To be honest, I think its a case of serendipidy and bungling simultaneously.
Serendipity, because Musharraf clearly wasn’t going to let her run for election, nor any other party for that matter – his only wish is to remain in power. His ‘election’ of a toady to head the Army, and his crackdown on the Pakistani legal system, plus all the hot air about ‘allowing’ a free and fair election in the new year is clearly a byzantine move on his part to hold onto power for as long as possible.
Bungling, because his govt could have gotten away scott-free if they’d only kept thier mouth shut about the method of her death. My bet is that the govt welcomed the news that she’d been shot, and wanted to make the story go away as soon as possible – hence the totally ludicrous insistance that she hit her head on the sunroof. That way, no one is to blame, and everything is hunky-dory.
Unfortunately, for him, an assassination of a very popular candidate doesn’t go away that easily, so, rather than calming the waters by producing a ‘plausible’ explanation, they’ve shot themselves in the foot.
New footage of the horrible incident has just been aired on CNN – in it you can clearly see a man in sunglasses with a gun shoot at her. Milliseconds later, you can see the back of her veil and her hair lift, and she clearly slumps into the body of the van several seconds before the bomb blast. So, obviously, the govt is wrong in its insistence that she died from a skull fracture.
As for the CIA – I doubt it very much. The US was forging ties with the PPP, and had she lived, would have put increasing pressure on Musharraf to concede proper democratic elections. As Allan points out, the CIA has its hands full with the likes of Chavez and Ahmedinijhad,
Bhutto was technically on ‘our’ side.
Personally, I do believe she was killed by one of the Al Quaida/Taliban factions – no surprise really as she was anathema to their wish to instate Sharia law in Pashtunistan. A secular woman in charge? No way, Jose.
The Govt security forces clearly weren’t fans either, but I think Musharraf is too canny to be linked, explicitly or implicitly, with her assassination – too much of a hot potato, especially when there are so many others that were willing to do the deed in his place, without links to him or his govt.
However, I also believe that Musharraf is guilty implicitly, by not allowing her the security she constantly asked for. By not treating her as a security risk, he dammned her to death. More fool him, as the whole mess has blown up in his face, and the international community is looking very hard at his regieme now, rather than just allowing him to do what he wants, when he wants.
