The cold-blooded assassination of Benazir Bhutto today has shattered what little prospects there were for constructing a moderate political centre in Pakistan capable of dealing with the extremist threat to the nation’s territorial sovereignty and political integrity.

This evening in Rawalpindi, the jihadi forces straddling the Pak-Afghan border kept their word to kill Bhutto and trump the political process—in the form of general elections due in a couple of weeks—aimed at restoring a measure of representative rule in Pakistan.

India, however, appears a long way from appreciating let alone dealing with the consequences of the profound structural crisis has enveloped Pakistan. Last night, no Indian leader, whether in government or Opposition, could go beyond expressing shock and condemn one of the most brutal acts of political extremism in the sub-continent’s history.

New Delhi’s accumulated historical experience of dealing with Islamabad can no longer be a guide to India’s future engagement with Pakistan whose organising principles are now being shaken to the core.

India has dealt with strong military dictators and vacillating civilian leaders in Pakistan. It has never faced a rudderless Pakistan that is in the danger of losing control to extremist forces.

But first to Pakistan itself. It was the very need to decisively confront the growing clout of religious extremism in the northwestern parts of the subcontinent — which threatens to return Afghanistan to the Taliban and push the Army and the state out of Pakistan’s Western borderlands — that resulted in Benazir Bhutto’s risky decision to return.

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