In recent years, Pakistan has been the home of banks that wired money for the Sept 11 plot, been the chief source of illicit nuclear proliferation, offered a tribal-area haven for planners of worldwide terrorism, abetted the reconstitution of the Taliban and educated many a suicide bomber in Islamic religious schools.

At the same time, President Pervez Musharraf, in power since a 1999 coup, has received about $10 billion in US aid, much of it to reinforce the Pakistani military in fighting al-Qaeda, the Taliban and global jihadism in South Waziristan and other tribal areas.

If a US policy was ever broken, this is it. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has given the coup de grace to this botched American attempt to manage a nuclear-armed Islamic state.

But some things need no elucidation. First, the United States, out of misplaced deference to Musharraf, failed to secure Bhutto the protection she was demanding.

Second, al-Qaeda has turned some of its attention from Afghanistan to the richer rewards of upending Pakistan.
Third, Musharraf’s ambivalence has hurt US interests, culminating in a murder that shames America. He has safeguarded the nukes but never ensured that his military or intelligence services break from their Taliban baby. This double game must end.

Fourth, years of strong economic growth have expanded a Pakistani middle class that wants democracy’s rule of law. Radical Islamist parties constitute a minority: unlike in the Shah’s Iran, democratic forces outweigh the theocratic.

Fifth, the US must redirect policy toward forthright support for democracy. The Bush administration has seen the military as a bulwark against extremism. The true bulwark, as Bhutto knew, is the middle class. Barnett Rubin of New York University observed, “If Afghanistan is ready for democracy, Pakistan certainly is”.

Sixth, the absence of engagement with Iran leaves the US overdependent on Pakistan for influence in Afghanistan. A post-Sept 11 tragedy has been the US failure to build on the Iranian opening that the overthrow of a shared enemy, the Taliban in Kabul, created.

Bhutto’s loss is devastating, comparable with Yitzhak Rabin’s. Her Kennedylike family tragedy leaves the fathomless void of what might have been.

Of grace and conviction her unusual fusion of East and West was formed. Only Pakistani democracy can avenge, in part, the disappearance of the rare bridge she offered and offset the American mistakes that led to this loss.

The New York Times