[NYTr] Bin Laden Killed Bhutto? How Blind Can We Be?

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[See Arkin's blog at URL below for many embedded references.
The note about Al Jazeera's Frost interview with Bhutto at the end 
was appended by map. - NYTr]


sent by map @ economic democracy - activ-l - Dec 30, 2007
http://EconomicDemocracy.org/

The Washington Post blogs - Dec 28, 2007
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/12/bin_laden_killed_bhutto_how_bl.html?nav=rss_blog


Bin Laden Killed Bhutto? How Blind Can We Be?

by William M. Arkin

The shorthand being bandied about in the news that al-Qaeda is
responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto is so sloppy, so
lacking in nuance or understanding of the dynamics of Pakistan, and so
self-centered in its reference to America's enemy as to be almost
laughable.

Several U.S. defense and intelligence experts are quoted today
dismissing even the possibility that President Pervez Musharraf,
Pakistani government forces, or other domestic elements could be
involved, a conclusion that flies in the face of the country's history
and ignores the obvious beneficiaries.

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, commander of U.S. Central Command
during the Clinton administration, told The Washington Post that there
is "no doubt in my mind" that the murderers are linked to al-Qaeda. In
an interview with Time magazine, he elaborated: "[T]hey're the only
ones who gain from this.... I really think they're trying to ignite
Pakistan into the kind of chaos they need to survive."

Former CIA official and National Security Council staffer Bruce Riedel,
now at the Brookings Institution, is spouting the same theory, telling
Newsweek that the assassination was "almost certainly the work of Al
Qaeda or Al Qaeda's Pakistani allies...Their objective is to
destabilize the Pakistani state, to break up the secular political
parties, to break up the army so that Pakistan becomes a politically
failing state in which the Islamists in time can come to power much as
they have in other failing states."

To be sure, al-Qaeda has found sanctuary in Pakistan since its founding
in 1988. Key al-Qaeda lieutenants such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the
Sept. 11 organizer, have operated from there. Before Sept. 11, Pakistan
was a source of recruits and financing and technical support for
al-Qaeda. And since Sept. 11, "al Qaeda" has been tied to various
attempts to kill President Musharraf and to attacks on Pakistani Army
and intelligence facilities - attacks that have increased in frequency
and consequence since the central government sought to control the
lawless border region. The thinking is that al-Qaeda has been trying to
preserve its freedom of operations and to build relations with
like-minded affiliates and Pakistani jihadis.

That said, al-Qaeda -- at least the movement led by and associated with
Osama bin Laden -- is in terms of power and importance at the bottom of
a long list of anti-democratic factions in Pakistan, including
malcontents in the active and retired military, renegade intelligence
and secret service elements, radical Islamic political parties,
extremist Sunni movements, indigenous terrorist organizations and
Afghan and Pakistani "Taliban" movements.

To say that "al-Qaeda" is responsible for Bhutto's assassination --
suggesting Osama bin Laden and an external force -- is to ignore all
those political and religious factions inside the country that had the
motives and resources to kill the former prime minister. Some of those
factions in the government, the military or the intelligence services
were likely privy to Bhutto's movements, and they could have actively
schemed, if not played a direct role, in getting the suicide attacker
to the right place at the right time.

Musharraf, of course, will say that he "warned" Bhutto of the dangers.
Though, given that Bhutto's father, another former prime minister, was
hanged by a military dictatorship and her two brothers were killed
under suspicious circumstances, she no doubt already understood the
landscape of domestic threats.

Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence officials are trying to verify the claim,
via an Italian website, that al-Qaeda was behind the killing. Mustafa
Abu al Yazid, al-Qaeda's commander in Afghanistan, allegedly told a
reporter: "We have terminated the most precious American asset which
vowed to defeat [the] mujahedin." The website reported that the call to
assassinate Bhutto came from al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman
Zawahiri.

This claim of responsibility is highly suspect. And, if al-Qaeda were
involved at all, it's less likely to have dictated decisions than to
have been used by domestic factions pursuing their own power
objectives. Those factions almost universally have an interest in
labeling all lawlessness and terrorism "al Qaeda" activity.

Given Pakistan's history, it is unlikely that the true perpetrators
will ever be brought to justice. For the United States though, the
al-Qaeda bogey-man has the negative effect of affirming support for
Musharraf and his martial law, while ignoring the various extremists
who represent the true existential threat to the country. We should not
let our al-Qaeda fixation blind us, just as the Soviet threat did in
Iran in the 1970s, to the realities that Pakistan could implode of its
own accord.

                              ***

IN OTHER NEWS:

Meanwhile, video has surfaced in which Bhutto is interviewed by Sir
David Frost on English Al Jazeera last month (Nov 07) and says that
Osama Bin Laden was murdered. Most amazing thing is that Frost DOES NOT
ASK HER TO EXPLAIN BUT JUST IGNORES HER COMMENT. Hear Bhutto's claim
in this short clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIO8B6fpFSQ

Frost over the World - Benazir Bhutto - 02 Nov 07
15 min - Nov 3, 2007 - (558 ratings)

Nov 07...Sir David speaks to former Pakistani prime minister Benazir
Bhutto about her controversial return to Pakistan...