There was always a good chance that Benazir Bhutto’s homecoming – choreographed by her party and family retainers as a whirlwind of political triumph – would end up spattered in blood. It is highly probable that the suicide-bombing of her motorcade in Karachi, which killed at least 136 people, was carried out by jihadis who this summer declared war on General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s military leader and Ms Bhutto’s new best friend. But it is hard to know: the lady has a lot of enemies and local politics have become volcanic.

What is clear is that Pakistan is not so much in limbo as a sort of political penumbra as it awaits the outcome of a manipulated transition from eight years of rule by Gen Musharraf to a regime with the general in charge and his allies in command of the army, all cloaked by a fig leaf of legitimacy to be furnished by Ms Bhutto, amnestied out of a self-imposed exile fleeing corruption charges.