A rejoinder to Mirza Aslam Beg
General [RETD] Mirza Aslam Beg.
General [RETD] Jahangir Karamat
General [RETD] Parvez MusharrafAND THE VICTIM:
Dr A Q Khan [Pakistani Scientist]
Pakistan lays down the agenda for the US By Seema Sirohi Dec 25, 2004
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FL25Df01.html
Meanwhile, what surprised some was Karamat's dismissive tone about the A Q Khan affair, which he labeled a "proliferation episode" while denying any government complicity in it. "There was no government sanction, approval, or any kind of government connection with what went on," he said flatly. But Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, in his 11-page confession reported in the US press in February, named Karamat, former chief of army staff General (retired) Mirza Aslam Beg and President General Pervez Musharraf as the men on top who were aware of what was going on. As the chief of army staff from 1996-98, Karamat was directly responsible for the safety and security of the nuclear program.
General [RETD] Hamid Gul.
It was Hameed Gul who briefed Zia against the Geneva Accords and got the ISI to badmouth Yaqub Khan who was right once again (after East Pakistan) in siding with prime minister Junejo who had accepted the Geneva Accords. The vision is in fact a one-track mind that exploits Islam and prescribes an isolationist course of action that appeals only to the jihadi clergy and the Urdu press. [1]
General Zia and American President Ronald Reagan [Two Brothers]
This advise of General Gul lateron culminated in Junejo Government's dismissal by General Zia [Late Muhammad Khan Junejo was handpicked by General Zia on the request of Peer Pagara, like Musharraf picked Zafarullah Jamali, Chaudary Shujaat Hussain and Shaukat Aziz and yet Musharraf has the audacity to declare that Democratically Elected government is working up to the mark as per Democratic and Parliamentary norms.
Theses advices of General Hameed Gul later on culminated in a bloody and nasty civil war 'amongst Muslims' in Afghanistan and a long one too from 1989 to 1996 [What kind of a Jihad was that which was fought amongst Muslim Afghan Warlords who were on the payroll of US CIA/ISI/and Saudi Mukhbarat].
These adivces of Hameed Gul corrupted the already rotten political atmosphere in the country [Courtesy Mehran Bank Scandal a brainchild of Hameed Gul] and that was just to stop the PPP from coming into power. Shame on you Mr. Hameed Gul as you encouraged Mr Nawaz Sharif [the former PM of Pakistan] to use slogans like 'Jag Punjabi Jag Teri Pag Nu Lag Gaya Dagh. But PPP, Jamat-e-Islami, PML-N and ANP has no shame neither their leaders to have the courage to invite this anrchist i.e. Mr. Hameed Gul in their party meetings.
GEO TV (December 18, 2005) Iftikhar Ahmad in his Jawabdeh programme questioned General (r) Hameed Gul on his interference in the political process of the country. Gen Gul admitted that he had interfered through putting together the IJI to oust the PPP from power in 1990, but he was not willing to disclose the names of the politicians who approached him for this. [1]
Well Mr. Hameed Gul think that if he wouldnt tell then nobody wouldnt know the details are published in Daily Dawn Karachi in several of its columns by Ardeshir Cowasjee
Detail are as:[2]
"QUOTE" [2]
Major [Retd] General Naseerullah Babar
Naseerullah Babar, had disclosed in the National Assembly in 1994 how the ISI had disbursed funds to purchase the loyalty of politicians and public figures so as to manipulate the 1990 elections, form the IJI, and bring about the defeat of the PPP.
Have all our generals been upright men and played it right? Of course, yes. Otherwise would they have ended up the way they did? Ziaul Haq? Governor, rich General Fazle Haq? How about dubious politician, rich General Aslam Beg, Lt General Javed Ashraf Kazi first chief of the MI and then of the ISI, Nawaz's ISI chief, General Javed Nasir, sacked by General Waheed Kakar, General Asad Durrani of MI and ISI fame, summarily sacked by General Kakar, rewarded and re-employed by Benazir as her ambassador in Bonn, and dangerous politician, the firebrand fundo General Hamid Gul.
On April 25, 1994, [Daily Dawn] carried an editorial entitled 'Our secret godfathers', which opened up: "Two basic points emerge from General Aslam Beg's admission that in 1990 he took Rs 14 crores from the banker Younus Habib and that part of this money was spent by the ISI during the elections that year . . . . . ". And closed, saying ". . . it is time now for some sort of check on the rogue political activities of our intelligence agencies . . .". It was not time, and apparently it is still not time.
In 1996, Air Marshal Asghar Khan filed a human rights petition in the Supreme Court against General Mirza Aslam Beg, former chief of army staff, Lt General Asad Durrani, former chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence, and Younus Habib of Habib Bank and then Mehran Bank, concerning the criminal distribution of the people's money for political purposes (HRC 19/96). In this case, Lt General Naseerullah Babar filed an affidavit in court supported by copies of various documents and a photocopy of a letter dated June 7, 1994, addressed by Durrani to the then prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, who, during her second term in office, appointed him as her ambassador to Germany.
Asghar Khan - former Air Chief Marshall of the Pakistan Air Force, Chairman of the Tehrik-e-Istaqlaal political party, and a man renowned for his integrity and clarity - vociferously denounces Pak Army and intelligence agencies' interference in political process via distribution of cash to favored politicians. He explains how: (a) Army officers are obligated to obey only lawful commands of their superiors and should be prosecuted for bribery of politicians; (b) intelligence officials do not need a lawyer but only their conscience to decide which order are illegal; (c) there have never been any elections free from fraud since mid-70s; and (d) successive Pak governments have deliberately dragged ISI into domestic politics to suit their purpose. This interview was recorded in 2009 as part of "Policy Matters" program. REFERENCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r8-w5Cawrs [Courtesy: Kashif H Khan]
A Khan: ISI Bribery of Pak Politicians -1/2
The recipients included Khar 2 million,
Hafeez Pirzada 3 million,
Sarwar Cheema 0.5 million
Mairaj Khalid 0.2 million
A Khan: ISI Bribery of Pak Politicians -2/2
A Khan: ISI's Role in Pak Politics -1/2
A Khan: ISI's Role in Pak Politics -2/2
He told Zia about his experience the previous year when the Israelis had shown him the vast stores of Soviet weapons they had captured from the PLO in Lebanon. The weapons were perfect for the Mujahideen, he told Zia. If Wilson could convince the CIA to buy them, would Zia have any problems passing them on to the Afghans? Zia, ever the pragmatist, smiled on the proposal, adding, "Just don't put any Stars of David on the boxes" {Page 131-132}.
In 1989, just weeks after the Red Army's withdrawal, when Gulbuddin's commanders in the Helmand Valley would trick a delegation of Massoud's warriors into negotiating. They guaranteed them safe passage them passage, even swearing on a Koran that they would honor this commitment. But once the trusting Tajiks came into the Pashtuns' territory, they were set upon, tortured, and killed. {Page 225}.
There were frightening posters and official briefings from the moment the soldiers got off the transport planes at Bagram Air Base, whispers about what had happened to their colleagues. They all knew about the fanatic Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's practice of leaving armless and legless Soviet soldiers on the road. {Page 288-489}.
Hart {Station Chief of CIA in Pakistan in Afghan War days} himself, however, was deeply suspicious, even angered by Massoud's refusal to move on the Salang Highway. He passed on his doubts to Langley, along with the ISI's crude joke about the unmanly nature of Massoud's Tajik: "When a Pashtun wants to make love to a woman, his first choice is always a Tajik man." {Page 199}.
