To begin ... I am a critic of the New York Times. I have the benefit of remembering how great of a newspaper it was 20 -25 years ago. So when my friends here me criticize its present day political bias .... I can always sense them saying to each other .... oh no .... here he goes again.But the New York Times published a great article on Bhutto in its Friday edition, and it held back no punches.
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.
Also
By 1993, during Ms. Bhutto’s second term, the Arab and Afghan jihadis (and their Inter-Services Intelligence masters) had really begun to take over the uprising from the locals. It was at this stage that the secular leadership of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front began losing ground to hard-line Islamist outfits like Hizbul Mujahedeen.
The entire article is here.
My Comment: Pakistan is now one of the main focal points for international terrorism and Islamic Jihad. It is also probably the sanctuary for Osama Bin Ladin and his many lieutenants.
Did she reap the whirlwind that she helped create? My gut tells me that she did. But my gut also tells me that we in the West supported her because she was the lesser of many evils. Because of our support are we going to reap a whirlwind also? When I think about it there are no easy solutions.