. Bhutto lost both her governments on grounds of massive corruption. She and her husband, a man who came to be known in Pakistan as "Mr. 10%," have been accused of stealing more than $1 billion from Pakistan's treasury. She is appealing a money-laundering conviction by the Swiss courts involving about $11 million. Corruption cases in Britain and Spain are ongoing.

It was particularly unappealing of Ms. Bhutto to ask Musharraf to bypass the courts and drop the many corruption cases that still face her in Pakistan. He agreed, creating the odiously titled National Reconciliation Ordinance in order to do so. Her collaboration with him was so unsubtle that people on the streets are now calling her party, the Pakistan People's Party, the Pervez People's Party. Now she might like to distance herself, but it's too late.

Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases be dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the brutal regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What about the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto -- my father -- returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been brought by Zia's military government. The cases all carried the death penalty. Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask her to drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the airport and spent the remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with confidence, in the courts of Pakistan.

Ms. Bhutto's repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government -- making Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so.

And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister's politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets.

My father was Benazir's younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a "much higher" political authority.

I have personal reasons to fear the danger that Ms. Bhutto's presence in Pakistan brings, but I am not alone. The Islamists are waiting at the gate. They have been waiting for confirmation that the reforms for which the Pakistani people have been struggling have been a farce, propped up by the White House. Since Musharraf seized power in 1999, there has been an earnest grass-roots movement for democratic reform. The last thing we need is to be tied to a neocon agenda through a puppet "democrat" like Ms. Bhutto.

By supporting Ms. Bhutto, who talks of democracy while asking to be brought to power by a military dictator, the only thing that will be accomplished is the death of the nascent secular democratic movement in my country. Democratization will forever be de-legitimized, and our progress in enacting true reforms will be quashed. We Pakistanis are certain of this.

Fatima Bhutto is a Pakistani poet and writer. She is the daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed in 1996 in Karachi when his sister, Benazir, was prime minister.

Original article posted here.

Classic assassination droppings

Police abandoned security posts before Bhutto assassination

Nick Juliano
Published: Friday December 28, 2007

No autopsy performed on body; docs say bullet wounds not found

Police abandoned their security posts shortly before Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto's assassination Thursday, according to a journalist present at the time, and unanswerable questions remain about the cause of her death, because an autopsy was never performed.

Pakistan's Interior Minister on Friday said that Bhutto was not killed by gunshots, as had been widely reported, and doctors at Rawalpindi General Hospital, where she died, say there were no bullet marks on the former prime minister's body, according to India's IBNLive.com. Furthermore, according to the news agency, there was no formal autopsy performed on Bhutto's body before she was buried Friday.

CNN is now reporting that it wasn't gunshots or shrapnel that killed Bhutto, but that she died from hitting the sunroof of the car she was riding in. The network said sources in Pakistan's Interior Ministry said nothing entered her skull, no bullets or shrapnel.

Apparently there was some kind of lever on the sunroof she was standing through, and she hit her head on that CNN reported Friday morning.

Earlier in the day Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz told a Pakistani news channel, “The report says she had head injuries – an irregular patch – and the X-ray doesn’t show any bullet in the head. So it was probably the shrapnel or any other thing has struck her in her said. That damaged her brain, causing it to ooze and her death. The report categorically says there’s no wound other than that," according to IBNLive.

Perhaps more shockingly, an attendee at the rally where Bhutto was killed says police charged with protecting her "abandoned their posts," leaving just a handful of Bhutto's own bodyguards protecting her.

"Police officers had frisked the 3,000 to 4,000 people attending Thursday's rally when they entered the park, but as the speakers from Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party droned on, the police abandoned many of their posts," wrote Saeed Shah in an essay published by McClatchy News Service. "As she drove out through the gate, her main protection appeared to be her own bodyguards, who wore their usual white T-shirts inscribed: 'Willing to die for Benazir.'"