In London, Avrakotos asked for a personal meeting with MI6 {British Intelligence}'s Massoud expert. He turned out to be a young, blond SAS guerilla-warfare expert with the peculiar nickname of Awk, a name said to vaguely resemble the grunting noise he would make on maneuvers. Awk had just returned from three months inside the war zone. It was about a two-week journey in those days, walking north from the Pakistan border through Nuristan and the Hindu Kush to reach Massoud's valley. Awk had gone in with two other SAS commandos. Their report had astonished Avrakotos. "There was one passage in there that really got me," remembers Avrakotos. "This guy was sleeping with a couple of his buddies and he said he awoke one night and heard horrible groans. He didn't get up but was able to put on his night-vision goggles and saw a group of Massoud's guy literally cornholing a Russian prisoner." {Page 199}.
At MI6 headquarters Awk told Avrakotos that watching that man die had made him finally understand the Afghans, ancient code: "Honours, hospitality, and revenge." Raping an infidel was not the atrocity it would be in the West; it was simply revenge. {Page 199}.
To begin with, anyone defecting to the Dushman {enemy} would have to be a crook, a thief, or someone who wanted to get corn holed everyday, because nine out of ten prisoners were dead within twenty-four hours and they were always turned into concubines by the mujahideen. {Page 332}.
At one point Avrakotos {CIA officer responsible for Afghan Jihad} arrived for one of these White House sessions armed with five huge photographic blowups. Before unveiling them he explained that they would provide a useful understanding of the kind of experience a Soviet soldier could expect to have should he surrender the mujahideen. One of them showed two Russians sergeants being used as concubines. Another had a Russian hanging from the turret of a tank with a vital part of his anatomy removed." {Page 333}.
The CIA found itself in the preposterous position of having to pony up $ 50, 000 to bribe the Afghans to deliver two live ones {Russian Prisoners}. "These two guys were basket cases," says Avrakotos. "One had been ****ed so many times he didn't know what was going on" {Page 333}.
Where as General Zia and his toady Mufti/Mullahs were playing havoc with the lives of common citizens of Pakistan through exploiting Islam particularly the weaker section of society i.e. Women, Labour, Minorities but Pseudo Commander of the Faithful General Zia ul Haq appointed a 'Society Lady' Joanne Herring as Pakistan's honorary Consul in Houston, Texas USA, earlier her husband Bob Herring was offered the post but he declined and gave his wife's name.
She was Zia's most trusted American adviser, as per Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, She absolutely had his ear, it was terrible," "Zia would leave cabinet meetings just to take Joanne's calls. "There was no affair with Zia," Wilson recalls, but it's impossible to deal with Joanne and not deal with her on sexual basis. No matter who you are, you take those phone calls." {Page 67-68}.
On page 503 in Charlie Wilson's War, the author quoted but it was losing Zia that crushed Charlie. At the state funeral in Islamabad, with a million Pakistanis and Mujahideen crowding up to him, Charlie made his way to Akhtar's successor, Hamid Gul, and broke into tears. "I have lost my father on this day," he said.
[Reference: Charlie Wilson's War The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History by George Crile]
One of the leaked reports of CIA says, "A significant amount of the leaking was (as it still is) coming from within Pakistan, where corrupt government and rebel officials have suddenly become quite rich. Pakistani General Akhter Abdul Rehman, head of ISID up to 1987, and his successor, General Hamid Gul, are suspected to have been prime benefactors of the pipeline. They and their subordinates within the ISI's National Logistic Cell (NLC) could easily have made fortune off CIA supplies. [Never-Ending Flow: The Afghan Pipeline by Steve Galster, Covert Action 59, Number 30 (Summer 1988)]. In one of his book Silent Soldier by Brigadier Retd. Muhammad Yousuf had done great injustice to General Zia and General Hamid Gul. General Zia for his intellectual dishonesty and political expediency for removing General Akhter from ISI under US pressure and to General Hamid Gul for his professional incompetence and failure from taking on from where General Akhter had left. After the demise General Ziaul Haq, the DG ISI of the time suddenly became all-powerful and played a predominant role in manipulating the political future of Pakistan. General Hamid Gul and some of his close associates tried to carve out the political destiny of Pakistan by clubbing together nine political parties into IJI; a political front to confront the PPP.Judged purely from the standpoint of professionalism, the role of a 'king maker' assumed by General Gul and a couple of his colleagues tantamount to betrayal of the trust reposed in them by the nation. They played a partisan role and violated the charter of ISI duties. In fact, they must be held responsible for leading this sensitive and important institution on its death knell. The IJI-PPP confrontation so orchestrated by his group was purely for limited selfish motives and without any moral, ethical or professional justifications. The ISI as a principal intelligence and security agency, instead of being objective and realistic at that crucial juncture of history, played the role of a political broker. As a result of that time's shortsighted policy, today the whole nation from a sepoy to an IG Police and from a naib qasid to a secretary stand polarized and politicized. This political divide has assumed such alarming proportions that no political party is prepared to tolerate the other. Bravo General Gul. This attitude of DG ISI also set a chain reaction of fissiparous tendencies, which led to a political divide in the ISI as well. An institution, which, by its very character, must remain immune to diverse political or other influences, lay open for its personnel to exercise their individual choices of political alignment and loyalty. Obviously, while the DGI played partisan, he could not stop other members of the ISI from rendering personalized services to a party or a leader of their choice. To crown it all, General Mirza Aslam Baig also gave this good news to the nation and to the world at large that as Chief of Army Staff he had also made his contribution to further corrupting the ISI by contributing Rupees 140 Million to their secret funds to influence the national elections of 1988. General Baig further added that this money was ill gotten from an infamous character Younus Habib of Mehran Bank. We only await what the Americans have to say how much money they had contributed, through the ISI, towards Afghan War and who all have eaten that away.
[Reference: Profiles of Intelligence by Brigadier Syed A. I. Tirmizi, SI (M)]
Gen Gul said that he owned only two plots and two squares of land. As for Dr Farooq Sattar's accusation that he had grabbed 13 squares of land, he denied it, saying he got those squares in 1964 and the High Court had cleared him, and he had got himself cleared from NAB too. He is in denial about the correct dimensions of the land he has acquired which he says was allowed by the High Court and NAB, both suspect in the eyes of the people, one for being scared of the ISI, and the other simply not willing to knock an ex-army type. [1]
SO-CALLED HONEST HAMEED GUL:
Varan Bus Service was established with millions of rupees loaned to the daughter and son-in-law of a former ISI chief, General Hameed Gul, now the most right wing spokesman of Islamic fundamentalists of Pakistan. His politics of course started after he had secured the financial and economic interests and for his family, using his General's uniform as the password.
Here is the story which tells numerous tales of how the Generals would not let any business opportunity slip by. Despite the ideological rhetoric and slogan mongering, facts in this story will shake up readers:
"Situated in and around the federal capital, the Rawalpindi/Islamabad district is politically critical because of its proximity to the heart of all government operations. Last summer the CMKP began to reorganize its wing in the area, placing special emphasis on attracting working class youth to the party ranks.
Among other issues, cadres began efforts to develop political consciousness in workers in the Varan city bus service. These efforts have resulted in increased police surveillance and repression of the party and its supporters. This is how the struggle of CMKP started in the district of Rawalpindi and Islamabad.
