Islamabad burns as news of Benazir’s assassination spreads. CNN/BBC trot out the usual tripe about “south asian curse” and a “long tradition of assassinations”. No mention of the main reasons for instability on the subcontinent.
Ayesha Siddiqa is a military analyst and author of MILITARY INC. (banned by Musharraf gov’t). Speaking on Sky News an hour after the assassination, she said “It is really time the military gets out of politics.”
The Bhuttos mean all manner of things to us. Zulfikar Bhutto precipitated the 1971 Bangladesh genocide when he refused to accept Mujib’s victory in 1970. I will break the leg of any politician who goes to East Pakistan, he said. Nine months
and a million deaths, Zulfikar Bhutto got his wish. He got to be PM of a new Pakistan, leaving East Pakistan to Mujib.
Later Bhutto was hanged by Zia ul Huq. But not before he finished the book “If I Am Assassinated”. Benazir took on the mantle of “Daughter of the East”. Mostly hyperbole and exaggeration in that book, but this is not the time to speak ill of the dead.
Then the return of Benazir. Her brother Murtaza was openly feuding with Benazir’s husband Asif Zardari. One day in 1997, Murtaza was killed in a Karachi gun battle for which many blame Benazir (I heard an urban legend that her mother stopped talking to her). Another brother died mysteriously in Paris. Who knows why? And now Benazir. Blood to blood.
All roads lead to the army. Not some mythical, Ramayana-Quran combo “curse”, but rumbling machines and money. Lots of money, much of it American.
In the Middle of Nowhere 
December 27, 2007 at 9:10 am
Our Military have now two materials to go through a homework… they can take idea from Thailand… or they can take it from Pakistan.
I am expecting something to happen inside Dhaka Cantonment as effect of a trilogy… (i) Absence of the Chief of Staff, (ii) Benazir’s assassination by Musharraf & (iii) Thaksin’s victory over Thai elections… let see what these things cook up for us
December 27, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Benazir assasinated [Inna-lillahe wa Inna Ilaihe Rajeun]. Rumi was right in his short description of her dynasty legacy following his comment it’s not time to speak ill of dead. Ke sera Sera: What will happen will happen. But we should take lesson from all these past and recent events.
Thanks.
December 28, 2007 at 1:10 am
A simple calculation of occurance & benefit. Benazir died, who benefited? Election of Jan 8 has already been under boycott of Nawaz Sharif as he has declared to fight Benazir’s fight to bring back democracy. Then what happened? Lifting of autocracy has been delayed and Musharraf to remain chief of state for some more months or years. What we saw last few months, who were Benazir’s enemies? Off course this was Musharraf & his junta. How can this be possible that two attempts on her have been made within three months (the last one succeeded) and ISI which is one of well reputed homeland security agency (though very unpopular abroad) has not been able to track a single clue, trail a single person?
December 28, 2007 at 1:54 am
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928-1979)
Shahnawaz Bhutto (1958-1985)
Murtaza Bhutto (1954-1996)
Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007)
Fatima Bhutto (1982- )
December 28, 2007 at 2:05 am
Breaking News:
An Italian journalist of AKI (Andkronos International) has been phoned by Al-Qayeda station commander in Afghanistan calling himself as Mustafa Abu Al Yajid and told him that Al Qayeda is taking all responsibilities of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. He has said in the phone, “We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat the mujahadeen”
But this plot has come mostly from the military junta, because (any security specialist will say so) Bhutto affairs & her assassination have been the drastic violence of most basic protection codes & crime scene management codes.
December 28, 2007 at 3:57 am
Maybe our two netris are now rethinking their decisions to stay/return to Bangladesh. At least if they have any human feelings and care about their children.
December 28, 2007 at 10:26 am
Full list of assassinations:
Assassins
http://www.drishtipat.org/blog/2007/12/28/assassins/
December 28, 2007 at 10:38 am
Watching Pakistan press conference in disbelief as “Al Qaeda” bogeyman is trotted out again! You don’t get it, we don’t believe your fairy tales anymore!
December 29, 2007 at 1:56 am
I’m reminded of Faiz’s revolutionary poem:
Hum dekhenge,
Lazim hai ki hum bhi dekhenge woh din jis ke wadah hai…
Jab zulm-o-sitam ke kohe-garaan rui ki tarah ud jaayenge,
Hum mahkoomon ke pau tale, jab dharti dhar dhar dharkegi…
Sab taaj uchale jaenge
Sab takht girae jaenge…
Uthega An-al-Huq ka nara jo mai bhi hoon aur tum bhi ho…
My Urdu is quite poor, so this is only a rough translation.
