[NYTr] Who killed Benazir?

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Riaz K Tayob - Jan 2, 2008

Undiplomatic Times blog
http://undiplomatictimes.blogspot.com

Who Killed Benazir?

by Bhaskar Menon

If mass media coverage of Benazir's murder were a screenplay, it would 
begin with the directions: "Spotlight crime scene. Background is 
impenetrably dark."

A week after the event, political analysts and opinion mongers have 
expanded only minimally on reportage: the country is in turmoil; there 
are concerns about the security of its nuclear weapons; suspicion that 
President Musharraf had a hand in the assassination is widespread, but 
Al Qaeda cannot be ruled out. For the United States, which pushed for 
Benazir's return as a way to ease the country out of military rule, the 
assassination is a disaster. Instead of a half-step towards a more 
legitimate government in Islamabad, it is now stuck with a seriously 
weakened Musharraf.

The only analyst to go beyond that tight spotlight has been Tariq Ali, 
the Trotskyist enfant terrible of the 1960s who has evolved into a 
biriyani-scotch radical welcome on the BBC. The strange thing is, Ali 
wrote his trenchant analysis well before Benazir was killed, for it 
appeared in the 11 December issue of the London Review of Books. "The 
Daughter of the West" is a a total dump on Benazir, dwelling on the 
corruption of her family and her personal involvement in the killing of 
her brother Murtaza; one might almost read it as an explanation of why 
she deserved to be offed. Coming from as well connected a figure as
Ali, whose uncle was a former chief of Pakistani military intelligence,
and whose relationship with MI-5 must remain a matter of interesting 
speculation, it is more than the preternatural "scoop" that Robert Fisk 
of The Independent declared it to be.

It is quite possible that Musharraf ordered the murder; but is it 
likely? What would be his motivation? He had much more to gain from 
playing ball with Benazir than from bumping her off; Musharraf is 
damaged goods in everyone's book and now that he is sans military 
uniform, there is very little to prevent another ambitious General from 
elbowing him aside. He would have to be a complete political moron to 
throw away the only prop that would have allowed him to hobble off the 
scene with a modicum of dignity.

If Musharraf is not behind Benazir's murder, who is? Certainly not the 
CIA; Benazir was Washington's baby. And almost certainly not Al Qaeda. 
The Pakistani government has claimed to have evidence that Al Qaeda was 
responsible but the alleged perp, a Taliban commander by the name of 
Baitullah Mehsud, took the unusual step of issuing a public denial. A 
spokesman for Mehsud called reporters in Peshawar to say (according to 
one published report): "We are sad over Benazir Bhutto's death. We do 
not have any enmity with Pakistani leaders and are only opposed to the 
United States"

The last of the usual suspects is Pakistan's spy service, the infamous 
Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The evidence here is 
mute but graphic: video footage of the assassination shows a 
clean-shaven man with a sleeveless vest, rimless sun glasses and 
close-cropped hair -- the stereotypical ISI operative -- pointing a gun 
at Benazir. The fact that the crime scene was immediately hosed clean, 
as was the bloodied interior of the SUV in which Benazir was riding, 
also points to an inside job. But why would the ISI kill Bhutto? It is 
hard to imagine that her third ascent to the prime ministership would 
have been a threat to its power or many privileges.

It could be that the murder is a calculated response to a too forceful 
American effort to order Pakistan's internal affairs: the 
Benazir-Musharraf partnership deal was put in place by gimlet-eyed John 
Negroponte, whose experience in kicking butt in Cold War Latin America 
might not have translated well into the izzat-ridden world of Punjabi 
Islam. If this is a case of the worm turning, then the ISI's British 
connection becomes a live matter. The ISI was established by the
British immediately after Indian independence, at a time when they were 
stage-managing the first India-Pakistan war over Kashmir. (Armies on 
both sides were led by British officers, and Luis "Dickie" Mountbatten 
was not only free India's first Governor-General, but chairman of the 
cabinet committee handling the situation in Delhi.)

London maintained a close working relationship with the ISI throughout 
the Cold War, its influence strengthened by its intimacy with Saudi 
royals who had clout in Islamabad. A common element binding the 
intelligence agencies of all three countries -- Britiain, Pakistan and 
Saudi Arabia -- was resentment at the CIA's dominating role. In the
post Cold War era that resentment led Osama bin Laden to (ostensibly)
break with his handlers in Saudi intelligence and set up shop in
Afghanistan. It caused Pakistani operative Mir Amar Kansi to go on a
shooting rampage outside the CIA's headquarters building in Langley,
Virginia, in January 1993; and it led to the broad Pakistani role in
supporting the 9/11 attacks. British authorities, though swallowing
hard over American intervention to force a peace settlement in Ireland,
have been less open in expressing  their displeasure with Washington,
for they have far more at stake; but there is no denying that in recent
years London has moved towards an increasingly independent line. The
decision to halve the number of British troops in  Iraq at a time when
the United States is in the middle of a desperate pacification effort
is only the most visible indication.

At the United Nations the British ambassador outfoxed American envoy 
John Bolton and slipped Beijing's candidate for Secretary-General into 
office, gaining in the process a greater command over high-level UN 
appointments than London has had for decades. Newly appointed 
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon handed Britain the post of 
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs  (which gives it ready 
access to all the  world's trouble spots), and appointed Britons as his 
political representatives for the peace processes in Nepal and the 
Middle East, both areas in which British policy has a long and
invidious history. Washington neutralized the latter appointment by
pushing Tony Blair into the role of Middle East mediator. Such fencing
has reached the ground level: a British UN staffer was recently
expelled from Afghanistan by President Karzai for having unauthorized
contact with the Taliban.

Against that background Benazir's murder might portend much more than 
instability in Pakistan. It might mean we are in the middle of a large 
power struggle in Asia, and that could have very dire consequences.