Varan city bus service is a private company that provides urban bus transport in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The company is headed by politically powerful shareholders who enjoy very strong connections with the establishment. Its owner, Uzma Gul, is the daughter of the former Director General of the ISI (Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence Agency), Hameed Gul, who some people might remember as the man who headed the anti-communist campaign in Afghanistan, and as a major patron of all right-wing groups in Pakistan.
In addition, 10 or 11 Army Generals are also shareholders in the company. Using its connections as leverage, Varan has acquired special concessions from the Pakistan Government. For example, it has exclusive public transport rights within the city. No other transport company is allowed to operate within city limits, giving Varan a monopoly over transport in certain areas. This company is so powerful that even the Traffic Police is afraid of challenging its operators over traffic law violations.
[Reference: The Generals' Monopoly Bus Service Faces a Rough Route in Islamabad By M T Butt]
http://www.satribune.com/archives/200502/P1_varan.htm
Notes and References:
SECOND OPINION: Hameed Gul: strategic overcompensation' —Khaled Ahmed's TV Review Tuesday, February 07, 2006 [1]
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5C02%5C07%5Cstory_7-2-2006_pg\3_3
We never learn from history By Ardeshir Cowasjee [2]
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/20020721.htm
We never learn from history-2 By Ardeshir Cowasjee [2]
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/20020804.htm
We never learn from history-3 By Ardeshir Cowasjee [2]
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/20020811.htm
We never learn from history-4 By Ardeshir Cowasjee [2]
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/20020818.htm
We never learn from history-5 By Ardeshir Cowasjee [2]
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/20020825.htm
General Gul says that USA killed General Zia but read what he says to a journalist and calculate that if it was USA then USA was not alone there was somebody else as well and guess who:
"QUOTE"
This conclusion was reinforced when an analysis of chemicals found in plane's wreckage, done by the laboratory of Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco in Washington, found foreign traces of pentaerythritol tertranitrate (PNET), a secondary high explosive commonly used by saboteurs as a detonator, as well as antimony and sulfur, which in the compound antimony sulfide is used in fuses to set off the device. Using these same chemicals, Pakistan ordinance experts reconstructed a low-level explosive detonator which could have been used to burst a flask the size of a soda can which, the Board suggested, probably contained an odorless poison gas that incapacitated the pilots.
But this was as far as the Board of Inquiry could go. It had not had autopsies done on the remains of the crew members to determine if they were poisoned. It acknowledged in its report that it lacked the expertise to investigate criminal acts. What was needed was criminal investigators and interrogators. It thus recommended that the task of finding the perpetrators by turned over to the competent agency, which meant, as one of the investigators explained to me, Pakistan's intelligence service--the ISI.
When I got to Pakistan in February and called upon General Hamid Gul, the Director General of the ISI, I found out that political events had apparently overtaken this mandate. He told me that his agency had called off its investigation at the request of the government and had transferred the responsibility for it to a "broader based" government authority headed by a civil servant called F.K. Bandial. It was not using the resources of his intelligence service and, as far as he knew that committee had not begun the work. His tone suggested that, he did not expect any immediate resolution of the crime.
Who Killed Zia? (Page 2) VANITY FAIR September 1989 by Edward Jay Epstein
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/zia.htm
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/zia2.htm
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/zia3.htm
On October 17th, 2006, the Carnegie Endowment hosted Lt. Gen. Asad Durrani, the former Director-General of Pakistan military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Bureau. While Visiting Scholar Frederic Grare served as the Moderator, Lt. Gen. Durrani spoke on Disengaging Military from Politics in Pakistan," commenting on the phenomenon of military takeovers and suggesting how Pakistan's military could be disengaged from the political sphere. Lt. Gen. Durrani started by attempting to explain why and under what circumstances the military takes over. [1]
Would Mr Asad Durrani like to tell us all as to what he was doing when he headed the ISI and as per a book by late. Azher Sohail [Agenciyon Ki Hukoomat by Jang Publications], the same Asad Durrani, Hameed Gul, Javed Nasir and Ghulam Jeelani Khan [All Generals] used to claim that Mian Nawaz Shareef was their invention. Mr Asad Durrani has the audacity to lecture all and sundry in the USA and Pakistan as well on "Military must not have any role in Politics". I will ask Mr Durrani a question [questions are based on News Article and Columns] to define his role in Politics when he was in Government Service and I would also like to ask as to why he served as an Ambassador of Pakistan in Saudi Arabia under Mr Musharraf Governement whereas nowadays he sometimes become Champion for the Rights of Smaller Provinces [on Private TV Channels particularly Sindhi and Urdu Channels] and he is totally a different man when talking to Fascist Urdu Newspapers like Jasarat and Ummat [backed by MMA AND JAMAT-E-ISLAMI]. Whereas from the podium of so-called Think Tank of old toadies he writes letters to President on Uniform and Office of the President should not be together, tell us which Asad Durrani is the real one and please also tell us about the below mentioned dark chapter of your career:
"QUOTE"
Old habits die hard. In the 10-year span mentioned by Gen Musharraf, the ISI was headed by Lt Gen Ghulam Jilani (1974-1980), who as governor of Punjab let loose Mr Nawaz Sharif as a politician on an unsuspecting Pakistani public; Gen Akhtar Abdur Rahman (1980-1987); and Lt-Gen Hameed Gul (1987-1989); and for part of 1989, Lt-Gen Shamsur Rahman Kallue (names and dates from Wikipedia website). In a rebuttal, which is neither here nor there, Gen Gul has said that the Taliban surfaced in 1994, five years after his tenure ended as ISI chief. However, his political activities prior to his retirement, including the rousing tour of Punjab in support of Mr Nawaz Sharif and the IJI after the dismissal of the Junejo government, are well known, and the ideological thrust of his views well established. A few days ago, another ISI chief (1990-1991), Gen Asad Durrani, said in a private TV channel interview that he was asked to receive money given for the IJI in what is known as Mehrangate. The money was duly passed on and the general candidly confessed that while it was wrong in principle for him as ISI chief to have undertaken the mission, in his personal capacity he believed that the change that this might augur would be good for the country. So we have army generals and ISI chiefs who meddle in politics, face no accountability and presumably continue to get their pensions and other post-retirement privileges. Most of them seem to be more knowledgeable about our ideology and collective good than are ordinary mortals or elected politicians. Their political instincts also for the most part are clearly honed in a particular right-wing direction. Isn't this another mess that requires to be cleared? [2]
"UN-QUOTE"
Contradictions & anomalies By Tahir Mirza [2]
http://www.dawn.com/2006/10/06/op.htm
The kind of loyalty we are showing with our country is like the Pseudo Nationalism like RSS/VHP AND BAJRANG DAL people show for India. Musharraf in an interview in the USA alleged that the retired officials are behind the present so-called insurgency but he didn't name anybody but guess what? The very next day General Hameed Gul and Asad Durrani [IN DAILY DAWN] and General Ali Kuli Khan [IN THE NEWS INTERNATIONAL] and Former Army Chief Mirza Aslam Baig on ARY ONE TV condemned Musharraf for the truth he divulged on US Electronic Media. The article below will help you a lot to understand the dirty tricks of establishment within the Pakistan.
