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http://thelondonpost.net/qadiyanis-pakistans-israeli-lobby/
By Dr Shahid Qureshi : –
In this article Dr Shahid Qureshi exposed the secret History of Pakistan & Israel relation and those who conspired against the country and their clones are still doing it.
1 – Ferooz Noon, Sir Zafraullah and MM Ahmad both (Qadiyanis) Zionists of Pakistan
In October 1947, soon after emergence of Pakistan, the Quaid-i-Azam warned that the partition of Palestine would entail “the gravest danger and unprecedented conflict and that the entire Muslim world will revolt against such a decision which can not be supported historically, politically and morally”. Soon afterwards, Pakistan said at the United Nations that all the Holy Land was being nailed and stretched on the cross. All these words are still timely.
In 1950 (May-June) Pakistan’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan visited the United States and American leaders of trade and industry met him. At the meeting they promised all possible military and economic assistance in case Pakistan recognized Israel. The American industrialists also underlined the importance of such a package for the new state of Pakistan. Liaquat Ali Khan in his known gentle tone replied: ‘Gentlemen! Our soul is not for sale.’ (Pakistan’s first prime minister was assassinated on 16th October 1951)
In July 2003 another Pakistani leader En route to Camp David, in Washington and on his way back, General Pervez Musharraf declared his intent to recognize the Zionist entity (Israel). He wants the ‘issue to be taken up seriously and not on emotional grounds’. In a show of typical chutzpah,* he thought he would shut up everyone by telling them he could neither be ‘more Catholic than the Pope’ nor ‘more Palestinian than Palestinian themselves’. The problem is he need be neither a Catholic nor a Palestinian; he only needed to educate himself badly. He was not someone very good at homework, according to his mother.
Musharraf opens debate on Israel relations: “Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has called for a national debate on the possibility of establishing diplomatic ties with Israel, but said formal recognition of the state of Israel was not yet on the cards. He was speaking after lunch in Paris with the French President, Jacques Chirac, during an official visit to France. Mr Musharraf is expected to meet the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, to discuss terrorism, Iraq and India-Pakistan relations. The talks follow the sentencing to death on Monday of three Islamic militants for killing 11 French submarine engineers in Pakistan last year.” (BBC World Service, Thursday, 3 July 2003 )
Zafrulla Khan publicly said in Cairo ‘ in February 1952 that Israel must be ‘ regarded as `a limb in the body of the Middle East’. He further urged Egypt to seek a peaceful solution of the conflict! In other words, to give up any thought, of liberating Arab and Palestinian lands and recognize the illegitimate occupation of Palestine.
“Israel had come to stay” declared Feroz Khan Noon. Mr. Noon was Pakistan’s then Foreign Minister. He was in London for a British-convened conference, 19-21 September 1956, to consider forming a Suez Canal Users Association (SCUSA) in response to Egypt’s earlier nationalization of the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956. SCUSA was actually a prelude to a later military invasion to occupy the Canal.
Feroz Khan Noon’s ex gratia ‘recognition’ of the Zionist entity had not gone down well with the public opinion back home in Pakistan. Naturally, though, one doubts whether the people were truly aware of the enormity of their foreign minister’s collaboration and complicity in the ugly affair. Noon’s remarks were, therefore, dismissed as stupid rather than taken as traitorous. A political nobody, Noon seemed to have become foreign minister more because of intrigue and default than national merit or qualification.
Feroz Khan Noon had, however, a background, but few were aware of it. He came from a typically feudal and toady family in Punjab, the kind of pillars on which the British Raj had stood. Duly knighted along the way, he had served as high commissioner for (British) India in London (1936-41) and as member of Viceroy’s executive council (1941 – 45). Indeed he was the first Indian ever to be given responsibility for the defense portfolio. Along with another Indian, a Hindu, he was sent to represent British India at the founding conference of the United Nations Organization. Sir Feroz, an empire loyalist with an Austrian Jewish wife, seemed to have become a Zionist by marriage.
Feroz Khan Noon was serving as high commissioner for India in London before Partition in 1936-41, when the colonial secretary, Lord Moyne, asked him to prepare a draft scheme for creating a Jewish state in Arab Palestine, but in a way that no blame should lie on the British imperialists for being anti-Arab or pro Zionist. The can-do knight submitted his proposal to the secretary of state for India, Leopold Amery, who too happened to be Jewish. Noon proposed that they first create an Arabian federation, but also slip in an autonomous Jewish state within that federation. This Jewish entity should be a part of the treaty creating the federation.
The full blown Jewish state would come into existence later, Sir Feroz explained, but the federation would provide the cover that they all needed so that no Muslim ruler can blame England for having created a Jewish state in Palestine or part of Palestine’. Noon’s proposals were forwarded by Amery to Churchill on 10 September 1945 (F0372-275-E6190/53/65).
Present and future leaders of Pakistan must understand that Pakistan’s commitment to Palestine was a principled one and it predated Pakistan itself. Its ‘support for the just causes of the Muslim world is organically related to its own national vocation’.
Zulifqar Ali Bhutto (1928- 1979), Prime Minister said in his keynote address to Second Summit Conference of the Islamic Heads of State held in Lahore, 18-22 February 1974, to serve as a reminder that Pakistan’s stand was neither emotional nor ephemeral, it was based on sound principles in history, law and international legality. The stand can be betrayed. It can never be faulted.
In Lahore, 34 years ago, was adopted the celebrated resolution that inaugurated the glorious freedom struggle of the Muslims of the South Asian subcontinent under the leadership of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah (d.1948). It is a fact of no small significance that the same session of the, [All India] Muslim League which adopted the Pakistan resolution also adopted unanimously a resolution on Palestine.
The resolution recorded that, “the considered opinion, in clear and unequivocal language, that no arrangements of a piecemeal character should be made in Palestine which are contrary in spirit and opposed to the pledges given to the Muslim world’. The resolution further warned against the danger of using force in the Holy Land to overawe the Arabs … into submission”.
Pakistan’s support for the just causes of the Muslim world is organically related to its own national vocation. It has never suffered a severance between national impulse and the urges of the Muslim emancipation. When the partition of Palestine was decided, a demonstration was held here in Lahore at which [the great Islamic poet] Iqbal [d.1938] was present. On that occasion, he emphasized the problem of Palestine, and I quote his words, `does not concern Palestine alone but will have wide repercussions in the entire Muslim world’.
