Former Prime Minister Of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, Assassinated

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Very.

If I remember correctly, Ijaz Shah was also Omar Sheikh's handling officer. Sheikh turned himself in to Ijaz Shah for Pearl's murder. I wonder if Shah had any contact with U.S. officials prior to 9/11.

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Musharraf: Bhutto To Blame For Own Death
Pakistan President Tells "60 Minutes" His Government Provided All Possible Security

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...inutes_3678203

1/5/2008

(CBS) The assassination of his chief political rival was her own fault, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf tells Lara Logan in his first one-on-one interview since the death of Benazir Bhutto.

The exclusive interview will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Jan. 6, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

In the interview that took place in Pakistan Saturday morning, Musharraf tells Logan, "For standing up outside the car, I think it was she to blame alone. Nobody else. Responsibility is hers." Bhutto was killed in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi last week while standing up in a moving car with her head through the roof hatch.

A suicide bomber blew himself up near her car at the time of her death and the government of Pakistan initially said the concussion of the blast caused her to hit her head on the roof hatch. There was also a gunman present, but it's not known whether his shots hit Bhutto.

Asked by Logan if he believes a gunshot could be the cause of Bhutto's head injury, he replies, "Yes, yes."

"So she may have been shot?" asks Logan.

"Yes, absolutely, yes. Possibility," says Musharraf.

Some also speculate that Bhutto, who was campaigning for prime minister in Musharraf's government, had inadequate security.

"Even with the benefit of hindsight, you feel that you and your government did everything possible to give Benazir Bhutto the security she needed?" asks Logan.

Musharraf insists he did. "Yes, yes absolutely. And you have to…remember…she had the threat. So she was given more security than any other person."

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Bhutto's Husband Calls for UN Probe

http://myembarq.com/news/news_reader...356&feedid=217

By RAVI NESSMAN Associated Press Writer
2008-01-05 15:35:43

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Benazir Bhutto's widowed husband accused members of Pakistan's ruling regime of involvement in his wife's killing and called Saturday for a U.N. investigation, as British officers aiding Pakistan's own probe pored over the crime scene.

"An investigation conducted by the government of Pakistan will have no credibility, in my country or anywhere else," Asif Ali Zardari, the effective leader of Bhutto's opposition party, said in a commentary published in The Washington Post. "One does not put the fox in charge of the hen house."

Calls for an independent, international investigation have intensified since the former prime minister was killed Dec. 27 in a shooting and bombing attack after a campaign rally. Opposition activists denounced the government's initial assessment that an Islamic militant was behind the attack and that Bhutto died, not from gunshot wounds, but from the force of the blast.

President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged that investigators may have drawn conclusions too quickly and mishandled evidence, including hosing down the site hours after the attack. But he insisted the government was competent to run the investigation with the help of forensic experts from Britain's Scotland Yard. The United States said it did not believe a U.N. investigation was needed.

The British investigators arrived at the site of the attack in the city of Rawalpindi under heavy police guard in a convoy of sports utility vehicles. They spoke to local security officials and repeatedly walked from the park where Bhutto held her final campaign rally to the spot outside where her departing vehicle was attacked.

Local police parked a truck where Bhutto's had been, and the British investigators took photographs of it and filmed it from different angles, including from a nearby rooftop.

Zardari said no government investigation would satisfy him. He reiterated his demand for a U.N. probe modeled on the investigation into the death of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and urged "friends of democracy in the West, in particular the United States and Britain, to endorse the call for such and independent investigation."

"Those responsible — within and outside of government — must be held accountable," he wrote.

Also Saturday, the government accused a leading international think tank of "promoting sedition" for urging Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in the war on terror, to resign.

The report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group called Musharraf "a serious liability, seen as complicit" in Bhutto's death.

In a statement, the government said the report "amounts to promoting sedition" and the group "neither has the credentials, nor the credibility and lacks representational standing specially on Pakistan's national affairs" to comment on Pakistan.

Also Saturday, gunmen shot and killed one paramilitary soldier and wounded two others in the southwestern city of Quetta, said Rahmatullah Niazi, a senior police official. The motive behind the attack was not known, he said.

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US intelligence suggests coverup in Bhutto assassination
Suicide bomber may have been inserted to eliminate evidence

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/US_int...utto_0107.html

Larisa Alexandrovna
Published: Monday January 7, 2008

The assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 27, 2007 has created concerns for US intelligence officials, who see US policy toward Pakistan as being held hostage by President Pervez Musharraf and factions of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Mrs. Bhutto was shot when she stood up through the sunroof of her vehicle after a campaign rally for her Pakistan Peoples Party in Rawalpindi. Immediately after the shooting, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive, killing 25 people as well as himself.

The Musharraf government's initial reaction was to blame either al Qaeda or other terrorists closely linked to al Qaeda. However, contradictions in official statements, as well as the behavior of police – who hosed down the streets in Rawalpindi just an hour after Mrs. Bhutto was assassinated – quickly began to cast doubt on the official version of what happened, leaving serious questions surrounding Musharraf and the ISI and putting more pressure on the United States to pull back its support for Pakistani leadership.

