Editor’s Note: It’s been one year since an assassin shot and killed Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s first female prime minister. To commemorate Bhutto’s death, Vishakha N. Desai, a regular contributor to wowOwow and president of the Asia Society, remembers Bhutto and ponders Pakistan’s political future.

Although Benazir Bhutto had been a frequent guest of the Asia Society in the late 1980s, when she first came to power, my first face-to-face meeting with her didn’t take place until July 2007.

It was clear by then that she was preparing to go back to Pakistan with the support of the U.S. government. Having heard so much about her beauty and elegant demeanor, I wasn’t disappointed. Her face, as always, was perfectly made up. If you just saw her photo, you would think that she had not changed much from the 1980s. What was different was her resolve to go back to Pakistan and her clarity about what she needed to do. She knew that she had to tackle two serious challenges: First, she needed to restore democratically elected government by dealing directly with the military dictatorship of President Pervez Musharraf. And, second, it was imperative that Bhutto tackle the issue of increasing power of Islamic fundamentalist groups.

Though a daunting task, Bhutto knew how to handle the first problem: Work with U.S. officials to force Musharraf’s hand to let her return and call for new elections. She would then be free to, hopefully, mobilize her party – and indeed the Pakistani people – and clinch the elections. The second problem proved to be more of a challenge and Bhutto clearly wasn’t sure how to handle the fundamentalist elements in Pakistan.

When asked, she gave a standard answer about the power of democratic process and the potential of education to eradicate radicalism of disenchanted youth. It was evident that her historically problematic relationship with the army, going back to the hanging of her father, former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, would make the possibility of her gaining any control over the military very difficult.

When she went back to Pakistan in October, 2007, she was confident that through her charisma she would win the political battle, but she was unsure as to how or whether she would be successful against the radical faction of the society. This radical faction was one initially supported by her government, her military and the American allies against the Russians in Afghanistan. Bhutto was particularly worried about key figures in the army and their unwillingness to provide suitable protection for her. And, as we all know by now, on December 27 Bhutto lost her life to the second problem. Politics she could handle, but terrorist forces proved to be more potent than ever.

A year later, Pakistan seems less governable and more on the brink of becoming a failed state. Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto’s husband and a man once nationally famous for corruption scandals, has become the president of the country. And things aren’t looking very promising.