Bhutto had list of enemies who wanted her dead

WASHINGTON — A single assassin apparently pulled the trigger and detonation cord to kill former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, but he could have been working with any number of Islamist extremist groups, U.S. officials and South Asia analysts said Thursday.

Bhutto had returned from exile after eight years with a pledge to reform Pakistan in ways that would upset the country's political parties, its fundamentalist religious organizations and multinational extremist groups al-Qaida and the Taliban. She was aligned with the United States and vowed to crack down on the radicalism. And she had accused the government's military and intelligence establishments of coddling terrorists.

As a result, the list of her enemies was long, and determining who really killed her, and why, could be complicated and confounding, according to current and former U.S. officials and analysts.

They say it is unlikely one person working alone killed the popular daughter of a Pakistani political dynasty. A more likely scenario, they say, is that al-Qaida was ultimately responsible because it has long targeted Bhutto and stands to gain the most from the political destabilization that is certain to follow her slaying. If that turns out to be the case, it is also likely that more extremist organizations were involved, analysts say.

Within Pakistan, Osama bin Laden's global group has worked closely with more than a dozen radical fundamentalist Islamist organizations that have grown in power and mainstream popularity in recent years. Two of them, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, changed their names in recent years to avoid U.S. and Pakistani sanctions after they were designated terrorist organizations. Other groups include Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan.

All of them are Sunni Muslim-based and oppose Bhutto, in part, because she was female and from the Shiite sect. Though they have links to al-Qaida, such Sunni extremist groups have their own leaders and agendas, with potentially thousands of foot soldiers.

Another top suspect is Baitullah Masood, a Taliban commander operating in Pakistan's tribal areas, who reportedly pledged before Bhutto returned in October to dispatch suicide bombers against her, according to current and former U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials. Masood has denied that.

Complicating things are the many ties extremist groups have to Pakistan's political establishment, including elements of the government loyal to President Pervez Musharraf and Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies. Bhutto had long criticized such links, and, in the wake of her killing Thursday, some of her angry supporters accused the government of playing a role.

U.S. intelligence officials said they were investigating but could not confirm an initial claim of responsibility for the attack that reportedly came from an al-Qaida leader. An Italian Web site said Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, al-Qaida's commander in Afghanistan, told its reporter in a phone call, "We terminated the most precious American asset, which vowed to defeat [the] mujahedeen."

The Web site also said the decision to assassinate Bhutto was made by al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, in October.

Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for the Directorate of National Intelligence, said authorities were "obviously looking into" such reports but had not been able to confirm them.

Bruce Riedel, a former Pakistan expert for the CIA, the National Security Council and the State Department, said his "hunch" was that al-Qaida was responsible. "They have been trying to kill her for years," he said. "They had motive: destabilize Pakistan further. And means: dozens of martyrs ready to die."

Some U.S. intelligence experts and analysts said that there are so many tangled alliances between the extremist groups and agencies of the Islamabad government that it will be virtually impossible to get to the bottom of who killed Bhutto unless the perpetrators come forward — with proof. The FBI has offered to send investigators, but Pakistan has not responded, said Richard Kolko, an FBI spokesman.

"There are just too many different groups that both have the desire to do this and also ... the capacity to do it to make any sense of it until one of them convincingly comes out and suggests that they did it," said Daniel Markey, who oversaw South Asia policy for the State Department until February.

Markey also cast doubt on whether U.S. officials should trust their Pakistani counterparts to investigate the slaying. "I have zero confidence that the Pakistan government will get to the bottom of this, if they want to or if they don't want to, no matter who is actually responsible for it," he said.