WATERLOO, Canada — Born amid the mass killings of partition in 1947, Pakistan has never escaped the cycle of violence, volatility and bloodshed. Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007) is the latest casualty of that murderous cycle.

Many features of her life and death are common to South Asia: birth into a famous political dynasty; political triumphs punctuated with personal failings and assassinations of family members; the weight of carrying the hopes and aspirations of millions of followers against the temptations of turning the institutions and treasury of the state into personal fiefdoms; and political parties that are vehicles to personal and family political and financial advancement instead of repositories of competing visions and instruments of national development.

The murderers of 9/11 came out of the mountainous caves of Afghanistan where the Taliban regime — a monstrous creation of the U.S.- and Saudi-backed mujahedin against the Soviet-installed regime and of Pakistan's search for strategic depth against archenemy India — had nurtured them as a potent weapon against all infidels.