Benazir Bhutto reportedly killed in Pakistan

December 27, 2007

Stunning news out of Pakistan this morning:

Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday in a suicide bombing that also killed at least 20 others at a campaign rally, a party aide and a military official said.

“At 6:16 p.m. she expired,” said Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Bhutto’s party who was at Rawalpindi General Hospital where she was taken after the attack.

A senior military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, confirmed that Bhutto had died.

Widespread unrest in Pakistan is practically inevitable, and Bhutto supporters outside the hospital where she was treated began chanting “Dog, Musharraf, dog,” in reference to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

Musharraf, of course, had promised free parliamentary elections next month, coinciding with the end of his “emergency rule,” though, given Bhutto’s reported assassination, the country may be poised to endure additional turmoil.

News accounts vary on whether the killing has been officially confirmed, though the AP quoted Bhutto’s lawyer, Babar Awan, saying, “The surgeons confirmed that she has been martyred.” Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Bhutto’s party who was at Rawalpindi General Hospital where she was taken after the attack, added, “At 6:16 p.m. she expired.”

Update: Spencer Ackerman spoke with NYU’s Barnett Rubin, a South Asia expert.

Bhutto’s assassination presents an opportunity for Musharraf. “It’s very possible Musharraf will declare [another] state of emergency and postpone the elections,” Rubin continues. “That will confirm in many people’s minds the idea that the military is behind” the assassination. For it’s part, the U.S. will likely “be scrambling to say the election either needs to be held as planned or postponed rather than canceled, but Musharraf is in a position to preempt that.”

As a result, Rubin says, U.S. strategy is “in tatters.”

Ackerman adds, “The most likely culprit is the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda. But it’s not exactly an event met with tears by the Pakistani military, which thoroughly controls the government and the economy.”

Ah, lovely.

Expect finger pointing to commence in three, two, one…

  • When you get down to it, this is all Charlie Wilson’s fault. We wanted to get the Soviet Union bogged down in a war in Afghanistan, and that we did. But the way we did it, relying on Islamic Extremists such as Osama bin Laden and his ilk just set the stage for the radicalization of the whole region. And once they had driven the Soviets out, and defeated the Soviet puppet regime in Kabul, we dropped the country from our attention, which lead to civil war, war lordism and the rise of the Taliban, who after all are just the orphan children of Pastun ‘freedom fighters’ trained in Madrassas in Pakistan funded by oil money from Saudi Arabia.

    Thank you George H. W. Bush. Thank you Ronald Reagan. Thank you Jimmy Carter. Thank you all the minions of the same.

    And the lesson is: PAY EFFING ATTENTION YOU MORONS!

  • Holy f**king sh*t. And there was a glimmer of hope that there might actually be an election and a transfer of power.

    I got a mental image of Cheney, drink in hand, exclaiming excitedly to David Addington, “Now that’s what *I’m* talkin’ ’bout!”

  • Hopefully our government wasn’t involved in this. Encouraging suicide bombers doesn’t sound like their style, but considering how seriously they take politics it wouldn’t surprise me to know that they considered Bhutto to be an enemy and I wouldn’t put it past them to encourage the assassination of an enemy..

  • I feel for her and for the twenty people this bastard took down with him, taking her down.

    They have a photo up on the AOL newsfeed, showing the burned and broken bodies left behind in the wake of this attack, and a man sobbing in the midst of it.

    Welcome to reality. It’s not pretty.

    I really hope that someone emerges in that region who has the power to fix what’s broken and turn the tide of violence. The only thing I know for sure is, that kind of change can’t be imposed from the outside. Not that power-drunk fuckheads won’t try.

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  • Shalimar said:

    Hopefully our government wasn’t involved in this.

    Too late. Wwwaaaaayyyyyyyy too late. Musharraf is OUR guy. Every step including the bullet in her neck and the bomb afterwards can be traced back to U.S. policies in the region going back to the Cold War.

    From a review for the book, “Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons”:

    http://www.amazon.com/Deception-Pakistan-United-Nuclear-Weapons/dp/0802715540/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198766746&sr=8-1

    “But they, (Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark), do substantially support the idea that the nuclear program influenced Pakistan’s internal power struggles, and that American government officials led disinformation campaigns for 30 years in order to hang onto the nation as a dubious ally against first the Soviets and then al-Qaeda. The authors also hint at the possible involvement of Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby in an attempt to discredit an intelligence analyst who spoke frankly of the Pakistani threat during the first Bush administration.”

    ___________

    That radioactive and bloody dirt under Musharraf’s finely manicured fingernails. We put it there.

  • Lance said it all in comment #2. It’s a wonderful world we’ve left us, isn’t it?

    Like Shalimar (#4) I hope we weren’t behind it, but I sure wouldn’t place any bets on that. After all, Musharraf and the Shrub are soulmates (maybe I should have said “lack of soul” mates).

  • I don’t see any reason to think the US would be behind this, so IMHO you guys should knock it off. We’ve done some stupid things, but supporting suicide bombers would be way beyond stupid. It’s highly unlikely that Musharaf will benefit much from this attack, more likely what will happen will be a military crackdown followed by a civil war. I can think of few things that would be less in our interest.

