Benazir Bhutto Assassination
On December 27, 2007, Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, was assassinated while leaving an election rally in Rawalpindi. Her death occurred in a highly charged political environment as Pakistan was preparing for parliamentary elections set for January 2008. Witnesses and video footage captured the moment, which included gunshots and a subsequent suicide bomb explosion, resulting in the deaths of Bhutto and numerous others. Initial reports suggested she died from bullet wounds, but a later investigation by Scotland Yard determined that her death resulted from a skull fracture sustained when she fell back into her vehicle after the explosion, a conclusion that was contested by her family and supporters. The Pakistani government, under President Pervez Musharraf, blamed a Taliban leader and Al Qaeda affiliates for orchestrating the attack, though no group immediately claimed responsibility. Bhutto's assassination sparked widespread riots and unrest across Pakistan, leading to the postponement of the elections and raising serious questions about the government's ability to maintain security. Her death added to the turmoil within the country, highlighting the growing influence of extremist groups amid dissatisfaction with military rule. Bhutto's legacy remains significant as she was the first woman to head a democratic government in a majority Muslim nation, and her assassination marked a critical moment in Pakistan's ongoing struggle for democracy and stability.
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Benazir Bhutto Assassination
Summary: Former Pakistani Prime Minister Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on Dec. 27, 2007, in the midst of a parliamentary elections campaign. Her murder contributed to a growing sense of crisis inside Pakistan. Bhutto had returned to Pakistan in October 2007. The United States had actively supported an alliance between Bhutto and President Pervez Musharraf as a means of stabilizing a key regional ally in the war against terrorism. The Pakistani government--and subsequently, the chairman of the Central Intelligence Agency--blamed a Pakistani affiliate of Al Qaeda for the assassination. A Scotland Yard advisory team concluded in February that Bhutto died from hitting her head on the rooftop escape hatch of her armored Land Cruiser, not from bullet shots. Her assassination was captured on videotape; it showed three gunshots at close range followed by a suicide bomb explosion. Days of rioting followed Bhutto's assassination, and the government postponed parliamentary elections, scheduled for January 8, 2008, until mid-February.
Incident: On December 27, 2007, Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan, was assassinated while leaving an election rally in an armored car. Bhutto was standing her vehicle's rooftop escape hatch waving farewell to the crowd. The moment of her assassination was caught on several video cameras. The videotape showed a man with a pistol firing three shots, then a bomb exploding. At least 20 people died in the explosion.
Bhutto was declared dead upon arrival at the hospital. Initial reports said she had suffered two bullet wounds, including one to her neck and a head wound. She was buried the next day without an autopsy--her husband refused to permit one, in line with Islamic beliefs.
Within 24 hours of the incident a senior government spokesman, Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema of the Interior Ministry, said Bhutto died of a skull fracture suffered by hitting her head on the lever of her vehicle's roof escape hatch as she fell back into the car as a result of the bomb blast. He declared that "there was no bullet that hit Mohtarma Bhutto, there was no splinter that hit Mohtarma Bhutto, and there was no pellet that hit her."
The government of President Pervez Musharraf accepted an offer from Britain's Scotland Yard to help investigate the cause of death. On February 8, 2007, the Scotland Yard team said it concurred with the government's assessment--that Bhutto died from a blow to her head rather than from gunshots.
This conclusion was immediately rejected by Bhutto's family and the Pakistan People's Party which she headed. The party renewed its call for an investigation by the United Nations.
Some confusion was generated release of by amateur videotapes of the assassination that showed her headscarf fly back, as if hit by something, immediately after the gunshots but before the explosion. A close aide to Bhutto said she had seen the head wound while bathing the body before burial. The differing explanations, and lack of an autopsy, added to suspicions voiced by many Pakistanis that the government might be trying to cover up the details of the murder--including allegations that the government failed to provide adequate security protection.
The assassination was the second attack on Bhutto in just over two months. On Oct. 18, 2007, two bombs exploded near her vehicle in Karachi during a prolonged homecoming parade; that attack killed at least 134 people, but left Bhutto unscathed. Bhutto, who served twice as prime minister, had returned to Pakistan with the active support of the United States, which was seeking to restore democracy to Pakistan eight years after Musharraf led a military coup in 1999.
Perpetrator(s): Neither the gunman nor the suicide bomber was immediately identified; nor did any group immediately claim responsibility for the assassination. There were, however, several alternative claims made, including:
The government blamed a Pakistani affiliate of Al Qaeda for the assassination. The day after Bhutto's death a government spokesman specifically blamed Islamist militant leader Baitullah Mehsud for directing the assassination. Mehsud is the leader of Pakistani Taliban forces. A spokesman said the government had intercepted a telephone conversation in which Mehsud discussed the attack. A spokesman for Mehsud later denied the radical leader had anything to do with the assassination.
