[NYTr] Bhutto: Pakistan Chaos news rounduup

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP - Dec 29, 2007
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PAKISTAN?SITE=TXHOU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Militants, Bhutto aides allege cover-up

By RAVI NESSMAN
Associated Press Writer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- An Islamic militant group said Saturday it
had no link to Benazir Bhutto's killing and the opposition leader's
aides accused the government of a cover-up, disputing the official
account of her death.

The government stood firmly by its account of Thursday's assassination
and insisted it needed no foreign help in any investigation.

"This is not an ordinary criminal matter in which we require assistance
of the international community. I think we are capable of handling it,"
said Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema.

Bhutto's aides said they doubted militant commander Baitullah Mehsud
was behind the attack on the opposition leader and said the
government's claim that she died when she hit her head on the sunroof
of her vehicle was "dangerous nonsense."

Cheema said the government's account was based on "nothing but the
facts"

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton called for an
independent, international investigation into Bhutto's death - perhaps
by the United Nations - saying Friday there was "no reason to trust the
Pakistani government."

Attackers opened fire at a motorcade of Bhutto's supporters as they
returned to Karachi after her funeral, killing one man and wounding
two, said Waqar Mehdi, a spokesman for Bhutto's party. The government
said mass rioting has killed 38 people, though officials in Sindh
province say at least 44 people were killed there alone.

In Rawalpindi, thousands of Bhutto supporters spilled onto the streets
after a prayer ceremony for her, throwing stones and clashing with
police who fired tear gas to try and subdue the crowd.

President Pervez Musharraf told his top security officials that those
looting and plundering "must be dealt with firmly and all measures be
taken to ensure (the) safety and security of the people," the
Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

Pakistan's election commission called an emergency meeting for Monday
to discuss the violence's impact on Jan. 8 parliamentary elections.

Nine election offices in Bhutto's home province of Sindh in the south
were burned to the ground, along with voter rolls and ballot boxes, the
commission said in a statement. The violence also hampered the printing
of ballot papers, training of poll workers and other pre-election
logistics, the statement said.

The U.S. government, which sees nuclear-armed Pakistan as a crucial
ally in the war on terror, has pushed Musharraf to keep the election on
track to promote stability, moderation and democracy in Pakistan,
American officials said.

Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro said Friday the government had no
immediate plans to postpone the election, despite the violence and the
decision by Nawaz Sharif, another opposition leader, to boycott the
poll.

Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party also called a meeting Sunday to decide
whether to participate in the vote. Her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, told
the British Broadcasting Corp. that their son would read a message left
by Bhutto and addressed to the party in event of her death.

Roads across Bhutto's southern Sindh province were littered with
burning vehicles, smoking reminders of the continuing chaos since her
assassination Thursday. Factories, stores and restaurants were set
ablaze in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, where 20 people have been
killed and dozens injured, officials said.

Army, police and paramilitary troops patrolled the nearly deserted
streets of Bhutto's home city of Larkana, where rioting left shops at a
jewelry market smoldering.

The government blamed Bhutto's killing on al-Qaida and Taliban
militants operating with increasing impunity in the lawless tribal
areas along the border with Afghanistan. It released a transcript
Friday of a purported conversation between Mehsud and another militant,
apparently discussing the assassination.

"It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her,"
Mehsud said, according to the transcript.

But a spokesman for Mehsud, Maulana Mohammed Umer, denied the militant
was involved in the attack and dismissed the allegations as "government
propaganda."

"The fact is that we are only against America, and we don't consider
political leaders of Pakistan our enemy," he said in a telephone call
he made to The Associated Press from the tribal region of South
Waziristan, adding that he was speaking on instructions from Mehsud.

Cheema said the government had evidence to back its claim.

"I don't think anybody has the capability to carry out such suicide
attacks except for those people," he said.

Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party accused the government of trying to
frame Mehsud, saying the militant - through emissaries - had previously
told Bhutto he was not involved in the Karachi bombing.

"The story that al-Qaida or Baitullah Mehsud did it appears to us to be
a planted story, an incorrect story, because they want to divert the
attention," said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Bhutto's party.

After the Karachi attack, Bhutto accused elements in the ruling
pro-Musharraf party of plotting to kill her. The government denied the
claims. Babar said Bhutto's allegations were never investigated.

