Renegade Commando Units Possibly Involved in Bhutto Killing

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Over at the New York Sun, Eli Lake reports on a possibility that I have also heard about from sources within government:

The attack yesterday at Rawalpindi bore the hallmarks of a sophisticated military operation. At first, Bhutto's rally was hit by a suicide bomb that turned out to be a decoy. According to press reports and a situation report of the incident relayed to The New York Sun by an American intelligence officer, Bhutto's armored limousine was shot by multiple snipers whose armor-piercing bullets penetrated the vehicle, hitting the former premier five times in the head, chest, and neck. Two of the snipers then detonated themselves shortly after the shooting, according to the situation report, while being pursued by local police. A separate attack was thwarted at the local hospital where Bhutto possibly would have been revived had she survived the initial shooting. . . . A working theory, according to this American source, is that Al Qaeda or affiliated jihadist groups had effectively suborned at least one unit of Pakistan's Special Services Group, the country's equivalent of Britain's elite SAS commandos. . . . "They just killed the most protected politician in the whole country," this source said. "We really don't know a lot at this point, but the first thing that is happening is we are asking the Pakistani military to account for every black team with special operations capabilities."

Lake's source stressed to him that "this was just a theory at this point": early reports about situations such as the Bhutto assassination are, in general, unreliable. Once forensic analysis of the bomb type and bullets used to kill Bhutto has been performed, that should shed light on whether military units were indeed involved. Moreover, as of last night nobody had been placed in custody yet for the assassination. The questioning of suspects should also shed light on what exactly happened. As a senior intelligence source wrote yesterday in an e-mail to me, "While the general identity of the perpetrators is known (al-Qaeda), much of the specifics remain extremely elusive and will likely continue for the time being until more information comes out."

For a large number of reasons, it is extremely rare for military units -- particularly elite units such as those that can be found within Pakistan's Special Services Group -- to be suborned by non-governmental actors. According to my sources, there may have also been other unreported attacks against figures within Pakistan's government. The media is pretty much on lockdown in Pakistan, not an infrequent occurrence in that country.

Particularly salient among the points that Lake's source made is the remark that Bhutto was "the most protected politician in the whole country." Now many Pakistani politicians must be thinking, "If they can get Bhutto, they can get me too." Most will not want to be the sole voice behind the podium calling for serious action in the tribal areas.

To that extent, one critical question is who takes over the Pakistan Peoples Party following Bhutto's death. Yesterday a colleague of mine circulated a short white paper arguing that the PPP "should be encouraged to select a forceful new leader to stand for prime minister as soon as possible, and take up the standard of Bhutto’s fight for liberty and democracy and against extremism." Though I agree with this, I wonder if they will be able to find such a voice under the circumstances. For more, the New York Times discusses the PPP's early search for a new leader.

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