We shall see
It is certain that we shall see
The day that has been promised
When the heavy mountains of injustice shall flutter away like cotton
When the earth shall shake under the feet of the oppressed like us
All crowns will be thrown away
All thrones will be upturned…
The cry of the Truth (An-al-Huq = I’m the Truth, a Sufi saying) that is you and me shall rise…
Here is to that people’s republic, in Pakistan as well Bangladesh.
December 29, 2007 at 1:58 am
In Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s revolutionary words:
Hum dekhenge,
Lazim hai ki hum bhi dekhenge woh din jis ke wadah hai…
Jab zulm-o-sitam ke kohe-garaan rui ki tarah ud jaayenge,
Hum mahkoomon ke pau tale, jab dharti dhar dhar dharkegi…
Sab taaj uchale jaenge
Sab takht girae jaenge…
Uthega An-al-Huq ka nara jo mai bhi hoon aur tum bhi ho…
My Urdu is quite poor, so this is only a rough translation.
We shall see
It is certain that we shall see
The day that has been promised
When the heavy mountains of injustice shall flutter away like cotton
When the earth shall shake under the feet of us, the oppressed
All crowns will be thrown away
All thrones will be upturned…
The cry of the Truth (An-al-Huq = I’m the Truth, a Sufi saying) that is you and me shall rise…
Here is to that people’s republic, in Pakistan as well Bangladesh.
December 29, 2007 at 10:40 am
I feel the avid urge to say something beyond the topic. I do highly appreciate Jyoti for posting is urdu poem. This poem is a very nice relevant one and reflects the peeople’s sentiments and seems an urdu version of our rebellious poet Kazi Nazrul Islam.
I do, especially, admire Jyoti not to hesitate or feel shy of quoting urdu poem here. Here he showed he could transcend our Bangalee world view. We are extremely nationalistic community and especially once I was too much. Thanks God, I got riddance of that malice. Nantionalism seggregates people from people and extreme nationalism diminish humanity and shrouds people with a shade of darkness failing them to think fairly and rationally. That’s why have strong general hatred to urdu language and urdu-speaking people. As if we were blind and deaf and so had been totally indifferent to the humantarian call to solve the problem of few lakhs urdu-speaking Beharis living in our land for last 36 years. Very recently EC had taken a decision to make them voter and a process of assismilating them in our society, a recognition that they are humans, a noble step.
Moreover, generalization of people as good or bad based on nationality and treating everybody in so biased view is sin. With such mindset we sometimes do injustice to people and indulge in behaviors, inappropriate and inhuman.
In addition, we forget a language is always a wealth, not a property, even though it’s a language of enemy.
Thanks.
December 29, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Bitterboy, our xenophobia is not as bad as you make it sound. Faiz particularly is quite well known among the proressive circles in Dhaka. Nirmalendu Gun I believe has translated many of his poems into Bangla.
The comparison with Nazrul is particularly apt. Like Nazrul, Faiz too was a secular humanist in personal life. Like Nazrul, Faiz’s politics was also international socialism – he rejected partition with these lines: ye dag dag ujala, ye shabgazida sahar / wo intazar tha jis ka, ye wo sahar to nahin (this mottled dawn, this benighted morning, this is not the morning that we have been waiting for).
Both used Islamic terms and phrases to get their message across. And
in both cases, their work has been appropriated by their ideological enemies. As Nazrul has been turned into a poet of Muslim nationalism, Hum dekhenge has been appropriated by the Islamists in Pakistan because it contains lines like Naam rahega sirf Allah ka (only Allah’s name shall remain) and Raj karega Khalq-e-Khuda (God’s creation shall rule).
December 30, 2007 at 4:07 am
Also, the song has strong anti-dictatorship credentials. There is a famous live rendition (available online) by Iqbal Bano. She was singing it to an audience of tens of thousands during the Zia-ul-Huq era. Halfway through the song, during the lines ‘sab taaj uchale jayenge/sab takht giraye jaenge’, the crowd broke out into chants of Inquilaab Zindabad.
January 1, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Anglo-American Ambitions behind the Assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the Destabilization of Pakistan
by Larry Chin
Global Research, December 29, 2007
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It has been known for months that the Bush-Cheney administration and its allies have been manuevering to strengthen their political control of Pakistan, paving the way for the expansion and deepening of the “war on terrorism” across the region. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto does not change this agenda. In fact, it simplifies Bush-Cheney’s options.