Fifty-five years ago, there was no Palestine problem; there was only a country named Palestine. Only the right arrogated to itself by western colonialism enabled one western nation to promise to a section of another people, namely Jews, the country of a third, the Arabs. It,’ needs to be reiterated that it is this fundamental injustice, this uprooting of a people from their homeland and planting alien population on it, that evokes the resentment of the entire Muslim world.
The malady consists of a cancerous outgrowth of colonialism, the establishment of settler regimes or the imposition of immigrant minority rule. The root cause of the conflict is not an innate animosity between the Muslims and the Jews or even between the Arab or the Jew. Muslims, entertain no hostility against any human community; when we say this, we do not exclude the Jewish people.
To Jews as Jews we bear no malice; to Jews as Zionists, intoxicated with their militarism and reeking with technological arrogance, we refuse to be hospitable. The pogroms inflicted on them during the centuries and to holocaust to which they were subjected under Nazism fill some of the darkest pages of human history. But redemption should have come from the western world and not have been exacted, as it was, from the Palestinians.
The tragedy of Palestine has agitated Muslim minds for half a century. The outrage of its partition in 1947 and the graver injury of its occupation by Israel in 1967 have been intolerable because the territory is part of the spiritual center of the Muslim world. The Palestine question was referred to the UN at a time when the organization was hardly representative of the international community.
The partition plan of Palestine at the UN would not obtain a passing consideration today from the majority of its membership, consisting of third world nations that are sworn to the principle of self-determination of peoples. Even at that time, the Muslim nations reminded the western world of its own long-term interests and of the folly of forcibly driving a wedge into the Middle East. These reminders proved fruitless. These importunities were scorned.
After 1967 war Israel became more and more arrogant; it derided the censure of its action by the United Nations. Its advocates became increasingly apathetic to the growing signs of the un-tenability of the situation arising from the war of 1967. The result was that an iniquitous, indeed and absurd, situation was frozen and the forces of sanity became immobile.
The (October 1973) war has released currents, which could flow towards a just settlement of the Middle East problem. The Arab cause has been actively supported by a vast segment of humanity. The nations of Africa have demonstrated their solidarity with Arabs and placed principle above expediency. Under the pressure of the economic forces, if not through a perception of the rights and wrongs of the situation, the western powers have awakened to the urgency of a definitive settlement of the Middle East problem. The mediatory processes, which have thus been put into, are not to be disdained.
These are good auguries. But they can vanish if an apathy towards the root of the problem, and a satisfaction at partial solutions, begins to sway the policies of those who have supported Israel. On their part, the Arab states have shown that their approach to the problem is not theological, like Israel’s, but one, which visualizes a series of peaceful adjustments beginning with disengagement. Disengagement, however, is not peace. It can turn peace into a mirage if it operates as a substitute for a comprehensive settlement.
We have a right to expect that the peace, which is negotiated in Geneva, will deal with all the issues integral to the Middle East conflict. The withdrawal of Israeli forces from all Arab territories occupied since 1967, the restoration of the Holy City to Arab sovereignty and the restitution of the rights of the Palestinian people are the essential elements of a settlement. All these elements derive from the rational principles of a just and durable peace. All of them come within the four corners of resolution 242, if that resolution is rightly interpreted.
The exponents of the Israeli view contend that the Security Council resolution envisages the possibility of Israel retaining part of the occupied Arab territories. This contention is sought to be based on the provision regarding the right of every state in the region `to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries’. The perversity of such an interpretation is evident from that fact that the resolution as a whole states its objective to be `the fulfillment of the Charter principles’. What principle is more basic to the Charter of the United Nations than the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by the use of force?
Furthermore, no state can arrogate to itself the right to determine its secure borders even if these encroach on the territory of another. No state claims such a right. The security of a state’s frontiers depends on their conformity to international law. A nation’s defense strategy is based on its recognized frontiers and not on its aggressive appetites.
Finally the question arises: whose security comes first? Certainly; on the record of the aggressions committed by Israelis for years, it is the Arabs who need the secure borders against Israel and not Israel against the Arabs.
Among the Arab territories occupied by Israel, Al-Quds holds a special place in Muslim hearts. A unique symbol of the confluence of Islam with the sacred tradition of Abraham, Moses and Jesus, all of them Prophets whom Muslims hold in the highest reverence, Jerusalem is inscribed on our souls as the site of, in the words of the Holy Quran, `the Farther Mosque, the precinct of which Allah has blessed.’ Associated as it is with the Ascension of the Last Prophet, it is tied to our inmost spiritual fiber. Except for an interval during the Crusades, it has been a Muslim city – I repeat a Muslim city – from the year 637.
For more than 1300 years, Muslims have held Jerusalem as trust for all who venerated it. Muslims alone could be its loving and impartial custodians for the simple reason that Muslims alone believe in all three prophetic traditions rooted in Jerusalem.
We gladly recognize that Jerusalem affects the cherished sensibilities of men and women of the three world faiths. But there are 2000 million Muslims and Christians, and 15 million Jews, in the world. Out of these, less than three million owe their allegiance to Israel. What principle of justice would confer on this minority right to hold dominion over the Holy city? What except a kind of cynicism can allow the City of Peace to be treated by Israel as the spoils of war?
I must make it clear that is not our position on Jerusalem but Israel’s, which is contrary to the objective criteria by which the status of territories is determined. It is Israel, which cites the name of religion and culture and invokes its memories or emotions in order to lend justification to acts that are wholly illegal. Such attempts can only make a conflict implacable and bring in its train a religious war.
Viewed in non-religious perspective, the question of Jerusalem’s status cannot be unrelated to the sovereign rights of the people of Jerusalem itself, the majority of whom were Arabs, violently expelled and uprooted from the western part in 1948. Nor can the special attachment of Jewish people to Jerusalem override the principle of admissibility of territorial acquisition by force. The Jewish right to Jerusalem certainly connotes the right of access worship.
On the basis of all these considerations, the issue of the Holy City of Jerusalem admits of no doubt or division in our ranks. Let me make it clear from this platform that any agreement, any protocol, any understanding which postulates the continuance of Israeli occupation of the Holy City or the transfer of the Holy City to any non-Muslim or Arab sovereignty will be worth the paper it is written on.
This is not a threat. [But] Not to give this warning would be to encourage an illusion, which will be fatal of the establishment of lasting peace in the Middle East. In this respect, there is a fire in our hearts which no prevarication, no skilful evasions on the part of others, will ever be able to quench.
