Pakistan on the edge

Benazir Bhutto's killing marks another tragedy in the terrible saga of Pakistan's most prominent political family, with her father and brother having suffered unnatural deaths before her. It also throws Pakistan into its most serious internal crisis since the secession by Bangladesh more than a third of a century ago. With rival Nawaz Sharif's own electoral rally being attacked by gunmen on the same day, the elections scheduled for January must now have a huge question mark hanging over them. If campaigning is not possible by either of the two prominent political parties, because one party's leader is dead even as the other is being attacked, the climate in the country is not one that will allow the return of democracy, long though it may have been wished for by the vast majority in the country. But if not democracy, then what? That is the terrible question that confronts Pakistan.

The cycle of violence tells its own story "" Ms Bhutto's return to Pakistan two months ago was marked by a huge bomb blast that killed 140 people in her welcoming procession. Thursday's was her first political rally after that outrage, after she postponed it once under advice from President Musharraf. She has paid with her life for wanting to campaign for high office, shortly after she and Nawaz Sharif had talked for the first time of joining forces to fight President Musharraf and to demand that he reinstate the judges whom he had sacked. On the same day, Mr Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League was also holding a rally, only to have gunmen open fire at the rally and kill several people.

President Musharraf may or may not be pleased with a crisis that forces postponement of elections, or holding one in which his own 'king's party' wins by default because the others cannot campaign or are leaderless. It should not be forgotten that Mr Musharraf was virtually forced by the US to announce that elections would be held after the lifting of emergency rule. The irony of course is that President Musharraf himself is said to be under threat from extremists. So a country that has sought to use terrorism as a state weapon against its neighbours to the east and west, and against its own political parties, now faces its hour of reckoning as the same jihadists mount an assault on all moderates in an Islamic country that Mr Musharraf had claimed would be known for its "enlightened moderation".

This is not a situation in which Pakistani civil society, including its political parties, can produce anything by way of an adequate response. The guns have to go out of Pakistan's daily life if votes are to count, and be counted. The onus for cleaning up the mess and thereby restoring normalcy has to fall on the army. Indeed, the army should get down to the task in right earnest because there will be no shortage of people looking for its hidden hand in what happened yesterday. The problem of course is that no one can be sure that the army will want to clean up sufficiently for the political parties to function with some degree of normalcy. Recent news reports speak of the army taking American help meant to help it fight al Qaeda, and using it to arm itself for battle against India. It would seem that Pakistan's stabilising force does not know which is its real enemy. Will Ms Bhutto's killing change that?