Benazir Bhutto is dead, assassinated. A grave tragedy, this could likely have even graver consequences. She was walking back to her vehicle after addressing a rally at Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh on December 27 when, according to reports, a man approached her, started shooting and then blew himself up. The bullet that entered her neck proved fatal.

That Bhutto was attacked is not surprising; it wasn’t the first time. What is surprising is that someone could so easily get close to her and had enough time to start shooting before activating his suicide belt.

Who could have done it? The answer to this obvious question, unfortunately, is not so obvious. If motive is the benchmark, culprits can range from the rightwing elements — Al-Qaeda and its affiliate groups had repeatedly threatened to take her out — to her political rivals, to elements within the establishment and intelligence agencies. Anyone, singly or in tandem, could be behind this murderous act.

Bhutto had, after the gruesome Karachi bombings, pointed the finger at what she called the “Zia remnants”; later, however, she had decided not to press with that line. But the manner in which Pakistan’s politics is configured, the PPP rank and file will entertain no other thought except that the dark deed was committed by Bhutto’s rivals — and rivals range from the army (for whom Bhutto was a bete noire) to intelligence agencies, to right-of-centre political parties, to the extremist groups on the loose.

PPP cadres are already in a foul mood and in the coming days the possibility of increasing violence in the party’s strongholds cannot be discounted. The consequences of Bhutto’s assassination have to be seen on the basis of the vertical fault-line that has historically run through Pakistan’s politics and where the army has overtly and covertly tried to do everything possible to keep the PPP on the margins since its very inception (the former director-general of Inter-Services Intelligence, Lt Gen Hamid Gul, has publicly confessed that he put together the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad in 1988 to thwart the PPP).

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