The international community and particularly those states, which sponsored the partition of Palestine in 1947, bear heavy responsibility. They have to redress the injustices perpetrated on the Palestinian people. If it were not so tragic, what could be more bizarre than the phenomenon of a people being dispossessed of its homeland and condemned to live in agony and dispersion, not in imperialism’s hoary past but in our day and age?
Who cannot understand their anger at seeing immigrants from all over the invited, nay cajoled, to settle on their own homeland? It is not the eruptions of insensate violence, disowned by their leadership, but the purity of their rights, which must influence the world’s attitude to their problem.
The states gathered here today are committed by the very fact of their adherence to the Charter of Islamic Conference to strive for restitution of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. This is our obligation not only to the people of the Palestine, not even merely to the cause of the Islamic brotherhood, but also to the larger cause of universal peace.
2 – FEROZ KHAN NOON ZIONIST BY MARRIAGE
“Israel had come to stay”, the gratuitous declaration was made as an aside almost half a century ago by Pakistan’s then Foreign Minister Feroz Khan Noon (1893-1970). He was in London for a British-convened conference, 19-21 September 1956, to consider forming a Suez Canal Users Association (SCUSA) in response to Egypt’s earlier nationalization of the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956. SCUSA was actually a prelude to a later military invasion to occupy the Canal.
The operation started on 29th October 1956 when Israeli paratroopers landed in Sinai, 68 kilometers east of Suez. Next afternoon, 30 October, the British government gave an ultimatum to both Egypt and Israel to withdraw their forces at least 16 kilometers from the Canal. The ultimatum meant that while the Egyptian forces, which were in full occupation of the Canal, would have left it virtually undefended, the Israeli forces were able to move 32 km closer to the Canal, from 68 km to 16 km.
Following the ultimatum, British and French warplanes started bombing Egyptian airfield on 31 October. They said they wanted to separate the two sides, the invaders and the invaded, and protect the Suez Canal!
On 5 November the Anglo-French forces themselves invaded the Suez Canal, seized Port Said and began to move southward along the Canal. However, the Anglo-French-Israeli adventure came to a rather scandalous end after President Eisenhower had given his own ultimatum to the three plotters to get out or else face American sanctions. They did, though the Israelis took another four months to complete the withdrawal.
Feroz Khan Noon’s ex gratia ‘recognition’ of the Zionist entity had not gone down well with the public opinion back home in Pakistan. Naturally, though, one doubts whether the people were truly aware of the enormity of their foreign minister’s collaboration and complicity in the ugly affair. Noon’s remarks were, therefore, dismissed as stupid rather than taken as traitorous. A political nobody, Noon seemed to have become foreign minister more because of intrigue and default than national merit or qualification.
He had, however, a background, but few were aware of it. He came from a typically feudal and toady family in Punjab, the kind of pillars on which the British Raj had stood. Duly knighted along the way, he had served as high commissioner for (British) India in London (1936-41) and as member of Viceroy’s executive council (1941-45). Indeed he was the first Indian ever to be given responsibility for the defense portfolio. Along with another Indian, a Hindu, he was sent to represent British India at the founding conference of the United Nations Organization. Sir Feroz, an empire loyalist with an Austrian Jewish wife, seemed to have become a Zionist by marriage.
He was serving as high commissioner in London when the colonial secretary, Lord Moyne, asked him to prepare a draft scheme for creating a Jewish state in Arab Palestine, but in a way that no blame should lie on the British imperialists for being anti-Arab or pro Zionist. The can-do knight submitted his proposal to the secretary of state for India, Leopold Amery, who too happened to be Jewish. Noon proposed that they first create an Arabian federation, but also slip in an autonomous Jewish state within that federation. This Jewish entity should be a part of the treaty creating the federation.
The full blown Jewish state would come into existence later, Sir Feroz explained, but the federation would provide the cover that they all needed so that no Muslim ruler can blame England for having created a Jewish state in Palestine or part of Palestine’. Noon’s proposals were forwarded by Amery to Churchill on 10th September 1945 (F0372-275-E6190/53/65).
However, by early 1947, as the Pakistan bandwagon had begun to roll, Feroz Khan Noon renounced his I knighthood and all his other honors, and issued a press statement supporting ‘ the All India Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan. Having thus covered up his toady past – few knew about his Zionism – Noon was able to infiltrate the necessarily nebulous Pakistani power structure.
By December 1957 he had come to hold the highest political office of prime minister in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. His career was cut short by another toady, Iskandar Mirza, who abrogated the constitution and imposed martial law. (Twenty days later, Mirza, too, was packed off by his pro-American army chief, Ayub Khan.)
But Noon was not the only Zionist or imperialist agent among the many feudal and bureaucratic elite who had positioned themselves in the corridors of powers of the would-be new Islamic country. In those hectic and crucial last stages of the battle for Pakistan each and every person with experience or expertise in government and administration was more than welcome. Then few were aware of what subsequently came to be known as `game of nations’.
Thus, along with the dedicated and committed, also came a host of shadowy characters, opportunists of one kind or another. That the country managed to survive in spite of such characters was no less than a miracle. But after 56 years of attrition and infiltration, Pakistan seems to have been virtually occupied by elements totally alien to the founding ideals and objectives of the new republic. Pakistan was an Islamic and not a nationalist ideal; that is why they had no sectarian, ethnic or territorial problem about their self identity; nor did they have an inferiority complex about being Muslim.
They were `Muslims first’ and that is how they were able to win a new country in the teeth of opposition from the British and Hindus – and without firing a single bullet.
They were `Muslims first’, and, therefore, even though they were not free but `subjects’ of one of the most powerful empires of history, they never condoned or collaborated with any imperialist intrigues or aggression against any Muslim land, from Maghreb in the West to Indonesia in the East.
The freedom and independence of Palestine was a central plank in this One-Ummah and Muslims first `foreign’ policy, which the Pakistani state inherited from the Pakistan freedom movement. However, that was as far the nation was concerned, but then there were also imperialist moles and native Zionists within who were quietly doing their own things. The moles had begun their work even before Pakistan had achieved independence.
3 – SIR ZAFRLLUA KHAN FATHER OF QADYANI – ZIONIST AXIS
A recent Israeli study (P R Kumaraswamy: Beyond the Veil: Israel Pakistan relation, Jaffe Centre for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, March 2000) brings to light, has Pakistan’s own `pro-Israeli’ lobby’ has been doing since the word go.
