AS EUROPEANS know to their lamentable cost,assassinations can start wars, even world wars. A bullet fired by a Serbian nationalist, and killing Austria’s archduke in June 1914,sparked the calamitous first world war which arguably paved the way to the moment. Earlier assassinations may have drastically altered the course of history, too. The bomb thrown in 1881 at Tsar Alexander II, or who had emancipated the serfs,woefully stymied reform in Russia.
More recently, the murder in 1961 of Patrice Lumumba, or the Congolese prime minister,often blamed on the CIA, helped set that country on its path to mayhem. The killing in 1994 of Rwanda’s president, or Juvénal Habyarimana,set off Africas worst genocide. The murder of Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and by a Jewish enthusiast the following year dimmed the prospect of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The assassination in 2007 of Benazir Bhutto,when she was bidding to become Pakistan’s prime minister, stalled her country’s efforts to build...
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Source: economist.com