Seeding chaos with a pretext
“Delivering democracy to the Muslim world” has been the Orwellian rhetoric used to mask Bush-Cheney’s application of pressure and force, its dramatic attempt at reshaping of the Pakistani government (into a joint Bhutto/Sharif-Musharraf) coalition, and backdoor plans for a military intervention. Various American destabilization plans, known for months by officials and analysts, proposed the toppling of Pakistan’s military.
The assassination of Bhutto appears to have been anticipated. There were even reports of “chatter” among US officials about the possible assassinations of either Pervez Musharraf or Benazir Bhutto, well before the actual attempts took place.
As succinctly summarized in Jeremy Page’s article, “Who Killed Benazir Bhutto? The Main Suspects”, the main suspects are 1) “Pakistani and foreign Islamist militants who saw her as a heretic and an American stooge”, and 2) the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, a virtual branch of the CIA. Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari directly accused the ISI of being involved in the October attack.
The assassination of Bhutto has predictably been blamed on “Al-Qaeda”, without mention of fact that Al-Qaeda itself is an Anglo-American military-intelligence operation.
Page’s piece was one of the first to name the man who has now been tagged as the main suspect: Baitullah Mehsud, a purported Taliban militant fighting the Pakistani army out of Waziristan. Conflicting reports link Mehsud to “Al-Qaeda”, the Afghan Taliban, and Mullah Omar (also see here). Other analysis links him to the terrorist A.Q. Khan.
Mehsud’s profile, and the reporting of it, echoes the propaganda treatment of all post-9/11 “terrorists”. This in turn raises familiar questions about Anglo-American intelligence agency propaganda involvement. Is Mehsud connected to the ISI or the CIA? What did the ISI and the CIA know about Mehsud? More importantly, does Mehsud, or the manipulation of the propaganda surrounding him provide Bush-Cheney with a pretext for future aggression in the region?
Classic “war on terrorism” propaganda
While details on the Bhutto assassination continue to unfold, what is clear is that it was a political hit, along the lines of US agent Rafik Harriri in Lebanon. Like the highly suspicious Harriri hit, the Bhutto assassination has been depicted by corporate media as the martyring of a great messenger of western-style “democracy”. Meanwhile, the US government’s ruthless actions behind the scenes have received scant attention.
The December 28, 2007 New York Times coverage of the Bhutto assassination offers the perfect example of mainstream Orwellian media distortion that hides the truth about Bush/Cheney agenda behind blatant propaganda smoke. This piece echoes White House rhetoric proclaiming that Bush’s main objectives are to “bring democracy to the Muslim world” and “force out Islamist militants”.
In fact, the openly criminal Bush-Cheney administration has only supported and promoted the antithesis of democracy: chaos, fascism, and the installation of Anglo-American-friendly puppet regimes.
In fact, the central and consistent geostrategy of Bush-Cheney, and their elite counterparts around the world, is the continued imposition and expansion of the manufactured “war on terrorism”; the continuation of war across the Eurasian subcontinent, with events triggered by false flag operations and manufactured pretexts.
In fact, the main tools used in the “war on terrorism” remain Islamist militants, working on behalf of Anglo-American military intelligence agencies—among them, “Al-Qaeda”, and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI. Mehsud fits this the same profile.
Saving Bush-Cheney’s Pakistan
In an amusing quote from the same New York Times piece, Wendy Chamberlain, former US ambassador to Pakistan (and a central figure behind multinational efforts to build a trans-Afghan pipeline, connected to 9/11), proudly states: “We are a player in the Pakistani political system”.
Not only has the US continued to be a “player”, but one of its top managers for decades.
Each successive Pakistani leader since the early 1990s—Bhutto, Sharif and Musharraf—have bowed to Western interests. The ISI is a virtual branch of the CIA.
While Musharraf has been, and remains, a strongman for Bush-Cheney, questions about his “reliability”, and control—both his regime’s control over the populace and growing popular unrest, and elite control over his regime—have driven Bush-Cheney attempts to force a clumsy (pro-US, Iraq-style) power-sharing government. As noted by Robert Scheer, Bush-Cheney has been playing “Russian roulette” with Musharraf, Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif—each of whom have been deeply corrupt, willing fronts for the US.
The return of both Bhutto and the other former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has merely been an attempt by the US to hedge its regional power bets.
What exactly were John Negroponte and Condoleeza Rice really setting up the past few months?
Who benefits from Bhutto’s murder?
