Benazir

What Bhutto Was Worried About/Robert D. Novak

THE WASHINGTON POST, 31/12/07;

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto followed two months of urgent pleas to the State Department by her representatives for better protection. The U.S. reaction was that she was worried over nothing, expressing assurance that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would not let anything happen to her.
That attitude led a Bhutto agent to inform a high-ranking State Department official that her camp no longer viewed the backstage U.S. effort to broker a power-sharing agreement between Musharraf and the former prime minister as a good-faith effort toward democracy. It was, according to the written complaint, an attempt to preserve the politically endangered Musharraf as George W. Bush’s man in Islamabad.
President Bush confirmed that judgment with his statement Thursday, within hours of learning that Bhutto was dead, when he urged that the elections scheduled for Jan. 8 be held in furtherance of Pakistani “democracy.” That may be Musharraf’s position, but it definitely is not the position of his critics. They believed the election would be a sham with Bhutto dead and with Saudi-backed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif boycotting the balloting, though Sharif’s party reversed course yesterday.
The Bush administration decided months ago to broker a power-sharing arrangement, with the deeply unpopular Musharraf retiring from the army but remaining as president and the popular Bhutto taking a third try as prime minister (after twice being ousted by the military). That decision was based on Pakistan’s strategic importance as a sanctuary for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Bush was in a quandary. Bhutto was much tougher than Musharraf on Islamist extremists, but Bush had invested heavily in the general.
When I last saw Bhutto, over coffee in August at Manhattan’s Pierre Hotel, she was deeply concerned about U.S. ambivalence but asked me not to write about it. She had not heard from Musharraf for three weeks after their secret July meeting in Abu Dhabi. She feared the Pakistani military strongman was not being prodded from Washington.
Next came Musharraf’s state of emergency and purge of Pakistan’s Supreme Court to guarantee legality of his questionable election as president. According to Bhutto’s advisers, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Bhutto in a telephone conversation to go along with that process in return for concessions from Musharraf. Bhutto agreed, but she got nothing in return.
The unsuccessful Oct. 18 attempt on Bhutto’s life followed the regime’s rejection of her requested security protection when she returned from eight years in exile. The Pakistani government vetoed FBI assistance in investigating the attack. On Oct. 26, Bhutto sent an e-mail to Mark Siegel, her friend and Washington spokesman, to be made public only in the event of her death.
“I would hold Musharraf responsible,” Bhutto said in the message. “I have been made to feel insecure by his minions.” She listed obstruction to her “taking private cars or using tinted windows,” using jammers against roadside bombs and being surrounded with police cars. “Without him [Musharraf],” she said, those requests could not have been blocked.
In early December, a former Pakistani government official supporting Bhutto visited a senior U.S. government official to renew Bhutto’s security requests. He got a brushoff, a mind-set reflected Dec. 6 at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, was asked to respond to fears by nonpartisan American observers of a rigged election. His reply: “I do think they can have a good election. They can have a credible election. They can have a transparent and a fair election. It’s not going to be a perfect election.” Boucher’s words echoed through corridors of power in Islamabad. The Americans’ not demanding perfection signaled that they would settle for less. Without Benazir Bhutto around, it is apt to be a lot less.
A more sinister fallout of a free hand from Washington for Pakistan might be Bhutto’s murder. Neither her shooting on Thursday nor the attempt on her life Oct. 18 bore the trademarks of al-Qaeda. After the carnage, government trucks used streams of water to clean up the blood and, in the process, destroyed forensic evidence. If not too late, would an offer and acceptance of investigation by the FBI be in order.

Pakistan may not make it/By Peter W. Galbraith, a former US ambassador to Croatia and the author of The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End

THE GUARDIAN, 31/12/07;

With the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s survival depends on the outcome of a struggle between the army and Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s party, now headed by her 19-year-old son Bilawal. The protagonists are mismatched and the odds are that Pakistan will not make it.For all its flaws, the PPP is Pakistan’s only true national institution. As well as overwhelming support in the Bhutto family’s home province of Sindh, it has substantial support in Punjab and North-West Frontier Province. Like many south Asian political parties, it is a family affair, but it has an enduring platform: opposition to military rule.
Pakistan’s army has long defined itself as the guardian of the nation, and successive generals have used this role as their excuse to seize and hold power. But the army is not a national institution. Historically, the Punjab has produced 90% of the officer corps while the Sindh, with 25% of Pakistan’s population, is essentially unrepresented. Sindhis tend to see army rule as equivalent to Punjabi rule. The Bhutto killing sparked widespread attacks on federal property in Sindh and could galvanise separatist sentiment in the province.
The PPP’s decision to make Bilawal Bhutto chairman is not just about dynastic succession or garnering a sympathy vote. It is also an effort to save the Pakistani federation, which was a central point made at yesterday’s news conference announcing the new leadership. But will it work?
Benazir was an extraordinarily gifted politician. She was a brilliant strategist who focused not only on finding a way back to power for a third time but also on constructing a moderate coalition - including power-sharing with Pervez Musharraf - that could defeat extremism, make peace with India and thus create conditions that would get the army out of politics for good. Benazir honed her tactical skills and strategic thinking over nearly 30 years at the helm of the PPP and it is unrealistic to think that her son - by all accounts a bright, studious and forthright young man - could do the same, even with the help of family and Benazir’s political associates.
But the larger problem is the Pakistani military. Pakistan’s ruling generals have an almost unbroken record of sacrificing the national interest for their personal interest. Musharraf is not as bloodthirsty as his predecessor Zia ul-Haq but is no less keen on power.
Since Musharraf has certainly read the handwriting on the wall and yet still intends to stay in power, there is not much foreign leaders can do, in effect, to encourage his departure. Many Pakistanis - and most Sindhis - believe Musharraf and the army had a role in the Bhutto killing, which took place in a garrison city. Musharraf cannot be trusted to conduct an impartial investigation of the murder of his top rival. He has sacked Pakistan’s independent-minded judges and imprisoned its lawyers.
The US and Britain should take the lead in demanding a UN investigation: the facts in this case are every bit as compelling as those that led the UN to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Harriri. The Bhutto killing is tearing Pakistan apart. A UN investigation can help calm passions, but only the permanent departure of the army from power can provide a hope - and it is only a hope - of saving the country.