Daily Times, May 26, 2006
SECOND OPINION: Who tried to kill Benazir Bhutto? —Khaled Ahmed’s Review of the Urdu press
Osama bin Laden wanted concessions in Peshawar and Nawaz Sharif wanted funds. Osama paid for services rendered. But somewhere in all this, Benazir Bhutto too became a target. She says Nawaz Sharif got money from Osama to oust her. There are reports that terrorist Ramzi Yusuf did try to kill her. Who put him up to it? Ramzi had a free run of Islamabad, staying at the Islamic University where Al Qaeda’s founding philosopher Abdullah Azzam had taught.
Columnist Hamid Mir wrote in Jang (March 27, 2006) that ex-ISI operative Khalid Khwaja had recently revealed that Osama bin Laden had paid Nawaz Sharif money to get rid of Ms Bhutto’s government in 1989 and that he himself had carried the money to Mr Sharif. The truth was that Osama was not interested in bringing a no-confidence vote against Ms Bhutto, he was more interested in getting his Arab friends out of trouble in Peshawar.
That year Hosni Mubarak, Gaddafi and King Hussein had asked Ms Bhutto to get rid of the Arab terrorists in Peshawar. In the operation that was mounted, Abu Musa’b Al Zarqavi too had to spend six months in jail in Peshawar. After his release he was imprisoned in Jordan too.
Khalid Khwaja was then retired from the ISI but was personally serving Nawaz Sharif and flying Nawaz Sharif’s personal plane between Pindi and Lahore. He proposed that Osama pay money to end Ms Bhutto’s government so that his men would not be bothered any more. One Khayyam Qaiser got some of the money but returned it to Khalid Khwaja because no next ruler would save Osama’s men in Peshawar.
Author Jason Burke in his book Al Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror (IB Tauris 2003) gives a large profile to Sipah-e-Sahaba in the terrorism that began in the training camps of Afghanistan. He claims that an attempt on Ms Bhutto’s life was unsuccessfully made by Ramzi Yusuf on the instigation of Sipah-e-Sahaba. The money came from his relative Khalid Shaikh Muhammad who was then living in Karachi disguised as a Saudi businessman. Ramzi got injured outside Ms Bhutto’s Karachi house when his bomb went off prematurely. Severely injured, he was visited in hospital by senior Sipah-e-Sahaba leaders. Ms Bhutto, whose government was in coalition with Sipah-e-Sahaba in Punjab, accused Osama bin Laden.
Burke doesn’t connect Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Ramzi with Al Qaeda at this stage. He also, by and large, avoids looking into the ISI connection probably because that is outside his ken. The book is very carefully written to avoid making claims to knowledge that the author cannot confirm from his own experience. In April 2006 Sipah-e-Sahaba is back with the ISI with a big show of force in Islamabad staged after an “understanding with the government”.
Writing in Jang (March 27, 2006) Hamid Mir stated that Nawaz Sharif had done a lot of planning to help the Americans get Osama bin Laden. The Americans thought they could trust Nawaz more in the matter of capturing Osama. In 1998 when Nawaz Sharif was prime minister the Americans bombed Afghanistan for the first time. In 1999, it was agreed between Nawaz Sharif, American adviser on security Sandy Burger, Shehbaz Sharif and ISI chief Ziauddin to mount an operation to capture Osama. The army chief, Pervez Musharraf, was unaware of it.
American writer Bob Woodward has revealed that an operation was afoot in 1999 in the border areas in Pakistan, which also triggered the reaction from JUI’s Maulana Fazl ur Rehman that any American found in the area should be shot on sight. Nawaz Sharif had also banned Harkat ul Ansar and declared war on Al Qaeda, but was toppled in 1999.
The fact that Nawaz Sharif was helping the Americans nab Osama has been confirmed. Mr Sharif may have been trying to kill a lot of unlikely birds with one stone. No one will ever know who got Sipah-e-Sahaba and Ramzi to try to kill Ms Bhutto. Her allegation is on record and the fact that Ramzi did try to kill her has also been mentioned by some.
Writing in Jang (March 26, 2006) Ata ul Haq Qasimi referred to a statement made by singer Abrar ul Haq on the question of music as a source of peace of mind. A woman had asked if namaz was not the only source of this tranquillity. The columnist stated that the ulema were not united on the concept of entertainment in Pakistani culture. Were music, photography, singing, painting, poetry and cinema allowed as entertainment or not?
The truth is that entertainment is not allowed. Pakistan’s grief springs from its incompleteness. No one knows if this grief will come to an end after an end of culture, but this is what we think we should do. Kill culture and achieve purity and happiness.
According to Nawa-e-Waqt (March 30, 2006) chief of now-banned Harkat ul Mujahideen Maulana Fazl ur Rehman Khaleel, who lives in Islamabad, was kidnapped by unknown persons along with his driver and cruelly beaten up. He was thrown at a spot in Fatah Jang in a serious condition.
The Harkat chief was in a precarious condition but the doctors hoped that he could survive. The paper reported that Fazl ur Rehman was busy doing tabligh these days.
Khaleel is Musharraf’s “jihadi option”. He was Osama’s logistics man and fell out with Shamzai’s blue-eyed boy Masood Azhar, another of the ISI’s jihadi options. At one point he co-signed Osama’s threats to the West. Who could have thrashed him? Most probably it was an intra-jihad spat.
Famous historian Dr Safdar Mehmood wrote in Jang (March 31, 2006) that the educated people of Pakistan were becoming increasingly aware that Pakistan had become the colony of the US and the US could bomb our region any time and arrest anyone it wanted any time and then go back home. They thought that Pakistani rulers had become functionaries (karinday) of America and, after the Bush visit, had come to realise that America itself was not satisfied with these rulers.
As a historian Dr Mehmood is too simplistic. His honour-based vision ignores the compulsions of the state. But honour accompanied by economic and social breakdown is of no use. Today we would be ill-served by our willingness to carry out an unsophisticated analysis of the current situation.
Quoted in Nawa-e-Waqt (April 1, 2006) ex-ISI chief Hameed Gul said that Iran would not accept dictation from America because Iran had guts (jaan hai). He said that American ambassador’s statement that there would be no AQ Khan in future was a violation of diplomatic norms. He added that there was ember in the ashes of the Muslim ummah and it will become a fire.
The high point of honour is martyrdom. The high point of wisdom is survival. Clearly Gen Gul wants Ahmadinejad to achieve martyrdom to redeem the ummah. But we will not stop killing the Shias in Pakistan no matter what Ahmadinejad does for us. *
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