When Army Capt. Jeremy Gwinn's company patrolled Baghdad in 2005, the approach toward roadside bombs was simple: avoid them or die.
By early 2006, that strategy had begun to shift: Instead of hunting for the bombs, the soldiers hunted for bombmakers. "We started to know a lot of people in the community and develop contacts," recalls Gwinn, now a major. "There was a noticeable change … in the way we were doing things."
Today, that change has swept across Iraq, and attacks using improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, have declined steadily for eight months. Casualties from the bombs are at their lowest point since 2003, the first year of the war. Troops have seized twice as many weapons caches this year as they did all of last.
"Just about every single night, we are identifying and engaging one or more cells caught in the act of planting IEDs," Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. forces in Iraq, said in an interview.
Efforts to stop IEDs by targeting the insurgent networks that finance, build and plant the bombs showed results only after the Bush administration adopted a broader counterinsurgency strategy this year — and sent 30,000 more troops to Iraq to support it.
But investigations show that the strategy now used to defeat the bombmaking networks and stabilize Iraq was ignored or rejected for years by key decision-makers. As early as 2004, when roadside bombs already were killing scores of troops, a top military consultant invited to address two dozen generals offered a "strategic alternative" for beating the insurgency and IEDs.
That plan and others mirroring the counterinsurgency blueprint that the Pentagon now hails as a success were pitched repeatedly in memos and presentations during the following two years, at meetings that included then-Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
The core of the strategy: Clear insurgents from key areas and provide security to win over Iraqis, who would respond by helping U.S. forces break IED networks and defeat the insurgency.
Bush administration officials, however, remained wedded to the idea that training the Iraqi army and leaving the country would suffice. Officials, including Cheney, insisted the insurgency was dying. Those pronouncements delayed the Pentagon from embracing new plans to stop IEDs and investing in better armored vehicles that allow troops to patrol more freely, documents and interviews show.
Even after the Pentagon began committing substantial resources to combat IEDs, investigations found, its spending focused mostly on high-tech devices with limited utility. Some silver-bullet solutions, such as microwave beams designed to destroy IEDs before they blew up, never worked.
By the time the Pentagon moved to a counterinsurgency strategy at the end of last year, the bombs had been the top killer of U.S. troops for three years, claiming more than 1,160 lives. To date, they are responsible for more than 60% of combat deaths.
"What's astounding is how long we spent not applying traditional counterinsurgency principles to fighting what obviously was an insurgency," says Fred Kagan, a military analyst at the American Enterprise Institute and former West Point instructor. "It's not that we've solved the IED problem, per se. It's that we've begun to have success in defeating the insurgents."
Andrew Krepinevich, the consultant who addressed the generals in 2004 and met with Libby in 2005, says the price of that failure was profound.
"One is the human cost, both in terms of the suffering of Iraqis and the Americans killed and wounded," he says. "Second is the material cost. And third is the failure to accomplish the mission."
Krepinevich, who has advised several secretaries of Defense and the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, says "the American military is on the clock in this war, and the American people, in a sense, gave the administration several years to make progress. Those years, to a significant extent, were wasted."
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe says the administration weighed all strategy options and made "appropriate decisions."
"Throughout the war, many people have come forward with various suggestions and ideas, from 'more troops' to 'get out now,' " he says. "The president has listened to the commanders on the ground and the Defense Department."
Rumsfeld declined to comment.
Rumsfeld and other civilian and uniformed war planners "had this mind-set of the short war, a liberation vs. an occupation," says retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, former chief of U.S. Central Command.
He says many combat commanders were frustrated by the Pentagon's failure to recognize that a force larger than the 120,000 U.S. ground troops in the initial invasion was needed to secure the country — and its ammunition dumps, which held the explosives that insurgents continue to use to build IEDs.
Officials also failed to send the right kind of vehicles.
In July, investigations reported that until 2006, the Pentagon balked at pleas from battlefield commanders to send safer armor to protect U.S. troops from IEDs. The armored vehicles, called Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, weren't fully embraced by the Pentagon until mid-2007, when Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Rumsfeld's successor, made them his top procurement priority.
