“I know some people will think it is naïve to return despite death threats.
But if you believe in a cause you have to pay the price.”
                                             — Benazir Bhutto

Whatever else the mind-numbing killing of Benazir Bhutto means for Pakistan’s future, there is little doubt that politics in Pakistan has undergone a cataclysmic shift.
In fact, it prompted even a supercilious Musharraf to refer to Benazir’s death as “martyrdom” and her avowed “mission” (rooting out terrorism) as the one, which he, too, espoused as his own in a nationally televised address that dilated on the unrest in the country following the assassination, poll postponement and his decision to call in a team of Scotland Yard for investigation. 
In her death, the country has lost its most potent political player, who remained at least for its vast moderate and secular population as well as the world outside their best hope. Given the vitiated international climate vis-à-vis the war-on-terror for Islamabad, deep polarisation within the country and institutional instability, the loss -- not just for Pakistan but for the world too is colossal.
The debate over who and what killed her and, before that, the chilling present and clear danger to Benazir’s life from extremists is a matter of detail that pales before the huge setback it has wrought for the forces of moderation in the fight against terror.
Even so Benazir’s death was like a chronicle foretold. She had escaped a bigger suicide attack upon her return from exile in Karachi little over two months ago -- a manifestation of the threat to her life, which extremists had pledged to carry out with fatal consequences.  
These threats emerged following her much publicized deal with the Musharraf regime, which enabled her to return home and take part in the elections in exchange for allowing the beleaguered general to get himself re-elected as president.
While the opposition resigned en bloc from the parliament to block the re-election in a year that saw a rejuvenated judiciary challenge Musharraf’s authority, Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party merely abstained from voting, giving an easy run to the general.
The extremists were annoyed with Benazir for her unqualified support to the Neo-con war on terror and willingness to play ball with the Bush Administration, a policy that remains hugely unpopular but which was seen by her party as a politically correct course in order to win back power.
Benazir’s apparent grandstanding in offering to give International Atomic Energy Agency access to nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan to probe his alleged role in nuclear proliferation and allow American troops to enter the Pakistani hinterland to take out Al Qaeda militants sparked outrage even in the intelligentsia back home.
However, the general consensus was that she remained the country’s biggest hope in pushing Musharraf for a transition to genuine democracy, which is what she professed in defence of her move to negotiate with the military ruler.
The Bush Administration had been engaged in hectic diplomacy for more than a year to arrange a political marriage between Musharraf and Benazir, a factor that contributed in alienating many fringe supporters of Bhutto into searching for an alternative.
To Benazir’s credit, she had managed to create space for other political aspirants despite her initial attempt at a solo flight, notably former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who, has shown greater resilience and will to fight the junta’s alleged moves to steal the elections.
In fact, the two held a detailed meeting last month and after failing to follow on Sharif’s suggestion to boycott the polls, decided to launch a joint struggle in the event of a rigged poll to oust Musharraf.
The irony of Bhutto’s death will not be lost on many given that if she had agreed with Sharif on a boycott, she may still have been alive.
For much of Pakistan’s democratic history, politics has been dominated by the Bhutto factor: Benazir successfully carried on the legacy of her father where only two kinds of forces were arraigned in a political contest — those who loved Bhutto or the ones who loathed him. A string of military rulers tried to break the corollary without success.
Benazir was favoured to have a decisive say in the formation of the next government, especially after the Musharraf regime successfully maneuvered to oust Sharif from the electoral race.
An inescapable aspect of the near-Greek tragedy governing the Bhutto family is how three members of the twice-elected prime minister’s immediate family also fell prey to such grand ill fortune.
Benazir’s father, the country’s first popularly elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was ousted by a hand-picked army chief, who later connived with a judiciary to have him sentenced to death over disputed and unproven charges of an opponent’s murder in 1979.
Benazir then lost her younger brother, Shah Nawaz, who died in France seven years later after being, allegedly, poisoned.
The last surviving male member of the nucleus family, Benazir’s elder brother, Murtaza, who staked a claim for the mantle of their father for many years, was gunned down outside his residence in Karachi eleven years ago in a shootout with the police under his own sister’s government.
Benazir’s mother, Nusrat, who lives in Dubai, is also in an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s. Benazir now becomes the first woman of the Bhutto family to have lost her life in tragic circumstances. The only other surviving member of the nucleus family, other than Nusrat, is Benazir’s sister Sanam, who has remains in the shadows, choosing a totally apolitical life.
The Benazir saga is enigmatic and, at once, more fascinating than any screen epic. Father Bhutto, who initiated the rites of passage for her, was certain of a secure place in the annals of history for his daughter.
He once said of her: “Benazir will be more popular than Indira Gandhi — and even more successful.” The inspirations were purposely nurtured when Bhutto took along Benazir to the Simla Summit in 1972 to have her meet the Indian ‘Iron Lady’ in person.
Little would Bhutto have known that his Oxford, Harvard-educated daughter would tread the same tragic path as her father — and with little success.
Benazir may have been the first woman prime minister of a Muslim country but was twice dismissed as premier on corruption charges, which she fought all her political life.
Ironically, it was only recently that corruption cases against were “washed” clean courtesy a controversial ordinance passed by Musharraf on the premise of national reconciliation but effectively to win her support for his continued stay in power.
Regardless of what modus operandi appealed to her — and she took many decisions that surprised even her family what to talk of political adversaries, Benazir remained a force to reckon with right till the end.