The “war on terrorism” geostrategy and propaganda milieu, the blueprint that has been used by elite interests since 9/11 to impose a continuing world war, is the clear beneficiary of the Bhutto assassination. Bush/Cheney and their equally complicit pro-war/pro-occupation counterparts in the Democratic Party enthusiastically support the routine use of “terror” pretexts to impose continued war policies.
True to form, fear, “terrorism”, “security” and military force, are once again, the focuses of Washington political rhetoric, and the around-the-clock media barrage.
The 2008 US presidential candidates and their elite campaign advisers, all but a few of whom enthusiastically support the “war on terrorism”, have taken turns pushing their respective versions of “we must stop the terrorists” rhetoric for brain-addled supporters. The candidates whose polls have slipped, led by 9/11 participant and opportunist Rudy Guiliani, and hawkish neoliberal Hillary Clinton, have already benefited from a new round of mass fear.
Musharraf benefits from the removal of a bitter rival, but now must find a way to re-establish order. Musharraf now has an ideal justification to crack down on “terrorists” and impose full martial law, with Bush-Cheney working from the shadows behind Musharraf—and continuing to manipulate or remove his apparatus, if Musharraf proves too unreliable or broken to suit Anglo-American plans.
The likely involvement of the ISI behind the Bhutto hit cannot be overstated. ISI’s role behind every major act of “terrorism” since 9/11 remains the central unspoken truth behind current geopolitical realities. Bhutto, but not Sharif or Musharraf would have threatened the ISI’s agendas.
Bhutto, militant Islam, and the pipelines
Now that she has been martyred, many unflattering historical facts about Benazir Bhutto will be hidden or forgotten.
Bhutto herself was intimately involved in the creation of the very “terror” milieu purportedly responsible for her assassination. Across her political career, she supported militant Islamists, the Taliban, the ISI, and the ambitions of Western governments.
As noted by Michel Chossudovsky in America’s “War on Terrorism”, it was during Bhutto’s second term that Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) and the Taliban rose to prominence, welcomed into Bhutto’s coalition government. It was at that point that ties between the JUI, the Army and the ISI were established.
While Bhutto’s relationship with both the ISI and the Taliban were marked by turmoil, it is clear that Bhutto, when in power, supported both—and enthusiastically supported Anglo-American interventions.
In his two landmark books, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia and Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, Ahmed Rashid richly details the Bhutto regime’s connections to the ISI, the Taliban, “militant Islam”, multinational oil interests, and Anglo-American officials and intelligence proxies.
In Jihad, Rashid wrote:
“Ironically it was not the ISI but Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the most liberal, secular leader in Pakistan’s recent history, who delivered the coup de grace to a new relationship with Central Asia. Rather than support a wider peace process in Afghanistan that would have opened up a wider peace process in Afghanistan, Bhutto backed the Taliban, in a rash and presumptuous policy to create a new western-oriented trade and pipeline route from Turkmenistan through southern Afghanistan to Pakistan, from which the Taliban would provide security. The ISI soon supported this policy because its Afghan protégé Gulbuddin Hekmatyar had made no headway in capturing Kabul, and the Taliban appeared to be strong enough to do so.”
In Taliban, Rashid provided even more historical detail:
“When Bhutto was elected as Prime Minister in 1993, she was keen to open a route to Central Asia. A new proposal emerged backed strongly by the frustrated Pakistani transport and smuggling mafia, the JUI and Pashtun military and political officials.”
“The Bhutto government fully backed the Taliban, but the ISI remained skeptical of their abilities, convinced that they would remain a useful but peripheral force in the south.”
“The US congress had authorized a covert $20 million budget for the CIA to destabilize Iran, and Tehran accused Washington of funneling some of these funds to the Taliban—a charge that was always denied by Washington . Bhutto sent several emissaries to Washington to urge the US to intervene more publicly on the side of Pakistan and the Taliban.”
Bhutto’s one mistake: she vehemently supported the pipeline proposed by Argentinian oil company Bridas, and opposed the pipeline by Unocal (favored by the US). This contributed to her ouster in 1996, and the return of Nawaz Sharif to power. As noted by Rashid:
“After the dismissal of the Bhutto government in 1996, the newly elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his oil minister Chaudry Nisar Ali Khan, the army and the ISI fully backed Unocal. Pakistan wanted more direct US support for the Taliban and urged Unocal to start construction quickly in order to legitimize the Taliban. Basically the USA and Unocal accepted the ISI’s analysis and aims—that a Taliban victory in Afghanistan would make Unocal’s job much easier and quicken US recognition.”