Today, 11,941 MRAPs have been ordered, and about 1,200 of those are being used by troops in Iraq. "These are a vast improvement in terms of protection," Petraeus says.
Petraeus cites other crucial steps — among them the 30,000-troop "surge" — that have led to a decline in violence and a better chance to secure the country. Most are key components of the strategy favored by Krepinevich and others during the first months of the war.
Petraeus won't discuss why the Bush administration didn't pursue a counterinsurgency strategy earlier. Rather, he focuses on what's happening now — and its apparent successes. "It's not just the additional forces. It's also how they are used," Petraeus says. "The deployment of our forces and Iraqi forces into the neighborhoods, to the areas where the bad guys are located, is key. You have to live with the population to help secure it. "
He says that "in the past couple of months, we have been finding greater than 50% of the IEDs (before they go off), which is a first."
Zinni credits Petraeus with shifting U.S. fortunes. "It's about Americans being out there and being visible, providing security, building confidence among the people," he says. "It's paying off."
For years, Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials resisted just such an approach. Although Generals such as Petraeus put their theories into action on a small scale in Iraq as early as 2003, the military still lacked a detailed, nationwide plan for battling the insurgency.
In September 2004, 18 months into the war, Krepinevich flew to Nashville at the invitation of top Generals. Krepinevich, then 54, wore a jacket and tie; except for the spouses many Generals brought to the session, he was one of few in the hotel conference room not in uniform. It added to his trepidation.
Krepinevich had the credentials: A graduate of West Point, he had been an officer for 20 years and now ran the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent Washington think tank. What he didn't have was the experience: He hadn't been to Iraq. Moreover, he was about to tell the generals that the Pentagon's approach to the war made no sense.
He would be embarrassed if they told him he didn't understand the situation in Iraq, he recalls thinking. But if they agreed with his assessment, it meant trouble for U.S. efforts to secure the country.
"It is difficult to discern a coherent U.S. strategy for defeating the insurgency," he told them. The solution: "Win the hearts and minds, and … deny insurgents easy access to the population, thereby enhancing intelligence on the enemy."
Krepinevich's call for a new direction drew no criticism. "It told me they didn't have an approach" for winning the war, he says.
Retired Army Major General Paul Eaton, who was at the meeting and had been directing the training of Iraqi forces, said Krepinevich "was saying what had become increasingly obvious to many of us."
"What we had was a Secretary of Defense who denied (the insurgency existed) … and the senior leadership of the Army would not challenge him," Eaton says. "But Krepinevich could. A lot of us were thinking, 'He gets it; maybe he can reach some of the leadership.' "
Krepinevich would become one of several analysts and retired military officers who helped develop the counterinsurgency strategies. But their ideas wouldn't gain footing with decision-makers for years.
Meantime, the Pentagon had spent billions of dollars on technology to detect or defeat IEDs.
Most of the money went toward "jammers" — devices to block the electronic signals used to detonate IEDs by remote control. Jammers remain one of the more successful electronic IED countermeasures. As insurgents shifted to new types of detonators, new jammers were introduced. This year, the Pentagon has spent $2 billion on them.
Other high-tech initiatives in the IED fight have failed entirely:
•Forerunner, a remote-controlled truck, was to be driven ahead of convoys to detect IEDs. It was scrapped after almost $7 million in spending. It didn't work.
•BlowTorch was designed to use microwaves to fry the circuitry in IEDs from afar. It was abandoned after more than $8 million was invested. It didn't work either.
Defense officials acknowledged that technology alone would not defeat IEDs, but spending soared. In 2006, the Pentagon's counter-IED office, the Joint IED Defeat Organization, spent 67% of its $3.5 billion budget on jammers and other technology to "defeat the device."
But IED deaths kept rising.
Retired Army General Montgomery Meigs, who took over the IED office at the end of 2005 and led it until this month, began pushing for a new focus in 2006. "We made attacking the network No. 1" on the priority list, he says.