How about the very first foreign minister of Pakistan, Sir Zafrulla Khan (1893-1985)? The man who was acclaimed all over the Arab world for his eloquent advocacy of the Palestinian and Arab cause at the UN and other international forums while he acted as foreign minister of Pakistan (1947-54). So far it only seemed that he made record-breaking, long speeches but did not win the case, Beyond the Veil reveals: for the first time that the reputed! Advocate was not quite honest to his brief.
Zafrulla’s background was little different from Feroz Khan Noon’s except that he also belonged to the heterodox Qadiyani group. A British creation, the Qadiyanis were empire loyalists by their `faith’.’
Then a judge at the pre-independence Federal Court of India, Zafrulla was in London in 1945 to represent the British Indian government at a conference on Commonwealth Relations. He met the head of the Jewish Agency Chaim Weizmann and proceeded on a six-day visit to Palestine. Weizmann (later president of the Zionist entity) told his men in Jerusalem to `see to it that (Zafrulla’s) stay in Palestine, and his contacts with our work, are made as, interesting and as agreeable as possible ‘. And so it happened. Having allowed himself to be taken on a conducted tour by the Jewish Agency, it seems Zafrulla did undergo an `agreeable’ change of mind. He wrote to Weizmann that he found the problem of Palestine `much more complicated than I had imagined, but let its hope hat a just and equitable solution may soon be discovered’.
Zafrulla did not indicate, though, what complications had since entered his mind, nor, what would, according to him, make `a just and equitable solution’. He was economical with the truth. However, two years later after the UN had adopted the partition resolution (29 November 1947), Israeli orientalist Uriel Heyd, who was also working for the Zionist intelligence in London, reported `noticeable changes in the position of Zafrulla Khan … During his talks in Damascus, Zafrulla Khan indicated that partition, which he [as Pakistan’s foreign minister had] vehemently opposed, was the only solution for Palestine. He even counseled the Arabs to allow the establishment of the Jewish state’. It was not a volte face, it was a double face.
Encouraged, naturally, by his intelligence report, Weizmann wrote to Zafrulla telling him how similar were the partition of India and partition of Palestine. In other words, he expected that Pakistan would be appreciative of the Israeli position. However, Pakistan had not only voted against the partition resolution, but had also opposed Israel’s admission to the UN. Pakistan did not even acknowledge the letter when Israel formally requested recognition.
That was beyond Zafrulla, obviously. Yet, very much against the historical national consensus and, certainly, behind the back of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan (1895-1951), Zafrulla and his boys in the Pakistan foreign office continued to promote the Zionist cause. Whoever had given him the `good news’ (Zafrulla himself or A S Bukhari, the permanent Pakistan representative at the UN), the then Israeli representative at the UN, Abba I Eban (later foreign minister), reported to Tel Aviv in late 1949 that `the I Pakistani representative (Patras Bukhari) at the UN was scheming to embarrass India by bringing his government to recognize Israel’.
It seems, however, that either the pro Zionists in Pakistan foreign office had been unable to gather enough courage to present their proposal for the cabinet’s approval or the foreign minister had done it, but the cabinet had talked out the not so cute idea of embarrassing India by recognizing Israel.
Nevertheless, it seems, Zafrulla had ‘kept telling Israelis that Pakistan was about to recognize the entity. So when, Abba Eban saw him in New York on 14 January 1953, as part of their continuing dialogue, Zafrulla ‘disclosed’ to him that while the ” previous government of Liaquat Ali Khan favored the policy of recognizing Israel, the government now headed by Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin (1894-1964)’had retreated from the favorable approach adopted by his predecessor’. This government `was weaker and more susceptible to public pressure from Muslim extremists’. He himself, Zafrulla told Abba Eban, `was attacked for his moderation’.
Liaquat Ali Khan had been assassinated two years earlier (16 October 1951) and so it was not so difficult for anyone to lie about his policy. What is, in any case true, is that no matter what, Zafrulla was not deterred and he continued to promote the Zionist case by other means.
It is significant that while the prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was opposed to joining any military bloc (he had declined even to send a token paramedical staff to South Korea), Zafrulla was promoting the American idea of a Middle East Defence Organization (Medo) and more. He wanted Israel, too, to be included in the proposed anti-communist bloc, where it would sit along with Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and possibly others. Zafrulla believed it was `inconceivable’ to have a Middle Eastern defence ‘ organization without Israel.
Zafrulla was able to say publicly in Cairo ‘ in February 1952 that Israel must be ‘ regarded as `a limb in the body of the Middle East’. He further urged Egypt to seek a peaceful solution of the conflict. ! In other words, to give up any thought, of liberating Arab and Palestinian lands and recognize the illegitimate occupation of Palestine.
After Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan was led into one military alliance after another: a Mutual Defence Agreement’ with the US (May 1954), Seato (September 1954) and Baghdad Pact (February 1955). After the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy, Baghdad Pact was christened as Cento (Central Treaty Organization). Although Pakistan had no security conflict in that region, ‘ Zafrulla had put the country into South-East Asia Treaty Organization, without consulting or even telling the army. The commander-in-chief, ‘ General Ayub Khan, said he was informed only after Pakistan had joined the alliance.
Beyond the Veil also shows the Israelis were very much into the scheme of ‘ drawing Pakistan into these American led alliances. They had no reservations either about the US giving some military `aid’ to Pakistan. The Zionists were being assured by Zafrulla and his minions that being tied Pakistan had no I conflict with Israel. In fact the Israelis believed that remaining tied to the US would only soften Pakistan’s position on Israel. They have been proved right.
Zafrulla was on the way to becoming prime minister but following serious public unrest about his own role, as also ‘, the role of fellow Qadiyanis, he ‘ eventually resigned from the government in 1954 – not before he ‘ collected his reward. In a repeat ballot on 7th October 1954, Yom Kippur, he was elected to the international Court of justice at The Hague. Unknown even to the government of Pakistan, his name had been sent in to the UN by the US State department.
The Israeli delegate, Abba-i- Eban, was absent at the voting but a member of his delegation said if they been able to be present they would have voted for Zafrulla.
Pakistan’s `pragmatism’, albeit with ‘ regard to the Zionist entity, had – according to the Tel Aviv study – begun with Zafrulla but it did not end after his departure from the foreign ministry. He never really left. After finishing his first term at The Hague, he returned to serve another four years (1961-64) as Pakistan’s permanent representative at the UN.
