Shortly after former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007, a retired brigadier general and a spokesperson from the interior ministry, who had reportedly been given his talking points from the director of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), told the press she died from the impact of an injury caused by hitting her head against the lever of the custom-designed escape hatch of her vehicle. He further alleged that Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban at the time, and Al Qaeda had plotted to kill her. He provided a telephone transcript where the Taliban leader was heard congratulating another man. Not only media scepticism but anger from within Bhutto’s PPP accusing the government of a cover-up followed these claims.

The quick clean-up of the crime site and Bhutto’s vehicle, and the refusal of the police to allow the hospital to perform an autopsy, appeared in contradiction to what is police practice. In the aftermath, many questioned the cause of Bhutto’s death. Some blamed Gen. (retd) Musharraf for inadequate security; politicians said she had been shot and that terrorists recruited allegedly by the ISI had been used for the assassination; even Bhutto’s own entourage and party members were not free of blame. But the conspiracy to kill Bhutto, including the main actors behind her assassination, have never been found, in spite of a Scotland Yard investigation, and the evidence and witness accounts collected.

Heraldo Munoz, the former Chilean ambassador to the UN, was asked by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in January 2009 to lead the international commission into the assassination of Bhutto, at the request of the Pakistani government. He was assisted by two commissioners, the former attorney general of Indonesia, Marzuki Darusman, and former deputy commissioner of the Irish Police, Peter Fitzgerald. In his book, Getting Away with Murder, Munoz relates the circumstances that led to Bhutto’s murder, but recognises the limits of the investigation — and the complex role of Pakistan’s police, intelligence services and the military, the latter hesitant to talk directly to investigation teams.

Noting that as a tribunal they were powerless to establish criminal responsibilities, Munoz was unable to “force anyone to testify,” and knew that his “powers would be limited, and public expectations … high.” This essentially took away any expectation of new findings, needed for impact in this book and the UN investigation report at the time. Public expectations might have been high when the report was released, but questions remained unanswered and the information hardly provided revelatory details when it came to new analysis of the (minimal) evidence collected at the crime scene, and the motives and actors responsible.

Unsolved political murders are not unheard of in Pakistan. In 1988, when Ziaul Haq was killed in a plane crash along with American and Pakistani officials, there were conspiracy theories about the CIA and even the KGB, but the case was never solved. Similarly, the 1996 murder of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, Benazir’s brother who was gunned down outside his family home in Karachi, remains unsolved.

Past civilian governments, including Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s years, are discussed briefly in Getting Away with Murder, although Pakistani readers might not completely buy the description of a politician who introduced “social and economic changes and campaigned against the military-religious alliance that ruled Pakistan for years.” While historical context and the working of Pakistani politics are necessary and lead into Bhutto’s death, with Munoz explaining her relationship with the West and Pakistan’s unstable relationship with America, it is done in a quick, cursory manner which makes it less appealing. This part of political history, including the workings of volatile governments ousted by the military and the treatment of various political actors, has been vigorously analysed by Pakistan experts: in Anatol Lieven’s Pakistan: A Hard Country, and more recently, in Husain Haqqani’s Magnificent Delusions.

Getting Away with Murder incorrectly cites mid-August 1996 as the date when Bin Laden was planning a meeting at a Khost training camp (“one of the most active terrorist bases in the world” said President Clinton in 1998) when in fact it was August 1998. Clinton saw it as an opportunity to send in cruise missiles in retaliation for the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 the same year. Clinton knew that the ISI used some of these camps to train fighters for Kashmir and that it was here that Bin Laden and Al Qaeda trained insurgents and so didn’t want to warn the Pakistanis in case their sources cleared the camps. Similar consensus to keep Pakistan out of the loop was reportedly reached within the Obama administration before the Abbottabad raid.

In many ways, Pakistan’s politics and institutions work with the blessing of the ‘establishment’ that comprises the power of the military, leading business supporters and the various arms of the intelligence organisation. Over decades, civilian governments and political parties have learnt to co-exist and understand the workings of the establishment, keeping the balance of power intact and beneficial for the political party in government. It would be detrimental to cross the establishment is what is widely understood. Munoz writes that the ISI “has actively intervened in political elections, organised political parties and alliances, and created and managed radical Islamic groups. It draws in the intelligence capacity of the three military service branches in addition to its own autonomous strength. Formally, the ISI communicates information to the prime minister, but in practice it reports to the chief of army staff.”

Already controversial in its claims, Carlotta Gall’s forthcoming book, The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014, also discusses, among other findings, the role of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. Gall, who works with The New York Times, spent two years trying to figure out whether the ISI knew of Bin Laden’s whereabouts although they would deny the accusation: “According to one inside source, the ISI actually ran a special desk assigned to handle Bin Laden. It was operated independently, led by an officer who made his own decisions and did not report to a superior. He handled only one person: Bin Laden. I was sitting at an outdoor cafe when I learned this, and I remember gasping, though quietly so as not to draw attention. (Two former senior American officials later told me that the information was consistent with their own conclusions.) This was what Afghans knew, and Taliban fighters had told me, but finally someone on the inside was admitting it. The desk was wholly deniable by virtually everyone at the ISI — such is how super secret intelligence units operate — but the top military bosses knew about it, I was told.”