Krepinevich had continued to push the same message. In an Aug. 23, 2005, memo to Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, Krepinevich warned that technology wasn't the answer.
Instead, as Krepinevich says today, U.S. forces needed to provide "enduring" security that would make it "risky for people to go out and plant" IEDs. "You needed to think not just about technology; you needed to think about how you defeated the overall problem. The key … was intelligence."
Krepinevich says he told that to Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, during a July 2005 meeting in Libby's office. In May, just two months earlier, Cheney had declared that the Iraqi insurgency was in "its last throes." Now, Krepinevich was suggesting the administration refocus its approach around that insurgency. Libby "took it all in and asked a few questions," Krepinevich recalls, but that was it.
Krepinevich says the only meaningful support he got came from Zalmay Khalilzad, then the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, who was briefed by Krepinevich just before heading to Baghdad in June 2005. Despite Khalilzad's apparent interest, there was no overall change in the administration's war plan.
Khalilzad, now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, declined through a spokesman to comment.
Turning over security to newly trained Iraqi forces remained the hallmark of U.S. strategy in Iraq until early 2007. Army Gen. George Casey, who led coalition forces in Iraq until February, often said the goal was to have U.S. forces stand down as Iraqi forces stood up.
In June 2006, Kagan and three other military experts visited Camp David for a meeting with the president's war Cabinet. Each took a turn addressing the officials, who included Rumsfeld, Rice, National Security adviser Stephen Hadley, and Gen. Peter Pace, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Kagan's message — "We've got to do some counterinsurgency on these guys" — didn't take.
Within weeks, the Pentagon launched "Operation Together Forward." Coalition forces would "clear" an insurgent stronghold and Iraqi forces would "hold" it. When Iraqi forces failed to hold, violence soared. After two months, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell acknowledged that Together Forward had "not met our overall expectations."
In November 2006 — a day after Democrats won control of Congress — Bush accepted the resignation of Rumsfeld, who had backed the stand-up, stand-down strategy. Bush chose former CIA director Gates to replace him. By December, the shift to a counterinsurgency strategy had begun.
Iraq was boiling over: 69 U.S. troops would be killed that December by IEDs, the most IED deaths in any month since the war began. On Dec. 6, the Iraq Study Group, a panel of military and political thinkers, issued a report calling the Iraq situation "grave and deteriorating" and urging a phased U.S. withdrawal.
The next Monday, Dec. 11, Bush met with retired generals and top military analysts. One, retired Army General Jack Keane, pushed hard for a "surge" of U.S. troops coupled with a secure-and-hold strategy for Baghdad and other key areas.
Keane and other experts had developed the idea with Kagan, who was invited to the White House later that week to meet with Hadley. It was one of several strategy options, and the only one calling for a big increase in U.S. troops. Keane and Kagan proved persuasive.
Even so, it took what Kagan calls "a perfect storm" to put it in place. The deteriorating situation in Iraq, the grim report from the study group and growing calls for U.S. withdrawal made the administration more flexible, he says.
On Jan. 5, Bush chose Petraeus, who had finished writing the military's counterinsurgency doctrine, to take charge in Iraq. Five days later, Bush outlined a new strategy: "to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods … protect the local population, and … ensure that the Iraqi forces … are capable of providing" security.
It was precisely what his administration had rejected — and counterinsurgency advocates had championed — for years.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
The Jihadi Preemptive Strike Against Bhutto's War of Ideas by Walid Phares
Former Pakistani Prime Minster Benazir Bhutto was murdered because of herpotential actions in Pakistan, by the combined forces of jihadism in that country. In short, they executed her to pre-empt her future war of ideas. This was the bottom line and here is why.