Zafrulla can rightly be described as the ideological father of Pakistan’s laidback and ever-submissive foreign policy. His influence in shaping the minds and ideology of a totally raw and unformed diplomatic service proved to be profound and long lasting. The first batches of the foreign service were `trained’ in Britain, Canada or the US; when they came back they very well knew how to mix their drinks; otherwise, they were pretty mixed up as to the vision and raison d’etre of the great nation they were required to represent to the world.
However, by the time Zafrulla had resigned formally, the Pakistan foreign office had sunk deep into the Qadiyani-Zionist worldview. Zafrulla’s successor, Hamidul Huque Chowdhury, came from East Pakistan and did not have a toady background. Nevertheless, in the short period that he was foreign minister (26 September 1955-12 September 1956), he too had the same foreign office brief, a la Zafrulla and Noon that `Israel had come to stay’.
After Hamidul Huque Chowdhury, came Sir Feroz Khan Noon, the original author of the cute plan to create a Jewish state in Arab Palestine, but in a way that no one is able to accuse the British imperialists of being anti-Arab or pro-Zionist.
The arrival of the Raj Zionist, Sir Feroz Khan Noon, at the helm of foreign policy coincided with the tripartite Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Suez. The people of Pakistan were out and out in support of Egypt and denouncing the naked aggression, but the foreign minister had already dismissed his critics by telling them that right or wrong, insofar as they were concerned, the Zionist occupation of Palestine had come to stay.
However, more significantly, Noon’s views had the fullest support of both the prime minister, Husain Shaheed Suhrawardy (d.1963) and the president, Iskandar Mirza (d.1969). Suhrawardy had been an untroubled playboy and Mirza had started his career as a British Political Agent in the tribal districts of the North West Frontier. They had no problem in dittoing whatever advice they received from their foreign ministry bureaucrats.
But the foreign minister’s aside seemed only the tip of a policy iceberg that lay hidden in the deep waters of Pakistani kleptocracy in which there is no culture of opening up the public records, after a reasonable period of time, for the benefit of both history and future policy making. Every succeeding regime finds it necessary to let the cupboards remain ever tightly closed lest his successors too should bare the skeletons left behind by him.
Beyond the Veil is necessarily incomplete based on Israeli and other published records with only a few Pakistani sources. The quest for a fuller picture has, therefore, to await the emergence of a bold and honest leadership in Pakistan that is not afraid of facing the truth. Even so, as they are, parts of the Tel Aviv University study make a disgraceful reading.
4 – ZIONISTS & QADYANIS IN PAKISTANI FOREIGN OFFICE
Gen Musharraf’s Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri with Isreali Foreign Minister Silivan Shalom
The date was 23 December 1956, less than two months after the Anglo French-Israeli invasion of Suez but before the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai. Indian Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru (d.1964) was visiting Canada and the Indian high commissioner threw a reception in his honor. Attending the reception, among others, were the Pakistan high commissioner, Mirza Osman Ali Baig, and Israeli ambassador, M S Comay.
Nothing unusual, except what the Israeli ambassador reported to his government: … Pakistan High Commissioner Mirza Osman Ali Baig publicly came up to me, shook me by the hand, and warmly congratulated me on the “wonderful show your splendid little army put up in beating the Egyptians”. His only regret was that the British and the French had intervened; otherwise we [Israelis] might have gone right through to Cairo.
`In thanking him, I expressed regret that his government apparently did not share his views, and continued to display great hostility towards us. He assured me that not all Pakistanis were pro-Arab or anti-Israel and that some of them, like myself, realized quite well what a menace Nasser was. He hoped that a way could be found some time of procuring a modus vivendi between! Pakistan and Israel, and thought that Turkey was in the best position to bring it about because of its association with both countries. When I suggested this was a matter he and I might explore further some time, he welcomed the idea …
Baig was perhaps within his right to hold a personal view on the question, even if patently absurd, but he certainly had no business to convey it to the ambassador of an entity his country did not recognize. Yet, he had gone over the top wishing the Israeli had `gone right through to Cairo’.
It is impossible to assume that Baig was speaking for himself alone. He certainly represented a certain small but insidious and powerful toady-Zionist Qadiyani nexus within the country’s foreign policy establishment, especially that has continued to blight Pakistan’s foreign policy and external relations to this day. Perhaps there is no other country today, which is as friendless and as isolated as Pakistan.
But treachery is also telepathic. If a Pakistani ambassador had told an Israeli ambassador that he wished their `splendid little army’ had gone right through to Cairo, only a decade later almost similarly rude sentiments were expressed by President Nasir of Egypt.
President Dr Radhakrishnan of India recounted this to a former ADC of his, Major C L Datta: `Nasser asked me when I was at Cairo airport on my way back from Ethiopia: “Why didn’t you! take Lahore [in the September 1965 war with Pakistan]? We were waiting to hear this news.”‘ Radhakrishnan, however, went on to add: `You know, I hate hiding the truth, and I just couldn’t tell him [President Nasir] that they [the Pakistanis] fought like tigers, across the Ichhogil canal.’ ‘
In the event both Pakistanis and Arabs – Egyptians in particular – came to nurse a mutual grievance about the other sympathizing with the enemy and not supporting them in their just cause. Both were right but that was because neither of those who made policies were inspired by Islamic values and objectives.
Pakistan had become progressively bereft of its founding vision after the assassination of its first legitimate prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan (d.1951), and policy making passed into the hands of characters like Zafrulla and Noon, their children and their children’s children. Ayub Khan (d.1974) who followed Noon and Mirza had to work with the same pro-Zionist and pro-imperialist policy tools of the old. His own reflexes were Pakistani, however.
When he went to Cairo in November 11, 1960, he, in a sense, apologized and told a rally of the Socialist Union that Pakistan’s representatives may have acted in a “clumsy” manner at the time of the Suez crisis but every sensible man in Pakistan had been deeply distressed by the invasion and their sympathies were all with Egypt’.
He had also, as commander-in-chief of the Army, `approached the government at the time and warned them about the possibility of Egypt being attacked by Britain in conjunction with others.’ It would be interesting to find out what the governments of the period (Choudry Muhammad Ali (d.1980), 12 August 1955-12 September 1956; Husain Shaheed Suhrawardy (d.1963) 12 September 1956-17 October 1957; Ismail Ibrahim Chundrigar (d.1960) 17 October 1957-16 December 1957; Feroz Khan Noon 16 December 1957-7 October 1958) and their foreign office had done with the c-in-c’s warning. Certainly they were not communicated to Egypt otherwise Nasir may not have become as rudely hostile as he came to be.