You should all read the above news and columns in the light of this:
Common "civilians" in Pakistan can be picked up from anywhere without any cogent reason and can be detained for months [without producing them in the Court of Law] if not years without a trace and incommunicado too. You can slap, oust, try, imprison, torture, insult and discredit them through media trial and even hang the elected representatives of the people but when the real test comes those who are entrusted with the responsibility of defending the country always show you clay feet, read and lament about the mysteries regarding jittery Retd General Mirza Aslam Baig and his interviews to ARY VIEWS ON NEWS, more loyal than the king to the interests of smaller provinces Retd General Asad Durrani, born again Democrat and Progressive General Retd Hameed Gul and his sudden discovered Love for Democracy and Constitution and their letters to Mr Musharraf advising him to quit. Their hands are tainted with the blood of Pakistani people, yet they have the audacity to participate in the political meetings of PPP, PML-N, MMA and ARD. Shame on all of you who invite such monsters in their party meetings to discuss the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, particularly shame on Benazir and Nawaz to tolerate Hameed Gul amongst their meetings. When General Zia died in 1988 plane crash and power came into the hands of Lt. General (Retd) Aslam Beg, Lt. Gen (Retd) Hameed Gul and of course Ghulam Ishaq Khan, the then Federal Finance Minister Dr. Mehboobul Haq [a toady of World Bank/IMF who served General Zia, IMF and World Bank very well] signed several accords with the IMF and World Bank and he signed these accords when there wasn't any representative elected government in the country, to be precise Dr Mehboobul Haq enslaved the people of the Pakistan through this accords. Comes Benazir Bhutto as the first elected Woman Prime Minister of Pakistan and she was told by the three above and Robert Oakley the then American Viceroy of Pakistan that she will have to accept and honour the Accords signed by Mehboobul Haq with the IMF, and many other things like accepting Sahibzada Yaqoob Khan as Foreign Minister and Ghulam Ishaq Khan as the President and the so-called Daughter of the East Ms. Bhutto accepted all the demands to be ousted from power from the same group in August 1990 and now General Beg and General Hameed Gul have the audacity to lecture all of us about Islam, Democracy, Pakistan and Loyalty. The most sad thing is this that those who served under General Musharraf from 1999 to 2005 are nowadays addressing letters to him to quit [in my humble opinion General Musharraf should remain in power for at least 25 years] e.g. Javed Jabbar [Musharraf's Former Infromation Minister] , Lt General Retd Moeenuddin Haider [Musharraf's Former Interior Minister], Lt. General Retd. Tanveer Naqvi [Musharraf's National Reconstruction Bureau's Planner (BBC's Tim Sebastian had ruined Tanveer Naqvi and his so-called Devolution Plan in one of his program Hard Talk], Lt. General Retd Mohammad Asad Durrani [Musharraf's Former Ambassador in Saudi Arabia] etc.etc I wonder why all of a sudden the former cabinet members are so worried that they started writing letters to General Sahab. They have got what they had always wanted the complete Militarization of Pakistani society.
"QUOTE"
In September of 1994 Kamran Khan of The News and The Washington Post came calling. He told me how earlier that year he had asked for an appointment with the then leader of the opposition, Nawaz Sharif, to interview him on his relationship with the army and the security services whilst he was prime minister. He was asked to go to Lahore and meet the Mian. When on May 16 Kamran arrived at Nawaz's Model Town house, there was an army of men equipped with bulldozers demolishing the security fences and structures Nawaz had built on adjoining land, not his to build upon (akin to those built around Karachi's Bilawal House). The breakers had been on the job since dawn. Kamran found Nawaz angry but composed. He was amply plied and refreshed with 'badaam-doodh' and Nawaz, his information wizard Mushahid Hussain and he settled down to talk and continued to do so until late afternoon when Kamran left to fly back to Karachi.
Nawaz opened up by congratulating Kamran on his Mehrangate exposures which had recently appeared in the press, asking how the inquiry was progressing, and giving his own views. They exchanged information, each believing the other was being informed. They talked about how COAS Aslam Beg (sporter of shades in the shade) managed to get Rs 14 crore (140 million) from Yunis Habib, then of Habib Bank. This was deposited in the 'Survey Section 202' account of Military Intelligence (then headed by Major-General Javed Ashraf Kazi). From there Rs 6 crore was paid to President Ghulam Ishaq Khan's election cellmates (General Rafaqat, Roedad Khan, Ijlal Hyder Zaidi, etc.), and Rs 8 crore transferred to the ISI account. After lunch, Nawaz brought up the subject of how Aslam Beg early in 1991 had sought a meeting with him (then prime minister) to which he brought Major-General Asad Durrani, chief of the ISI. They told him that funds for vital on-going covert operations (not identified by Nawaz) were drying up, how they had a foolproof plan to generate money by dealing in drugs. They asked for his permission to associate themselves with the drug trade, assuring him of full secrecy and no chance of any trail leading back to them.
Nawaz remarked that on hearing this he felt the roof had caved in on him. He told them he could have nothing to do with such a plan and refused to give his approval. The Washington Post had just broken Kamran's story and when I asked why it had not broken earlier, he told me how they check and recheck, and that in the meantime, he had been busy with the Mehrangate affair on which, between May and August, he had filed seven stories. We must again ask: was Nawaz capable of saying what he did? Yes. Did Kamran invent the whole thing? Not likely. Is The Washington Post a responsible paper with credibility? Yes. Everybody who is anyone in Washington reads it over breakfast. Has it ever made mistakes? Yes.
What is so earth-shattering about using drugs to make money? Drugs have been trafficked and used for covert operations for ages, by warlords, statesmen, chieftans and generals, used to gain territory, to buy or to harm the enemy. Remember how the staid Victorians of the British empire used opium to China's detriment. Remember the Americans and how they traded drugs in Vietnam, and the Iran-Contra affair. Can we believe Aslam Beg? Judging by his behaviour and record, no. Are we expected to believe Asad Durrani, a clever professional spook? Of course not. Have all our generals been upright men and played it right? Of course, yes. Otherwise would they have ended up the way they did? Ziaul Haq? Governor, rich General Fazle Haq? How about dubious politician, rich General Aslam Beg, Lt General Javed Ashraf Kazi first chief of the MI and then of the ISI, Nawaz's ISI chief, General Javed Nasir, sacked by General Waheed Kakar, General Asad Durrani of MI and ISI fame, summarily sacked by General Kakar, rewarded and re-employed by Benazir as her ambassador in Bonn, and dangerous politician, the firebrand fundo General Hamid Gul.
How did Ejazul Haq, son of the pious General Ziaul Haq, and Humayun Akhtar Rahman, son of the powerful General Akhtar Abdul Rahman, become tycoons overnight? The story related above was printed in Dawn in my column of September 23 1994, and was never repudiated by any of the honourable gentlemen mentioned. Kamran Khan is still writing and when Nawaz Sharif returned as prime minister in 1997, Kamran was awarded the presidential Pride of Performance medal for journalism which was pinned upon his chest by none other than Rafiq Tarar, former justice of the Supreme Court and then head of state.[3]
We never learn from history By Ardeshir Cowasjee [3]
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/20020721.htm
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/20020804.htm
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/20020811.htm
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/20020818.htm
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/20020825.htm
Two ex-ISI chiefs refute president's statement By Iftikhar A. Khan [3]
http://www.dawn.com/2006/10/03/top3.htm
Pakistan's shadowy secret service Mahmud Ali [3]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6033383.stm
Can the ISI change its spots? By Akhtar Payami [3] October 07, 2006 Daily Dawn Encounter.