When Munoz and his team came to Islamabad they “soon discovered a country deeply skeptical of authority and the justice system because of widespread political corruption, abundant behind-the-scenes political deal-making, and the regular impunity that had met previous unsolved political assassinations.” Sharing details of the investigation, Munoz is of the view that “the police deliberately botched the investigation into Bhutto’s assassination.” Why that happened and whether they acted on the behest of a more powerful institution, especially as Police Chief Saud Aziz did not act independently when he gave the order to hose down the crime scene, remains unanswered. Munoz refers to “the suspicion in Pakistani society, and in the international community, that the ISI, in some shape or form, was involved in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.” Many, including Washington, found it convenient to accept that Baitullah Mehsud and Al Qaeda were directly involved in plotting and executing Bhutto’s assassination. Although the US and UK may have brokered her return as a deal with Musharraf, they failed to guarantee her security, despite Bhutto’s persistent appeals and concerns that her life would be in danger from various actors wanting her out of the way. There is an unsettled feel to this book — like the UN report submitted in April 2010 which came up with nothing revelatory, concluding that Benazir Bhutto’s killer was a teenage suicide bomber recruited by Pakistani Taliban allegedly with support from certain elements within the security establishment.

In October 1986, when Robert Gates, the former US secretary of defence, was the deputy director of the CIA (1982-1986) he visited mujahideen training camps in north-western Pakistan near the Afghan border, accompanied by members of the ISI, to meet fighters wearing “brand-new parkas” and “learning to shoot rocket-propelled grenades.” Gates was there to convince the ISI to get generous and provide new American-gifted Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to the Tajiks and other non-Pakhtuns fighting the Soviets. He assumed then that they knew the CIA was funding the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and through Pakistan because Ziaul Haq wouldn’t have it any other way.

In his detailed memoir, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, Gates retraces key US foreign policy decisions; dissention within the Obama administration around the new wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; and the American support for Afghan militants back in the days to defeat the Soviets. Gates writes that “these ghosts” or past experiences with Afghanistan, its culture and tribal and ethnic politics, should have taught the Obama administration the need to create a strong Afghan government and not walk away again. But lessons have not been learnt. In fact, Gates was never in full support of risking additional American forces in 2007 and though he endorsed the military defending a troop surge in Afghanistan, he was closer to Vice President Joe Biden’s strategy of eliminating Al Qaeda and staying away from long-term civilian assistance. His account details divisions between the White House (Biden’s counter-terrorism plan) and the military (counter-insurgency strategy and troop surge adopted by the generals and the State Department) on the Af-Pak strategy, resulting in ill-informed policies, and leading to a resurgence of the Taliban (see Bob Woodward’s Obama’s Wars).

As most American policymakers would reiterate to Pakistani leaders, Musharraf, Zardari and now Sharif, Gates writes that he wanted to convince Pakistan to wipe out militant safe havens that fuelled the war in Afghanistan, but quickly realised that “the real power in Pakistan is the military.” Pakistan’s symbiotic relationship with America and its position as a key ally is questioned by Gates, explaining that he might have defended Pakistan before the Congress, because they needed to keep the Karachi route open for Nato supplies to Afghanistan, but became resigned early on that Pakistan was not an ally with its policy of supporting militant groups that sent fighters across the border. Referring to a January 2010 visit to Islamabad which was his second and last one to Pakistan, he concludes that while the Americans were focused on fighting militancy, Pakistanis wanted to retain their influence in Afghanistan at any cost and that’s why they never severed their ties with the Taliban. Gates’ shared Obama’s perception of working with Pakistan: there was little point working on the Pakistan that supported terrorists and proxy wars.

More interesting is corroboration from a former defence secretary that the American administration did not inform the ISI or seek help with the Abbottabad raid, learning from past experience that the Al Qaeda chief might be tipped off. “I worried that Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence was aware of where Osama bin Laden was and that there might be rings of security around the compound that we knew nothing about or, at minimum, that ISI might have more eyes on the compound than we could know,” he writes. The Obama administration, having experienced growing anti-Americanism in Pakistan after the Raymond Davis episode, could not risk the Pakistani military showing up during the OBL operation. Gates was informed by Vice Admiral William McRaven, in charge of the operation, that if they confronted the Pakistani military, US commandos would just hunker down and wait for a “diplomatic extraction” and “not shoot any Pakistanis.”

Gates’ memoirs point to the history of misunderstanding between America and the Af-Pak region, moments of acceptance of the other, interspersed with lingering differing priorities, especially dangerous as the US reduces its footprint in South Asia and the Congress opts for non-interventionist strategies with decreased aid commitments.

With changes in the Afghan theatre, and given Pakistan’s strategic priorities that make it a disliked proxy backer of militant forces, the region could predictably face more violence, corruption and insecurity. Clearing its own backyard of extremism, guarding its internal security, managing its border with Afghanistan and working on peaceful coexistence with India is not a priority for Pakistan, when compared to interference in Afghanistan’s political process, running the Saudi race and negotiating with non-state actors that threaten its economics, politics and social acceptance.

Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War

(Memoirs)

By Robert M. Gates

Knoff, New York

ISBN 0307959473

640pp.

Getting Away With Murder: Benazir Bhutto’s Assassination and the Politics of Pakistan

(Politics)

Heraldo Munoz

W.W. Norton and Company, US

ISBN 0393062910

272pp.