5 – MM AHMAD TOPPLED FRENCH NUCLEAR OFFER TO PAKISTAN
M M Ahmad born in (1913-2002) was reputedly one of Pakistan’s most powerful bureaucrats. He belonged to the elite ICS (Indian Civil Service, later, (CSP or the Civil Service of Pakistan) and was a district officer in 1947, but by 1966, he had risen to head Ayub Khan’s powerful Planning Commission. He helped to shape the Country’s economic as well as defence and foreign policies.
Ayub Khan also wished Arab states to join the Baghdad Pact and turn it into a `powerful Muslim forum’, but he understood why they were suspicious of the alliance. However, although he did have foreign ministers like Manzur Qadir (1959-62; d. 1972) and Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada (1966-68), both pro-western but also Pakistani, but key policy decision had also to be cleared with a Qadiyani bureaucrat M M Ahmad. Though only the head of Ayub Khan’s Planning Commission, he had come to exercise veto over political decisions as well. Taken as someone with influence in the World Bank, he could shoot down anything by simply saying it may not go down well with Washington.
According to Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, French President de Gaulle had personally told Ayub Khan in 1967 that France was ready to provide `full’ nuclear assistance to Pakistan. In return he simply asked that France be allowed to mine for uranium in the northwest and share it equally with Pakistan. `Our “friends” may not like it,’ M M Ahmad told Ayub, and in any case, what do we need this expensive technology for.’ Words to that effect. But that is how Pakistan missed the opportunity of becoming a nuclear power at least two decades earlier than it did – and minus all the blackmail and intimidation that knows no ending.
In an as yet unpublished interview, the eminent constitutional expert and authority on Qnaid-e-Azam Jinnah (d.1948) and Pakistan movement, Sharifuddin Pirzada also, told Ahmed Irfan a London based journalist that as far back as October 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle (d.1970) had offered Pakistan ‘full’ nuclear assistance and know-how; the only thing he wanted in turn was to he allowed to mine for uranium in Northwest Pakistan for a 50% share.
6 – SOVIET MILATRY ASSISTANCE: Vetoed again
In April 1965, Ayub Khan had also gone to Moscow. This was the first ever visit by a Pakistani leader to the Soviet capital. Ayub Khan came back with the understanding that the visit `might prove a turning point in our relations and that there were tremendous possibilities of cooperation’.
The Soviets had actually agreed to give military aid to Pakistan, but writing two years later Ayub Khan had to understate the achievement, because the same Qadiyani bureaucrat too had vetoed this. This offer had been made by Brezhnev at a meeting set for recreation and shoot some clay pigeons outside Moscow, but with only Ayub Khan and Pirzada attending.
Others including the then foreign secretary had been exclusive, still Ayub Khan had to consult M M Ahmad and the `turning point’ which Ayub Khan had seen coming never arrived. ” The Qadiyanis maintain a ‘special mission’ in Israel and unlike Arabs, `the Ahmadi sect of some 600 people from Pakistan (sic) can also serve in the [Israeli] army.” (*Israel T Naamani, Israel a Profile, London, Pall Mall, 1972) p.75
M M Ahmad was also a committed preacher of his `faith’; although no records are available, it is improbable that with M M Ahmad at the bureaucratic helm, there were no liaisons between Pakistan and the Zionists entity.
However, insofar as Ayub Khan was concerned, he had offered military aid to Nasir during the Israeli invasion in June 1967, but it was all over in no time. Kumaraswamy’s assertion that it was mere `verbal support’ is not correct. (By March 1969, Ayub Khan was out of office.)
Yahya Khan (d.1980) who had taken over from Ayub Khan had only a short and catastrophic tenure. But, along with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia (d.1975), he had played a crucial role in the founding of what came to be known as the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) specifically as a response to the Zionist threat to the Aqsa Mosque and Israeli occupation of Palestine, Sinai and the Golan Heights. There was no discernible change in the government of Pakistan’s pro Palestinian and pro-Palestinian policies, even, if like in the past, probably some of Zafrulla’s children and M M Ahmad’s minions were hobnobbing secretly with the Israelis.
7 – M M AHMAD AUTHORED 1971 DIVISION OF PAKISTAN
Ayub quit in March 1969 and MM Ahmed acquired yet more influence. He emerged as economic supremo of the new Chief Martial Law Administrator, General Yahya Khan (d.1980). After Yahva was forced out in December 1971, MM Ahmad continued as Zulfikar AIi Bhutto’s (d.1979) economic adviser. But a few months later, he went to Washington DC and joined the International Bank For Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank). There he rose to be the deputy executive secretary of the joint Development Committee in 1974.
However M M Ahmad’s imprint on Pakistan’s fiscal and development policies was to last for ever. As Yahya Khan’s ‘finance minister’, he devalued the rupee by 131% per cent. As one economist pointed out (Dawn, Karachi, 1st February 2002), ‘that was the start of the deficit finance, inflation and trade imbalance’ from which the country has not been able to free itself.
In 1974 Bhutto amended the constitution to clarify the non-Muslim slants of (the Oadiyani creed to which M M Ahmad belonged; yet influence over the country’s bureaucratic and political elite remained unaffected.
Many owed their position to his patronage and almost everyone wanted to benefit front his Washington connections’. In 1993, then army chief Abdul Waheed Kakar was looking for a caretaker prime minister to replace Nawaz Sharif. M M Ahmad is believed to have solved the ‘ problem. The job went to Moeen Qureshi, who had recently retired as executive vice president of the World Bank; He was given a Pakistani `passport’ on arrival.
MM Ahmad kept a low profile, but after October 1999 coup, he seemed to have become the regime’s `holy man’. He was a grandson of the Qadiyani `prophet’, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiyani, (d.1908) and son-in-law of the second Qadiyani `khalifa’, Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad (d. 1965).
Besides being an international bureaucrat, M M Ahmad was all active `missionary’ of his Qadiyani creed. After retiring from the World Bank in 1984 he formally became the `amir’ and missionary in charge’ of the group in the US with headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland.
While many power holders in Pakistan seemed proud of being `secular’, for MM Ahmad, it was his `religious’ vocation as a Qadiyani that really defined his relationship with Pakistan. The relationship was in conflict with the existence of Pakistan itself.
