Benazir Bhutto to take the service's entrance exams later in the year. In July 1977, Zulfikar Bhutto—who had just been re-elected in a general election—was overthrown in a military coup led by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the Chief of Army Staff. Both Zulfikar and Benazir believed that Zia's coup had been assisted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); Zulfikar claimed that in a 1976 meeting, U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger had told him that the U.S. would make "a horrible example" of him if he did not terminate Pakistan's efforts to built a nuclear bomb. Now in control of the country, Zia declared
Benazir Bhutto retracted this claim. In September 1996, the Taliban secured power in Afghanistan. Bhutto's government was one of only three countries to recognise it as the legitimate Afghan government, a move that further distanced it from its Western allies. Benazir Bhutto was prime minister at a time of great racial tension in Pakistan. Ethnic violence had again broken out in Sindh as muhajir—mobilised by the MQM—rioted in protest at what they saw as their poor treatment. To deal with the unrest, Bhutto permitted her interior minister, Naseerullah Babar, to launch Operation Blue Fox, a violent crackdown on the MQM. By the