While President Musharraf initially declined help from the British in investigating the assassination of Mrs. Bhutto, pressure from a distrusting public and a crumbling explanation caused a turnaround this week. An agreement was reached allowing the British to conduct their own investigation, and police from Scotland Yard arrived over the weekend.

US intelligence officials say, however, that very little evidence will be found, especially if investigators are looking for the suspected shooter. Three former US intelligence officials have told Raw Story that not only is the gunman dead, he was likely the actual target of the suicide bomber.

According to a former high ranking US intelligence official, who wishes to remain anonymous due to the delicate nature of the information, the US intelligence community understands the gunman to have been killed in the blast following Mrs. Bhutto's assassination.

"He was killed, probably not knowing that the suicide bomber was there," said this source. "We don't know for sure if the two men arrived together. We do know that the assassin died in the explosion, and was probably meant to."

Several other US intelligence officials concur that the bomber was likely "inserted" to "clean up" evidence of the shooting, including eliminating the gunman.

When asked why it was important to determine the relationship between the gunman and the suicide bomber, one former CIA officer explained that such details are the key to understanding what happened, how it happened, and who was ultimately responsible. Such details also enable investigators to document patterns and methods used, in order to determine if a terrorist attack has indeed taken place or something else has occurred.

Not terrorism
On Thursday evening, just hours after Mrs. Bhutto was assassinated, the FBI and DHS issued a bulletin indicating that the attack had originated from the terrorist group al Qaeda and was carried out by a suicide bomber. That information, which the US acquired from Pakistani intelligence and government officials, came originally from an Italian news agency which claimed to have received a phone call from an al Qaeda representative and was never substantiated.

On Friday, the Pakistani Interior Ministry offered a slightly different version, saying the suicide bomber was associated with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a terrorist group linked to al Qaeda. This initial belief that an act of terrorism was responsible for the tragedy that killed Mrs. Bhutto and 25 of her supporters caused a great deal of confusion.

Intelligence sources say that it is precisely these kinds of unsubstantiated claims that create the impression that it is "all al Qaeda, all the time," as one former official noted.

The reports that an al Qaeda suicide bomber had killed Mrs. Bhutto disappeared as quickly as they had surfaced, when footage showing a gunman and an audio capture which clearly indicated several shots fired prior to the explosion began to circulate online and in news accounts.

According to a former high ranking US intelligence official, the involvement of a gunman undercuts the official story that a terrorist attack was responsible for the murder of Mrs. Bhutto.

"Traditionally, al Qaeda coordinates multiple targets and suicide bombers," said the source during a Wednesday conversation. "While it is possible that al Qaeda was behind the assassination, it is not likely, given the operational elements."

A former CIA officer agreed that employing gunmen to assassinate targets is not the way al Qaeda generally operates, saying, "[shooting] at close range is not a traditional al Qaeda technique."

Both sources agreed that it is the general belief within the US intelligence community that the gunman was killed in the attack.

A current US official, who wishes to not be identified for this article, confirmed that the gunman died in the blast but was unable to say whether the suicide bomber was targeting the gunman as suggested by the intelligence officials. "The working assumption is that the gunman [is] dead. But it's by no means clear that the gunman was ignorant of the bomber. I can't confirm that at all."

The CIA declined to comment for this article.

Other Pakistani candidate also a target
On the same day that Mrs. Bhutto was targeted, supporters of Nawaz Sharif – former prime minister and head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) party – were shot at as they readied a welcome procession to greet their candidate, who was also scheduled to give a speech in Rawalpindi. That shooting resulted in four dead and 16 injured, putting the total death count of Thursday's violence at 30, including Mrs. Bhutto.

Mr. Sharif did not respond to requests for comment, but in statements to the foreign press he has blamed President Musharraf for both the attack on his supporters and the assassination of Mrs. Bhutto.

"The Pakistani people are disgusted and disappointed to see Bush support one man against 160 million of its citizens," Sharif told the Hindustan Times. "I always worked well with the US when I was prime minister. But today I am disappointed."

Contradictory claims, likely cover-up
While no officials interviewed for this article would explicitly say that Pakistani military or ISI officials played a role in the assassination of Mrs. Bhutto and the shooting attack on Sharif supporters, that possibility was not discounted. The evidence thus far does raise many questions about what role, if any, President Musharraf or someone in his administration might have played in the double attack at Rawalpindi.

"I won't say Musharraf was responsible [for the assassination of Mrs. Bhutto] on the record," said the former high ranking CIA official. "At the very least he was responsible for not providing adequate security.”

Originally a suicide bomber on a motorcycle was blamed for the attack on Bhutto, and shortly thereafter the suicide bomber was said to have ties to al Qaeda. However, by late on Friday, December 28th, Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud was fingered as the mastermind behind Mrs. Bhutto's assassination. By Saturday morning, spokespeople for Mehsud had issued a formal denial of his involvement.

The former high ranking CIA official says that the US has gotten the "Mehsud intelligence" from Pakistan, but has not been able to independently confirm it. "The intelligence is in the form of intercepts that are attributed to Mehsud," said the source. "He is said to be sending a congratulatory message, but we have no independent intelligence to confirm this."

A current US official, who was not comfortable being identified in any form due to the delicate situation between the US and Pakistan, confirmed that Mehsud is all the US has in terms of any leads in the assassination.