The long-term plan of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan during the 1990s was to eventually spread to Pakistan and seize power, and, ultimately after 1999, to seize the nukes, too. Miscalculating on September 11, Osama bin Laden lost Kabul and the jihadi war room crossed into their eastern neighbor. Plan B was then to seize Waziristan and gradually Talibanize the country, grabbing the "doomsday" devices in the end. For the last seven years, the jihadi hydra protected by the fundamentalist tribes, hooking up with the local Islamist movements and with tentacles deep inside the defense and intelligence apparatus, attempted to spread in that direction. President Pervez Musharraf, unable to determine the extent of radical influence in his own services, moved slowly and reluctantly on the containment strategies. This lost time resulted in several assassination attempts and allowed a widening of the jihadi networks in the country. Reacting to the breach of national security, he tightened the rope on the opposition, frustrating his secular opponents and alienating the nation's Supreme Court.
The descent into generalized violence was spiraling out of his government's control and working to al Qaeda's satisfaction. Both bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as Taliban leader Mullah Omar, acting as jihadi supreme rulers of the country, pressed on with calls for assassination and fatwas for regime change. By 2006, Mr. Musharraf was fighting on two fronts: taking on the jihadi forces, including the homegrown ones on the one hand; and dealing with the pressures from his secular opposition on the other hand. From early 2007, as Taliban operatives based in enclaves in the border areas continued to strike inside Afghanistan, al Qaeda's messages beaming out of Pakistan and violence were unrestrained. The United States pressed Mr. Musharraf to change direction.
The advice from Washington (which was endorsed by the West and not opposed by moderate Muslim countries) urged the general (who was also serving as president) to: 1) open up to the opposition and allow the exiles to come back to the country, despite sour past relations; 2) hold general elections and welcome a new democratically elected cabinet; 3) relinquish his command of the armed forces if elected president; and 4) launch an all-out military campaign against Pakistan's Taliban.
Reading the map accurately, Mr. Musharraf heeded almost all suggestions. He allowed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to return and head her large party, although he made it more difficult for her colleague, Nawaz Sharif — Mr. Musharraf's direct political enemy — to proceed as swiftly in his return to the political scene. Mr. Musharraf announced a general legislative election slated initially for next month. He was re-elected as president by the current legislature and resigned from the top military office. And last but not least, he indeed sent several divisions to the frontier valleys to battle the terrorists on their own turf. But by changing direction, he opened a Pandora's box for his government and for the political process he freed.
Former political enemies weren't smooth on reconciling: While Mrs. Bhutto began negotiating with Mr. Musharraf, demanding a purge in the military, Mr. Sharif called for Mr. Musharraf's resignation. In addition, the president of the high court refused to recognize the general's election as president. These turbulences triggered frustrations among the military as it was marching to confront the most lethal enemy in the North-West region. And taking advantage of this dizzying political storm, the jihadi forces launched their urban offensive culminating with the suicidal Red Mosque intifada in Islamabad in the summer. And as Mr. Musharraf was steering the wheels toward political reconfiguration, terror attacks targeted various cities as well as military personnel across the country.
But the return of Mrs. Bhutto to Pakistan sent a positive message to the public and a negative one to the radical Islamists. The daughter of a prominent leader, a member of a political family, a former prime minister in her own right — and, above all, a liberal Muslim woman — Mrs. Bhutto projected the possibility of a leap toward more balanced politics and greater steps toward pluralism — two ingredients for progress toward democracy. Her dialogue with Mr. Musharraf made possible the return of Mr. Sharif and the global march to new elections. The bickering politicians didn't let go of their sour feelings toward each other, but the political process was about to gradually return to the country.
The prospect of the January elections would be good for all parties. The president would be proving that his institutions are solidly democratic, thus legitimizing his own office. The opposition would gain the seats it needed to access the cabinet or become powerbrokers at the assembly. Mrs. Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party was projected to be the largest bloc, and through a coalition in parliament, she was to become the next prime minister of this powerful Muslim country. That is precisely why she was murdered.
Indeed, the greatest losers in the upcoming elections, and in any democratic elections mobilizing large and experienced secular forces, would be the Islamists. Their six-party coalition achieved legislative power because of the absence of the secular and democratic forces. Now that Mr. Musharraf isn't in love with the jihadi forces anymore, several assassination attempts later; and after the seculars saw with their naked eyes what the fundamentalists were preparing for the country, the slice of Islamist vote was projected to shrink.
