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Letter to the editor

No suspect is obvious in bombing

Bhutto had so many Islamist enemies in Pakistan, none stands out.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Benazir Bhutto was the target of threats from virtually all the militant groups who make Pakistan their home - from al-Qaida to homegrown terrorists to tribal insurgents on the Afghan border.

Her assassination after a rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi - where the country's military and intelligence services are based - also focused anger and suspicion on the government of President Pervez Musharraf.

Bhutto had blamed al-Qaida, the Taliban and homegrown militants for the suicide bombing of a procession welcoming her back from exile in October. But she accused militant "sympathizers" in Musharraf's administration of backing the attempt on her life. Bhutto's supporters chanted, "Killer, Killer, Musharraf!" outside her hospital Thursday.

Al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri decried Bhutto's return in a video message this month and called for attacks on all the candidates in Pakistan's Jan. 8 parliamentary elections, in which Bhutto and her opposition party were campaigning.

In Washington, FBI and Homeland Security officials sent a bulletin to law enforcement agencies nationwide citing Islamist Web sites as saying that al-Qaida had claimed responsibility for the attack and that al-Zawahri had planned it.

Bhutto, a U.S.-backed, British-educated woman who forcefully pledged to redouble Pakistan's fight against Islamic militancy, was also despised by Taliban-style radicals backed by tribes along the Afghan border.

Baitullah Mehsud, a tribal warlord in the Waziristan region, was quoted in a Pakistani newspaper as saying that he would welcome Bhutto's return from exile with suicide bombers, but he later denied saying that.

Bhutto also was labeled an infidel by other groups, such as Jaish-ul Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Hezb-ul Mujahedeen, which were spawned by Pakistan's military and intelligence services to take on neighboring India in the disputed Kashmir region.

The groups later aligned themselves with al-Qaida and have vowed to battle foreign troops in Afghanistan and wage war against the Pakistani military for its support of the U.S.-led antiterror campaign. Some of their leaders have said Bhutto deserved to die for her threats to crush militants.

"I think by far the most likely (suspect) is the al-Qaida organization, which has been trying to kill Bhutto for the better part of the decade," said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former senior director for South Asia on the National Security Council.

"If it's not them, it's certainly one of the groups that are sympathetic with them," Riedel said. "They all work together and share a common antipathy to Bhutto because she's a woman, an advocate of secularism, a supporter of democracy and everything they stand against."

Retired army Gen. Hamid Gul, a former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence secret service agency, questioned the security arrangements made for Bhutto's rally.

"How could they enter with so much of a police cordon. I am surprised," Gul said in an interview with the Associated Press.

A former Taliban intelligence official, Mullah Ehsanullah, said this year that there were more than 500 men training as suicide bombers in 50 sites across the region in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

[Last modified December 28, 2007, 01:24:53]