> So, gave them weapons -- i.e., fostered, not created.
Fair enough. But difference in quantity is difference in kind. Without our billions "fostering," the muj would be lacking several of the qualities that made them the muj of today. There'd be 100 times less of them and they wouldn't have any experience or access to sophisticated weaponry. And most of all, they wouldn't have become a transnational force. They would just be locals, and only a local threat. It was Saudi Arabia, under our encouragement, piping in not only money but all of its radicals that were making life tough at home by assassinating Fahd and taking over Mecca that really created -- I don't think that is too strong a work -- the contemporary international terrorist threat, distinct and different from terrorism as a tactic directed at occupiers.
And it was this template that created the current Kashmir situation, as Pakistan followed this model to pipe its troublemakers in Kashmir, and to vacuum them up from all over the world.
Without our fostering, Kashmir would be a matter for the locals. And would be a very different affair. And neither Kashmir nor Pakistan would be as distinctively fucked as they are today.
Michael