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/encounter/20061007/encounter4.htm
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This conclusion was reinforced when an analysis of chemicals found in plane's wreckage, done by the laboratory of Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco in Washington, found foreign traces of pentaerythritol tertranitrate (PNET), a secondary high explosive commonly used by saboteurs as a detonator, as well as antimony and sulfur, which in the compound antimony sulfide is used in fuses to set off the device. Using these same chemicals, Pakistan ordinance experts reconstructed a low-level explosive detonator which could have been used to burst a flask the size of a soda can which, the Board suggested, probably contained an odorless poison gas that incapacitated the pilots. But this was as far as the Board of Inquiry could go. It had not had autopsies done on the remains of the crew members to determine if they were poisoned. It acknowledged in its report that it lacked the expertise to investigate criminal acts. What was needed was criminal investigators and interrogators. It thus recommended that the task of finding the perpetrators by turned over to the competent agency, which meant, as one of the investigators explained to me, Pakistan's intelligence service--the ISI. When I got to Pakistan in February and called upon General Hamid Gul, the Director General of the ISI, I found out that political events had apparently overtaken this mandate. He told me that his agency had called off its investigation at the request of the government and had transferred the responsibility for it to a "broader based" government authority headed by a civil servant called F.K. Bandial. It was not using the resources of his intelligence service and, as far as he knew that committee had not begun the work. His tone suggested that, he did not expect any immediate resolution of the crime. [4]
Who Killed Zia? (Page 2) VANITY FAIR September 1989 by Edward Jay Epstein [4]
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/zia.htm
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/zia2.htm
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/zia3.htm
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Everybody condemns Musharraf for being too Pro Indian whould anybody like to define as to why Aijaz ul Haq [Religious Affairs Minister] who nowadays wears "HINDU TILAK" on his forehead to appease Indians whereas his Father The Rampant Ziaul Haq made living hell the lives of common Pakistanis but wait read the news Zia had adopted BJP [The cohorts of RSS/BAJRANG DAL & VHP] Activist and Film Actor Shatrughan Sinha. Why dont the Qazi Hussain Ahmed and his MMA condemn General Zia for this? Is it because that Former Ameer of Jamat-e-Islami Mian Tufail is a Father in Law of General Ziaul Haq.
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Top Indian actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha, in an interview to The News, recalled unfading memories of his eight-year association with the former Pakistani President, General Ziaul Haq. Shatrughan is in Pakistan these days to attend the birth day ceremony of Zain Zia, special daughter of late General Zia. He recalled that even military tension between the two countries on several occasions could not break his ties with the Zia family. Shatrughan whose name became household in Pakistan after he was declared a state guest by General Zia recalled that how Zia used to receive him with great affection. Giving details of his first meeting with General Zia, Shatrughan said he was on a personal visit to Karachi in 1981, when he received a message that the president of Pakistan wanted to meet him in Islamabad. He was greatly surprised to receive this unusual invitation, he said. Shatrughan said he came to Islamabad where he was given a royal reception by General Zia whose daughter Zain turned out to be his big fan. He said Zain loved his acting and had asked her father to arrange a meeting with him. Zia returned after performing Umra the same day and could not meet the Indian actor. The next day, General Zia took Shatrughan to his family where the latter was surprised to see the passions of a small girl, Zain, for him. Shatrughan said being so close to Zia, he had played a major role in removing many misconceptions between the two countries and their people as he used to tell his friends and media men in India about many positive things of Pakistan. He recalled that he was given special treatment by General Zia. He said once he with his family was riding in a car and being escorted by military and police motors and people standing on roads thought he was perhaps arrested in Pakistan. He said even General Zia was taunted for spending hours with an Indian actor. But, he said Zia never compromised his relations with him. He said once his kids lost their pet black cat named 'Michael Jackson' in Bombay. When they came with him at the Army House, Rawalpindi, to meet the Zia family, they spotted a black cat in the lawn and rushed to capture it shouting they had found their ÔMJÕ. He said to his great astonishment, General Zia also stood up and rushed behind his children to ensure that they did not fall on the ground. He said he could not forget those unusual moments in his life watching Zia running after his kids. He said when Dr Anni, daughter of General Zia, got married he was one of the few privileged people who were invited. ÒRather I was the host at this wedding as I was deputed to receive and see off guestsÓ, he said. He said when General Zia came to India to watch Pakistan-India cricket match in Jaipur state as part of cricket diplomacy, he received a telephone call from Zia himself to accompany him to watch the match. [5]
Shatrughan cherishes memory of friendship with Zia Rauf Klasra [5]
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2005-daily/03-08-2005/main/main28.htm
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Retd. Brigadier Mohammad Yousuf of so-called Afghan Jihad is Information Secretary in Millat Party of Former President of Pakistan Sardar Farooq Laghari, who says that Nawaz, Benazir should quit politics.
Lets examine the unsavory character of Laghari's Information Secretary:
SOME TRUTH ABOUT BRIGADIER YOUSUF:
Former Brigadier of Pakistan Army Muhammad Yousuf {Afghan War Veteran} had said that he kept him away from the CIA and American during "Afghan Jihad" but the history tells us something else:
Just how vicious a campaign the CIA was sponsoring is suggested by the Pakistan Brigadier Mohammed Yousuf, who directed the training with and distribution of CIA weapons at that time. In a matter-of-fact passage in his memoirs, he describes the range of assassination tactics and targets he was preparing the mujahideen to take on in Kabul. They ranged from your everyday knife between the shoulder blades of a Soviet soldier shopping in the bazaar" to "the placing of a briefcase bomb in a senior official's office." Educational institutions were considered fair game, he explains, since they were staffed by "Communists indoctrinating their students with Marxist dogma."
{Page 335 Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story Of The Largest Covert Operation in History by George Crile}.
On a CIA sponsored trip to Washington that year, the proud ISI Brigadier was deeply insulted when he was led, virtually blindfolded, to the Agency's "sabotage school" in North Carolina. Vickers {CIA Official foe Afghan "Jihad} escorted the burly Pakistani Brigadier in a plane whose windows were blacked, then in a car with its shades drawn. Yousuf, who suffers the chip on the shoulder of many proud Third World types, was deeply offended at this slight. He reasoned that if he was trusted enough to be permitted to run the CIA's operation in Pakistan, why was the Agency treating him as if he were about to reveal the location of the sabotage school? Later Vicker and Avrakotos {CIA Officials for Afghan "Jihad"} take Yousuf and one of his colleagues out for a fancy dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, USA.
{Page 351 Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story Of The Largest Covert Operation in History by George Crile}.
Brigadier [Retd.] and his Chief Mr Laghari should quit politics and should adopt silence.
The same Brigadier Yousuf in his book The Bear Trap wrote about our Ambassador in USA Major General Retd. Mahmood Ali Durrani [who was Military Attache in USA from 1978-1982 the so-called Islamic days of General Zia and he is again there during the [as per MMA the Secular-Infidel Present Government].
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THE LEGENDS NEVER DIE
(Excerpts from The Bear Trap) WHIRLPOOL OF TERRORISM (Excerpts from The Bear Trap) [6]
Brig (Ret) Mohammad Yousaf
http://www.sovietsdefeatinafghanistan.com/editorial/07.htm
It was 17 August 1988. Moments before Hafiz Taj Mohammad, who was walking towards his field near the village of Dhok Kamal, near the Sutlej River eight miles north of Bahawalpur, heard the roar of engines and looked up. He watched incredulously as the lumbering plane, which was still rising steadily through 5000 feet, suddenly dropped its nose to fly almost straight at the ground, before, with some superhuman effort, it climbed again. Then, as though its strength had finally gone, it plunged down to extinction. To the man below there was no outward reason, no missile, no mid-air explosion, no fire, no engine trailing smoke, nothing to forewarn of such a disaster.