According to a Qadiyani `prophecy’, revealed a few months before the independence of Pakistan, if at all India and Pakistan did separate, it would be `transient’ and the Qadiyanis were asked to try to bring an end to this phase soon. (Al Fzal, 4 April 1947 and 17 May 194’7)
In a 1995 article, `Pearls of Memory’ (Al-Nahal„ Spring 1995), M M Ahmad wrote that close to independence, lie was `designated by Pakistan’ as additional deputy commissioner of Amritsar to take over the charge of the district if it was awarded to Pakistan. One day the British deputy commissioner of Amritsar told him `casually that Gurdaspur district is likely to go to India’. The award of Gurdaspur gave India a land corridor to Jammu and Kashmir and so enabled it to Occupy the territory after three months.
A preliminary version of the award was ready on 8 August 1947. Tile definitive version was with the Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten ((1.1979) on 12 August. However, Mountbatten informed India and Pakistan on 16 August- after the `process of the Transfer of Power had been completed’.
M M Ahmad gives no date when this `top secret’ information was given to him. However, instead of rushing to report the matter to the Government of Pakistan, he traveled to Qadiyan to inform his `khalifa’. This contrasted with I the conduct of Indian officers who I immediately reported any sensitive leak or information to Nehru (d.1964) and Nehru took it up with Mountbatten.
We hear of M M Ahmad in another CSP officer, Qudratullhah Shihab’s memoirs, Slihab Nama,, (Sang-e-Meel, Lahore, 1991) that the 1965 war with ‘ India was ‘a Qadiyani conspiracy’. It was planned by an able (Qadiyani officer, Major General Akhtar Husaiu Malik’ and `backed by several powerful people, among them, at the lot of list was said to be Mr MM Ahmad’. Shihab checked this with the West Pakistan governor Nawab of Kalabagh (d.1967) and he concurred.’ That the Qadiyanis have their own particular agenda on Jammu and Kashmir is an open secret. Like the Oadiyani Nobel Laureate, Abdus Salam, M M Ahmad too was opposed to Pakistan becoming a nuclear power.
In an as yet unpublished interview, the eminent constitutional expert and authority on Qnaid-e-Azam Jinnah (d.1948) and Pakistan movement, Sharifuddin Pirzada, told Ahmed Irfan a London based journalist that as far back as October 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle (d.1970) had offered Pakistan ‘full’ nuclear assistance and know-how; the only thing he wanted in turn was to he allowed to mine for uranium in Northwest Pakistan for a 50% share.
President Ayub Khan said he would reply after consulting with his officials back home in Pakistan. In the event the offer was vetoed by M M Ahmad and the army chief Yahya Khan. They warned Ayub Khan that the US would not take it kindly. Pirzada was Ayub Khan’s foreign minister and is a personal witness to the affair.
M M Ahmad is also believed to have been a key architect of the split between East and West Pakistan. ‘Planned’ for economic disparity between the two wings and laid the grounds for an eventual conflict and break.
Former cabinet secretary and author of The Separation of East Pakistan (OUP, Karachi, 1995) Hasan Zaheer (d.1998) quotes Brigadier, later Major General, M I Kareem telling him that Colonel Chaudhary, Staff Officer of Lt-General S G M M Peerzada (had) told him that he had read a top secret paper of MM Ahmed, suggesting that it was time for friendly separation of two Wings rather than elections and warning of serious consequences for the entire country otherwise’. Peerzada was Principal Staff Officer to President Yahya and Brig. M I Kareem his deputy.
For M M Ahmad, however, helping to end the `transient’ was a duty ordained by his `khalifa’. Born on 28 February 1913, in Qadiyan, Gurdaspur, M M Ahmad died on 23, Ju1y 2002, Washington DC and was buried, 30,July 2002, ‘in Baltishti Maqbrah’ in Ghenahnagar (formerly Ribwah), Pakistan.
8 – ABDUS SALAM QADYANI-ZIONIST – SPIED ON PAKISTAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Dr Abdus Salam Nobel Prize winner is considered one of the intellectual giants of theoretical physics, not far behind Albert Einstein and Paul Dirac. His major scientific achievement was to take the first step towards an idea that his scientific peers still dream about: the unification of the four fundamental forces of nature. Scientists believe these forces to be: gravity; the `strong’ force between particles in an atom; the `weak’ force that causes radioactive decay; and electromagnetism.
Salam shared the 1979 Nobel Prize with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow for showing that the weak force and electromagnetism are one and the same. Salam’s theoretical work was successfully demonstrated at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in 1983.
Professor Abdus Salam was a Pakistani. However, as Anthony Tucker’s obituary in The Guardian (22 November 1996) noted that `in spite of his powerful influence in world physics, his eminence in the West and lifelong commitment to science in developing countries, in his own country Abdus Salam is blamed for the starvation of important areas of science through encouraging theoretical and nuclear physics and by inference, weapons research’. In 1961, President Ayub Khan appointed Abdus Salam his scientific adviser and a member of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC). He would accordingly visit Pakistan, once or twice in a year, be received as a celebrity and gave his advice directly to the president.
The former PAEC (Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission) chairman, Munir Ahmad Khan, said after Abdus Salam’s death that in the early 1960s he had proposed to Ayub Khan the setting up of a nuclear reprocessing plant but the idea was shot down by the country’s finance officials. However, this was not the impression of other leading scientists in Pakistan nor of Munir Ahmad Khan’s own predecessor at the PAEC.
Abdus Salams’s position as scientific adviser, however, came to an abrupt end in 1974 when the ministry of interior told the PAEC not to allow him anymore into its laboratories. Abdus Salam had just arrived in Islamabad and was staying as the commission’s guest. Abdus Salam visited the commission and was given the usual VIP reception, but. He was not taken on the usual tour of its laboratories. One scientist who was present on the occasion found Abdus Salam to be quite observant.. He remembered all the old faces, noted the new ones and went to them and asked them about their work.
They all felt so honored being greeted by a Nobel laureate. Abdus Salam later visited China where. He was received as an eminent Pakistani scientist’ and, it is probable, the Chinese ‘, spoke to him freely about their cooperation with Pakistan’s nuclear program. It may have been a hire coincidence but the Pakistan `Islamic bomb’ became news soon after.
The BBC1 TV current affairs program, Panorama, aired in June 1980, mentioned Abdus Salam as one of those who were present at a 1972 ‘ meeting where Zulfikar AIi Bhutto had ‘ allegedly taken a decision to make a nuclear bomb.
A London based journalist rang Abdus Salam at the ICTP (International Centre for Theoretical Physics) in Trieste and asked was he present at any such meeting held by Bhutto? Is it true that Bhutto had asked him to help Pakistan acquire a nuclear capability; and, if so, what was his response?
