ISLAMABAD, 3 January 2008 (IRIN) - An uneasy calm has returned to Pakistan one week after the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

Nearly 60 people were killed in three days of nationwide riots, after Bhutto, a former prime minister and leader of the country's popular Pakistan People's Party, was killed on 27 December in the garrison town of Rawalpindi.

"Things are more or less back to normal," Naeem Ahmed, a 35-year-old shopkeeper in Islamabad's Aabpara market said. "But I don't know what the future holds for my country."

"Anything is possible at this point, "Mohammad Faiz Abbasi, a fruit seller warned, noting a drop in business over recent days.

Yet despite the uncertainty, life for Pakistan's over 160 million inhabitants is slowly creeping back to normal.

Streets once littered with debris and bricks in the wake of the unrest have been cleared, with most commercial markets and shops throughout the country now re-opened.

Earlier fears of price fixing or food shortages for the most part never materialised, while earlier long lines outside petrol stations have since disappeared.

Public transport services, badly affected by the violence, have now largely resumed, as have most education facilities.

But according to government sources, the damage - estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars - was substantial.

Buses, banks torched

In Karachi, the country's commercial capital, hundreds of buses and other public vehicles were torched after Bhutto's death, as were a number of banks, with railway links with the rest of the country only restored on 1 January.

Reportedly at least 65 railway stations, 40 locomotives, 150 buses and other infrastructure were badly damaged across the country, as were a number of polling stations set up for the country's upcoming parliamentary elections originally slated for next week.

Elections postponed

At least 13 polling stations were burnt in Bhutto's home province of Sindh alone as violent protests gripped the country; a contributing factor in the government's decision to postpone elections until 18 February.

Pakistan's Election Commission maintains the postponement will give it time to complete arrangements that it says were disrupted as a result of Bhutto's assassination, including the destruction of voting equipment and ballot boxes

Speaking in a TV address to the nation on 2 January, President Pervez Musharraf, said army and paramilitary troops would deal forcefully with any renewed violence and appealed for national reconciliation leading to free and fair elections.

Concern over security

Meanwhile, there is growing concern, with the security situation in the country already tense, that any further delays may serve only to heighten tensions further. "I really don't know what will happen now," Imran Mumtaz, a 29-year-old Rawalpindi resident remarked. "It seems to be just getting worse."

In 2007 Pakistan was marred by a string of suicide attacks largely targeting members of the country's military or security forces following the government's storming of Islamabad's Red Mosque earlier in July, where religious scholars and students had been staging an aggressive campaign to enforce Sharia law in the capital.

At the same time, an ongoing military operation in Pakistan's western tribal areas adjacent to Afghanistan against Taliban militants has resulted in many local residents fleeing their homes - even reportedly across the border.

In some parts of the country's North West Frontier Province (NWFP), particularly in areas badly affected by the 2005 earthquake, aid and reconstruction efforts had to be scaled back earlier this year following growing incidences of threats and intimidation by extremist elements in the area.

In fact, over the summer, many non-governmental organisations working in the NWFP expressed concern over their ability to remain fully operational amid growing insecurity in the country, prompting them to curtail their activities or suspend them altogether.

"As NGOs we are very much soft targets," Babar Aziz, deputy director of operations for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), told IRIN in Islamabad at the time.

ds/at/cb

© IRIN. All rights reserved. More humanitarian news and analysis: http://www.IRINnews.org

IRIN news