Dead were the President of Pakistan, General Zia-ul-Haq, and the man who might have succeeded him had he survived, General Akhtar Abdul Rahman Khan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. Gone were the two most powerful men in Pakistan, the head of state and the man who for eight years until 1987, and headed the ISI. At a stroke the Afghan resistance fighters, the Mujahideen, had lost their two most influential champions. Dead were the US Ambassador, Mr. Arnold Raphel, who had known the President for twelve years, and Brigadier-General Herbert Wassom, the US Defense Attaché in Islamabad. Dead also were eight Pakistani generals with their staff, and the crew - thirty-one persons in all.
Disquietingly, neither President Zia nor General Akhtar should have been abroad the plane. Both had been persuaded against their wishes to attend a demonstration of a solitary American M-I battle tank, which the US was keen to sell to the Pakistan Army. It was not a function that required their presence. Such a comparatively low-level event would normally have been handled by the Vice Chief of Army Staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg. It was the first time Zia had left the heavy security of his official residence since he had dismissed the government of Prime Minister Junejo three months before.
It was only on 14 August that Zia had finally given in to the pressure from his former military secretary and Defense Attaché in Washington, Major-General Mehmood Durrani, now commanding the armoured division. He insisted that the President's presence was diplomatically desirable, and would give added weight to the Pakistani delegation. After all Zia had retained the post of Chief of Army Staff. Against his better judgment he agree to go.
Similarly, General Akhtar had no intention of going to Bahawalpur until a mere twelve hours beforehand. His change of mind was brought about by the persistent phone calls of a former director in ISI, to the effect that Zia was about to make some controversial changes in the military hierarchy about which Akhtar should know. Akhtar consulted with the President, asking for an urgent meeting. Zia, who was then committed to the tank demonstration trip, suggested Akhtar accompany him as they could discuss things on the aircraft. The fate of both was sealed. The call sign of the President's plane was PAK 1, but the actual aircraft he would use was not selected until shortly before the flight. Usually two of the C-130s based at the Air Force base at Chaklala, a few miles from Islamabad, were earmarked. Then, once the decision was taken, the VIP passenger capsule could be rolled into the aircraft and secured shortly before take off. This was a 21-foot-long by 8-foot-wide plywood and metal structure weighing 5000 pounds, which was fitted out to give some comfort, including an independent air conditioning and lighting system, to an otherwise notoriously uncomfortable aircraft interior. The second aircraft, PAK 2, would follow PAK 1 as a backup. There was routine security search of both planes prior to departure. For this flight there was a problem. The airstrip at Bahawalpur was small and could only accommodate one C-130, so PAK 2 would land 150 kilometers away at Sargodha. Once the President left Chaklala there was no possibility of his changing aircraft.
There would, however, be two other smaller planes on the airfield. The first was the Cessna whose task was to circle the vicinity of the airport as a precaution against missile-armed terrorists. This had been routine practice since an unsuccessful missile attack six years earlier. Then there was the eight-seater plane of General Beg who, as the official host, had to get the small jet that would take him and the ambassador south would be parked at Multan. If the crash was sabotage the two Americans were not part of the target. The actual demonstration, in front of so much Army brass, was a big embarrassment to the Americans. The much-vaunted Abrams tank failed to score many hits and the billion-dollar deal evaporated in the enervating heat.
While the President and the senior officers ate lunch at the officer's mess PAK 1 sat on the tarmac, baking in the sun. An armed military guard was on duty around the aircraft, but there had been a minor fault with a cargo door so the seven-crew technicians worked on it. The pilot, Wing Commander Mash'hood Hussan, who had been personally selected by Zia, together with his co-pilot, navigator and engineer, arrived back at the plane for pre-flight checks in advance of the passengers. These four men would be seated on the elevated flight deck, which was separated from the VIP capsule by a narrow door at the top of three steps, on the left side of the aircraft. Zia, with his party, arrived at around 3.30 p.m., and knelt towards Mecca before saying his farewells. He had persuaded both the senior US officials to join him for the return flight. They did so with no apparent concern. General Beg made excuses when the President tried to prevail upon him to board PAK 1. He would use his own plane as he had business to attend to at Lahore. It was a known practice of Zia's to fly with the maximum number of top generals or officials to minimize the risks of a sabotage plot. Shortly before departure two crates of mangoes arrived for the VIPs, which were loaded in the rear without any check, together with a case of model tanks.
Strapped into the sofa and easy chairs inside the VIP capsule were Zia, Akhtar, Afzaal (Chief of the General Staff), Raphel, Wassom, and the President's military secretary, Brigadier General Najib Ahmed. Zia, Raphel and Akhtar sat close together so they could chat during the flight, although conversation is difficult as the C-130 is an excessively noisy aircraft. At 3.46 p.m. PAK 1 lifted off after the Cessna security plane reported nothing untoward. On the flight deck the take off routine had been uneventful, with clear communications to the control tower. The fact that the aircraft lacked either a black box flight recorder or a cockpit voice recorder would later be the subject of censure, but at lift off none of the crew or passengers had the slightest hint of the catastrophe that was little more than two minutes away. Mash'hood gave his arrival time at Islamabad over the radio as the plane pulled up onto the sky and began to turn on to its correct course. On the ground General Beg's pilot was preparing to take off; at Sargodha PAK 2 was airborne, as was the Cessna. All were on the same radio frequency as PAK 1, so all heard the ground controller request PAK 1's estimated position, and the response, 'Stand by'. Then nothing, no mayday call, total silence, despite the increasingly frantic calls from the control tower as it was realized that something was radically wrong.
To the passengers the horror of the sickening plunge, with bodies hanging by their safety belts, unable to move, screams drowned by the uninterrupted roar of the engines, was indescribable. Then, the sudden, few fleeting moments of relief as the plane seemingly came under control and started to climb again, with the occupants lolling in the opposite direction or jammed hard back into their seats. But, finally, yet another terrifying dive as PAK 1 gave up the struggle to survive. In Judicial terms it was either misadventure or murder. When the news broke, the chances of finding any Pakistani who believed it was an accident were a million to one against. Zia was a man with umpteen enemies. There has been at least six previous attempts at assassination, including a near miss by a missile fired at his plane. Probably his most uncompromising opponents within Pakistan were the Bhutto family. Zia had, despite the international outcry to commute it, confirmed the death sentence on the present Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's father -- this, to the man who, as prime minister, had personally picked Zia, then the most junior lieutenant-general, for promotion of Chief of Army Staff over the heads of his seniors. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had made a decision that, three years later, he would pay for with his head. On 4 April, 1979, he was hanged in Rawalpindi jail. Thereafter the family feud was unrelenting.
Zia imprisoned Benazir Bhutto and her mother, banned Bhutto's political party, and had his sons Shah Nawaz and Mir Murtaza convicted of serious crimes in absentia. In exile Mir Murtaza established an anti-Zia terrorist group named Al-Zulfikar (The Sword) in Kabul, where it shared offices with the PLO. From there, and Damascus, it carried out a campaign of killing and sabotage which, in 1981, included the hijacking of a Pakistan International Airlines passenger jet. Then, in 1985, Shah Nawaz died a painful death in sinister circumstances in Paris, it being rumoured that he had been poisoned by Zia's agents. There was, and still is, an implacable hatred between these two families. Benazir Bhutto claimed the crash was 'An act of God', before going on to win the general election three months later, to become Pakistan's first woman prime minister.
