Bhutto Assassination: Who Stands to Benefit?

The assassination of Pakistan’s twice-elected Prime Minister raises many a question of grave concern.

Ask yourself who benefits most from the removal of Benazir Bhutto from the Pakistani political landscape.

As he does with mostly everything these days, President Musharraf was quick to tie the assassination back to the fight against terrorism. When President Musharraf addressed the Pakistani nation shortly after Bhutto died from her injuries in a Rawalpindi hospital, he said she was assassinated by the same terrorists against whom the country has been fighting.

But the Islamic militants are not the only ones who disliked Bhutto...

Is it possible that Musharraf is just scapegoating “religious extremism” in Pakistan for Bhutto’s murder the same way he used it to justify imposing emergency rule?

After all, Musharraf stands to reap the most benefits from the vacuum in political leadership left by Bhutto’s death.

It is plausible that the religious extremists in Pakistan played a role in her assassination. Bhutto had repeatedly avowed to crush the rising extremism and militancy in Pakistan after she came into power. Bhutto also received letters threatening suicide attacks from “friends of Al Qaeda” on October 23.

While the religious extremists had their reasons to hate Bhutto, they did not have much to gain from ensuring her removal from the Pakistani political arena. The Islamic parties in Pakistan are floundering for minimal support, even in their stronghold of NWFP where they won control of the provincial assembly in 2002. As I wrote in an earlier post, only 4% of Pakistanis intend to vote for the religious parties in the upcoming elections. The reasons for this disfavor are myriad and such that wouldn’t be solved by the removal of Bhutto alone.

Maybe former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had a motive because his party, PML-N, was the main opposition to Benazir Bhutto’s PPP in the January 2008 elections. Sharif, however, has been permanently barred from contesting the elections. The Election Commission of Pakistan bases the rejection of his nomination papers on his conviction in 2000 on terrorism and hijacking charges while Sharif’s party claims that the rejection is politically motivated and that Musharraf is behind it. Sharif’s supporters point out that his nomination papers were rejected on December 3, 2007 on the grounds of his 2000 conviction despite the fact that they were accepted for the 2002 elections when he was in Saudi Arabia.

With Bhutto killed and Sharif barred from contesting the election, Musharraf’s party, PML-Q, no longer has to face Pakistan’s two biggest political parties in January’s parliamentary elections. Interestingly enough, two days prior to her return to Pakistan and the twin suicide blasts that took the lives of about 140 people, Bhutto sent a letter to Musharraf in which she named four persons she believed posed a threat to her life. One of the four she named was Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, Chief Minister of Punjab and parliamentary leader of PML-Q. Elahi is now widely tipped to become the next Prime Minister of Pakistan.

The assassination of Bhutto leaves the U.S. without a viable West-aligned, moderate and democratic leader committed to continuing America’s war against terror in Pakistan. The U.S. administration again finds itself in a situation where seemingly it has no option but to rely on Musharraf.

Bhutto’s untimely and tragic demise has left Musharraf in an unparalleled, strengthened position. His party faces effectively little competition in the upcoming elections. He has once again become the only suitable front-man in Pakistan to fight America’s war against terror.

Will the U.S. administration be able to find another viable, democratic leader to support in Pakistan? How will U.S. foreign policy shape up following this tragedy?

And, perhaps most importantly, what will Musharraf do?

Why Pakistan’s Islamic Parties are Struggling for Support

This report in the Washington Post should put to rest any fears that a Taliban-style cleric may emerge as the new Prime Minister of Pakistan following its January 8 elections.

A recent survey shows that only 4 percent of Pakistanis intend to support the religious parties in the upcoming elections.

The results of the last Pakistani parliamentary election in 2002, the high-water mark for the Islamic parties of Pakistan, took many political analysts by surprise. The MMA (Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal), a then newly-formed, broad coalition of religious parties captured not only 12 percent of the national vote but also won control of the provincial government of NWFP (North-West Frontier Province is one of Pakistan’s four provinces).

A number of factors explain the short-lived political success of Pakistan’s democratically-aligned mullahs.

The Incumbency Factor

In 2002, the Pakistani public had hoped for real change when they voted for MMA. They were fed up with both the military which refuses to stay within its barracks and the corrupt, secular parties. The religious parties lacked such a condemning record because they had never really been tested in political office before. After having served for the past five years, the MMA’s record proved to be no different from that of the opponent parties they had criticized. For the most part, they failed to deliver on their vow of ‘clean government and improved citizen services’.

Rising Islamic Militancy

The religious parties have been hurt by the fact that they have either acted indifferent towards the growing insurgency threat in NWFP or quietly supported it. Common Pakistanis caught between the cross-fire of radical Islamic hardliners – such as Maulana Fazlullah of Swat – and the Pakistani troops fighting them are highly resentful of both the spreading Talibanization and the sharply deteriorating law and order situation.

Increased Competition

In the upcoming election, MMA faces stiff competition from Pakistan’s two main, freshly-invigorated opposition parties, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and Pakistan Peoples Party. Both parties’ leaders, former Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, were exiled in 2002 but are riding a surge of popularity following their respective successful returns to Pakistan this past year.

The MMA Splits

The religious parties simply failed to agree on a unified campaign strategy for the January 8 elections. While MMA President Qazi Hussain Ahmed called for a boycott of the upcoming elections, which most think will be rigged, one of the major religious parties, Jamait-ul-Ulama-Islam (JUI) decided to contest them anyway. The five-year old testy coalition between the religious parties unraveled and took much of the support for the Islamic parties down with it.

The Musharraf Stigma

Following their parliamentary success in 2002, the religious parties formed an alliance government with President Musharraf’s PML-Q party. The MMA committed the blunder of continuing to support the dictator even as his popularity took serious and repeated hits this past year. JUI’s tacit support to Musharraf to get him re-elected President for yet another term in October 2007 may very well have been the last nail in their coffin.