Counterterrorism Blog

In an article published yesterday, Time's Bruce Crumley claims that Benazir Bhutto's assassination may represent a new terror tactic for al-Qaeda. (Of course, responsibility for the assassination has not yet been determined definitively. Based on my intelligence sources, and despite the shifting and sometimes farcical explanations of Pakistan's government, I believe that al-Qaeda and aligned Islamic terror groups are the most likely culprit.) Crumley writes, "Up until now, the violent methods employed by al-Qaeda and its operatives around the globe have largely eschewed single assassinations or the targeting of political leaders." In case the reader is skeptical since assassination attempts orchestrated by Islamic militant groups have targeted Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf in the past, Crumley addresses this: "Islamist radicals have been accused in the past of plotting to kill Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf because of his alliance with the U.S. and its war on terror. Those purported attempts produced near-misses at best." Thus Crumley concludes that "[i]f the path from Bhutto's murder leads to the al-Qaeda camp, it could well indicate political assassination, once an exception to the rules, has now become a must-do in the jihadist playbook."

Put simply, this analysis is entirely wrong-headed. Let's begin with the "purported attempts" against Musharraf. There is, in actuality, nothing purported about them. Islamic militants' attempts to kill Musharraf were quite real, and to brush them off as "near-misses at best" dramatically understates the effort and skill that went into these attempts. In Frontline Pakistan, Zahid Hussain writes of the twin assassination attempts against Musharraf in December 2003: "Security was always tight when [Musharraf] travelled, with roads closed to allow his long motorcade to pass rapidly. . . . In both the attempts it was clear that the perpetrators had the assistance of experts and were given tracking and other devices not usually available to local terrorists." Moreover, Hussain states that these attempts "could not have been possible without inside contacts." Musharraf has faced at least nine attempts on his life since 2001, and perhaps more.

Another problem with Crumley's article is that the turn to assassinations by al-Qaeda and terrorists closely aligned with the network is not at all new. It stretches back at least to the mid-1990s, and includes the following:

• Benazir Bhutto herself had been targeted before, as Ramzi Yousef tried to kill her in the mid-1990s.
• Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance that challenged the Taliban's dominance in Afghanistan, was killed by two suicide bombers disguised as journalists two days before 9/11.
  
• In the mid-1990s, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed plotted to assassinate then-president Bill Clinton and Pope John Paul II during their visits to the Philippines.
• In his hearing before Gitmo's Combatant Status Review Tribunal, KSM admitted to plotting to kill former president Jimmy Carter.
• American citizen Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a former valedictorian at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria, Virginia, was convicted in late 2005 of plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush.
• Islamic terrorists have tried to kill Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz during their travels overseas.
• Multiple assassination attempts have targeted Afghan president Hamid Karzai.
• The high mortality rate among Afghan and Iraqi politicians attests to the specific targeting of political leaders in both countries.

This list is not exhaustive, but it suffices to demonstrate the inaccuracy of claiming that al-Qaeda and affiliated terror groups "have largely eschewed single assassinations or the targeting of political leaders." They have in fact engaged in both for well over a decade. If al-Qaeda was responsible for Bhutto's assassination, it does not signal a change in the terror group's playbook. The killers remained on familiar ground.