Zia was a military man who, along with Akhtar, was the last officer to have been commissioned from the Indian Military Academies just before the partition of India in 1947. Once in politics he would often boast that 'The Armed Forces are my constituency' and he never vacated the post of Chief of Army Staff that Bhutto had given him. But even within the military he had few friends. He quickly developed an uncanny knack of spotting potential rivals for power. These were removed from the scene by sacking, or posting to positions well away from the political centre at Islamabad. His only role as Chief of Army Staff had been to vet the promotions and postings of all officers to the rank of major general or above. Numerous disgruntled Service chiefs were secretly delighted that Zia was dead. Potential assassins were not restricted to Pakistanis. Ever since Zia had backed the Mujahideen in their struggle against the Soviets and their Afghan allies, Pakistan had been swamped with KHAD agents bent on undermining his government by a terror campaign of bombing civilians. KHAD is the Afghan secret police organization, trained and advised by the KGB. At the top of its hit list was President Zia, closely followed by General Akhtar. The Soviets were withdrawing from Afghanistan solely because Zia and given sanctuary to the Mujahideen and had, for nine years, been arming, training and advising them in a bloody guerrilla war that had cost the Soviet military 13,000 lives.
The USSR blamed Pakistan for continuing to encourage and supply the Mujahideen in their attacks during the withdrawal, which was half-completed at the time of the crash. It had gone so far as to warn Pakistan, through the US Ambassador in Moscow, that it intended to teach Zia a lesson. Then there was India. Pakistanis and Indians had slaughtered each other on three separate occasions, in 1947, 1965 and 1971. India's Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandhi was convinced that Zia was supplying weapons to Sikh terrorists. They had murdered his mother, and now several thousand armed Sikh insurgents were active in India. Zia was accused of meeting their leaders, and giving shelter and training to the guerrillas inside Pakistan. To counter this, Delhi had established a special branch of its Intelligence Service, with the unpretentious title of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), specifically targeted on Pakistan.
Even the US government shed few genuine tears at Zia's death. It was the State Department's belief that Zia had outlived his use fullness. With the Soviets leaving Afghanistan, the last thing the US wanted was for communist rule in Kabul to be replaced by an Islamic fundamentalist one. American officials were convinced that this was Zia's aim. According to them his dream was an Islamic power block stretching from Iran through Afghanistan to Pakistan with, eventually, the Uzbek, Turkoman and Tajik provinces of the USSR included. To the State Department such a huge area shaded green on the map would be worse than Afghanistan painted red.
On the very day of the disaster the Pakistan Chief of Air Staff ordered a Board of Inquiry set up to inquire into the circumstances of the crash, assess damage and costs, apportion blame (if any) and make recommendations to avoid similar occurrences in the future. Air Commodore Abbas Mirza presided, with three other senior Pakistan Air Force (PAF) officers sitting as members. To provide technical advice and expertise six USAF officers were hurriedly flown from Europe to join the inquiry. They were led by Colonel Daniel Sowada. For two months the Board deliberated and sifted evidence. Witnesses were interviewed, while exhaustive laboratory tests were carried out regarding the aircraft structure, instruments engines, propellers, and flight controls, both in Pakistan and the USA, with the full cooperation of Lockheed, the aircraft's manufacturers. One after another possible causes of the crash were eliminated with meticulous care. Crew fitness, fatigue and stress were ruled out. There had been no pilot error. Adverse weather was not a factor, nor was fuel contamination. No in-flight fire had occurred prior to impact; the aircraft was structurally intact when it hit the ground; there was no metal fatigue; engines and propellers were functioning normally, as were hydraulic fluid, electrical power and control cables. No evidence of a high-intensity internal explosion was found. Finally, no missile or rocket had been used to down the plane. The inevitable conclusion -- a criminal act of sabotage had killed thirty-one people. The board was of the opinion that the crew in the cockpit had been instantaneously and simultaneously incapacitated by the use of a chemical agent such as fast-working nerve gas. The presence of an odourless and colourless gas would not alarm the crew, so they would not don helmets and masks to breathe oxygen. It was established that none of the flight crew was wearing helmets at the time of the crash. The Board commented that such a chemical agent could have been packed in a small innocuous container such as a drink can, thermos flask or gift parcel, and smuggled onboard without arousing suspicion.
It was not possible to substantiate the type of gas used as 'no proper autopsies on the flight deck crew were carried out'. Only the body of Brigadier Wassom was examined before the authorities at the military hospital at Bahawalpur were ordered not to perform autopsies. He had been in the VIP capsule, not on the flight deck, and all that could be deduced was that he had not suffered injuries from any explosion prior to impact. Neither had he breathed in any toxic fumes, as would have been the case with a fire before the plane hit the ground. The instructions not to perform autopsies came as a shock, as it was a routine procedure. Later, it was stated that all the bodies had been completely destroyed in the fire, rendering autopsies impossible. When General Akhtar's family wanted to see his body before burial, they were refused, on the grounds that it was totally disintegrated, with nothing of any substance left. The reason was not believed. Witnesses at the crash site said that, while the passengers at the rear of the aircraft were virtually totally destroyed, this was not the case with the senior officers in the capsule or the crew in the cockpit. The condition of Wassom's body did not prevent thorough examination. Zia's Holy Koran survived, charred but easily recognisable, as did Akhtar's uniform cap, together with his personal file cover with its crest, and the words 'CHAIRMAN JCSC' still clearly readable. A US official was to announce that the bodies were not available for autopsy as Muslim custom requires burial within 24 hours. While this is true in normal circumstances, it never applies within the Services, as shown by the Army medical staff at Bahawalpur when they automatically made preparations to proceed.
The Board had no members qualified to undertake criminal investigations, but they did record that, 'although 31 death certificates have been received no physical body count was carried out at the wreckage site or in the hospital. The possibility of someone not boarding the aircraft at Bahawalpur cannot be ruled out'. Although the ISI was initially tasked with investigations, its efforts appeared less than enthusiastic. Service personnel at Bahawalpur were surprised that they were not subjected to rigorous interrogation. The discovery of a murdered policeman nearby was not successfully investigated, while the efforts of interrogators to extract a confession from the pilot of PAK 2 were bizarre, as well as unrewarding. A recent killing of a Shiite leader had been blamed by his followers on Zia. Both the pilot of PAK 2 and co-pilot of PAK 1, Flight Lieutenant Sajid, were Shiites, so it was suggested that the PAK 2 pilot had persuaded Sajid deliberately to crash the plane in a suicide mission. Only when the Board of Inquiry showed that such actions would have been physically impossible was the unfortunate man released. So it was an act of mass murder. The likely method was pinpointed by the Board, although the culprits remained unidentified. As explained above, many people, organizations, even nations, had powerful personal or political motives for wanting Zia removed.
The State Department would have much preferred an accident, some sort of technical failure, pilot error, anything rather than sabotage. If it was a murder of two high-ranking US officials then the American public would expect, indeed demand, to know the culprits. For such an outrageous act of terrorism the outcry against the perpetrators would be loud and long. The government would probably find it impossible to silence the clamour to exact retribution. Depending on who had done it, exposure could mean the ruin of US policy objectives in the area, and elsewhere in the world. Supposing the KGB, or their surrogates in KHAD, were responsible, how would revealing the USSR as the organizer of mass murder, of the assassination of a head of state, affect the build-up of goodwill between East and West? How could the US avoid a major outbreak of hostility between themselves and the USSR? Almost certainly the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan would be reversed. The implications of Moscow being to blame were unnerving.
