Did Qaeda Allies in Pak Government Help Slay Bhutto?

By James Gordon Meek

New questions are being raised about divided loyalties inside the government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Could this shocking political murder have been, at least in part, an inside job? In Sunday’s New York Daily News, we reported exclusively on increasing suspicions among top U.S. counterterrorism officials that Al Qaeda leaders have been protected by rogue operatives from Pakistan’s army or Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, who could just as easily have aided them in slaying the former prime minister.

Particular attention is on Osama Bin Laden’s No. 2, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, whose ease at communicationg to the West this year has proven remarkable. Zawahiri has issued almost monthly video or audio statements throughout 2007, including some referring to specific events as recently as seven days earlier.

It’s worth noting that the ISI’s extended retiree network is open for business and that its former chief under Bhutto, Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, is still a prominent figure in Pakistan. Gul openly stated in a 2003 interview that “God will destroy America,” and has professed admiration for enemies of the U.S. Those might be just meaningless comments were they not from the man who organized the Taliban a decade ago as an instrument of Pakistan’s foreign policy.

New York University’s Barnett Rubin, an expert on the region, told me he “wouldn’t be surprised” if it turned out that Zawahiri has gotten what one American counterterrorism official recently described to me as “food and succor.” But other experts and U.S. defense officials watching South Asia say there is no evidence Zawahiri is protected by government operatives. Another senior U.S. intelligence official said that Bin Laden’s allies inside the Musharraf government may have been passive aggressive - not complicit in the plot, but doing zip to stop it. “My bet is that either the army or the ISI were knowledgeable, not necessarily involved, and that Al Qaeda sponsored it [Bhutto’s assassination],” the official said.

Pakistan’s gradual unraveling was clear even a few months ago, when a top Bush administration diplomat told The News that the country was devolving into “Talibanistan,” and claimed the ISI was so rogue that Bin Laden himself once “was an asset of theirs.” (Ironically, in his most recent message this month, Zawahiri called Pakistan “Americanistan, and [Pakistanis] must save it before it turns into Indiastan or Israelistan.”)

But the Taliban appears to be in the midst of as big a shakeup as the semi-legitimate political structure in Islamabad under Musharraf. The Al Qaeda-linked Taliban emir of Pakistan named as the mastermind of Bhutto’s killing, Baitullah Mehsud, recently was elected to his position in the wake of the deaths of several senior fellow commanders, including clansmen Abdullah Mehsud, who is often described in press reports as Baitullah’s late brother.

Over the weekend, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar pulled a Donald Trump by telling top field commander Mansour Dadullah, the brother of the martyred Taliban brute Mullah Dadullah Akhund, “You’re fired!” Dadullah’s spokesman denies he was sacked for insubordination, while Omar’s spokesman insists he was. What’s surprising is that Dadullah was so publicly humiliated by Omar instead of assassinated in what our intel sources call a “classic turf battle,” and simply declared a great martyr for the “Islamic Emirate of Kharasan” (Afghanistan).

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