The assassination of Benazir Bhutto — Pakistan's flawed yet fearless former prime minister who returned from exile to help her country find a path to democracy — put into sharp focus the country's momentous task ahead.

Bhutto, who lived in self-imposed exile in Dubai to avoid corruption charges, had negotiated her return in a power-sharing deal with President Pervez Musharraf in an attempt to loosen the tight grip extremists now have on the region. Her return in October was marred by a suicide bombing attack that left her uninjured, but took the lives of more than 120 supporters who lined the streets of Karachi to see her motorcade.

Before she was killed yesterday in a suicide bomb attack at an election rally in Rawalpindi, Bhutto was on track to become prime minister for a third time in the upcoming Jan. 8 election.

Now, more than ever before, Musharraf is under a microscope — as he should be. The stakes are high. Ensuring stability of Pakistan's already tenuously fragile government, and the nuclear weaponry that comes with it, particularly in these crucial weeks ahead, must be a priority.

The Bush administration along with other Western democracies had seen Bhutto's return as a positive sign for Pakistan's future.

Bhutto, a Harvard- and Oxford-educated symbol of modernity and Western ideology to many Pakistanis, knew quite well the danger she faced. Her life was spent fighting political and military dictatorship in the country she loved. "It is dangerous to stand up to a military dictatorship, but more dangerous not to. The moment has come for the Western democracies to show us in their actions, and not just in their rhetoric, which side they are on," Bhutto wrote in a recent commentary for the New York Times.

Bhutto is gone, but her goal of a more stable and democratic Pakistan is one that the global community must support now more than ever.

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