The very real chance that she might do just that so alarmed al-Qaida and its Taliban allies that they sent their signature terrorist, one or more suicide bombers, to kill her. Instead, Bhutto survived, but some 136 Pakistanis (including more than 50 of Bhutto's own security guards) lost their lives and hundreds more were injured.
The attack in many ways is reminiscent of al-Qaida's successful suicide assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Afghan Northern Alliance, two days before 9/11. Now as then, al-Qaida senses its vital interests are threatened and is attempting to reduce the odds it must face. This time, it's because Bhutto has made it clear she is returning home to take on the terrorists who have infiltrated Pakistan's military and political leadership and are trying to incite upheaval across the country. Even before her return, and with U.S. backing, Bhutto succeeded in pressuring President Musharraf to launch what may be, at last, a serious assault against al-Qaida safehavens in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), especially in Waziristan. Bhutto understands that Musharraf's concessions there to tribal groups that harbor al-Qaida and Taliban elements cannot stand if Pakistan is to remain a sovereign state.
If Bhutto and her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) do win the elections, if they are held in February 2008 as a close associate of Musharraf told the Middle East Times, the commitment to moving against al-Qaida is likely to become even more serious. And if the Pakistani army is permitted by the powerful Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to invade al-Qaida's longtime redoubts in Pakistan's wild northwest, and if they prove up to the challenge (which is far from certain), there will be few options for the al-Qaida fighters: they can stand and fight, they can flee across the Afghan or Kashmir border, or they can flee (as before) into Iran. The first option means high casualties and the second puts al-Qaida between Musharraf's hammer and either the Indian Army's or NATO's anvil. Only the third option, fleeing into Iran, offers escape.
And therein lies both challenge and opportunity for the West. Usama bin-Laden's son, Saad, his military operations commander, Saif al-Adl, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, plus dozens of other al-Qaida fighters found a ready welcome from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) when they plunged across the Iranian border in flight from the battlefields of Tora Bora in late 2001-early 2002. Al-Zarqawi having been killed in 2006, the remainder have been living there under IRGC protection ever since, participating in widespread terrorist operations, including in Iraq, secure in their safe haven. Should a victory for Bhutto's PPP return her to power for a third term as Pakistan's prime minister, however, al-Qaida knows it will face an implacable foe whose determination to drastically diminish its operational capability inside Pakistan almost surely surpasses Musharraf's.
Bhutto herself leaves little doubt about her intentions to confront al-Qaida and the Taliban: "The terrorists are trying to take over my country, and we have to stop them."
Hence, the first of what likely will be more than one attempted assassination. The United States was instrumental in pressuring Musharraf to accept the deal that allowed Bhutto to return to Pakistan and clearly has more than a passing interest in helping to keep her alive now. Supporting Bhutto, the one candidate most likely to keep Pakistan's policies aligned with U.S. objectives not only against the international Sunni jihad, but the Khomeinist Shiite radicals as well, makes sense for U.S. policy. Were Bhutto to be even partially successful in flushing al-Qaida out of Pakistan, the reduction in al-Qaida's ability to destabilize the country or direct operations in Afghanistan and Iraq could be significant. Of potentially even greater import, a victory for the forces of stability inside Pakistan would help close off one more segment of the Iranian border to cross-border movement by Usama bin-Laden and his al-Qaida-Central comrades.
For Iran, though, a dangerous convergence of threats could see remnants of al-Qaida join forces with the clerical regime in Tehran just when Iranian scientists at Natanz are boasting that its 3,000 gas centrifuges are ready to begin full-scale uranium production. That is the level at which most experts agree it would be possible to obtain enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon in just one year. And George W. Bush would have just about one full year left in office to do something about both al-Qaida and its nuclear-weapons-seeking friends in Tehran.
In a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Studies last October, Vice President Dick Cheney said of Iran, "Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions."
The Iranian endgame may have been in sight until Musharraf upset the applecart.
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Clare Lopez is vice president of the Intelligence Summit and a former CIA officer. She speaks and writes widely on Middle East issues.