Her appealing and glamorous pro-Western image notwithstanding, Bhutto’s true record is one of corruption and accommodation.
The “war on terrorism” resparked
Every major Anglo-American geostrategic crime has been preceded by a convenient pretext, orchestrated and carried out by “terror” proxies directly or indirectly connected to US military-intelligence, or manipulated into performing as intelligence assets. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is simply one more brutal example.
This was Pakistan’s 9/11; Pakistan’s JFK assassination, and its impact will resonate for years.
Contrary to mainstream corporate news reporting, chaos benefits Bush-Cheney’s “war on terrorism”. Calls for “increased worldwide security” will pave the way for a muscular US reaction, US-led force and other forms of “crack down” from Bush-Cheney across the region. In other words, the assassination helps ensure that the US will not only never leave, but also increase its presence.
The Pakistani election, if it takes place at all, is a simpler two-way choice: pro-US Musharraf or pro-US Sharif.
While the success of Bush-Cheney’s 9/11 agenda has met with mixed results, and it has met with a wide array of resistance (“terroristic” as well as political), there is no doubt that the propaganda foundation of the “war on terrorism” has remained firm, unshaken and routinely reinforced.
As for Nawaz Sharif, who now emerges as the sole competitor for Musharraf, he, like Musharraf and Bhutto, is legendary for his accommodation to Anglo-American interests—pipelines, trade, and the continued US military presence. As Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie noted in the book Forbidden Truth, the October 1999 military coup led by Musharraf that originally toppled Sharif’s regime was sparked by animosity between the two camps, as well as “Sharif’s personal corruption and political megalomania”, and “concerns that Sharif was dancing too eagerly to Washington’s tune on Kashmir and Afghanistan”.
In other words, Bush-Cheney wins, no matter which asset winds up on the throne.
Larry Chin is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Larry Chin
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7699
January 1, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Please also try to relate Benazir’s assasination
with the continuous efforts for destabilizing Pakistan… The following article(In the link)could be a good read in that direction..
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7705
January 1, 2008 at 1:10 pm
And very comprehensive discussion in Pakdef.info
that would help to create a premise of the motive of the murder…
http://www.pakdef.info/forum/showthread.php?t=9659
January 15, 2008 at 9:12 am
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/intrigue_uncovered120.html
Intrigue Uncovered in Bhutto’s Murder
Once again an all-too-familiar hand is caught stirring the pot in Pakistan
By Mark Glenn
Is the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minster Benazhir Bhutto—whose Pakistan People’s Party was considered a shoe-in during the upcoming elections—yet another piece in the neocon puzzle aimed at further de-stabilizing the Islamic world and furthering the goal of perpetual war in the Middle East for Israel’s benefit?
Pakistan was immediately thrown into turmoil over the news of her death. The people were already incensed with President Pervez Musharraf, who was seen as a puppet for American and Zionist interests. They blamed him
for her death and named him the prime suspect.
Bhutto returned from an eight-year, self-imposed exile at the insistence of American operatives including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The bait in bringing her back to her native Pakistan was the elimination of corruption charges she was facing as well as assuring her a prominent place in an upcoming new Pakistani government.
With Musharraf’s unpopularity and the risk that the West would lose control over Pakistan, Bhutto’s return could douse the fires of a popular revolution as occurred in 1979 Iran. The main theme of her platform was “bringing democracy” and “fighting Islamic extremism” and in general making Pakistan a country cooperative with Western demands through her Pakistan People’s Party.
It is too early to assume this assassination is yet another false flag operation. But there are several items that can lead people to conclude her death at the hands of yet another “lone gunman” is all part of a bigger plan in furthering the neocon agenda in the Middle East.
De-stabilization of Islamic countries is the name of the game when it comes to the neocon agenda. Israeli oriented think tanks, groups and papers written such as “Clean-Break” and The New American Century speak openly of creating chaos in the region for the purpose of keeping Islamic countries divided and weak.
Pakistan, the lone Islamic country possessing nuclear weapons, is no exception. Like Iran and other Middle Eastern nations, Pakistan has remained recalcitrant toward normalizing relations with Israel and despite the relatively cooperative disposition of President Pervez Musharraf towards America, Pakistan still holds tight to the notion of her own sovereignty.
In addition, Pakistan—like Iraq—shares a long border with Iran that can be used as a forward base in any military attack on Iran, which has definitely not been taken off the neocon schedule.
Other items associated with the assassination raise suspicions among individuals aware of Zionism’s aims in the Middle East, not the least of which is the immediate pinning of this act on Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda.
