ISLAMABAD: Benazir Bhutto was the target of threats from virtually all of the militant groups who make Pakistan their home- from al-Qaida to homegrown terrorists to tribal insurgents on the Afghan border.
Her assassination after a rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where the country's military and intelligence services are based, also focused anger and suspicion on the government of President Pervez Musharraf.
The former prime minister blamed al-Qaida, the Taliban and homegrown militants for an October 18 suicide bombing that tore through a procession welcoming her back from exile to lead her opposition party in parliamentary elections.
But she accused militant "sympathisers" in Musharraf's administration of backing the attempt on her life. Bhutto's supporters chanted "Killer, Killer, Musharraf!" outside the hospital where she was pronounced dead yesterday.
Musharraf blamed Islamic terrorists, pledging that "we will not rest until we eliminate these terrorists and root them out."
Al-Qaida Number 2 Ayman al-Zawahri decried Bhutto's return in a video message this month and called for attacks on all the candidates in the January 8 elections.
And according to Bhutto, several Pakistanis arrested in an assassination attempt during her second term in the mid-1990s said they were following Osama bin Laden's orders.
The US-backed, British-educated leader who pledged to redouble Pakistan's fight against Islamic militancy was also despised by Taliban-style radicals backed by tribes along the border with Afghanistan, where American forces are battling rising militant violence.
Baitullah Mehsud, a tribal warlord in the Waziristan region, was quoted in a Pakistani newspaper as saying that he would welcome Bhutto's return with suicide bombers. He later denied that in statements to local television and newspaper reporters.
Khalid Khwaja, a former Pakistani intelligence officer and self-declared friend of bin Laden, said Bhutto "was very openly threatening these tribal people".
"Naturally some of them could have done it," he said. "She was certainly hated to that degree by those elements who are victims of the American terror."
Bhutto also was labeled an infidel by groups such as Jaish-ul Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Hezb-ul Mujahedeen, which were spawned by Pakistan's military and intelligence services to take on neighboring India in the disputed Kashmir region.
The groups later aligned themselves with al-Qaida and have vowed to battle foreign troops in Afghanistan, and wage war against the Pakistani military for its support of the US-led anti-terror campaign. Some of their leaders said Bhutto deserved to die for her threats to crush militants.