Bhutto was killed Thursday evening when a suicide attacker shot at her
and then blew himself up as she left a rally in the garrison city of
Rawalpindi near Islamabad. The attack killed about 20 others as well.
Authorities initially said she died from bullet wounds, and a surgeon
who treated her said the impact from shrapnel on her skull killed her.

But Cheema said she was killed when she tried to duck back into the
armored vehicle during the attack, and the shock waves from the blast
smashed her head into a lever attached to the sunroof, fracturing her
skull, he said.

"We gave you absolute facts, nothing but the facts," he said. "It was
corroborated by the doctors' report. It was corroborated by the
evidence collected."

Bhutto's spokeswoman Sherry Rehman, who was in the vehicle with her
boss, disputed the government's version.

"To hear that Ms. Bhutto fell from an impact from a bump on a sunroof
is absolutely rubbish. It is dangerous nonsense, because it implies
there was no assassination attempt," she told the BBC.

"There was a clear bullet wound at the back of the neck. It went in one
direction and came out another," she said. "My entire car is coated
with her blood, my clothes, everybody - so she did not concuss her head
against the sun roof."

The government said it was forming two inquiries into Bhutto's death,
one to be carried out by a high court judge and another by security
forces.

[Associated Press writers Zarar Khan in Larkana, Sadaqat Jan in
Islamabad, Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan and Afzal Nadeem in
Karachi contributed to this report.]

© 2007 The Associated Press. 

                          ***

The Independent - Dec 29, 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3291600.ece

They don't blame al-Qa'ida. They blame Musharraf

by Robert Fisk

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. 

                          ***

Prensa Latina, Havana
http://www.plenglish.com

Bhutto's Murder Shakes Pakistan

Islamabad, Dec 29 (Prensa Latina) Protests shook many Pakistani cities
on Saturday, among them Rawalpindi, where opposition leader Benazir
Bhutto was assassinated last Thursday.

Supporters of Pakistan People's Party (PPP) she led have burned down
cars, public buildings, factories, gas stations and trade centers in
the locality of the southern province of Sindh as well as in the
northeastern region of Punjab.

At least 20 persons were wounded this Saturday in Karachi, the city
where Bhutto was born, and about 23 persons died and 59 were wounded in
the three days of riots.

Meanwhile, demonstrators burned tires and destroyed vehicles on the
road that joins Rawalpindi and the neighbor city of Islamabad.

The government deployed thousands of soldiers and paramilitaries and
ordered them to use all the necessary force contain those violent
episodes, the most serious Pakistan has lived in the last three decades.

Analysts affirmed that the contradictory official communiqué over the
death the ex prime minister's death encouraged dissatisfaction,
uncertainty and insecurity all over the country.

hr abo alc PL-2

                             ***

AFP - Dec 29, 2007
http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/071229162453.s3byyq6f.html

Pakistan says turmoil after Bhutto death could delay vote

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistan indicated Saturday it would delay January
elections because of turmoil caused by the death of Benazir Bhutto, as
a bitter dispute erupted over how the opposition leader was killed.

Violent protests and looting which have left at least 38 people dead
and 53 injured have rocked the nation of 160 million Muslims since
Bhutto was killed at a campaign rally in the northern city of
Rawalpindi on Thursday.

The United States and Western powers have urged Pakistan to commit to
the democratic process in the aftermath of her death, but leading
opposition figure Nawaz Sharif has said his party would boycott the
polls.

Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, which has accused the government of
trying to cover up her death, has said it will decide Sunday on whether
to take part in the January 8 parliamentary elections.

Pakistan's interior ministry Saturday moved to quash the cover-up
claims, saying its account of how Bhutto died was based on the facts
and offering to exhume her body for inquiry.

The crisis-hit country's election commission said it would hold an
urgent meeting on Monday to decide the vote's fate but indicated a
delay was possible.

"All activities pertaining to pre-poll arrangements, including printing
of ballot papers and logistics as well as training of polling
personnel, have been adversely affected," it said in a statement.

In some places, the commission said, the security situation was "not
conducive" to holding the elections which Bhutto had come home from
exile in October to contest.

It cited the death of an election candidate in a bomb blast and said
election commission offices in nine districts had been set ablaze and
voter lists had been "reduced to ashes".

The polls would lack credibility without the participation of Bhutto's
PPP, which has been infuriated by the government's official account of
their leader's death.

