Benazir Bhutto, in her recent public speeches, vehemently opposed this religious right wing-military nexus in the Pakistani establishment and promised to save her country and its people from this spreading malignancy. Furthermore, she even indicated that she would re-open the A.Q. Khan episode, thereby revealing the murky role of the Pakistan ‘fauj’ in the clandestine nuclear proliferation network that has been conveniently swept under the carpet and away from public gaze. This threat may have been the final straw that led to her elimination.

Bhutto’s assassination has not only created a void in Pakistani politics, it has brought into stark relief the multiple security challenges that the nation and the region have to grapple with — from spreading jihadi fervour to the safety of nuclear weapons. The only viable option now is for President Musharraf to do what he did after 9/11 when, under the Bush diktat, he made a dramatic U-turn as regards Pakistan’s long-standing Afghanistan/Taliban policy. The time has come for the Pakistan Army GHQ in Rawalpindi to effect a U-turn in their domestic policy that goes back to the Ayub Khan years. The Pakistan ‘fauj’ that has appropriated the state unto itself and defined national interest in a corrosive and divisive manner by distorting the tenets of Islam and the legitimacy of the Kalashnikov, must begin a long mea culpa. It must return the state to its rightful owners — the much abused Pakistani people. If this happens, Benazir Bhutto’s premature death would not have been in vain.

... contd.