( (( ((( al-Q in Pakistan ))) )) )

A Pakistani soldier in North Waziristan, on the Afghan border. Al-Qaeda is thought to be using the region as a base for global terror operations. – Photo and caption from the New York Times

In December 2007, shortly after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, The Brookings Institute, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC, published an interview with Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow of Foreign Policy at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. Conducted by Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor of CFR.org (Council on Foreign Relations), Riedel makes it clear that, in his mind, al-Qaeda was behind Bhutto’s killing in the streets of Pakistan. While not a stunning revelation, it raises further questions as to al-Qaeda’s potential sympathizers already established inside Pakistani’s leadership structure.

Q: Let’s start with an obvious question. In the aftermath of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, who do you think was responsible?

BRUCE RIEDEL: It was almost certainly the work of al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda’s Pakistani allies. Al-Qaeda has been trying to kill Ms. Bhutto for decades. She has been the target of assassination attempts by al-Qaeda before. They were most likely responsible for the attack on her when she first returned to Pakistan. Their objective is to destabilize the Pakistani state, to break up the secular political parties, to break up the army so that Pakistan becomes a politically failing state in which the Islamists in time can come to power, much as they have in other failing states where al-Qaeda knows its chances for success are higher.

Riedel later goes on to say: “I am sure that conspiracy theories about that will abound in Pakistan. [Bhutto] was widely disliked in the intelligence apparatus, but it was more likely the work of al-Qaeda and its cohorts. Now it is certainly possible that they had penetrated and had sympathizers within the Pakistani security apparatus and had advance knowledge of her movements. It is clear from the al-Qaeda attacks in the past, including on President Musharraf, that al-Qaeda has sympathizers at the highest levels of security, and intelligence which provided information on his movements in the past which facilitated the efforts to kill him.”

He also states: “The only way that Pakistan is going to be able to fight terrorism effectively is to have a legitimate, democratically-elected, secular government that can rally the Pakistani people to engage al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other extremist movements.”

Source: http://www.brookings.edu/about.aspx