On January 18, 2008, the Washington Post quoted CIA Director Michael Hayden as saying in an interview that Bhutto was killed by fighters allied with Mehsud with support from Al Qaeda. Hayden effectively endorsed the Pakistan government's assessment. He also said that an alliance between Al Qaeda and Pakistani radicals represented "a change in the character of what's going on" in Pakistan. "You've got this nexus now that probably was always there in latency but is now active: a nexus between Al Qaeda and various extremist and separatist groups."
On January 19, 2008, Pakistan announced it had arrested a 15-year-old who had confessed to being a member of a five-person unit sent by Mehsud to assassinate Bhutto. The suspect was arrested near the Afghan border.
On February 7, 2008, the government said it had arrested two more suspects, identified only as Husnain and Rafaqat. The government said the arrests were an "important breakthrough," but provided few other details.
Bhutto herself, in an email message sent two months before her death, said she would hold Musharraf responsible if anything happened to her, accusing the government of denying her requests for additional security measures in the wake of the first assassination attempt. U.S. Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote a letter to Musharraf urging him to improve security measures to protect Bhutto; after the assassination Biden declared: "The failure to protect Ms. Bhutto raises a lot of hard questions for the government and security services that must be answered."
Impact: Bhutto's assassination added to what had been months of political turmoil in Pakistan. In the immediate wake of her death, angry crowds rioted in several cities, especially in Bhutto's native province of Sindh in southwestern Pakistan. Nearly 60 people died within the first days of rioting that also affected other major cities. To curb unrest the government halted most train service, closed gasoline stations, blocked roads around major cities, and sporadically shut down most television and Internet services.
Less than a week after her death, the government announced that parliamentary elections scheduled for January 8, 2008, would be postponed until February 18, 2008. This announcement drew sharp criticism from the main parties contesting the elections, including Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party led by Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zardari and her 19--year-old son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. The other main party, the Pakistan Muslim League led by Nawaz Sharif, also criticized the postponement. Nevertheless, both parties agreed to participate in the delayed election.
In the wake of the assassination Sharif--long a bitter political opponent of Bhutto--sought to form an alliance with Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party in rescheduled parliamentary elections.
Background: Bhutto's assassination was the latest in a series of events that appeared to have the cumulative effect of plunging Pakistan into chaos. The source of unrest in Pakistan--which after 2001 had emerged as a key ally of the U.S. campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in neighboring Afghanistan--was two-fold: a growing Islamist movement in northern Pakistan and dissatisfaction with the military rule of Pervez Musharraf.
News reports in 2007 repeatedly suggested that Osama bin Laden and other top leaders of Al Qaeda had found refuge in northern Pakistan's rugged Federally Administered Tribal Areas (F.A.T.A.'s) adjacent to Afghanistan, a region only nominally under control of the government in Islamabad. Toward the end of 2007 reports indicated that native Pakistani elements sympathetic to the aspirations of Afghanistan's Taliban Islamist fundamentalists (as opposed to the Arabs associated with Al Qaeda) had increased their influence in northern Pakistan.
Separately, Musharraf became locked in a political struggle with much of Pakistan's legal profession after he summarily dismissed the chief justice of the supreme court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. While the nominal reason was accusations of misconduct, most observers believed that Musharraf was preparing grounds for his re-election as president in autumn 2007 (which eventually took place in October) while still serving as head of the military; there were suspicions that Chaudhry and the supreme court would rule such an election to be unconstitutional.
Also in autumn 2007, two exiled long-time leaders of political opposition to Musharraf, Bhutto and Sharif, returned to the country with plans to lead their parties in scheduled parliamentary elections. Sharif was at first sent back into involuntary exile in Saudi Arabia (upon whose insistence he was later readmitted), while Bhutto was allowed to return from her prolonged exile (initially undertaken to avoid legal charges of corruption while in office as prime minister) with the help of the United States. As a Western-educated (Harvard, Oxford) daughter and heir to a popular politician who was executed by a previous military government, Bhutto was viewed in Washington as a means of restoring credibility to Musharraf's government. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party effectively abstained from Musharraf's re-election (in voting by the national and provincial parliaments) to a new presidential term.
At the beginning of November 2007 Musharraf declared a state of emergency, which lasted for six weeks, causing Bhutto to turn against him in her parliamentary campaign.
Periodicals
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Ali, M. M. "Pressure Mounts on Pakistan's Musharraf to Hold Fair Elections on Schedule" Washington Report on Middle East Affairs 25:5 (July 2006) 2p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=21126828&site=isc-live
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Hirsh, Michael and Ron Moreau. "State of Anxiety." Newsweek. (Atlantic Edition) 150:8/9 (August 20, 2007) 4p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=26463217&site=isc-live
Hussain, Zahid and Ron Moreau. "Musharraf's Secret Deal" Newsweek. 149:18 (April 30, 2007) 1/3p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=24829071&site=isc-live
Manor, James. "Daughter of the East" (book review). International Affairs. 65:4 (Autumn 1989) 2p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=4705098&site=isc-live
Weymouth, Lally. "Two Leaders, on a Collision Course." Newsweek 150:26 (December 24, 2007) 3p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=27969320&site=isc-live