Mrs. Bhutto was the reason for this future political defeat. But beyond these political considerations, it was a war of ideas that the Taliban and their ilk feared the most. It is one thing for the radicals to measure themselves in comparison with the military's authoritarianism. But it is another thing to be blasted ideologically by a woman who would dominate Pakistan's politics. By jihadi standards it was unbearable to see Lady Benazir seizing the premiership of the executive power. A staunch modernist and a genuine Muslim, she would have been their worst nightmare. With her in power, forget about the Talibanization: There would be no suppression of women and no brutalization of minorities. There would be fierce empowerment of civil society. This is why the combined "war room" of al Qaeda, the neo-Taliban and the Pakistani jihadists decided to eliminate her.
In October, Baitullah Mehsud, a Taliban commander in South Waziristan, threatened to kill Mrs. Bhutto upon her return. Mrs. Bhutto was aware of the Taliban and al Qaeda threats but dismissed them. Ata press conference in Dubai in NovemberMrs. Bhutto said "she did not fear 'militants and extremists,' acknowledging that Afghan and Arab militants as well as those of the Red Mosque had threatened her," Dawn TVreported. "She said that threats to her life had been whipped up to 'intimidate me and the people of Pakistan.' " She added, "I don't believe that a true Muslim will attack me. I believe Islam forbids suicide bombings." But the jihadists had previous tried to assassinate her in a prior bombing as she returned to Pakistan in October.
Since then, as she criticized Mr. Musharraf for his political failures, the state of emergency and her house arrest, Mrs. Bhutto nevertheless relentlessly attacked the "radical Islamists," whom she accused of terror and oppression. In those days between the first attempt and her slaughter on Thursday, Mrs. Bhutto acted as the single most influential, courageous and symbolic female leader in the Muslim world. She was waging a war of ideas on her own in the most dangerous jihadi environment on the planet. Had she survived to win the legislative elections, she would have become the most efficient Muslim prime minister in the war against the terrorists.
Benazir Bhutto was stepping into a hornets' nest with her face uncovered. She was executed by the Taliban in a manner that was almost frighteningly reminiscent of the massacre of Afghan women who refused to wear the burka. Now it is up to her party, her followers and her allies to pick up the struggle from where she fell and move forward with her legacy. They need to focus on the greater goal of salvaging democracy by uniting their efforts with the president to hold these elections against all odds, even at a different date, and to back their national army in a global effort to defeat the terrorists.
Pakistan is crossing a dangerous path, but the security stakes are the highest in the world, obviously because of the nuclear weapons. The assassination of Mrs. Bhutto has also another apocalyptic dimension. Since November 2001, bin Laden has revealed that the ultimate goal of al Qaeda is to claim what "is theirs," i.e. the atomic power of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Many jihadi leaders have since asserted the duty to equip the caliphate to come with the most powerful armaments in the world. The gradual advance of the Taliban into their eastern neighbor is aimed at reaching those nukes: Either they would infiltrate the intelligence agencies and the army or they would take advantage of chaos and collapse. The attempts to kill Mr. Musharraf and the assassination of Mrs. Bhutto converge into one thread, a maximum violence leading to a coup d'etat by their supporters inside the military. Once the cataclysmic scenario was achieved, the rest is left to dark imagination.
Armed with such devastating power, the suicidal jihadists will have an open field for their missiles, which could target India and the U.S. presence in the region, as well as Europe and the Russian hinterland. Eventually even China would be at their mercy. The alibis are endless as long as there are "infidels" to confront. Hence the world after such a day cannot function peacefully. Because of such an intolerable possibility, Washington, Brussels, Moscow, New Delhi and Beijing, as we speak, should be readying the world for such threats.