Bhutto died after a suicide attack targeted her vehicle at a campaign
rally in the northern city of Rawalpindi. Early reports and witnesses
said she was shot before a bomb exploded nearby.

However the government said she had no gunshot or shrapnel wounds. It
said the opposition leader died after smashing her head on her car's
sunroof as she tried to duck.

The ministry also blamed Al-Qaeda, saying intelligence services had
intercepted a call from Baitullah Mehsud, considered the extremist
group's top leader for Pakistan.

Senior members of Bhutto's party dismissed the government's version of
events, calling it lies.

"There was a bullet wound I saw that went in from the back of her head
and came out the other side," Bhutto's spokeswoman Sherry Rehman, who
was involved in washing her body for burial, told AFP. "This is
ridiculous, dangerous nonsense because it is a cover-up of what
actually happened."

Bhutto was an outspoken critic of Al-Qaeda-linked militants blamed for
scores of bombings in Pakistan and she had received threats.

But she had also accused elements from the intelligence services of
involvement in a suicide attack on her rally in October that left 139
dead and which she only narrowly escaped.

Maulana Omar, a spokesman for alleged Al-Qaeda kingpin Mehsud, denied
involvement in the attack and expressed grief over Bhutto's death.

"This is a conspiracy of the government, army and intelligence
agencies," said the spokesman from Waziristan, a lawless tribal region
where Al-Qaeda leaders, including possibly Osama bin Laden, are alleged
to be hiding.

One day after Bhutto was laid to rest at her family's mausoleum in
southern Sindh province, Pakistan was virtually paralysed with most
people unable to buy food or petrol, with all shops, fuel stations,
banks and offices closed down.

The streets of the country's main cities -- Karachi, Islamabad,
Rawalpindi, Lahore and Peshawar -- were largely empty, and in many
places there was evidence of violence and looting.

President Pervez Musharraf ordered security chiefs to take firm action
against rioters, and the interior ministry estimated that damage ran
into tens of millions of dollars.

"Elements who wish to exploit the situation by looting and plundering
must be dealt with firmly," the Associated Press of Pakistan news
agency quoted Musharraf as saying.

"Some elements of criminal mentality have taken undue advantage of the
situation," interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema told a
news conference.

However, Cheema said the situation was "satisfactory" on Saturday,
partly due to the army's presence in several hotspots.

"The situation is getting back to normal rapidly and we hope that in a
day or so life will return to normal in the country," he added.

Analysts warned that Pakistan was facing its biggest crisis since
Bangladesh split from the country more than 35 years ago.

"We are heading towards a very uncertain phase of politics which has
the potential to plunge the country into a state of anarchy," Hasan
Askari, former head of political science at Lahore's Punjab University,
told AFP.

The assassination has also thrust security concerns and foreign policy
back into the US political spotlight less than a week before Americans
start voting on their presidential candidates.

Leading democratic candidate Hillary Clinton called for an independent,
international probe into Bhutto's murder, saying Musharraf's government
had no credibility.

But Pakistan's interior ministry rejected the need for external help,
saying the international community "does not understand the
environment" in Pakistan.

Bhutto was buried on Friday with hundreds of thousands of mourners
following her coffin to the family's mausoleum in the village of Ghari
Khuda Bakhsh.

Educated at Harvard and Oxford, Bhutto first took the helm of Pakistan
in 1988. She was ousted in 1990 amid corruption allegations but was
premier again from 1993 to 1996.

She has been buried next to her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a former
premier who was hanged by the military government in 1979.

                            ***

The Guardian - Dec 28, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2232632,00.html

A tragedy born of military despotism and anarchy

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto heaps despair upon Pakistan. 
Now her party must be democratically rebuilt

by Tariq Ali

Even those of us sharply critical of Benazir Bhutto's behaviour and
policies - both while she was in office and more recently - are stunned
and angered by her death. Indignation and fear stalk the country once
again.

An odd coexistence of military despotism and anarchy created the
conditions leading to her assassination in Rawalpindi yesterday. In the
past, military rule was designed to preserve order - and did so for a
few years. No longer. Today it creates disorder and promotes
lawlessness. How else can one explain the sacking of the chief justice
and eight other judges of the country's supreme court for attempting to
hold the government's intelligence agencies and the police accountable
to courts of law? Their replacements lack the backbone to do anything,
let alone conduct a proper inquest into the misdeeds of the agencies to
uncover the truth behind the carefully organised killing of a major
political leader.

