Earlier today, Tim Blair laughingly reported on a senior Pakistani shi'ite cleric falling victim to a suicide bomber - presumably fielded by his sectarian rivals. The manner of this man's demise carries a strong element of poetic justice, considering he allegedly supported Hamas and Hezbollah - both terrorist groups not unfamiliar with "martyrdom operations". However, I do not feel as jolly about this cleric's death as many of the commenters on the linked Blair thread. Certainly, when a prominent Hamas and Hezbollah supporter gets his comeuppance in the so-very-appropriate form of a zealot with a bomb strapped to his gut, one could be forgiven for revelling in schadenfreude. Trouble is, such an event is precisely the sort of thing that could trigger a large-scale Islamist movement that overthrows Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf, or adds further impetus to ongoing efforts to assassinate him.

The Economist's recent article on Pakistan is a timely reminder that the West's current alliance with that nation is conditional in the extreme - and almost wholly reliant on Musharraf - whose death could not come soon enough for a large number of people he rules over. If he is assassinated, the General's successor might well be cut from a far more fundamentalist cloth. If this circumstance arises, a nuclear-armed Pakistan becomes an even more alarming prospect; raising the stakes over Kashmir and making nuclear weapons proliferation more likely. The risk of a nuclear weapon being detonated in a Western city is proportionate to the greenness of Musharraf's replacement.

If the Pakistani leadership was to fall into fundamentalist hands, this would represent a massive setback in the global struggle against international Islamic terrorism. The mission in Afghanistan would be deeply complicated, for a start. Then there's the problem of Pakistan becoming an even greater hub for Islamofascists. I will stop there; the list of conceivable heinous consequences could fill many pages. Unfortunately, "our boy" in Islamabad has made a lot of bitter enemies during his rule, and - according to the Economist article linked above - has also governed in a way that makes a post-Musharraf Pakistan a very ugly prospect indeed. Musharraf's removal or death would likely be catastrophic to the interests of those nations struggling against Islamofascism.

Certainly, the Pakistani cleric copped it most aptly. However, any gloating at the nature of his death may well be overshadowed by wider consequences relating to it.