Before the ambulance sirens had even died down, the sirens of the Zionist-dominated Western media were screeching out the standard mantra as if no other possibilities existed.
Next in terms of suspicious timing are the various news stories and op-eds preceding the assassination itself. Exactly one day before her death, a story appearing in the Washington Post entitled “U.S. Troops to Head
to Pakistan” reads in part:
“Beginning early next year, U.S. Special Forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counterinsurgency forces and clandestine counter-terrorism units, according to defense officials involved with the planning.”
Other stories appearing—interestingly enough—during the period of Bhutto’s campaigning and mega-media coverage, raised questions about the “safety” of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, said to number at least 70. In an op-ed piece appearing in the New York Times entitled “Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem” arch neocons Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institute engage in the usual business of Zionist fear-mongering by warning that Pakistan’s security situation is dangerously precarious and that without a substantial presence of American troops there Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal will inevitably fall into the hands of “Islamists.”
Not trusting Pakistan’s security services, Bhutto sought protection from Israel’s Mossad and the CIA and warned that were she ever assassinated President Musharraf would be the “prime suspect.” In a recent interview with British television, she said Osama bin Laden is dead. The day after her assassination, SITE, a “monitoring service” run by two individuals closely tied with Israel’s Mossad (one of whom, Rita Katz, was herself an Israeli intelligence officer whose father was executed decades ago in Iraq for being an “Israeli spy”) released a new “bin Laden” video that somehow the best intelligence agencies in America could not seem to acquire with as much ease.
Bush & Co. would face problems if bin Laden’s death became common knowledge. The reason for the war would be lost and all those videos would be exposed as fraud.
Bhutto made statements just prior to her death that no doubt the powers-that-be found unacceptable in terms of the problems they portended in the future. In a recent piece she authored entitled “A False Choice for Pakistan,” Bhutto blamed terrorism on the policies of the United States, saying “When the United States aligns with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, it compromises the basic democratic principles of its foundation—namely, life, liberty and justice for all.… Oppressed citizens, unable to represent themselves through other means, often turn to extremism and religious fundamentalism.”
In the last speech before her death, she said the insertion of NATO troops into Pakistan was unacceptable.
“Why should foreign troops come in? We can take care of this, I can take care of this, you can take care of this.”
People arguing that she was murdered because of her intransigence to American and Israeli interests have plenty of circumstantial evidence.
January 26, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Anglo-American Ambitions behind the Assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the Destabilization of Pakistan
by Larry Chin
Global Research, December 29, 2007
It has been known for months that the Bush-Cheney administration and its allies have been manuevering to strengthen their political control of Pakistan, paving the way for the expansion and deepening of the “war on terrorism” across the region. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto does not change this agenda. In fact, it simplifies Bush-Cheney’s options.
Seeding chaos with a pretext
“Delivering democracy to the Muslim world” has been the Orwellian rhetoric used to mask Bush-Cheney’s application of pressure and force, its dramatic attempt at reshaping of the Pakistani government (into a joint Bhutto/Sharif-Musharraf) coalition, and backdoor plans for a military intervention. Various American destabilization plans, known for months by officials and analysts, proposed the toppling of Pakistan’s military.
The assassination of Bhutto appears to have been anticipated. There were even reports of “chatter” among US officials about the possible assassinations of either Pervez Musharraf or Benazir Bhutto, well before the actual attempts took place.
As succinctly summarized in Jeremy Page’s article, “Who Killed Benazir Bhutto? The Main Suspects”, the main suspects are 1) “Pakistani and foreign Islamist militants who saw her as a heretic and an American stooge”, and 2) the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, a virtual branch of the CIA. Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari directly accused the ISI of being involved in the October attack.
The assassination of Bhutto has predictably been blamed on “Al-Qaeda”, without mention of fact that Al-Qaeda itself is an Anglo-American military-intelligence operation.
Page’s piece was one of the first to name the man who has now been tagged as the main suspect: Baitullah Mehsud, a purported Taliban militant fighting the Pakistani army out of Waziristan. Conflicting reports link Mehsud to “Al-Qaeda”, the Afghan Taliban, and Mullah Omar (also see here). Other analysis links him to the terrorist A.Q. Khan.
Mehsud’s profile, and the reporting of it, echoes the propaganda treatment of all post-9/11 “terrorists”. This in turn raises familiar questions about Anglo-American intelligence agency propaganda involvement. Is Mehsud connected to the ISI or the CIA? What did the ISI and the CIA know about Mehsud? More importantly, does Mehsud, or the manipulation of the propaganda surrounding him provide Bush-Cheney with a pretext for future aggression in the region?