Similarly, the dilemma was almost as serious if the plotters were within the Pakistan military. If investigation uncovered a clique of anti-Zia generals the American people would be outraged that, after all these years of massive support to the Pakistan Armed Forces and the Mujahideen, they had killed a US ambassador and a brigadier-general. It would be futile to say they hadn't intended to! US-Pakistan relations would be in ruins. Aid would have to be curtailed, the military might be forced into prolonged presidential rule, the democratic elections scheduled for November would be abandoned, and with them the prospect of the more acceptably moderate Benazir Bhutto becoming prime minister. As I have said earlier, the US was not sorry to see Zia go. The State Department was happy to see the Soviets out of Afghanistan, but decidedly unhappy with the likelihood of, as the US perceived it, Zia backed fundamentalist's talk over in Kabul. Nor did it like his determination to have nuclear weapons. By mid-1988 Zia was becoming a liability rather than an asset to the US. Though unlikely, it was conceivable that some minor political faction or terrorist group. Like Al-Zulfikar, had somehow achieved the impossible. The problem was, once serious investigations started there was no knowing what unwelcome worms might emerge from the can as the lid was lifted.
Testifying before the House of Representatives Judiciary Sub-Committee on Crime in June, 1989, Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage justified the lack of any serious investigations into the sabotage by claiming, '[we were] hopefully moving Pakistan in a more democratic manner.... The military in Pakistan as well as their presidency just being decapitated, we were very alarmed there might be some backsliding'. In other words they were quite prepared to write off Ambassador Raphel and Brigadier Waskom's murders if that meant not rocking the boat. None of this soul-searching would have been necessary if no Americans had died -- particularly such senior ones. The whole business was complicated by the fact that as recently as 1986 Congress had passed a law that gave the FBI the legal right, indeed the duty, to inquire into terrorist acts overseas that involved attacks on US citizens. It is often referred to as the 'Long Arm' law. The State Department did four things immediately after the crash which, taken together, point unerringly at a cover-up. First, within hours, it sent a team of purely technical air force advisers to assist the PAF Board of Inquiry. Secondly, it did not insist, through its embassy, on autopsies on the bodies of the victims, particularly the crew, but rather allowed them to be buried knowing that essential evidence as to how the crash was caused was being buried with them. Thirdly, it sent a Deputy National Security Adviser, Robert Oakley, to take over Raphel's post. He could be relied upon to sit on the lid of the can. Later, in June, 1989, he told a highly skeptical sub-committee that when he attended the National Security Council meeting to decide on the US response to the crash, he simply forgot all about the 'Long Arm' law. This, despite the fact that he had personally lobbied hard to get it passed. Fourthly, and most importantly, it vetoed the FBI's request clearance and on 21 August had been given it verbally, but, within hours, it had been withdrawn -- probably on the instructions of Oakley, who was by then in Islamabad. General Beg, who had just avoided dying with his President, had circled the burning wreckage in his own aircraft before flying straight to Islamabad. There troops were alerted, key points protected, and a crisis cabinet meeting called. But there was no military takeover. Beg accepted immediate promotion to Zia's old post of Army Chief of Staff, while the civilian chairman of the Senate, the 73-year-old Ghulam Ishaq Khan, took over as head of the interim government.
The November election would go ahead. Almost certainly the military authority that halted the autopsies will never be named, nor will the details of the collusion that must have taken place so swiftly between the Pakistani authorities and the US Embassy in Islamabad. It was not until ten months later that congressional pressure finally forced the State Department to allow three FBI investigators to go to Pakistan. As Congressman Bill McCollum (R. Fla.) said, 'At this late date, can the FBI find out what actually happened in Pakistan? I don't know. But we intend to find out what happened at the State Department'. The FBI team seemingly lacked enthusiasm for the task. It was reported that 'awkward' questions were not asked; the agents appeared disinclined to investigate evidence that conflicted with the statement that the bodies were too badly burned to permit autopsies and, with their schedule arranged by the Bhutto government, were apparently more interested in sightseeing than cross-questioning witnesses. According to a Washington Times source they only left Islamabad for tourist trips. Their attitude made it quite clear that they were following instructions not to stir the pot. There was genuine sorrow and foreboding among the three million Afghan refugees encamped just inside the Pakistan border. There was a great sense of loss among the Mujahideen, for Zia and Akhtar had been the architects of their successes in the field. [6]
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INTRODUCTION OF MAJ. GENERAL (RETD) MEHMOOD DURRANI. [7]
George Tenet, CIA (Part 2)
What can you tell us about your meetings with the Government of India, Maj.Gen. (retd) Mahmud Ali Durrani, who like Gen.Musharraf, was a blue-eyed boy of the late Gen.Zia-ul-Haq and who is now a close confidante of the self-styled Chief Executive?
Maj.Gen.Durrani had in the past served as the ISI station chief in Washington and was responsible for the ISI's liaison with the CIA and the FBI. Last year, Jamaat-e-Islami circles in Pakistan had alleged that he had, at the instance of the CIA, played a role, in consultation with Gen.Musharraf, in persuading the Hizbul Mujahideen to agree to a cease-fire." Why did the NSA have been destroying data collected on Americans or US companies since the Sept. 11 attacks?
Why did the CIA or Pentagon trust a document about nuclear bombs in a house in Kandahar, which has been proved as a parody from 1979, which also the NY Times reported?
Who do you think put that fake document into the house or do you think, That even Al-Aqueade didn't realize that the documents have been useless? Did you ever investigate in the death of Vladimir Pasechnik, former director of the Institute of Ultra Pure Biochemical Preparations, a component of the Soviet biowarfare establishment, Biopreparat in November 2001? [7]
Why? - An Extraordinary Series Of 911 Questions
From American Patriot Friends Network APFN@apfn.org 4-27-2 [7]
http://www.rense.com/general24/why.htm
India and Pakistan: Cost of Conflict & the Benefits of Peace DESCRIPTION [7]
"General Durrani, by his own admission, started out as a fire-breathing soldier, and his slow conversion to the cause of political engagement as the only way forward is all the more telling for that." - Salman Haider, Senior Fellow of Centre of Research in Rural and Industrial Development, Chandigarh, India
"This is the first time that a highly decorated Pakistani military officer has written about the need for peace and reconciliation with India." - Rifaat Hussain, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad
"If this book leads to formation of peace lobbies in India and Pakistan, I can say General Mahmud has achieved much." - Wasim Sajjad, former Chairman, Senate of Pakistan
http://www.dukandar.com/indiaandpakcost.html
VICISSITUDE OF CBMS AND NRRMS BETWEEN INDIA AND PAKISTAN [7]
Major General Mahmud Ali Durrani, retired, "India and Pakistan: The Cost of ... Nuclear Terrorism in South Asia" (Washington, DC: Presented at the Brookings)
http://www.stimson.org/southasia/pdf/nrrcsouthasia.pdf.
"UN-QUOTE"
NOTES:
This event report was prepared by Anirudh Suri, Junior Fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. [1]
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/events/index.cfm?fa=eventDetail&id=925&&prog=zg\p&proj=zsa
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