Posted on 01/05/2008 10:32:36 AM PST by forkinsocket
WHEN, in May 1991, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India was killed by a suicide bomber, there was an international outpouring of grief. Recent days have seen the same with the death of Benazir Bhutto: another glamorous, Western-educated scion of a great South Asian political dynasty tragically assassinated at an election rally.
There is, however, an important difference between the two deaths: while Mr. Gandhi was assassinated by Sri Lankan Hindu extremists because of his policy of confronting them, Ms. Bhutto was apparently the victim of Islamist militant groups that she allowed to flourish under her administrations in the 1980s and 1990s.
It was under Ms. Bhutto’s watch that the Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, first installed the Taliban in Afghanistan. It was also at that time that hundreds of young Islamic militants were recruited from the madrassas to do the agency’s dirty work in Indian Kashmir. It seems that, like some terrorist equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster, the extremists turned on both the person and the state that had helped bring them into being.
While it is true that the recruitment of jihadists had started before she took office and that Ms. Bhutto was insufficiently strong — or competent — to have had full control over either the intelligence services or the Pakistani Army when she was in office, it is equally naïve to believe she had no influence over her country’s foreign policy toward its two most important neighbors, India and Afghanistan.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
One quote from the writer is at once amusing and puzzling:
firearms fashioned from the steering shafts of rickshaws and so on...
...in reference to the muslim insurgency in India during its formative stages.
Interesting. So, according to this commentator, evidently “she had it coming”. How nice of him.
This is so last year.
...a pipe gun, zip gun, also used by entry level gang members in early 1900’s.
If the author is referring to Rajiv Gandhi (no relation to the pacifist M.K Gandhi) and the LTTE, the Sri Lankan Tamil separatists, he/she couldn't have been more wrong. The LTTE is not a religious group.
I guess the author confused this assassination with that of M.K Gandhi, who was assassinated by a Hindu extremist who was enraged by Gandhi's support in the creation of Pakistan.
Bhutto was an idiot. How long would a U.S. candidate last if they ignored every security recommendation from the Secret Service? And this was Pakistan, a lawless state packed with jihadists. She was a moron and was responsible for her own demise.
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