While some intelligence officials, especially within the US, were quick to finger al Qaeda militants as responsible for Bhutto's death, it remains unclear precisely who was responsible and some speculation has centered on Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, its military or even forces loyal to the current president Pervez Musharraf. Rawalpindi, where Bhutto was killed, is the garrison city that houses the Pakistani military's headquarters.

"GHQ (general headquarters of the army) killed her," Sardar Saleem, a former member of parliament, told Shah at the hospital.

Whatever the case, Bhutto's precise cause of death may never be known because of the failure to administer an autopsy. The procedure was not carried out because police and local authorities in Rawalpindi did not request one, according to IBNLive, but the government plans a formal investigation why this was the case.

Musharraf initially blamed her death on unnamed Islamic militants, but Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz told The Associated Press on Friday that "we have the evidence that al-Qaida and the Taliban were behind the suicide attack on Benazir Bhutto."

He said investigators had resolved the "whole mystery" behind the opposition leader's killing and would give details at press conference later Friday.

Original article posted here.

Flashbacks

Murdered by intelligence agency
supported terrorists

When Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan to take a stand for democratic government, 3 million Pakistanis greeted her at the airport.

Now she is dead.

At 6:15 in this video, Benazir Bhutto refers in a matter-of-fact manner to "the man who killed Osama bin Laden."

If this was a misstatement, she did not correct herself, nor did the interviewer call attention to it.

Before she was murdered, there was another attack on Benazir Bhutto's life. She told David Frost that she was not even allowed to file a police report let alone get a serious investigation of the attack.

She specifically stated that she wanted the finances of the terrorists traced.

Saeed Sheikh is the man Bhutto refers to in this interview.

He is charged with killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl who tracked the relationship between Pakistani intelligence and terrorist groups. He is also suspected of having wired money to Mohamed Atta on behalf of Pakistani intelligence right before the 9/11 attacks.

George Bush & Company wholeheartedly support the current Pakistani regime.

Moron Propaganda (and, given Bhutto's own death prognostication, helps expose the charade that is Al CIAda)

Officials: Al Qaeda claims responsibility for Bhutto killing

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin Thursday citing an alleged claim of responsibility by al Qaeda for former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination, a DHS official told CNN.

An Italian news agency says al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri began planning Bhutto's killing in October.

But such a claim has not appeared on radical Islamist Web sites that regularly post such messages from al Qaeda and other militant groups.

The source of the claim was apparently an obscure Italian news agency, Adnkronos International (AKI), which said that al Qaeda Afghanistan commander and spokesman Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid had telephoned the agency to make the claim.

"We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen," AKI quoted Al-Yazid as saying.

According to AKI, al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri set the wheels in motion for the assassination in October.

One Islamist Web site repeated the claim, but that Web site is not considered a reliable source for Islamist messages by experts in the field.

The DHS official said the claim was "an unconfirmed open source claim of responsibility" and the bulletin was sent out at about 6 p.m. to state and local law enforcement agencies.

The official characterized the bulletin as "information sharing."

Ross Feinstein, spokesman for Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, said the U.S. intelligence community is monitoring the situation and trying to figure out who is responsible for the assassination.

"We are not in a position to confirm who may be responsible," Feinstein said.

Feinstein said that the intelligence community "obviously analyze(s) open source intelligence," but he would not say whether the community believes the claim has any validity.

For now, he said, there is "no conclusion" as to who may be responsible.

Earlier, DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said Bhutto's assassination had not prompted "any adjustments to our security posture."

"Of course, we continue to closely monitor events as they unfold overseas," he said.

Original article posted here.

Wolf Blitzer tells about Bhutto's own death prognostication

Turning back to the 60's. Political assassinations rear their heads again, as "intelligence" agencies lose control of the script.

Bhutto Killing Inflames Pakistan



By PETER WONACOTT and JAY SOLOMON

The world's most unstable nuclear-armed nation is plunging deeper into crisis.

Yesterday's assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has thrown into disarray Pakistan's attempt to restore democracy, eliminating a leading contender for power days before a national election and highlighting the growing reach of extremists.

