The assassination of Benazir Bhutto on December 27 has brought light to the major issues that are confronting Pakistan today.  An international consensus is emerging about the state of Pakistan with different views from different people. In the last few years, the economy of Pakistan was booming largely due to high inflow of external aid, but all this aid was used in arms purchases and very little went into economic development. It was one of the issue that Benazir was about to expose.

The question resolving today is whether political institutions based on electoral politics can be established in Pakistan? Most of the American political analysts believe that democracy is the only way to save Pakistan. The military rule has not allowed the growth of democracy in Pakistan but has sufficiently marginalised the political process in Pakistan. After the 9/11 incident Pakistan emerged as the nerve centre for terrorism and violence across the globe. US is now putting considerable amount of pressure on Musharraf to facilitate early elections. In the process,a deal was struck between Benazir and Musharaf to hold elections at an early date and allow various political parties to get back their leaders to start political activity. Benazir’s death has given way to the violence that erupted after her assassination created a civil war like situation forcing the Election Commission of Pakistan to postpone the elections for a later date.  One is not certain when the elections will take place and to what extend these elections will be allowed to remain fair and free.

The second question would be what will be the future of Armed Forces in the Pakistani polity? President Parvez Musharraf as a former General and Chief of the Pakistani Army symbolises the predominance of the Armed Forces in Pakistan. In sixty years of independence of Pakistan, they ruled the country for more than three decades. In the process they destroyed political culture in Pakistan totally. At one point of time Field Marshal Ayub Khan called the politicians of Pakistan as a bunch of 'rascals'. Gen. Zia-ul-Haq too held similar opinion about Pakistani politicians and played with them in his bonsai democracy experiment. To demonstrate his contempt for politi-cians Gen. Zia decided to hang an elected Prime Minister, Z.A. Bhutto father of Benazir, onsorne frivolous charges. He felt the politicians have corrupted the country and it requires a heavy doss of Islamic ideology. In this backdrop he created and nurtured the radical Islamic groups. Parvez Musharraf followed the footsteps o f his prede-cessorby courting radical Islamic groups and debarring many political leaders on one pretext or the other.
In this situation it will be difficult for the Armed Forces to give up their predominance in the   polity just  to   facilitate democracy in Pakistan. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that Nawaz Sharifs and PPP's demand that Musharraf should resign and Armed Forces to go back to barracks seems to be highly unlikely. In this emerging uncertain situation, how the power will be shared between Armed Forces and political parties is to be seen.

The third issue will be to what extend radical Islamic groups will be disciplined in the new dispensation that is being contemplated by various friends and well wishers of Pakistan. Till now the radical Islamic groups have become part and parcel of Pakistan state craft and are playing an important role in shaping up the future of Pakistan as they perceived. These radical Islamic groups have already declared that democracy is not suited to an Islamic country like Pakistan.

The first effort to discipline radical Islamic groups started when the Pakistani troops made a forceful entry into Lai Masjidin July 2007. Though the Pakistani army succeeded in vacating Lai Masjid from radical groups, it has left sufficient scars on the Pakistani polity. There were also reports that the Armed Forces were sharply divided on the military action on Lai Masjid. Since then onwards one could notice the brooding problems in Pakistani politics. Finally, the radical Islamic groups have demonstrative their capabilities to retaliate by assassinating Benazir and forcing the elections to be deffered for the time being. All the indications available today show, that the radical Islamic groups will not allow elections to be held in Pakistan. By a chance, even if the elections are held they will ensure that they will come into power either directly or through their proxies. In such a development on which side the Armed Forces will be crucial.
The last factor would be the role of external powers including extra regional powers like the US. Rightly or wrongly many in the Islamic world perceive that Islam is under threat because of the US. They cite a number of examples starting from injustice that has been done to Palestinians to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The systematic propaganda by the radical Islamic groups con-vinced the common man in the Islamic world that there is a lot of truth in what the radical Islamic groups are saying. In this situation the democratic experiment in Pakistan is being seen as a handy work of the US to destroy the close relationship between them and the Armed Forces. In fact they believe that a Taliban type of Government is better suited to Pakistan than democracy.

From the Indian prospective a quick solution has to be found to all these questions confronting Pakistan after Benazir's death. In the Indian assessment any delay in finding answers to these questions may result in a chaotic situation in Pakistan that may result in sub division and fragmentation of that country.