  • “Way beyond stupid” is a perfect description of our administration. Normally I would agree with RacerX that presuming Bush had Bhutto assassinated is just too wacky but I’ve sadly discovered that the worst conspiracy theories from two or three years ago have proven to be true.

  • Speculation is tempting, but we’re a long way from knowing what went on here. What we do know is that an al-Q safe haven in a less than stable country with nuclear weapons is a potential nightmare that makes Iran’s so-called intentions to develop nuclear weapons appear hollow in comparison.

  • “When you get down to it, this is all Charlie Wilson’s fault”.

    LOL And there is the finger pointing! Must be easy to be a Monday Morning quarterback, huh Eddy and Lance?

    What about the little fact that that Charlie’s war stopped much of the widespread carnage within Afghanistan from the Soviets and helped break the back of the Soviet Union itself? Also, the disintegration of the Soviet block ultimately won the Freedom of millions of citizens in Central and Eastern Europe – but, I know those are pesky little positive ramifications which don’t support your partisan political agendas. Over his 8 years did Bill Clinton try to restore order in Afghanistan??? No. Clearly, nobody could have seen the mess in the region that ultimately ensued.

    Bipartisan agendas failed that region – not one individual party over the other.

  • It’s highly unlikely that Musharaf will benefit much from this attack

    I disagree. He will probably become even more unpopular, but I think there was a strong likelihood he was going to lose the elections next year to Bhutto. Now that can’t happen, and the elections will probably be cancelled too. That is a major benefit for Musharraf. He might not be able to hold onto power even with the assassination, but that is a tightrope he has walked for years.

  • RacerX said:

    “I don’t see any reason to think the US would be behind this, so IMHO you guys should knock it off.”

    Whether or not the U.S. had a direct hand in arranging or encouraging this particular incident isn’t the point. U.S. policy’s in the region and in Pakistan particularly have made it almost inevitable that every situation is going to default to worst case scenario. “Way beyond stupid” pre-dates ShrubCo. But ShrubCo has taken the ball and run with it to even greater heights of idiocy. Whether Musharraf benefits or not may be irrelevant to ShrubCo. Inexplicable chaos has been their calling card from the beginning and today fits nicely into their overall list of accomplishments.

  • Oh drat. I had a little bet with myself that someone would blame Bill Clinton within the first ten comments, but it was #11.

    I lose.

    More distressingly, Ms. Bhutto loses, those killed and their families lose, and the people of Pakistan lose. I ache for them.

  • “I had a little bet with myself that someone would blame Bill Clinton within the first ten comments

    Who blamed Bill? My point was that there is no single person/party/policy to blame for the discord in the region as a few others are already trying to do.

  • Musharef clearly has the upper hand now. With wide-spread unrest likely, he can declare, legitimately, a state-of-emergency, and clamp down again on the democratic elements in Pakistan – not that Bhutto was a superlative democrat, but she represented an alternative and countervailing force to the military.

    We’ll never know, as usual, what forces were actually behind her murder, but what our dysfunctional foreign policy apparatus will do now should be interesting to watch. So far Condi has proven herself to be quite inept at handling world crises, and this may just turn into the regional conflagration that Cheney and the bellicose neocons so desparately want.

  • JRS Jr,

    My point is that we took our eyes off Afghanistan and Pakistan after we ‘won’ against the Soviets. That’s the primary cause of the problems there. We left such a mess in Afghanistan and left such bad actors in the region that’s it’s no surprise we got a Taliban government there, and no surprise they allowed a former Muhajadin (sp) fighter named Osama bin Laden not only to operate against us from Afghanistan, but to actually name him their Minister of Defense.

    And yes, it’s easy to be a Mondy Morning quaterback. Isn’t that what conservatives do all the time. Complain about how bad things are (compared to how they imagine they could be) and then blame liberals for messing things up?

    Pot/Kettle.

  • Of course Pervert Musharaff profits from this assassination. There had been pressure from US for him and Bhutto to reconcile. Now, it’s a moot point — no competitor, no need to reconcile. And the assassination itself is plenty enough reason for him to cancel the termination of the state of emergency and to continue as before. Even if he doesn’t cancel the elections — why not pretend all is hunky-dory — the strongest competition doesn’t have a viable candidate and will be in a disarray for a while, so he’ll win them without breaking sweat.

    As for whose hand did the deed… Very likely it was either Taliban or al Qaea, not us. But, as a favour to Musharaff. He’s been a good friend to them for years.

  • I think the bigger problem with what we did viz the mujahadeen in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet Union is that we completely changed the perception people like bin Laden had of his role, his scope, and his abilities. The Al-Q remnants of the Afghan fight would have seen themselves as regional players, but beating one of the Superpowers is pretty heady stuff. Suddenly, you’re big league – you can have bigger, bolder ambitions, and motivate larger groups to believe in those previously unthinkable goals and plans.

  • Musharaff and Bush got their wish. If her party were to win the elections, the US position there would change

    http://www.pafundi.com

    Number of Operations Iraq Freedom and Enduring Freedom casualties
    as confirmed by U.S. Central Command: 4351

  • A woman who wants to be president gets shot down in a country where fundamentalist Islam is trying to establish an Islamic republic….

    Not what I would define as “stunning” news. Frankly, I have been expecting this for a long time now.

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