Ms. Bhutto, a Harvard-educated politician who enjoyed U.S. support, had been expected to do well in elections scheduled for Jan. 8, possibly becoming prime minister once again. Her death has deprived Pakistan's embattled president, Pervez Musharraf, of his strongest potential ally in the battle against the rising tide of radical Islam in this nation of more than 160 million people.

Yesterday's attack brought home how the world's second-most-populous Muslim nation totters on the brink of becoming a failed state, with potentially devastating consequences for neighbors like India and Afghanistan, and for the West. The murder was the latest in the series of suicide attacks that now occur in Pakistan with a frequency approaching that of Iraq, as Taliban-style Islamic insurgents overtake swaths of the countryside.

Ms. Bhutto, 54 years old, was killed by a man who first shot her and then blew himself up following a campaign rally in the city of Rawalpindi near Islamabad, witnesses said. Twenty people were killed in the blast.

One of the first women to lead a modern Muslim nation, Ms. Bhutto has long attracted the ire of Islamist extremists. She was the target of another assassination attempt on Oct. 18, the day she returned to Pakistan after eight years of self-imposed exile. More than 100 people died in that bombing.
As a Western educated woman in an Islamic society, and the first female Prime Minister of a Muslim country, Bhutto forged many new paths in a career which spanned decades. Video courtesy of Reuters.

Though no one claimed responsibility for yesterday's attacks, President Musharraf blamed radicals linked with al Qaeda and the Taliban. "This is the work of those terrorists with whom we are engaged in war," he said in a nationally televised speech. "The nation faces the greatest threats from these terrorists."

The Bhutto assassination puts President Musharraf, a close U.S. ally, in a tight spot: He was counting on the participation of Ms. Bhutto and her large Pakistan People's Party to lend legitimacy to the elections.

Ms. Bhutto had bitterly criticized President Musharraf's six-week emergency rule, imposed in November and lifted Dec. 15, and his measures against the independent judiciary and the press. But she also signaled that she could work with him in a government -- a stance that distinguished her from her longtime rival and another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. It was Ms. Bhutto's determination to run in the upcoming election that prompted most other opposition parties, including Mr. Sharif's, to follow suit and drop threats of an electoral boycott.

Next week's election is now up in the air. Mr. Sharif, a conservative with backing from Saudi Arabia, said yesterday that his party again intends to boycott the vote. Ms. Bhutto's party doesn't have a leader of comparable stature to step into her shoes. Closely intertwined with the Bhutto family, her PPP was established by Ms. Bhutto's father, former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged in 1979 by the country's military rulers. The party announced a 40-day mourning period as it weighs its options.

"It will be extremely difficult to hold elections now," said Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani political analyst who was recently a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University. "There will be violence."

Pakistan's tumult is roiling the capitals of world powers. Continuing chaos is likely to further embolden militants in Pakistan and in neighboring Afghanistan, and may undermine Islamabad's security cooperation with the U.S.

The U.S. yesterday called for the elections to be held as planned. "We believe the best way to honor Ms. Bhutto is for the democratic process to continue," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. To delay the elections, he said, "would be a victory for the assailants."

Pakistan's army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, said the country's police can handle the security situation. Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz went on TV to call upon political parties to react peacefully. He said the government was investigating the attack.

Some of Ms. Bhutto's supporters lashed out at President Musharraf and the government's security agencies, accusing them of complicity with the killing in Rawalpindi. They questioned whether Ms. Bhutto was given adequate protection in this garrison city, the headquarters of Pakistan's military.

Ms. Bhutto knew the dangers she faced. In a commentary she contributed to The Wall Street Journal after the Oct. 18 attempt on her life, she said she had asked the government to provide security. "The attack on me was not totally unexpected. I had received credible information that I was being targeted by elements that wanted to disrupt the democratic process," she wrote.

