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Just 24 hours after the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's interior ministry announced what many people had suspected: al-Qaeda-linked extremists were responsible for the killing. The ministry said that one of Bhutto's assailants was a known member of the extremist organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a group it said was allied with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. If so, it could mean further evidence of a dramatic and disturbing diversification in Al-Qaeda's terrorism playbook...
...until now, the violent methods employed by al-Qaeda and its operatives around the globe have largely eschewed single assassinations or the targeting of political leaders. Instead the group has preferred creating chaos and panic through large terror strikes that claim large numbers of random victims - carnage that creates pressure and fear in the societies and governments that the jihadists view as enemies. This was evident in the turmoil and trauma unleashed by al-Qaeda's strikes against civilian populations in Madrid, London, Bali and New York. The strategy, al-Qaeda has always believed, has longer effects on collective psychologies...
...that isn't an ironclad policy - and it may be changing quickly. If the path from Bhutto's murder leads to the al-Qaeda camp, it could well indicate political assassination, once an exception to the rules, has now become a must-do in the jihadist playbook. Islamist radicals have been accused in the past of plotting to kill Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf because of his alliance with the U.S. and its war on terror. Those purported attempts produced near-misses at best. Similarly, Taliban extremists have tried and failed to assassinate Western-backed President Hamid Karzai in neighboring Afghanistan...
...those elements may have been in place ahead of the attack on Bhutto. The problem is determining exactly who exploited them. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban had both previously threatened her for her pledges to modernize Pakistan, and promises to allow U.S. forces to hunt down jihadists on Pakistani soil. Military and intelligence forces in the country also considered her a threat. (Members of both Pakistani agencies have long been accused of ties with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.) Even members of the Musharraf government viewed Bhutto with hostility in the run-up to the Jan. 8 elections...
...immediate reaction in the United Sates will be visceral: al-Qaeda killed Bhutto because she was too secular and too close to the United States, an agent of American imperialism. It will be of some comfort that the front lines of terrorism are thousands of miles away; that we are fighting "them" there rather than in lower Manhattan; that there are heroes like Bhutto ready to fight and die for democracy, moderation and rationality...