The UN investigation into the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto began yesterday. It has six months to come up with answers as to who had the Pakistani politician killed. On the simple criterion of who benefited most from her slaying, it is clear that Al-Qaeda and the Taleban are the most likely perpetrators. Benazir, who had once like other prime ministers tolerated effective autonomy in Pakistan’s tribal areas, was returning with a clear policy to confront the militants. Thus Baitullah Mehsud, the Al-Qaeda-linked warlord may very well have been guilty of the crime, hoping it would plunge the country into instability.
But it is not quite that simple. The extraordinary behavior of President Pervez Musharraf’s government in the hours after Benazir’s murder also raises questions. The initial medical examination of the dead politician at the Rawalpindi hospital to which she was rushed, said she had suffered two gunshot wounds, to the head and neck. Yet this was denied a little later at a government press conference where it was claimed that Benazir had hit her head on the edge of the roof opening of her car, presumably as she dived for cover. There had been no bullet wounds.
This version of events was quickly proved bogus, when film footage showed both the gunman close to her vehicle and her head shawl being moved as she was hit by the bullets. A split second later, after she had fallen back into the bombproof vehicle, a suicide bomber, thought to be a man dressed in white standing behind the gunman, detonated his explosives. Film of the edge of the roof through which she had been standing also showed there was no blood and that it was highly unlikely that Benazir had therefore struck her head on it.
Conspiracy theorists also ask why the scene of the crime was almost immediately hosed down by the police, thus washing away valuable clues. This may have been the incompetence of a local police officer who did not know his job. There can, however, be no question about the extremely poor police protection given to Benazir from the minute she returned to Pakistan, nor the fact that Musharraf had forbidden her to bring her own specially trained bodyguards with her from exile.
These are the questions that the UN commission, headed by Chilean UN Ambassador Heraldo Munoz, will clearly have to address, if they can. The doubt however has to be that with Pakistan fighting for its survival against the fundamentalist insurgency, the investigation will be able to make real progress, talking to everyone that it needs to, including the intelligence service the ISI. Indeed there has to be some concern for the safety of the UN team itself, since whichever sinister hand was behind Benazir’s assassination, might well try to target the investigators.
Nevertheless it is right that the UN inquiry is taking place for one simple reason. This is the international community acknowledging the importance of Pakistan and its future stability. Munoz has a tough job ahead and should be wished well.
Fighting old wars
The Guardian in its editorial yesterday commented on the need for Britain to review its security strategy. Excerpts:
Even if the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had gone swimmingly — and they have both gone so badly that they are likely to be the last Western interventions for some time — there would still be a need to conduct a review of our security needs. The world is changing rapidly, and a security strategy worth the name should now encompass so much more than defense. Today’s global threats range from swine flu and collapsing banks to cyber attack. There are more failing states than there are stable ones, and nonstate actors are as important as states are.
But defense thinking is mired in past conflict. NATO is essentially a Cold War relic, and Britain is still doggedly determined to wage the full spectrum of conventional warfare. Does this make any sense? How good are bombs dropped from 35,000 feet at winning the hearts and minds of Afghan villages? What use will two highly expensive aircraft carriers be, even if we can afford them? They are already £1bn — or 25 percent — over budget.
Defense planners have consistently refused to face up to the fact that Britain cannot do everything. But that is changing. On Tuesday, Lord Guthrie, who was chief of defense staff at the time of the last review in 1998, asked how good two aircraft carriers will be at chasing Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. Last week Sir David Richards, who is about to take over as head of the army, raised similar concerns to the Royal United Services Institute. Even if a conventional war broke out, Sir David said, the aggressor would be unlikely to use massive force. More likely, the shooting would start through proxies, or by cyber attack.
The Institute for Public Policy Research, a think tank which invited people like Lord Guthrie, Lord Paddy Ashdown and Lord George Robertson to address these concerns, produced a host of thoughtful recommendations — that there should be a single security budget, and a national security council chaired by the prime minister; that Britain should increasingly look to coordinate its armed forces with Europe rather than rely on America.
Clear divisions emerged among them over the future of Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent. And our European partners are even more oblivious of the new world order than we are. There are 10,000 tanks, 2,500 combat aircraft and nearly two million people under arms in Europe, and yet 70 percent of its land forces are unable to operate outside national territory.