Since Pakistan was created by 1947's partition of India, it has never fully gelled as a stable state. The nation's identity has been premised on a single religion, Islam, and Pakistan provided sanctuary for generations of Muslims who felt oppressed in India or sought their own homeland. But the people of Pakistan have also grappled with a persistent question: How large a role should Islam have in daily life? Very little, say human-rights activists. Total theocracy, counter Pakistanis inspired by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Sixty Years of Instability

For most of its 60 years of independence, Pakistan has been run by the military, which hasn't helped resolve the question of religion and state, and in many ways planted the seeds for today's instability. Pakistan's military rulers suppressed political dissent in the 1980s and 1990s. At the same time, they provided succor to militants who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and India in the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Pakistan's plight stands in stark contrast to its foe and neighbor, India, the world's largest democracy, which has never experienced a military coup. Since 1947, Pakistan and India have fought three full-scale wars, one resulting in the 1971 secession of East Pakistan, now called Bangladesh. After a group of militants attacked India's parliament in late 2001, the countries came to the brink of the first war between two declared nuclear powers.
WSJ Washington Bureau Chief John Bussey analyzes how the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Bhutto could impact U.S. foreign policy.

Even Pakistan's civilian leaders have had to seek the tacit consent of the nation's powerful military. Ms. Bhutto's father served as a martial-law administrator under the military, before leading a grass-roots movement that made him prime minister. Mr. Sharif emerged as a national leader while a serving in a military government. The military eventually got rid of both, executing Mr. Bhutto and exiling Mr. Sharif.

Ms. Bhutto rose to prominence in the wake of her father's death, serving two terms as prime minister in the 1980s and 1990s. The military constrained her involvement in strategic and foreign affairs, and her government was criticized for alleged corruption.

President Musharraf, the former army chief of staff, came to power after ousting Mr. Sharif in a 1999 coup. As a military commander, Mr. Musharraf had cultivated contacts with militants -- typically through intelligence services -- for their forays into India.

Then came the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., plotted by al Qaeda from Afghanistan. President Musharraf reversed Pakistan's backing for Afghanistan's Taliban government. Instead, he provided logistic support to the U.S. military campaign there.

Continued insurgency in Afghanistan, however, has resulted in a creeping Talibanization of parts of Pakistan itself. Groups affiliated with the Taliban and al Qaeda have extended their influence well beyond tribal areas on the Afghan frontier, moving into large parts of the country. In the fall, they overran the Swat valley north of Islamabad, a onetime tourist destination and skiing resort.

Roots of the Crisis

Pakistan's current crisis began in March, when Mr. Musharraf sought to dismiss the country's Supreme Court justice, who his government accused of abusing the perks of his office. The move sparked pro-democracy protests, with lawyers and others taking to the streets against Mr. Musharraf.

At the same time, despite resistance among Pakistan's swelling urban middle class, extremism began reaching into big cities. Earlier this year, Islamic radicals occupied Islamabad's Red Mosque compound, sending out antivice patrols into the streets of the capital. The months-long occupation drew upon youth educated in religious schools. It ended in July with a bloody commando raid.

Since then, militants have launched a barrage of suicide bombings across the nation. Last Friday, a bomb exploded in a village outside of Peshawar, killing more than 50 people, an attack that apparently targeted Pakistan's former top antiterrorism official.

The incidents underscored the challenges closing in on Mr. Musharraf. Both ends of the political spectrum -- those who want civil liberties, and those seeking to establish a strict Islamic state -- wanted him gone.
WSJ's Andy Jordan visits a Pakistani community in New York to get reactions to the attack.

Ms. Bhutto's secular outlook, meanwhile, earned her admirers in Washington. U.S. officials encouraged her to discuss a possible alliance with President Musharraf. But almost as soon as she returned to Pakistan in October, after reaching a deal with President Musharraf to help guide the country toward civilian rule, friction between the two broke to the surface.

On Nov. 3, Mr. Musharraf -- buffeted by an upsurge in violence as well as a challenge to his reelection as president by a parliament stacked with his supporters -- declared emergency rule. He suspended the constitution, forced the resignation of dozens of judges, jailed opponents and took popular television broadcasters off the air.