How can Pakistan today be anything but a conflagration of despair? It
is assumed that the killers were jihadi fanatics. This may well be
true, but were they acting on their own?

Benazir, according to those close to her, had been tempted to boycott
the fake elections, but she lacked the political courage to defy
Washington. She had plenty of physical courage, and refused to be cowed
by threats from local opponents. She had been addressing an election
rally in Liaquat Bagh. This is a popular space named after the
country's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was killed by an
assassin in 1953. The killer, Said Akbar, was immediately shot dead on
the orders of a police officer involved in the plot. Not far from here,
there once stood a colonial structure where nationalists were
imprisoned. This was Rawalpindi jail. It was here that Benazir's
father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in April 1979. The military
tyrant responsible for his judicial murder made sure the site of the
tragedy was destroyed as well.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's death poisoned relations between his Pakistan
People's party and the army. Party activists, particularly in the
province of Sind, were brutally tortured, humiliated and, sometimes,
disappeared or killed.

Pakistan's turbulent history, a result of continuous military rule and
unpopular global alliances, confronts the ruling elite now with serious
choices. They appear to have no positive aims. The overwhelming
majority of the country disapproves of the government's foreign policy.
They are angered by its lack of a serious domestic policy except for
further enriching a callous and greedy elite that includes a swollen,
parasitic military. Now they watch helplessly as politicians are shot
dead in front of them.

Benazir had survived the bomb blast yesterday but was felled by bullets
fired at her car. The assassins, mindful of their failure in Karachi a
month ago, had taken out a double insurance this time. They wanted her
dead. It is impossible for even a rigged election to take place now. It
will have to be postponed, and the military high command is no doubt
contemplating another dose of army rule if the situation gets worse,
which could easily happen.

What has happened is a multilayered tragedy. It's a tragedy for a
country on a road to more disasters. Torrents and foaming cataracts lie
ahead. And it is a personal tragedy. The house of Bhutto has lost
another member. Father, two sons and now a daughter have all died
unnatural deaths.

I first met Benazir at her father's house in Karachi when she was a
fun-loving teenager, and later at Oxford. She was not a natural
politician and had always wanted to be a diplomat, but history and
personal tragedy pushed in the other direction. Her father's death
transformed her. She had become a new person, determined to take on the
military dictator of that time. She had moved to a tiny flat in London,
where we would endlessly discuss the future of the country. She would
agree that land reforms, mass education programmes, a health service
and an independent foreign policy were positive constructive aims and
crucial if the country was to be saved from the vultures in and out of
uniform. Her constituency was the poor, and she was proud of the fact.

She changed again after becoming prime minister. In the early days, we
would argue and in response to my numerous complaints - all she would
say was that the world had changed. She couldn't be on the "wrong side"
of history. And so, like many others, she made her peace with
Washington. It was this that finally led to the deal with Musharraf and
her return home after more than a decade in exile. On a number of
occasions she told me that she did not fear death. It was one of the
dangers of playing politics in Pakistan.

It is difficult to imagine any good coming out of this tragedy, but
there is one possibility. Pakistan desperately needs a political party
that can speak for the social needs of a bulk of the people. The
People's party founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was built by the
activists of the only popular mass movement the country has known:
students, peasants and workers who fought for three months in 1968-69
to topple the country's first military dictator. They saw it as their
party, and that feeling persists in some parts of the country to this
day, despite everything.

Benazir's horrific death should give her colleagues pause for
reflection. To be dependent on a person or a family may be necessary at
certain times, but it is a structural weakness, not a strength for a
political organisation. The People's party needs to be refounded as a
modern and democratic organisation, open to honest debate and
discussion, defending social and human rights, uniting the many
disparate groups and individuals in Pakistan desperate for any halfway
decent alternative, and coming forward with concrete proposals to
stabilise occupied and war-torn Afghanistan. This can and should be
done. The Bhutto family should not be asked for any more sacrifices.