Classic “war on terrorism” propaganda
While details on the Bhutto assassination continue to unfold, what is clear is that it was a political hit, along the lines of US agent Rafik Harriri in Lebanon. Like the highly suspicious Harriri hit, the Bhutto assassination has been depicted by corporate media as the martyring of a great messenger of western-style “democracy”. Meanwhile, the US government’s ruthless actions behind the scenes have received scant attention.
The December 28, 2007 New York Times coverage of the Bhutto assassination offers the perfect example of mainstream Orwellian media distortion that hides the truth about Bush/Cheney agenda behind blatant propaganda smoke. This piece echoes White House rhetoric proclaiming that Bush’s main objectives are to “bring democracy to the Muslim world” and “force out Islamist militants”.
In fact, the openly criminal Bush-Cheney administration has only supported and promoted the antithesis of democracy: chaos, fascism, and the installation of Anglo-American-friendly puppet regimes.
In fact, the central and consistent geostrategy of Bush-Cheney, and their elite counterparts around the world, is the continued imposition and expansion of the manufactured “war on terrorism”; the continuation of war across the Eurasian subcontinent, with events triggered by false flag operations and manufactured pretexts.
In fact, the main tools used in the “war on terrorism” remain Islamist militants, working on behalf of Anglo-American military intelligence agencies—among them, “Al-Qaeda”, and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI. Mehsud fits this the same profile.
Saving Bush-Cheney’s Pakistan
In an amusing quote from the same New York Times piece, Wendy Chamberlain, former US ambassador to Pakistan (and a central figure behind multinational efforts to build a trans-Afghan pipeline, connected to 9/11), proudly states: “We are a player in the Pakistani political system”.
Not only has the US continued to be a “player”, but one of its top managers for decades.
Each successive Pakistani leader since the early 1990s—Bhutto, Sharif and Musharraf—have bowed to Western interests. The ISI is a virtual branch of the CIA.
While Musharraf has been, and remains, a strongman for Bush-Cheney, questions about his “reliability”, and control—both his regime’s control over the populace and growing popular unrest, and elite control over his regime—have driven Bush-Cheney attempts to force a clumsy (pro-US, Iraq-style) power-sharing government. As noted by Robert Scheer, Bush-Cheney has been playing “Russian roulette” with Musharraf, Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif—each of whom have been deeply corrupt, willing fronts for the US.
The return of both Bhutto and the other former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has merely been an attempt by the US to hedge its regional power bets.
What exactly were John Negroponte and Condoleeza Rice really setting up the past few months?
Who benefits from Bhutto’s murder?
The “war on terrorism” geostrategy and propaganda milieu, the blueprint that has been used by elite interests since 9/11 to impose a continuing world war, is the clear beneficiary of the Bhutto assassination. Bush/Cheney and their equally complicit pro-war/pro-occupation counterparts in the Democratic Party enthusiastically support the routine use of “terror” pretexts to impose continued war policies.
True to form, fear, “terrorism”, “security” and military force, are once again, the focuses of Washington political rhetoric, and the around-the-clock media barrage.
The 2008 US presidential candidates and their elite campaign advisers, all but a few of whom enthusiastically support the “war on terrorism”, have taken turns pushing their respective versions of “we must stop the terrorists” rhetoric for brain-addled supporters. The candidates whose polls have slipped, led by 9/11 participant and opportunist Rudy Guiliani, and hawkish neoliberal Hillary Clinton, have already benefited from a new round of mass fear.
Musharraf benefits from the removal of a bitter rival, but now must find a way to re-establish order. Musharraf now has an ideal justification to crack down on “terrorists” and impose full martial law, with Bush-Cheney working from the shadows behind Musharraf—and continuing to manipulate or remove his apparatus, if Musharraf proves too unreliable or broken to suit Anglo-American plans.
The likely involvement of the ISI behind the Bhutto hit cannot be overstated. ISI’s role behind every major act of “terrorism” since 9/11 remains the central unspoken truth behind current geopolitical realities. Bhutto, but not Sharif or Musharraf would have threatened the ISI’s agendas.
Bhutto, militant Islam, and the pipelines
Now that she has been martyred, many unflattering historical facts about Benazir Bhutto will be hidden or forgotten.
Bhutto herself was intimately involved in the creation of the very “terror” milieu purportedly responsible for her assassination. Across her political career, she supported militant Islamists, the Taliban, the ISI, and the ambitions of Western governments.