His government suffered a backlash among critics inside Pakistan and abroad who saw the security clampdown not as way to fight militants but to sideline political opponents. Some critics say President Musharraf's unwillingness to relinquish power after eight years at the helm further fed unrest by weakening the state's legitimacy.

Ms. Bhutto was among those who condemned the president's emergency rule. In response, President Musharraf detained thousands of her supporters and thwarted her attempts to lead protest rallies. Ms. Bhutto was put under house arrest twice.

In the following weeks, after Mr. Sharif returned to Pakistan from exile in Saudi Arabia and President Musharraf stepped down as army chief, relations between Ms. Bhutto and the president showed some improvement. Ms. Bhutto was largely able to campaign freely, even holding rallies in the Northwest Frontier Province, the stronghold of Islamic conservatives.

Ms. Bhutto was struck in the head and neck yesterday as she was entering her car, according to Tariq Azim, former deputy minister of information, who said he had been briefed by Pakistan's Ministry of Interior. Ms. Bhutto was rushed to a hospital where she died from her injuries. The subsequent blast killed 20 and injured about 45, according to Mr. Azim, who called it a "sad and tragic day for Pakistan."

Yesterday evening, some roads were blocked amid the sound of gunfire in Pakistan's commercial capital of Karachi. Police said five people were killed and fires could be seen raging in some buildings. Near the site of the bombing in Rawalpindi, PPP supporters vented their grief by pounding on passing cars and shouting "Musharraf Dog."

Mr. Sharif fanned such sentiments by urging a "revenge on the rulers" for Ms. Bhutto's death.

Leadership Vacuum

Most current and former U.S. officials say Washington's Pakistan policy -- premised on a Musharraf-Bhutto alliance -- is now in trouble. These officials say the Bush administration should be working aggressively behind the scenes to try to rebuild a coalition between President Musharraf and the PPP. But they acknowledge that the approach is complicated by the leadership vacuum in Ms. Bhutto's party.

They also caution that the U.S. shouldn't be seen as too openly managing the political maneuvering due to fears this could fuel even greater anti-American sentiment. Among the PPP officials Washington would likely reach out to in the coming days are emerging leaders such as Aitzaz Ahsan, who could possibly galvanize the party. But Mr. Ahsan, a prominent lawyer, is a major opponent of President Musharraf for supporting Pakistan's ousted judges, and has been under detention himself.

Some analysts expressed fear that the fallout from the killings could also inflame separatist feelings in Pakistan's provinces, especially in Sindh -- Ms. Bhutto's home -- and in resource-rich Baluchistan.

"This will affect the very integrity of Pakistan," said Zafar Iqbal Cheema, chairman of the defense and strategic studies at Quaid-i-Azam University. "Ms. Bhutto was a symbol of Pakistan unity."

Original article posted here.

A bit of honesty seeps out in the Pakistan charade

Pakistan: Clash between Musharraf and Bhutto a "farce", says Bhutto niece

by Marco Liconti

The clash between Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto during the country's current state of emergency is a "farce", according to Bhutto's niece, Fatima.

In an exclusive interview with Adnkronos International (AKI), Fatima Bhutto accused her aunt, who heads the largest opposition party, the Pakistan People's Party, of "cynicism" and wanting "to sell out the country to the United States".

Speaking by telephone from Karachi, the 25-year-old niece launched a scathing attack on the former leader and accused her of returning home to Pakistan "not to serve the interests of the people, but to chase power".

"She has certainly not returned to Pakistan to spearhead political reform," she said.

The young woman said the current crisis had degenerated into a war between two people, Musharraf and Benazir, who were losing sight of the real issues facing the country.

Bhutto said Benazir had come to an agreement with the president "because she wanted to please public opinion".

But she claimed they would both find a way to "maintain the status quo" and "extend their own respective power", excluding the only other leader with any clout, exiled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

As for Benazir's house arrest, revoked on Thursday, the young Bhutto described it as a joke.

"Have you ever seen anyone placed under house arrest released continually for interviews and even receive an American consul?" she said.

