Behind the Assassination of Benazir Bhutto

The Musharraf propaganda machine called it a suicide attack by Islamic extremists. Bhutto herself believed it was the dirty work of Musharraf’s political allies. The ISI, Pakistan’s infamous security service, is infiltrated by ideologically jihadist elements that support al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists in Pakistan's border provinces. Bhutto had tried as prime minister to eject the ISI from politics, but that “country within a country” managed to overthrow her instead. She was well aware the security services were less than enthusiastic about Benazir Bhutto becoming prime minister a third time.

After the Oct. 18 carnage, Bhutto's People's Party asked the Musharraf government for the kind of security arrangements owed to a former prime minister. "We got no cooperation," says Bhutto's American spokesman, Mark Siegel. "She just kept on without security, she didn't care about the personal danger. She was the bravest person I ever knew." Bhutto also believed in predestination.

The Musharraf government is again dismissive of the lapse in security by the Army and security services. They allowed a sophisticated assassin to kill her at close range while the crowd was distracted by a suicide bombing -- the same scenario attempted in the November attack.

The government holds Bhutto to blame for taking the risk of public campaigning. Musharraf previously had confined her under house arrest. When that produced an international outcry, he warned her to stay out of sight. "We don't want a dead Benazir on our hands," Humayun Gauhar, Musharraf's confidant, argued in an interview with me. "She'd be just another unlikely martyr that we don't need." More

Pakistani former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has been killed in a presumed suicide attack, a military spokesman has announced on TV.

Earlier reports said Ms Bhutto had only been injured and taken to hospital.