"In terms of responsibility, there are indications that point to militants, including Beitullah Mehsud. But that's not a firm, final, definitive conclusion. There's more work to be done."

By Sunday, the Guardian was reporting that "The Pakistani authorities are reported to have drafted a plan to 'eliminate' Baitullah Mehsud ... despite widespread suspicion within Pakistan that he is being used as a scapegoat."

However, two former CIA officials say that there is far too much evidence pointing away from militants being behind the attack.

Indeed, the changing official position as to the cause of death indicates that someone was very interested in making it appear that Mrs. Bhutto had died in a suicide bombing, with initial medical reports out of Rawalpindi on Thursday claiming she had died as the result of the explosion.

By Friday morning, as audio of the gun shots surfaced, state-run media in Pakistan reported that Mrs. Bhutto died as a result of a gunshot wound to the neck, combined with shrapnel from the explosion. It was said the suicide bomber had first fired on Mrs. Bhutto and then detonated his explosives.

By Friday evening, however, the official story had changed yet again, with reports coming out that although bullets were fired, none had hit Mrs. Bhutto. On Saturday morning, the story changed once more, with an official medical report ruling that Mrs. Bhutto died from shrapnel received to the head as a result of the suicide bombing.

Yet also on Saturday, General Javed Iqbal Cheema, a spokesman for Pakistan's Interior Ministry – who cited the same medical report – said Mrs. Bhutto had died as a result of a skull fracture sustained when she either fell against the sunroof lever after the explosion or attempted to hide from the explosion inside the vehicle. Medical examiners admitted that no autopsy was done.

As footage of the gunman began to appear in the press, the official story changed again, to the cause of death being two gunshot wounds to the head and one to the neck. The changing versions of what happened, who had committed the crime, and the rising violence in Pakistan as protestors demanded answers, caused Musharref to finally agree to allow a foreign body to investigate the assassination.

US foreign policy held hostage
"The investigation will be opaque and less effective than what happened in Lebanon," said Larry Johnson, former CIA officer and Deputy Director for Transportation Security, Antiterrorism Assistance Training, and Special Operations for the office of Counterterrorism in the US State Department.

Others interviewed for this article share Johnson's skepticism and believe that the Bush administration will likely look the other way should any connection between Musharraf and the assassination be discovered, because, they say, at this point, the US has "no workable solution" and cannot discontinue support for Musharraf, given the options.

"We are being held hostage to Musharraf's whim," said one former intelligence official.

"What options do we have now? None. Under Musharraf, al Qaeda has grown. The tribal sheiks have also grown. It is a mess and there is not a damn thing we can do about it."

Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons, close ties to both al Qaeda and the Taliban, and funding from Saudi Arabia make Musharraf and his military dictatorship formidable. The only thing that US officials fear more than the Musharraf dictatorship is its alternative, a civil war and violence in a country which possess both WMD and terrorists.

The Bush administration is, however, feeling a great deal of pressure to pull back support for Musharraf. Many believe this will be handled by the US not asking too many questions about what happened to Mrs. Bhutto and why.

When asked why the West was even bothering with an investigation that would surely neither help alleviate pressure for any of the parties nor ease diplomatic tension when there is already no viable political solution, one US intelligence official responded that "This investigation is not being done for [the United States]. We are not the audience. The Pakistani people are."

Update: In a comment on the implications if Musharraf were found to be complicit in Bhutto's killing, Hady Amr, a fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution and director of the Brookings Doha Center, writes:

"It would be a tragedy for the people of Pakistan if someone in the current government was in any way complicit in either of the two assassination attempts. I met with Mrs. Bhutto this past fall and can attest that she was a strong-minded person who felt she was on a mission, as a candidate, to improve things in her country. I would hope that the current government was in no way complicit in these two assassination attempts. There are too many factors to suggest in advance what the US response should be. However, with many billions of dollars of US aid spent in Pakistan, the US Government certainly has significant leverage over – and significant interest in – what happens in Pakistan, the only Muslim-majority country with nuclear weapons."

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The Destabilization of Pakistan

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...xt=va&aid=7705

by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, December 30, 2007

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has created conditions which contribute to the ongoing destabilization and fragmentation of Pakistan as a Nation.

The process of US sponsored "regime change", which normally consists in the re-formation of a fresh proxy government under new leaders has been broken. Discredited in the eyes of Pakistani public opinion, General Pervez Musharaf cannot remain in the seat of political power. But at the same time, the fake elections supported by the "international community" scheduled for January 2008, even if they were to be carried out, would not be accepted as legitimate, thereby creating a political impasse.

There are indications that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was anticipated by US officials:

"It has been known for months that the Bush-Cheney administration and its allies have been maneuvering to strengthen their political control of Pakistan, paving the way for the expansion and deepening of the “war on terrorism” across the region.

Various American destabilization plans, known for months by officials and analysts, proposed the toppling of Pakistan's military...

The assassination of Bhutto appears to have been anticipated. There were even reports of “chatter” among US officials about the possible assassinations of either Pervez Musharraf or Benazir Bhutto, well before the actual attempts took place. (Larry Chin, Global Research, 29 December 2007)

Political Impasse
"Regime change" with a view to ensuring continuity under military rule is no longer the main thrust of US foreign policy. The regime of Pervez Musharraf cannot prevail. Washington's foreign policy course is to actively promote the political fragmentation and balkanization of Pakistan as a nation.