The long-term plan of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan during the 1990s was to eventually spread to Pakistan and seize power, and, ultimately after 1999, to seize the nukes, too. Miscalculating on September 11, Osama bin Laden lost Kabul and the jihadi war room crossed into their eastern neighbor. Plan B was then to seize Waziristan and gradually Talibanize the country, grabbing the "doomsday" devices in the end. For the last seven years, the jihadi hydra protected by the fundamentalist tribes, hooking up with the local Islamist movements and with tentacles deep inside the defense and intelligence apparatus, attempted to spread in that direction. President Pervez Musharraf, unable to determine the extent of radical influence in his own services, moved slowly and reluctantly on the containment strategies. This lost time resulted in several assassination attempts and allowed a widening of the jihadi networks in the country. Reacting to the breach of national security, he tightened the rope on the opposition, frustrating his secular opponents and alienating the nation's Supreme Court.
The descent into generalized violence was spiraling out of his government's control and working to al Qaeda's satisfaction. Both bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as Taliban leader Mullah Omar, acting as jihadi supreme rulers of the country, pressed on with calls for assassination and fatwas for regime change. By 2006, Mr. Musharraf was fighting on two fronts: taking on the jihadi forces, including the homegrown ones on the one hand; and dealing with the pressures from his secular opposition on the other hand. From early 2007, as Taliban operatives based in enclaves in the border areas continued to strike inside Afghanistan, al Qaeda's messages beaming out of Pakistan and violence were unrestrained. The United States pressed Mr. Musharraf to change direction.
The advice from Washington (which was endorsed by the West and not opposed by moderate Muslim countries) urged the general (who was also serving as president) to: 1) open up to the opposition and allow the exiles to come back to the country, despite sour past relations; 2) hold general elections and welcome a new democratically elected cabinet; 3) relinquish his command of the armed forces if elected president; and 4) launch an all-out military campaign against Pakistan's Taliban.
Reading the map accurately, Mr. Musharraf heeded almost all suggestions. He allowed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to return and head her large party, although he made it more difficult for her colleague, Nawaz Sharif — Mr. Musharraf's direct political enemy — to proceed as swiftly in his return to the political scene. Mr. Musharraf announced a general legislative election slated initially for next month. He was re-elected as president by the current legislature and resigned from the top military office. And last but not least, he indeed sent several divisions to the frontier valleys to battle the terrorists on their own turf. But by changing direction, he opened a Pandora's box for his government and for the political process he freed.
Former political enemies weren't smooth on reconciling: While Mrs. Bhutto began negotiating with Mr. Musharraf, demanding a purge in the military, Mr. Sharif called for Mr. Musharraf's resignation. In addition, the president of the high court refused to recognize the general's election as president. These turbulences triggered frustrations among the military as it was marching to confront the most lethal enemy in the North-West region. And taking advantage of this dizzying political storm, the jihadi forces launched their urban offensive culminating with the suicidal Red Mosque intifada in Islamabad in the summer. And as Mr. Musharraf was steering the wheels toward political reconfiguration, terror attacks targeted various cities as well as military personnel across the country.
But the return of Mrs. Bhutto to Pakistan sent a positive message to the public and a negative one to the radical Islamists. The daughter of a prominent leader, a member of a political family, a former prime minister in her own right — and, above all, a liberal Muslim woman — Mrs. Bhutto projected the possibility of a leap toward more balanced politics and greater steps toward pluralism — two ingredients for progress toward democracy. Her dialogue with Mr. Musharraf made possible the return of Mr. Sharif and the global march to new elections. The bickering politicians didn't let go of their sour feelings toward each other, but the political process was about to gradually return to the country.
The prospect of the January elections would be good for all parties. The president would be proving that his institutions are solidly democratic, thus legitimizing his own office. The opposition would gain the seats it needed to access the cabinet or become powerbrokers at the assembly. Mrs. Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party was projected to be the largest bloc, and through a coalition in parliament, she was to become the next prime minister of this powerful Muslim country. That is precisely why she was murdered.