The young Bhutto, a poet and writer, is actively involved in politics beside her stepmother Ghinwa Bhutto, plans to stand as a candidate for the breakaway Pakistan People's Party Shaheed Bhutto (PPP-SB), which supports a return to Pakistan's liberal Constitution of 1973.

Fatima Bhutto is the daughter of the late Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed by police in 1996 in Karachi during the premiership of his sister, Benazir Bhutto. She is grand-daughter of Pakistan's former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

During her interview with Adnkronos International, Fatima blamed her aunt for the death of her father.

"The second term of Benazir was characterised by several acts of state violence against opponents," said Bhutto.

She accused Bhutto of "creating the conditions for the violence in which he (her father) was a victim" and of also being responsible for the cover up at the inquest.

Bhutto accused of Musharraf of failing to live up to his promises while her aunt had simply given "new strength to the fundamentalists" in Pakistan.

She also called for the US alliance to be renegotiated in a way that gave Pakistan greater parity.

Fatima's mother, Ghinwa Bhutto, is the chairperson of the PPP-SB. The Lebanese widow of Murtaza Bhutto, she has staked claim to her share of the Bhutto political legacy.

Original article posted here.

Don 't mourn Pakistan too much, don't be surprised if this show hits America before November of next year

Pakistani troops jail hundreds & attack protesters

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BY MICHAEL McAULIFF
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Pakistani policemen arrest civil rights activists who were trying to march toward ousted chief justice Muhammad Chaudhry's residence during an anti-Musharraf protest in Islamabad on Sunday.

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Police and paramilitaries stand guard at the junction to the president's house in Islamabad.

Authorities rounded up opposition leaders Sunday, including these political workers in Lahore.

Opposition leader Javed Hashmi flashes a victory sign as he is arrested in Multan.

Punjabi policemen scour the news while awaiting orders outside the Presidential Palace on Sunday.

WASHINGTON - Riot troops swept through Pakistan Sunday, throwing hundreds of government opponents into jail as people took to the streets to protest the martial law clampdown and the suspension of the constitution.

Government forces shut down television stations, arrested hundreds of lawyers and human rights activists, and attacked opposition rallies with tear gas and clubs as the crisis deepened in the teetering nation - one of the world's nuclear powers and a precarious ally of the U.S. in the war on terror.

In Lahore, riot police stormed a meeting and arrested 50. "They dragged us out, including women," one man said at a police station. "It's inhuman, undemocratic and a violation of human rights."

The crackdown has put the U.S. in a tough position.

"The emergency is an embarrassment for the Bush administration," said Teresita Schaffer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But she said the White House has few options. "They will have to keep working with the government on terrorism and Afghan-related issues," Schaffer said.

Streets around government buildings were sealed, and opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto charged that President Gen. Pervez Musharraf had carried out a "second coup," referring to his initial power grab in 1999.

"This is a coup conducted by Gen. Musharraf against his own regime," she said on CBS News.

Musharraf suspended the constitution and dismissed most of the Supreme Court on Saturday, just days before it was to decide the legality of his most recent election.

The Pakistani strongman cited Abraham Lincoln, saying he was clamping down to prevent extremists from taking over, the way Lincoln suspended some rights during the Civil War.

"Poor President Lincoln, he must be turning in his grave," Bhutto scoffed on "ABC News."

"Unless we can stop it, the radicals will gain in strength, and there will be horrific consequences for the people of Pakistan as well as for the people in this region, if not even beyond," she said.

The United States has been pushing for improved democracy while sending billions in aid to prop up Musharraf and crack down on Islamic terrorists.

Neither effort has gone well, as Musharraf seems certain to ignore U.S. calls to hold promised elections on Jan. 15, and Taliban and Al Qaeda forces have only gotten stronger along Pakistan's lawless border with Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Rice complained yesterday that Musharraf was moving in the wrong direction. "I think the decision sets Pakistan back in terms of the considerable progress that it had made along the road to democratic change," she said, warning she would "review" Pakistan's aid package.

mmcauliff@nydailynews.com

Original article posted here.