A new political leadership is anticipated but in all likelihood it will take on a very different shape, in relation to previous US sponsored regimes. One can expect that Washington will push for a compliant political leadership, with no commitment to the national interest, a leadership which will serve US imperial interests, while concurrently contributing under the disguise of "decentralization", to the weakening of the central government and the fracture of Pakistan's fragile federal structure.

The political impasse is deliberate. It is part of an evolving US foreign policy agenda, which favors disruption and disarray in the structures of the Pakistani State. Indirect rule by the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus is to be replaced by more direct forms of US interference, including an expanded US military presence inside Pakistan.

This expanded military presence is also dictated by the Middle East-Central Asia geopolitical situation and Washington's ongoing plans to extend the Middle East war to a much broader area.

The US has several military bases in Pakistan. It controls the country's air space. According to a recent report: "U.S. Special Forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units" (William Arkin, Washington Post, December 2007).

The official justification and pretext for an increased military presence in Pakistan is to extend the "war on terrorism". Concurrently, to justify its counterrorism program, Washington is also beefing up its covert support to the "terrorists."

The Balkanization of Pakistan
Already in 2005, a report by the US National Intelligence Council and the CIA forecast a "Yugoslav-like fate" for Pakistan "in a decade with the country riven by civil war, bloodshed and inter-provincial rivalries, as seen recently in Balochistan." (Energy Compass, 2 March 2005). According to the NIC-CIA, Pakistan is slated to become a "failed state" by 2015, "as it would be affected by civil war, complete Talibanisation and struggle for control of its nuclear weapons". (Quoted by former Pakistan High Commissioner to UK, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Times of India, 13 February 2005):

"Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical Islamic parties. In a climate of continuing domestic turmoil, the Central government's control probably will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the economic hub of Karachi," the former diplomat quoted the NIC-CIA report as saying.

Expressing apprehension, Hasan asked, "are our military rulers working on a similar agenda or something that has been laid out for them in the various assessment reports over the years by the National Intelligence Council in joint collaboration with CIA?" (Ibid)

Continuity, characterized by the dominant role of the Pakistani military and intelligence has been scrapped in favor of political breakup and balkanization.

According to the NIC-CIA scenario, which Washington intends to carry out: "Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive policies, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction," (Ibid) .

The US course consists in fomenting social, ethnic and factional divisions and political fragmentation, including the territorial breakup of Pakistan. This course of action is also dictated by US war plans in relation to both Afghanistan and Iran.

This US agenda for Pakistan is similar to that applied throughout the broader Middle East Central Asian region. US strategy, supported by covert intelligence operations, consists in triggering ethnic and religious strife, abetting and financing secessionist movements while also weakening the institutions of the central government.

The broader objective is to fracture the Nation State and redraw the borders of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pakistan's Oil and Gas reserves
Pakistan's extensive oil and gas reserves, largely located in Balochistan province, as well as its pipeline corridors are considered strategic by the Anglo-American alliance, requiring the concurrent militarization of Pakistani territory.

Balochistan comprises more than 40 percent of Pakistan's land mass, possesses important reserves of oil and natural gas as well as extensive mineral resources.

The Iran-India pipeline corridor is slated to transit through Balochistan. Balochistan also possesses a deap sea port largely financed by China located at Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea, not far from the Straits of Hormuz where 30 % of the world's daily oil supply moves by ship or pipeline. (Asia News.it, 29 December 2007)

Pakistan has an estimated 25.1 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven gas reserves of which 19 trillion are located in Balochistan. Among foreign oil and gas contractors in Balochistan are BP, Italy's ENI, Austria's OMV, and Australia's BHP. It is worth noting that Pakistan's State oil and gas companies, including PPL which has the largest stake in the Sui oil fields of Balochistan are up for privatization under IMF-World Bank supervision.

According to the Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ), Pakistan had proven oil reserves of 300 million barrels, most of which are located in Balochistan. Other estimates place Balochistan oil reserves at an estimated six trillion barrels of oil reserves both on-shore and off-shore (Environment News Service, 27 October 2006) .

Covert Support to Balochistan Separatists
Balochistan's strategic energy reserves have a bearing on the separatist agenda. Following a familiar pattern, there are indications that the Baloch insurgency is being supported and abetted by Britain and the US.

The Baloch national resistance movement dates back to the late 1940s, when Balochistan was invaded by Pakistan. In the current geopolitical context, the separatist movement is in the process of being hijacked by foreign powers.

British intelligence is allegedly providing covert support to Balochistan separatists (which from the outset have been repressed by Pakistan's military). In June 2006, Pakistan's Senate Committee on Defence accused British intelligence of "abetting the insurgency in the province bordering Iran" [Balochistan]..(Press Trust of India, 9 August 2006). Ten British MPs were involved in a closed door session of the Senate Committee on Defence regarding the alleged support of Britain's Secret Service to Baloch separatists (Ibid). Also of relevance are reports of CIA and Mossad support to Baloch rebels in Iran and Southern Afghanistan.