Indeed, the greatest losers in the upcoming elections, and in any democratic elections mobilizing large and experienced secular forces, would be the Islamists. Their six-party coalition achieved legislative power because of the absence of the secular and democratic forces. Now that Mr. Musharraf isn't in love with the jihadi forces anymore, several assassination attempts later; and after the seculars saw with their naked eyes what the fundamentalists were preparing for the country, the slice of Islamist vote was projected to shrink.
Mrs. Bhutto was the reason for this future political defeat. But beyond these political considerations, it was a war of ideas that the Taliban and their ilk feared the most. It is one thing for the radicals to measure themselves in comparison with the military's authoritarianism. But it is another thing to be blasted ideologically by a woman who would dominate Pakistan's politics. By jihadi standards it was unbearable to see Lady Benazir seizing the premiership of the executive power. A staunch modernist and a genuine Muslim, she would have been their worst nightmare. With her in power, forget about the Talibanization: There would be no suppression of women and no brutalization of minorities. There would be fierce empowerment of civil society. This is why the combined "war room" of al Qaeda, the neo-Taliban and the Pakistani jihadists decided to eliminate her.
In October, Baitullah Mehsud, a Taliban commander in South Waziristan, threatened to kill Mrs. Bhutto upon her return. Mrs. Bhutto was aware of the Taliban and al Qaeda threats but dismissed them. Ata press conference in Dubai in NovemberMrs. Bhutto said "she did not fear 'militants and extremists,' acknowledging that Afghan and Arab militants as well as those of the Red Mosque had threatened her," Dawn TVreported. "She said that threats to her life had been whipped up to 'intimidate me and the people of Pakistan.' " She added, "I don't believe that a true Muslim will attack me. I believe Islam forbids suicide bombings." But the jihadists had previous tried to assassinate her in a prior bombing as she returned to Pakistan in October.
Since then, as she criticized Mr. Musharraf for his political failures, the state of emergency and her house arrest, Mrs. Bhutto nevertheless relentlessly attacked the "radical Islamists," whom she accused of terror and oppression. In those days between the first attempt and her slaughter on Thursday, Mrs. Bhutto acted as the single most influential, courageous and symbolic female leader in the Muslim world. She was waging a war of ideas on her own in the most dangerous jihadi environment on the planet. Had she survived to win the legislative elections, she would have become the most efficient Muslim prime minister in the war against the terrorists.
Benazir Bhutto was stepping into a hornets' nest with her face uncovered. She was executed by the Taliban in a manner that was almost frighteningly reminiscent of the massacre of Afghan women who refused to wear the burka. Now it is up to her party, her followers and her allies to pick up the struggle from where she fell and move forward with her legacy. They need to focus on the greater goal of salvaging democracy by uniting their efforts with the president to hold these elections against all odds, even at a different date, and to back their national army in a global effort to defeat the terrorists.
Pakistan is crossing a dangerous path, but the security stakes are the highest in the world, obviously because of the nuclear weapons. The assassination of Mrs. Bhutto has also another apocalyptic dimension. Since November 2001, bin Laden has revealed that the ultimate goal of al Qaeda is to claim what "is theirs," i.e. the atomic power of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Many jihadi leaders have since asserted the duty to equip the caliphate to come with the most powerful armaments in the world. The gradual advance of the Taliban into their eastern neighbor is aimed at reaching those nukes: Either they would infiltrate the intelligence agencies and the army or they would take advantage of chaos and collapse. The attempts to kill Mr. Musharraf and the assassination of Mrs. Bhutto converge into one thread, a maximum violence leading to a coup d'etat by their supporters inside the military. Once the cataclysmic scenario was achieved, the rest is left to dark imagination.
Armed with such devastating power, the suicidal jihadists will have an open field for their missiles, which could target India and the U.S. presence in the region, as well as Europe and the Russian hinterland. Eventually even China would be at their mercy. The alibis are endless as long as there are "infidels" to confront. Hence the world after such a day cannot function peacefully. Because of such an intolerable possibility, Washington, Brussels, Moscow, New Delhi and Beijing, as we speak, should be readying the world for such threats.
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