'Almost Certainly Al Qaeda'

When did you first meet Ms. Bhutto?
My first encounter with Ms. Bhutto was in 1991 when I was working at the White House for President George H.W. Bush as the director for South Asian affairs at the National Security Council. I have seen her again periodically over the years, including when she called on Mrs. Clinton in the second administration when she was in exile. I don't claim to have a personal relationship with her.

Why did she take such risks when she already had been targeted on her first day back in Pakistan?
Ms. Bhutto was the kind of person who believed that it was imperative for her to be in touch with her followers: that she couldn't be a leader of a democratic, secular party and hide from view all the time. It was part of her being the symbol of democracy and of women's rights in a Muslim country that she would be out on the campaign trail. She knew the risks. She knew her own family's tragic history; her father [former Pakistani president, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto] being executed by a previous military dictatorship in 1979; her brother [Murtaza Bhutto] dying in politically motivated violence in 1996.

She knew the risks, but she felt that being a political figure and standing for democracy meant that you had to be out there among the people and you couldn't be hiding. There now will be calls in Pakistan for a thorough investigation of the security around her appearance today and whether the government provided sufficient security. I won't try to preview how this will come out, but there will be a lot of desire to have accountability for the security situation today.

You said earlier that Al Qaeda was responsible, but could it also be military intelligence?
I am sure that conspiracy theories about that will abound in Pakistan. She was widely disliked in the intelligence apparatus, but it was more likely the work of Al Qaeda and its cohorts. Now it is certainly possible that they had penetrated and had sympathizers within the Pakistani security apparatus and had advance knowledge of her movements. It is clear from the Al Qaeda attacks in the past, including on President Musharraf, that Al Qaeda has sympathizers at the highest levels of security, and intelligence which provided information on his movements in the past which facilitated the efforts to kill him.

If you were still working at the White House what advice would you give the president on how the United States should respond?
First, to mourn the loss of the heroic figure. But the more critical point would be to press the Pakistani government to continue to go forward with the elections. The Musharraf government has promised to deliver stability and democracy and today's events are a tragic indication that it has failed to do both. Instead of stability we have acts of terror in the military capital of the country, Rawalpindi. And instead of democracy, we have one of the leading democratic advocates in the Muslim world killed. The only way that Pakistan is going to be able to fight terrorism effectively is to have a legitimate, democratically-elected, secular government that can rally the Pakistani people to engage Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other extremist movements. The army has failed to do that. The army dictatorship has failed to do so. We should now press for the democratic movement to move forward.

Do you think Sharif will become prime minister?
I don't know. His party has not been tainted by rumors of backroom deals like Bhutto's was. He is doing pretty well among Pakistanis who want a government that will be free of Musharraf and to move against him. But I won't try to predict the outcome of the elections now that we have the new tragedy.

© 2007