Can Musharraf Survive?

While Islamic extremists are the most likely perpetrators of the attack, many emotional Pakistanis, especially the devoted rank and file of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, will blame Musharraf, and the powerful military and civilian intelligence agencies he controls, for the killing. That perception will resonate among many Pakistanis. Already, pro-Bhutto crowds have started antiregime rioting in the major cities of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. The house of one government minister has been torched. At least one Bhutto stalwart has publicly pointed the finger of blame at the regime. "This was not the work of Al Qaeda or the Taliban," says a senior PPP stalwart who did not want to be quoted by name. "She told Musharraf this could happen before she came [back from exile, and] he laughed it off. [Pakistanis] know who is to blame for this."

Indeed, many of Bhutto's supporters and Musharraf's opponents will say that the government's intelligence agencies were behind the attack because they saw Bhutto as a threat to the political survival of the president, who has ruled Pakistan since overthrowing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup in 1999. "This is the darkest, gloomiest day in the history of Pakistan," said Sharif at the Rawalpindi hospital where Bhutto's body lay. "The unthinkable has happened." If the rioting continues, and the popular view that Musharraf may have had something to do with Bhutto's death gathers momentum, then Musharraf may come under heavy pressure to resign. Many Pakistanis may conclude that if he wasn't behind the attack he is responsible for failing to have his ubiquitous security services protect Bhutto.

For now the Pakistani police and paramilitary rangers seem to be handling the emotional civil disturbances that are breaking out. The army is on alert but did not take to the streets in the hours immediately following the attack. That could change if the police are not able to control or subdue the demonstrators and rioters. If Musharraf does call out the military, army head Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, Musharraf's handpicked successor, could ask Musharraf to step down rather than have Pakistani troops firing on crowds in the streets.

Bhutto and Musharraf's relations became tempestuous soon after she arrived from exile. During the months of back-channel negotiations by their aides, and during at least one face-to-face meeting late last summer in Dubai, Bhutto and Musharraf seemed to have reached a political truce. Musharraf believed that in return for his dropping corruption charges against her and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari (known as "Mr. 10 Percent" for the commissions he allegedly charged businessmen angling for government contracts), she would not agitate against him. But Musharraf has said he felt betrayed by Bhutto from the minute she returned and organized a massive political rally in Karachi. She subsequently vowed to lead a campaign caravan from Lahore to Islamabad. Seeing the massive crowds she drew for her Karachi homecoming and fearing that the Lahore-Islamabad cavalcade was a direct threat to his rule, he twice placed her under house arrest. He later said that he felt that she had double-crossed him, and that far from being cooperative, once back in Pakistan she had been confrontational.

But Bhutto was not being disruptive. Rather she was playing a rather clever political game. She had won her return to Pakistan and was then free to position herself ahead of the January elections. In this regard she outmaneuvered her rival, the conservative Nawaz Sharif. Sharif, also a former prime minister, returned from exile in November boasting about his refusal to negotiate with Musharraf and calling for a boycott of the upcoming vote. Bhutto refused to go along with Sharif's calls for an electoral boycott and his equally hardline demand that the Supreme Court justices, who had been deposed at the beginning of Musharraf's state of emergency, be restored immediately as the price for the opposition's participation in the January polls. Bhutto figured that her best chance to return to power and to promote democracy was to participate in the election, even though she said she feared Musharraf would rig it. With Bhutto and her relatively well-organized PPP in the race, Sharif had no alternative but to have his party run as well, even though he and his younger brother Shahbaz had been declared ineligible as candidates by the pro-Musharraf electoral commission.

Bhutto hoped that her PPP would either win a majority or emerge as the largest single party in the next parliament. It was not a blind hope. In the 2002 general elections, which foreign observers declared to be "seriously flawed," the PPP won the largest number of votes nationwide. The party ended up in the opposition when Musharraf engineered the defection of key PPP leaders to his own Pakistan Muslim League, which went on to form the government and control parliament. But Bhutto gambled that enough Pakistanis would buck the blandishments and threats from the ruling power structure to vote for her party. But if the election did turn out to be rigged, she said she would unite with other opposition parties and take to the streets to demand justice.