It would appear that Britain and the US are supporting both sides. The US is providing American F-16 jets to the Pakistani military, which are being used to bomb Baloch villages in Balochistan. Meanwhile, British alleged covert support to the separatist movement (according to the Pakistani Senate Committee) contributes to weakening the central government.

The stated purpose of US counter-terrorism is to provide covert support as well as as training to "Liberation Armies" ultimately with a view to destabilizing sovereign governments. In Kosovo, the training of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the 1990s had been entrusted to a private mercenary company, Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI), on contract to the Pentagon.

The BLA bears a canny resemblance to Kosovo's KLA, which was financed by the drug trade and supported by the CIA and Germany's Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND).

The BLA emerged shortly after the 1999 military coup. It has no tangible links to the Baloch resistance movement, which developed since the late 1940s. An aura of mystery surrounds the leadership of the BLA.



Distribution of Balochs is marked in pink.

Baloch population in Pink: In Iran, Pakistan and Southern Afghanistan

Washington favors the creation of a "Greater Balochistan" which would integrate the Baloch areas of Pakistan with those of Iran and possibly the Southern tip of Afghanistan (See Map above), thereby leading to a process of political fracturing in both Iran and Pakistan.

"The US is using Balochi nationalism for staging an insurgency inside Iran's Sistan-Balochistan province. The 'war on terror' in Afghanistan gives a useful political backdrop for the ascendancy of Balochi militancy" (See Global Research, 6 March 2007).

Military scholar Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters writing in the June 2006 issue of The Armed Forces Journal, suggests, in no uncertain terms that Pakistan should be broken up, leading to the formation of a separate country: "Greater Balochistan" or "Free Balochistan" (see Map below). The latter would incorporate the Pakistani and Iranian Baloch provinces into a single political entity.

In turn, according to Peters, Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) should be incorporated into Afghanistan "because of its linguistic and ethnic affinity". This proposed fragmentation, which broadly reflects US foreign policy, would reduce Pakistani territory to approximately 50 percent of its present land area. (See map). Pakistan would also loose a large part of its coastline on the Arabian Sea.

Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO's Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, have most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles. (See Mahdi D. Nazemroaya, Global Research, 18 November 2006)

"Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted, before he retired to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon’s foremost authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and U.S. foreign policy." (Ibid)



It is worth noting that secessionist tendencies are not limited to Balochistan. There are separatist groups in Sindh province, which are largely based on opposition to the Punjabi-dominated military regime of General Pervez Musharraf (For Further details see Selig Harrisson, Le Monde diplomatique, October 2006)

"Strong Economic Medicine": Weakening Pakistan's Central Government
Pakistan has a federal structure based on federal provincial transfers. Under a federal fiscal structure, the central government transfers financial resources to the provinces, with a view to supporting provincial based programs. When these transfers are frozen as occurred in Yugoslavia in January 1990, on orders of the IMF, the federal fiscal structure collapses:

"State revenues that should have gone as transfer payments to the republics [of the Yugoslav federation] went instead to service Belgrade's debt ... . The republics were largely left to their own devices. ... The budget cuts requiring the redirection of federal revenues towards debt servicing, were conducive to the suspension of transfer payments by Belgrade to the governments of the Republics and Autonomous Provinces.

In one fell swoop, the reformers had engineered the final collapse of Yugoslavia's federal fiscal structure and mortally wounded its federal political institutions. By cutting the financial arteries between Belgrade and the republics, the reforms fueled secessionist tendencies that fed on economic factors as well as ethnic divisions, virtually ensuring the de facto secession of the republics. (Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Second Edition, Global Research, Montreal, 2003, Chapter 17.)

It is by no means accidental that the 2005 National Intelligence Council- CIA report had predicted a "Yugoslav-like fate" for Pakistan pointing to the impacts of "economic mismanagement" as one of the causes of political break-up and balkanization.

"Economic mismanagement" is a term used by the Washington based international financial institutions to describe the chaos which results from not fully abiding by the IMF's Structural Adjustment Program. In actual fact, the "economic mismanagement" and chaos is the outcome of IMF-World Bank prescriptions, which invariably trigger hyperinflation and precipitate indebted countries into extreme poverty.

Pakistan has been subjected to the same deadly IMF "economic medicine" as Yugoslavia: In 1999, in the immediate wake of the coup d'Etat which brought General Pervez Musharaf to the helm of the military government, an IMF economic package, which included currency devaluation and drastic austerity measures, was imposed on Pakistan. Pakistan's external debt is of the order of US$40 billion. The IMF's "debt reduction" under the package was conditional upon the sell-off to foreign capital of the most profitable State owned enterprises (including the oil and gas facilities in Balochistan) at rockbottom prices .

Musharaf's Finance Minister was chosen by Wall Street, which is not an unusual practice. The military rulers appointed at Wall Street's behest, a vice-president of Citigroup, Shaukat Aziz, who at the time was head of CitiGroup's Global Private Banking. (See WSWS.org, 30 October 1999). CitiGroup is among the largest commercial foreign banking institutions in Pakistan.

