Benazir Bhutto’s murder is in lock step with a 60-years long historical pattern that has involved the physical and political elimination of the entities in Pakistan that dare challenge its martial wisdom.  On December 27,  Benazir Bhutto became the latest victim in a long line of bloody civies that includes Liaquat Ali Khan, Fatima Jinnah, Z. A. Bhutto, M. K. Junejo; and more recently the independent judiciary and media.  Therefore, people should not be fooled over the trivialities like whether Benazir died of a bullet or a sunroof wound, or what Abdullah Mehsud said to a maulvi in Pushto!  The real culprit here is not the one who plotted or pulled the trigger, but rather the Pakistan army who knowingly exposed a leading secular and liberal politician to the radical Islamist environment that it has itself perpetuated as a  tool to manipulate events in the country and the region to its own advantage.  With Al-Qaeda comfortably settled in Pakistan, the only logical conclusion of her indifferent security and  lack of investigation of the October 18 attack was bound to be Benazir’s physical elimination.  That is precisely the message coming out of Benazir’s email that CNN’s Wolf Blitzer  reported. 

Her email and subsequent assassination also suggest that Pinky was bracing to avenge the Pakistan army in a resounding manner, either way.  Grown sophisticated in creating convenient chaos, Hamid Gul’s students must have realized what it would mean losing the number one ally position in the war on terror to an uncompromising Pinky with the whole world behind her.  This posed the danger that everything from nuclear smuggling through Daniel Pearl’s murder and Army’s still existing Jihadi links could come to the lime light.  That is precisely why Plan B had to kill Plan A in a manner that makes the West look like a sucker.  Let us hope that this significant dimension of  the ongoing sorry saga is not overlooked by intelligent people that are not necessarily swarming the Western power circles.