As noted by Michel Chossudovsky in America’s “War on Terrorism”, it was during Bhutto’s second term that Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) and the Taliban rose to prominence, welcomed into Bhutto’s coalition government. It was at that point that ties between the JUI, the Army and the ISI were established.
While Bhutto’s relationship with both the ISI and the Taliban were marked by turmoil, it is clear that Bhutto, when in power, supported both—and enthusiastically supported Anglo-American interventions.
In his two landmark books, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia and Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, Ahmed Rashid richly details the Bhutto regime’s connections to the ISI, the Taliban, “militant Islam”, multinational oil interests, and Anglo-American officials and intelligence proxies.
In Jihad, Rashid wrote:
“Ironically it was not the ISI but Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the most liberal, secular leader in Pakistan’s recent history, who delivered the coup de grace to a new relationship with Central Asia. Rather than support a wider peace process in Afghanistan that would have opened up a wider peace process in Afghanistan, Bhutto backed the Taliban, in a rash and presumptuous policy to create a new western-oriented trade and pipeline route from Turkmenistan through southern Afghanistan to Pakistan, from which the Taliban would provide security. The ISI soon supported this policy because its Afghan protégé Gulbuddin Hekmatyar had made no headway in capturing Kabul, and the Taliban appeared to be strong enough to do so.”
In Taliban, Rashid provided even more historical detail:
“When Bhutto was elected as Prime Minister in 1993, she was keen to open a route to Central Asia. A new proposal emerged backed strongly by the frustrated Pakistani transport and smuggling mafia, the JUI and Pashtun military and political officials.”
“The Bhutto government fully backed the Taliban, but the ISI remained skeptical of their abilities, convinced that they would remain a useful but peripheral force in the south.”
“The US congress had authorized a covert $20 million budget for the CIA to destabilize Iran, and Tehran accused Washington of funneling some of these funds to the Taliban—a charge that was always denied by Washington . Bhutto sent several emissaries to Washington to urge the US to intervene more publicly on the side of Pakistan and the Taliban.”
Bhutto’s one mistake: she vehemently supported the pipeline proposed by Argentinian oil company Bridas, and opposed the pipeline by Unocal (favored by the US). This contributed to her ouster in 1996, and the return of Nawaz Sharif to power. As noted by Rashid:
“After the dismissal of the Bhutto government in 1996, the newly elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his oil minister Chaudry Nisar Ali Khan, the army and the ISI fully backed Unocal. Pakistan wanted more direct US support for the Taliban and urged Unocal to start construction quickly in order to legitimize the Taliban. Basically the USA and Unocal accepted the ISI’s analysis and aims—that a Taliban victory in Afghanistan would make Unocal’s job much easier and quicken US recognition.”
Her appealing and glamorous pro-Western image notwithstanding, Bhutto’s true record is one of corruption and accommodation.
The “war on terrorism” resparked
Every major Anglo-American geostrategic crime has been preceded by a convenient pretext, orchestrated and carried out by “terror” proxies directly or indirectly connected to US military-intelligence, or manipulated into performing as intelligence assets. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is simply one more brutal example.
This was Pakistan’s 9/11; Pakistan’s JFK assassination, and its impact will resonate for years.
Contrary to mainstream corporate news reporting, chaos benefits Bush-Cheney’s “war on terrorism”. Calls for “increased worldwide security” will pave the way for a muscular US reaction, US-led force and other forms of “crack down” from Bush-Cheney across the region. In other words, the assassination helps ensure that the US will not only never leave, but also increase its presence.
The Pakistani election, if it takes place at all, is a simpler two-way choice: pro-US Musharraf or pro-US Sharif.
While the success of Bush-Cheney’s 9/11 agenda has met with mixed results, and it has met with a wide array of resistance (“terroristic” as well as political), there is no doubt that the propaganda foundation of the “war on terrorism” has remained firm, unshaken and routinely reinforced.
As for Nawaz Sharif, who now emerges as the sole competitor for Musharraf, he, like Musharraf and Bhutto, is legendary for his accommodation to Anglo-American interests—pipelines, trade, and the continued US military presence. As Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie noted in the book Forbidden Truth, the October 1999 military coup led by Musharraf that originally toppled Sharif’s regime was sparked by animosity between the two camps, as well as “Sharif’s personal corruption and political megalomania”, and “concerns that Sharif was dancing too eagerly to Washington’s tune on Kashmir and Afghanistan”.
In other words, Bush-Cheney wins, no matter which asset winds up on the throne.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7699