There are obvious similarities in the nature of US covert intelligence operations applied in country after country in different parts of the so-called "developing World". These covert operation, including the organisation of military coups, are often synchronized with the imposition of IMF-World Bank macro-economic reforms. In this regard, Yugoslavia's federal fiscal structure collapsed in 1990 leading to mass poverty and heightened ethnic and social divisions. The US and NATO sponsored "civil war" launched in mid-1991 consisted in coveting Islamic groups as well as channeling covert support to separatist paramilitary armies in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia.

A similar "civil war" scenario has been envisaged for Pakistan by the National Intelligence Council and the CIA: From the point of view of US intelligence, which has a longstanding experience in abetting separatist "liberation armies", "Greater Albania" is to Kosovo what "Greater Balochistan" is to Pakistan's Southeastern Balochistan province. Similarly, the KLA is Washington's chosen model, to be replicated in Balochistan province.

The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi, no ordinary city. Rawalpindi is a military city host to the headquarters of the Pakistani Armed Forces and Military Intelligence (ISI). Ironically Bhutto was assassinated in an urban area tightly controlled and guarded by the military police and the country's elite forces. Rawalpindi is swarming with ISI intelligence officials, which invariably infiltrate political rallies. Her assassination was not a haphazard event.

Without evidence, quoting Pakistan government sources, the Western media in chorus has highlighted the role of Al-Qaeda, while also focusing on the the possible involvement of the ISI.

What these interpretations do not mention is that the ISI continues to play a key role in overseeing Al Qaeda on behalf of US intelligence. The press reports fail to mention two important and well documented facts:

1) the ISI maintains close ties to the CIA. The ISI is virtually an appendage of the CIA.

2) Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA. The ISI provides covert support to Al Qaeda, acting on behalf of US intelligence.

The involvement of either Al Qaeda and/or the ISI would suggest that US intelligence was cognizant and/or implicated in the assassination plot.

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I would very much like the allegation that the CIA and the ISI work hand in hand, or that the CIA is in control of the ISI investigated. How much evidence exists with regard to that allegation?

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Mysterious crowd suddenly stopped Bhutto's car, officer says

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/24637.html

By Saeed Shah and Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Friday, January 11, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Two new reports on the assassination last month of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto suggest that the killing may have been an ambitious plot rather than an isolated act of violence and that the government of President Pervez Musharraf knows far more than it's admitted about the murder.

A police officer who witnessed the assassination said that a mysterious crowd stopped Bhutto's car that day, moving her to emerge through the sunroof. And a document has surfaced in the Pakistani news media that contradicts the government's version of her death and contains details on the pistol and the suicide bomb used in the murder.

The witness was Ishtiaq Hussain Shah of the Rawalpindi police. As Bhutto's car headed onto Rawalpindi's Liaquat Road after an election rally Dec. 27, a crowd appeared from nowhere and stopped the motorcade, shouting slogans of her Pakistan Peoples Party and waving party banners, according to his account.

Bhutto, apparently thinking she was greeting her supporters, emerged through the sunroof of the bulletproof car to wave.

It was Shah's job to clear the way for the motorcade. But 10 feet from where he was standing, a man in the crowd wearing a jacket and sunglasses raised his arm and shot at the former prime minister. "I jumped to overpower him," the deputy police superintendent said later. "A mighty explosion took place soon afterwards."

Shah suffered multiple injuries and is recuperating in a Rawalpindi military hospital, guarded by agents of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate.

Who organized the crowd is only one of the mysteries two weeks after the assassination. "I don't know who they were or from where they came," the Rawalpindi officer told Dawn newspaper. "They just appeared on the road."

The second report emerged in the Pakistani daily newspaper The News, with detailed information about the pistol and bomb. It rejects the government's conclusion that Bhutto died when the force of the suicide blast threw her head against the sunroof lever of her car. Such an impact couldn't have fractured her skull, it said. The government refused to confirm the report's authenticity, but a security official verified it to McClatchy. He spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

According to the document, which the paper described as a "top agency" preliminary report, a pistol made by Norinco, a Chinese brand, was recovered from the scene, with the lot number 311-90. An MUV-2 triggering mechanism for the bomb also was found, as had been used in 15 previous suicide bombings in Pakistan, with the same lot number and factory code.

"It is a clear indicator that the same terrorist group is involved in almost all these incidents," concluded the report, which the paper quoted at length.

Another mystery of the case is why so valuable a report has been buried. Among its other conclusions: Bhutto's assassin, after shooting her, detonated his own suicide belt. No ambulance was called, and it took 25 minutes to get her to the hospital, only two miles from the scene.

Bhutto, and her security adviser Rehman Malik, had complained repeatedly that she was given inadequate official security, including mobile phone jammers that didn't work and less than the four-vehicle escort that she thought was needed to protect the four corners of her car. In an e-mail to her U.S. lobbyist, Mark Siegel, in late October, Bhutto wrote that if anything happened to her "I would hold Musharraf responsible," in addition to four individuals she named as plotting to kill her in a letter sent to Musharraf on Oct. 16.

There was no security cordon around Bhutto — who'd escaped a suicide bombing attack Oct. 18, the day she returned to Pakistan from self-imposed exile abroad — as she left the park in Rawalpindi. The crime scene was cleared immediately and hosed down, destroying vital evidence. Doctors at the hospital where she was taken, who announced the night it happened that she'd died of bullet wounds to the head and neck, changed their story the next day. There was no autopsy.