[Tariq Ali's book The Duel: Pakistan on the Flightpath of American
Power is published in 2008 tariq.ali3 at btinternet.com ]

                          ***

sent by Steven Robinson - activ-l

Informed Comment - Dec 27, 2007
http://www.juancole.com/

Pakistan's 2007 Crises Come to a Crescendo; Benazir Assassinated

Implications for US Security

by Juan Cole

Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan People's Party, has been
assassinated at a rally held Thursday evening near Islamabad. She
appears to have been shot by the assassin, who was wearing a suicide
bomb belt, which he then detonated to make sure he had finished the
job. The Bhuttos are sort of the Kennedys of Pakistan, marked by
wealth, power and tragedy, and central to the country's politics for
the past four decades.

The Pakistani authorities are blaming Muslim militants for the
assassination. That is possible, but everyone in Pakistan remembers
that it was the military intelligence, or Inter-Services Intelligence,
that promoted Muslim militancy in the two decades before September 11
as a wedge against India in Afghanistan and Kashmir. The Pakistan
People's Party (PPP) faithful will almost certainly blame Pervez
Musharraf, and sentiment here is more important than reality, whatever
the reality may be. The PPP is one of two very large, long-standing
grassroots political parties in Pakistan, and if its followers are
radicalized by this event, it could lead to severe turmoil. Just a day
before her assassination Benazir had pledged that the PPP would not
allow the military to rig the upcoming January 8 parliamentary
elections.

Pakistan is important to US security. It is a nuclear power. Its
military fostered, then partially turned on the Taliban and al-Qaeda,
which have bases in the lawless tribal areas of the northern part of
the country. And Pakistan is key to the future of its neighbor,
Afghanistan. Pakistan is also a key transit route for any energy
pipelines built between Iran or Central Asia and India, and so central
to the energy security of the United States.

The military government of Pervez Musharraf was shaken by two big
crises in 2007, one urban and one rural. The urban crisis was his
interference in the rule of law and his dismissal of the supreme court
chief justice. The Pakistani middle class has greatly expanded in the
last seven years, as others have noted, and educated white collar
people need a rule of law to conduct their business. Last June 50,000
protesters came out to defend the supreme court, even though the
military had banned rallies. The rural crisis was the attempt of a
Neo-Deobandi cult made up of Pushtuns and Baluch from the north to
establish themselves in the heart of the capital, Islamabad, at the Red
Mosque seminary. They then attempted to impose rural, puritan values on
the cosmopolitan city dwellers. When they kidnapped Chinese
acupuncturists, accusing them of prostitution, they went too far.
Pakistan depends deeply on its alliance with China, and the Islamabad
middle classes despise Talibanism. Musharraf ham-fistedly had the
military mount a frontal assault on the Red Mosque and its seminary,
leaving many dead and his legitimacy in shreds. Most Pakistanis did not
rally in favor of the Neo-Deobandi cultists, but to see a military
invasion of a mosque was not pleasant (the militants inside turned out
to be heavily armed and quite sinister).

The NYT reported that US Secretary of State Condi Rice tried to fix
Musharraf's subsequent dwindling legitimacy by arranging for Benazir to
return to Pakistan to run for prime minister, with Musharraf agreeing to
resign from the military and become a civilian president. When the
supreme court seemed likely to interfere with his remaining president,
he arrested the justices, dismissed them, and replaced them with more
pliant jurists. This move threatened to scuttle the Rice Plan, since
Benazir now faced the prospect of serving a dictator as his grand
vizier, rather than being a proper prime minister.

With Benazir's assassination, the Rice Plan is in tatters and Bush
administration policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan is tottering.

Benazir is from a major Pakistani political dynasty.  Her father,
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was prime minister in the 1970s but was overthrown
by a military coup in 1977 and subsequently hanged by military dictator
Zia ul-Huq. Benazir helped lead the Movement for the Restoration of
Democracy in the 1980s, and was often under house arrest. When Zia died
in an airplane accident in 1988, Benazir won the subsequent elections
and served as prime minister 1988-1990. Zia had put in place mechanisms
to limit popular sovereignty, and the then 'president' removed Benazir
from office in 1990. She served again as PM, 1993-1996 but was again
deposed, being accused of corruption. After the 1999 military coup of
Pervez Musharraf, she was in a state of permanent exile, since he said
he would have her arrested if she tried to come back. He relented
because of his own collapsing position and because of US pressure, and
allowed her to return in October. She was almost assassinated at that
time by a huge bomb when she landed in Karachi.