by Frank James
Al Qaeda or some other extremist group was likely behind today’s killing of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi, said Daniel Markey, a Council of Foreign Relations Pakistan expert.
In a lengthy teleconference with reporters today, Markey scoffed at suspicions some have expressed in Pakistan that the government of Pervez Musharraf might’ve played a role in the assassination. Markey said:
…There are militants and extremists and terrorists who have expressed their desire to kill Benazir from well before she returned to the country and have essentially followed through on that threat. And if Musharraf is culpable in any sense, it’s because his security forces were not capable of protecting an incredibly juicy target, so to speak, from a militant point of view,from a terrorist point of view. And if they could have done more to control the situation they should have.
But I think it’s worth remembering that Musharraf’s own people were almost incapable of protecting him on at least two significant occasions when he was attacked by al Qaeda. Presumably that wasn’t a conspiracy that he perpetrated against himself. So, again, this is not a conspiracy he would’ve pushed.
Even though there are plenty of people around him who are angry with Benazir, who have no love for her, who are probably pleased that she’s removed from the political scene. I still don’t believe they would have taken this particular step or done it in this particular way.”
Especially now, because it appeared that the political game had moved on. And that everyone was preparing for elections. To take this step now works against Musharraf’s interests and his party’s interests because they were very much hoping to see the elections go on on time and to move ahead and to take that next step in a sort of post-election context to rule the country.”
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Markey went on to say he didn’t see the murder being solved by the Pakistani government:
“I have zero confidence that the Pakistani government will get to the bottom of this. If they want to or if they don’t want to. No matter who was actually responsible for it. Even if they invited in the FBI, I have zero confidence they would achieve a great deal of clarity on who actually perpetrated this. Unless the perpertrators take responsibility for it and come out in some very obvious way and tell everybody who did it. I think that’s how the investigation will achieve success.
Pakistan watchers like Markey had been pinning their hopes on the elections scheduled for next month to move the country back towards democracy. He said:
This is a major loss because the elections that were scheduled for early January had the potential to take the county forward at least haltingly or slowly towards a more mangeable civilian-military partnership in terms of ruling the country.
And Benazir would have been a significant part of that despite all her failures and her flaws, corruption and so on, her failed prime ministerships of the past, she was still a legitimate civilian leader who could’ve played a significant role and worked at least in part with Musharraf and the army to have a manageable political accomodation in Islamabad. And now that’s obviously off the table.
That’s where the U.S. has essentially put a lot of its bets in terms of trying to move Pakistan forward. And now the U.S. is going to have to very much going to have to reassess that strategy and pick up the pieces.
Bhutto’s party, the Pakistan People’s Party, faces a severe challenge going forward, Markey said. The party might as well have been called the Bhutto Party since it was essentially built around her personality.
She groomed no successors and essentially marginalized anyone in the party who represented a potential threat to her leadership. According to Markey:
“One of the problems of having almost a dynastic leadership, an unchallenged leader of the party in Benazir and before her, her father, is that you don’t have any obvious candidates for who would take over. She has not anointed a successor. She has not made it clear who would take over if something like this happened, despite the fact that she’s obviously been in danger for some time.
“At the very least you’re going to see jockeying in the party and at the worst a disintegration.”
Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, has been the party’s financier (he was the investment minister in her government) so he will retain some power in the party, Markey said.
But he has a reputation for corruption on a grand scale. Also, any political power he had deriving from her. So he’s not in a position to succeed her.
Nawaz Sharif, another opposition leader, the head of the Pakistan Muslim League N (the N stands for Nawaz group) could be in a position to play the role Bhutto was going to, Markey said.
But Sharif’s vow to boycott the elections isn’t promising, showing him to be less of a statesman and more the posturing Pakistani politician than is needed right now, Markey said.
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One of the biggest threats Pakistan faces in these hours after Bhutto’s killing, and something to watch, will be what happens on streets in cities around Pakistan as soon as Friday, Markey said.
If violence spins out of control and the military is unable to control it, Pakistan could spiral into the kind of turmoil that is the nightmare scenario for U.S. policymakers. Markey doesn’t think this is the likeliest result of Bhutto’s murder. But it’s something to be aware of.