Musharraf's government has stuck to its explanation that Bhutto died when she hit her head on the sunroof's lever after the bomb went off, despite the emergence of several videos that show the gunman firing, then Bhutto disappearing into her vehicle before the blast. Officials also turned up what they said was a transcript of a telephone conversation between the supposed masterminds — militant Islamists allied with the Taliban — congratulating each other, the next day.

Scotland Yard detectives, whom Musharraf called in under pressure from home and abroad, have been told that they're to investigate only the cause of death, not the killer's identity. "Providing clarity regarding 'The precise cause of Ms. Bhutto's death' is said to be the principal purpose of the deployment," said Aidan Liddle, a spokesman for the British High Commission in Islamabad.

To many in Pakistan, it all raises questions about whether the government was complicit in the assassination. To others, it points at the very least to a concerted attempt to hide the massive extent of a security failure.

Bhutto's own private-security arrangements seemed poor, chaotic and amateurish. Armored cars are not fitted with sunroofs. Hers was modified in Karachi against all safety advice, according to a security company that operates in that city but spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. After Bhutto's death, her husband made the startling revelation that she'd been guarded by men he'd met in prison.

"Both the state and the internal security of the Pakistan Peoples Party failed miserably," said Masood Sharif Khattak, who was the head of the Intelligence Bureau, Pakistan's top civilian intelligence agency, while Bhutto was prime minister and now is retired. "But state responsibility (for her security) stands first and foremost."

"The fact that there are so many suicide bombings taking place in the country, and the security and intelligence apparatus is unable to prevent them, only leads to one conclusion: The jihadists have enablers within the system that allow them to do their stuff," said Kamran Bokhari of Strategic Forecasting, a consultancy based in Austin, Texas.

"We're not talking high-level officials, just people at midlevel, but mostly junior, who could provide them with logistics to operate."

Musharraf has denied that government agencies are involved at any level.

One of the most widely suspected forces behind Bhutto's assassination, al Qaida, hasn't claimed responsibility. The Pakistani militant whom the government has blamed, Baitullah Mehsud, has denied it. Mehsud is a 34-year-old tribal leader in the lawless Waziristan region, in the northwest, who's emerged as the leader of Pakistan's version of the Taliban.

Dr. Farzana Shaikh, associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, said: "If they (al Qaida) are intent on weakening Musharraf and his regime, they could do no better than this. For them to simply leave room open for speculation, much of which has centered on government complicity, would be a very clever move."

"That people are willing to believe this is a very telling reflection of the declining credibility of the Musharraf regime."

[simuvac]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl.../?query=bhutto

Truth is a casualty of blast that killed Bhutto

As eyewitness goes silent and a key report is suppressed, conspiracy theorists point to a government cover-up

SAEED SHAH

Special to The Globe and Mail

January 12, 2008


ISLAMABAD -- An eyewitness is muzzled. A leaked report contradicts the official version of the crime. A body is buried before an autopsy can be conducted. A crime scene is hastily cleansed of evidence.

What may sound like a standard plot from pulp fiction is playing itself out in Pakistan, where it is widely believed that an active effort to cover up the truth behind the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto is under way. Many of the theories swirling around conspiracy-obsessed Pakistan point back to the government, whose missteps and inconsistencies have fuelled the mystery around the killing.

Ishtiaq Hussain Shah, the Deputy Superintendent of Police who was alongside Ms. Bhutto's vehicle and gave an account of the assassination to a local newspaper from his hospital bed, has been silenced. Burly intelligence agents now posted in his ward stop anyone from talking to him.

An official report has surfaced in the local media containing detailed information on the pistol and bomb used in the highly sophisticated attack on Ms. Bhutto on Dec. 27. The report rejects the government's version that Ms. Bhutto died when the force of the blast threw her head against the sunroof lever of her car, fracturing her skull. However, it seems the document has been buried.

There was no security cordon around Ms. Bhutto, a known target for suicide attacks, as she left the park in Rawalpindi where she was killed. The doctors at the hospital, who on the night of her death said she died of bullet wounds to the head and neck, mysteriously changed their story the next day.

The government put forward its sunroof theory, which it has not abandoned despite the emergence of several videos that show Ms. Bhutto disappearing into her vehicle before the blast. Officials also conveniently turned up a transcript of a telephone conversation between the supposed terrorist masterminds, congratulating each other the very next day.

Scotland Yard detectives - who were called in by President Pervez Musharraf after the strong international outcry over the killing - have a limited scope to their inquiry, looking only at the cause of death, not who killed Ms. Bhutto.

To many in Pakistan, it all smacks of state complicity in the assassination. To others, it points, at the very least, to a concerted attempt to hide the extent of the security failure. Ms. Bhutto told her U.S. lobbyist Mark Siegel in an October e-mail that if anything happened to her, "I would hold Musharraf responsible."

Ms. Bhutto's own private security arrangements seemed poor and chaotic. Armoured cars are not typically fitted with sunroofs; Ms. Bhutto's vehicle was reportedly modified against all safety advice. After her death, her husband made the startling revelation that she was guarded by men he had met in prison.

