Unconfirmed reports suggest that the Al-Qaida has claimed responsibility for this assassination, describing Bhutto as the most valuable “American asset” who had to be eliminated. Bhutto’s uncompromising attitude towards the jihadi forces was well-known and it may be recalled that even before she returned to Pakistan on October 18, Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud had threatened to “welcome” her in a befitting manner. While the interim government in Pakistan has ordered a high-level inquiry, the consensus is that rightwing radicals, tacitly supported by sympathisers in the Pakistan intelligence and security establishment, are the principal perpetrators.

The pattern that thus emerges is fraught with grave security implications for Pakistan as an entity, the physical security of President Musharraf (who has also been targeted by these forces), the cohesiveness of the Pakistan military’s command and control and, by extension, the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. It is evident that Bhutto’s security cordon that would be of the highest level was breached by a gun-wielding sniper strapped with explosives. This would not have been possible without some degree of local complicity — and the final responsibility rests with the establishment that Musharraf represents. While he may not have been directly complicit, the charge of institutional ineptitude will remain — although individual turpitude by Musharraf may not be a valid charge.

The Pakistan establishment has been denounced angrily for not providing adequate protection to Bhutto and the case of faulty electronic jammers given to her security entourage is being highlighted. It is evident that in the run-up to the January 8 elections, the opposition rallies addressed by Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif have been more vulnerable to well-planned and premeditated attacks while the parties seen to be closer to Musharraf have been safe from such violence. This pattern has added to the many doubts that are being raised about who benefits from Bhutto’s demise.

The possibility that there are many elements within the Pakistan security and intelligence establishment who are deeply anti-US and hence anti-Musharraf is very real. This was most palpable after the Lal Masjid military operation in July and in the intervening months the developments in Swat and Waziristan point to the growing influence of the right wing — of whom Baitullah Mehsud is only one exemplar. It is well recognised that post General Zia and the long-drawn-out Afghan War, the Pakistan military had internalised the doctrine of jihad; and this was theologically and politically legitimised as being part of a ‘just war’. With the end of the Soviet occupation that culminated with the demise of the Cold War, these deep socio-religious forces were sought to be exploited by the Pakistan military — first against arch enemy India — and later in gaining strategic depth in Afghanistan.

In the early nineties, India was bled through many wounds of terrorism and low-intensity conflicts, both in Punjab and J&K, even as the Taliban came to power in Kabul. Both initiatives, although tactically innovative, were strategic blunders. Recent history indicates this. India was able to contain the scourge of state-sponsored religious radicalism and terrorism while Afghanistan paid the price for the enormity of 9/11. In the post 9/11 years it was these very socio-religious forces — nurtured in Afghanistan (the Osama bin Laden/Al-Qaida brand name) — acquired their own strategic depth right through Pakistan from Islamabad to Karachi on the Arabian Sea. Paradoxically, it is the same Pakistan military that had once nurtured these extremists which it is now seeking to contain — with limited success. Thus what we now witness is the transformation of a deep Islamist orientation within the Pakistan establishment into one of indignant jihadi militancy among some of its members. The only change is, for the former USSR, read the much-hated USA and, ironically, the persona of Musharraf.

Benazir Bhutto, in her recent public speeches, vehemently opposed this religious right wing-military nexus in the Pakistani establishment and promised to save her country and its people from this spreading malignancy. Furthermore, she even indicated that she would re-open the A.Q. Khan episode, thereby revealing the murky role of the Pakistan ‘fauj’ in the clandestine nuclear proliferation network that has been conveniently swept under the carpet and away from public gaze. This threat may have been the final straw that led to her elimination.

Bhutto’s assassination has not only created a void in Pakistani politics, it has brought into stark relief the multiple security challenges that the nation and the region have to grapple with — from spreading jihadi fervour to the safety of nuclear weapons. The only viable option now is for President Musharraf to do what he did after 9/11 when, under the Bush diktat, he made a dramatic U-turn as regards Pakistan’s long-standing Afghanistan/Taliban policy. The time has come for the Pakistan Army GHQ in Rawalpindi to effect a U-turn in their domestic policy that goes back to the Ayub Khan years. The Pakistan ‘fauj’ that has appropriated the state unto itself and defined national interest in a corrosive and divisive manner by distorting the tenets of Islam and the legitimacy of the Kalashnikov, must begin a long mea culpa. It must return the state to its rightful owners — the much abused Pakistani people. If this happens, Benazir Bhutto’s premature death would not have been in vain.

The writer was formerly director, IDSA

cudayb@gmail.com