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Pakistan After Bhutto

The assassination of Pakistan's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on December 27 in a gun and bomb attack (NYT) as she campaigned in the northern city of Rawalpindi raises concern about the political future of one of the world's most turbulent countries. Bhutto, the first woman to lead an Islamic state, hoped to win a third term as prime minister in critical parliamentary elections scheduled for January 8. Her death leaves pressing questions about whether the elections will run on schedule and how fair they will be.

Already signs of political uncertainty and future troubles loom as analysts try to second-guess Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's next move. Musharraf announced a three-day period of mourning (Bloomberg) for Bhutto. News reports suggested the other strong political leader and former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, will boycott elections (AP).

Bhutto's death also means that the United States will have to rethink its strategy for nudging forward democratization in Pakistan. It had been pushing for a deal between Musharraf and Bhutto in the hope that Bhutto's return to power would lend legitamacy to Musharraf's increasingly unpopular government. Even though this seemed unlikely after the recent imposition of emergency rule by Musharraf, Washington was optimistic about the January elections. In a media conference call, CFR Senior Fellow Daniel Markey said the elections had the potential to move the country forward toward a more manageable civilian-military partnership and "Benazir would have been a significant part of that." December 27th was a bad day for United States, he says, and it "will be paying a price for it for a while."

Facing a great deal of criticism for its support of Musharraf, the United States condemned the attack. President George W. Bush called it an attempt to "undermine Pakistan's democracy." U.S. presidential candidates also expressed concern about the region's stability.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and key South Asia policymaker in the 1990s, told CFR.org he believes Bhutto's assassination "was almost certainly the work of al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda's Pakistani allies." Bhutto, speaking at CFR's New York headquarters in August 2007, referenced repeated threats to her life from Islamic militants as well as the ties Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, continued to foster with Taliban elements. Indeed, on the day of her return from exile in October, Bhutto narrowly escaped death when her motor cavalcade was hit by a double suicide attack that left some 130 dead in Karachi.

"Her death brutally exposes how little success Pervez Musharraf has had in cracking down on the jihadists," writes CFR Senior Fellow Max Boot in Commentary's blog. "They have only grown stronger on his watch." The U.S. Congress, too, has questioned the effectiveness of nearly $10 billion in aid to Musharraf in the war against terrorism. Last week, it imposed new restrictions (AP) on U.S. assistance to Pakistan. As a former Bhutto aide, Husain Haqqani, now a professor at Boston University, told TIME: Bhutto "was let down by those in Washington who think that sucking up to bad governments around the world is their best policy option."

Riedel says that efforts by both the army and the army dictatorship have failed to rein in extremists. The only way Pakistan will be able to fight terrorism effectively is to have a "legitimate, democratically-elected, secular government," he says. The situation, however, is fraught. Newsweek's Michael Hirsh, a frequent traveller to Pakistan, wonders if Bhutto's death might lay the foundation for the democratic transformation she never attained in life.

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Related Topics: bush | foreign policy | pakistan |

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