"Both the state and the internal security of the Pakistan Peoples Party failed miserably," said Masood Sharif Khattak, a retired former head of the Intelligence Bureau, Pakistan's top civilian intelligence agency. "But state responsibility [for security] stands first and foremost."

According to that suppressed report on the assassination, the authenticity of which could not be verified, a pistol made by the Chinese company Norinco was recovered from the scene, with lot No. 311-90. An MUV-2 triggering mechanism for the bomb was found, similar to the ones used in 15 previous suicide bombings, and with the same lot number and factory code.

"It is a clear indicator that the same terrorist group is involved in almost all these incidents," the report concluded.

Why would such a valuable report be blocked?

Though it looks bad for Mr. Musharraf, most experts do not believe that the spate of bombings seen in Pakistan over the past year is being orchestrated from the top of the regime.

But the scale and complexity of the attacks - many have hit military targets - lends credence to the theory that rogue intelligence agents are involved.

"The fact that there are so many suicide bombings taking place in the country, and the security and intelligence apparatus is unable to prevent them, only leads to one conclusion. The jihadists have enablers within the system that allow them to do their stuff," said Kamran Bokhari of Strategic Forecasting, a U.S.-based consulting firm.

"We're not talking high-level officials, just people at mid-level but mostly junior, who could provide them with logistics to operate."

Mr. Musharraf has vehemently denied that any government agencies are involved at any level.

The obvious suspect behind the assassination of the pro-American Ms. Bhutto is al-Qaeda, but it has not claimed responsibility, though the group is usually not shy about taking credit. This event would appear to have presented the terrorist organization with a huge propaganda prize. But the Pakistani militant blamed by the country's government, tribal chief Baitullah Mehsud, has flatly denied it.

Some have pointed to the MQM, an ethnically based political party that was openly in conflict with Ms. Bhutto's government in the 1990s in the city of Karachi. While the MQM has history of violence, including allegations of political assassination, it has cleaned up its operations and the group has never been involved in anything of the scale of Ms. Bhutto's killing.

Accusations and innuendo have even extended to Ms. Bhutto's husband, Asif Zardari, who after her death produced a will that named him as her political successor. He has defended himself and, in turn, charged "the establishment" with killing his wife.

One theory has it that it is the United States that is behind the bombings, aiming to show that Pakistan is ungovernable and thus providing the excuse to seize its nuclear weapons.

Al-Qaeda's strange silence on the killing of Ms. Bhutto has everyone looking in other directions, which may be a deliberate tactic because suspicion has fallen mostly on Mr. Musharraf and the state.

The likely aim of the terrorists is to destabilize Pakistan, undermining the rule of government and any sense of security, as they did in Iraq.

One way for extremists to sink Pakistan is to let the administration take the blame for the violence, alienating the people from the state and opening the way for the chaos in which terrorism can thrive.

[Gold9472]

Musharraf rejects UN probe into assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Bhutto

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Mushar...tion_0112.html

Nick Langewis
Published: Saturday January 12, 2008

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has rejected a United Nations inquiry into the assassination of former Prime Minister and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, who he has publicly held personally responsible for her own death.

Pakistan, in addition to help from Scotland Yard, seeks to investigate internally. Blaming al-Qaeda for the assassination in an attempt to "destabilize Pakistan," Musharraf assures, in an interview with France's Le Figaro published Friday.

"If the Americans don't want to pay any more, they should ask other people to help them," adds Musharraf in response to calls to halt American aid, amid growing sentiment that funds for fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban have been misused. "But the fight against terrorism would suffer."

Members of the Bhutto family do not trust the current Pakistani government to conduct the investigation, though Musharraf says there is no indication of another country's involvement, and he says that results of the inquiry should be made available to the public before the February elections, originally scheduled for January 8.

[simuvac]

http://www.hindu.com/2008/01/14/stor...1451111400.htm

Scotland Yard “agrees” Al-Qaeda killed Benazir
Hasan Suroor LONDON: Scotland Yard detectives helping with the investigation into the assassination of the former Pakistani Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, reportedly agree with the official claim that she was killed by Al-Qaeda.

The Sunday Times has quoted British officials as saying that the “evidence” collected by the Yard team points towards Al-Qaeda’s involvement in the murder.

The Scotland Yard team, which includes experts in forensic science, video evidence and explosives, does not have the brief to establish who killed Benazir but simply to help with the analysis of evidence.

However, the British media has been full of speculation, quoting unnamed officials as lending credence to the Pakistan government’s version of Benazir’s assassination.

The Sunday Times report from Christina Lamb, Benazir’s personal friend and biographer, said: “British officials have revealed that evidence amassed by Scotland Yard detectives points towards Al-Qaeda militants being responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.”

It also claimed that the disputed transcript of a supposed conversation between Baitullah Mehsud, the tribal militant leader with Al-Qaeda links, and an extremist associate in which he admits to his group’s involvement in the killing is “genuine”, according to British and American officials in Pakistan.

The newspaper said that according to “diplomats”, Mehsud had dispatched teams of suicide bombers to “follow Bhutto to rallies and seize an opportunity to kill her”. Asked why Pakistani forces had not captured Mehsud, one official was reported as saying that it was not easy go into tribal areas. Benazir’s family has dismissed the Scotland Yard inquiry as a whitewash.