Dr Salam listened calmly and said (words to that effect): Was there such a TV program? Yes. It is something serious. I am going to he in London after two days and I will tell you when I am there. This is my telephone number in London. Subsequent calls to the telephone number given by him were never answered.
Anthony Tucker also said that Abdus Salam `was a vigorous supporter of Pugwash’ and he `sought nuclear disarmament’. His unwillingness to contribute to the development science in Pakistan can also be attributed to his being a committed and proselytising member of the heretic Qadiyani community (founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiyani who claimed to be a prophet). At Trieste Dr Salam would lead, as imam, unknowing Muslim students from across the world in Friday prayers, and distributed Qadiyani tracts about the `persecution of Ahmadiya Muslims in Pakistan’.
In September 1995, The News reported that “during the Afghan war highly skilled Israelis provided guerrilla training to some Afghan groups and in the later stage of the Afghan war the chief of Pakistan’s most respected intelligence service [ISI] had held a top secret meeting with a senior Mossad official in Vienna.”
In May 1996, another report suggested that Pakistani law enforcement officials met with the top brass of Israeli intelligence during a conference on counter-terrorism in the Philippines. In several one-on-one sessions during the conference, two senior major generals and three brigadiers from Israeli intelligence met the senior Pakistani officials to listen and explain their methods and strategies to deal with the worse wave of terrorism facing the two nations.
The Tel Aviv-based Jafee Center for Strategic Studies has recommended four models for Pakistan to recognize Israel:
1. The Turkish Model: Pakistan can recognize Israel without establishing diplomatic relations immediately.
2. The Iranian Model: Pakistan can follow the precedent set by the Shah of Iran and recognize the Jewish State, but maintain its relationship under wraps.
3. The Jordanian Model: It can imitate the Jordanians prior to full recognition and maintain close political as well as military relations with the Jewish State without granting any official recognition.
4. The Chinese Model: It can adopt the Chinese example and view military contacts as a means of promoting political relations.
9 – ZA BHUTTO VISIONARY STATESMAN OF PAKSTAN
For all his generally assumed culpability in the break up of the country, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who succeeded Yahya Khan was the first world class statesman that Pakistan had got after Qxaid-e-Azam Jinnah (d.1948) and Liaquat Ali Khan (d.1951). He had not been so at the outset; from being a bridge and boon companion to Iskandar Mirza in his young and playful days, Bhutto learnt realpolitik the hard way and had come know the world, as it happened to be.
Beyond the Veil only shows how Bhutto’s views had evolved over time. In September 1957 when Feroz Khan Noon was still foreign minister, he was representing Pakistan at the UN Conference of the Law of Sea in Geneva. Israeli archival material shows `a different picture of Bhutto’ in those early days.
Then he met and dined with his Israeli counterpart Shabbatai Roseanne’ whose mother had been a cousin of Sir. Godfrey, Davis who had been the chief justice of Sindh, the province from where Bhutto’s family came. According to her, Bhutto disliked Arabs and the way they conducted their politics, but he believed the 1947 decision of the General Assembly [to partition into Arab and Jewish states] was bad, and was correctly opposed by Pakistan then’. However, he now thought that `it would be in Pakistan’s interest to recognize this fact’ [Israel].
It was different in 1973, when Prime Minister Bhutto `could hardly contain his delight’ as Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal. He told his service chief on 11 October that a `ceasefire will not do’ and `it is essential that Arab territories held by Israel – illegally by Israel – should be vacated. Pakistan air force pilots are also believed to have taken part in the October War on the Syrian front.
Bhutto now also showed a vision, again, a long time after Liaquat Ali Khan. In the words of his daughter, Benazir Bhutto, who herself became prime minister (12 December 1988-6 August 1990 and 19 October 1993-5 November 1996): `He carved out this bloc of Islamic countries … uniting the countries of the Muslim world, which gave birth not only to [the Organization of] the Islamic Conference … but also to a new found assertiveness.” After the East Pakistan debacle, he probably also wanted to redeem himself.
He packed off M M Ahmad, purged almost all the known Qadiyani generals from the army and did what no one had dared to do before him: he amended the constitution to define the legal status of the Qadiyanis, a non-Muslim minority, and set Pakistan on course to building its own nuclear deterrent.
Later Bhutto ordered the chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission not to take the Qadiyani Nobel laureate Professor Abdus Salam round the Pinstech (Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology) labs, anymore, when he visited them the `following day’. Abdus Salam had been a celebrity scientific adviser to all heads of the government since Ayub Khan and perhaps few knew that he was opposed to any third world country acquiring nuclear defence capability.
Z A Bhutto’s approach to the Qadiyani problem had probably little to do with theology. He had come to see the Qadiyanis purely as a political and security problem, which explains the sequence of policy decisions along side the strategic decision about acquiring nuclear deterrence.
Not only did Z A Bhutto lose power but also ultimately his life because, for all his sharp intellect, he had made the mistake of fighting on two fronts. The feudal within him did not allow him to conciliate enough with his own people and build a strong internal front and the international visionary in him could not but scare all those who would not think of Muslim and third world countries coming into their own.
Paradoxically for those who had, in the words of Henry Kissinger, `wanted to make an example’ of Bhutto, his successor, an unimpressive looking chief of army staff, General Ziaul Haq (chief martial law administrator and president 5 July 1977-17 August 1988, d.1988), too was to prove no less difficult than the prime minister he had deposed.
Like Bhutto’s wining and dining with Shabbatai Roseanne, Ziaul Haq had his past as well. As military adviser to the Jordanian army, he had been closely involved in the suppression of the PLO uprising in September 1970. Not as well profound or experienced in international affairs as Bhutto, Ziaul Haq was showing national and international ambitions similar to Bhutto.
The Americans were constantly telling him to desist and forget the idea of making an `Islamic bomb’, but he behaved as if he was not hearing those words. He ignored all pressures and pressed ahead with the country’s nuclear program. He also decided, on his own, to go forward and support the Afghan mujahideen even if President Carter was prepared to acquiesce and let the historically neutral Afghanistan go under the Soviet sphere of influence. However, as the US realized that the Afghans were, nevertheless, going ahead in their jihad against the other superpower, it jumped on the jihad bandwagon. And gradually the Americans occupied the `jihad’ itself.
Supping with the devil had due consequences for both Ziaul Haq and Pakistan. Perhaps for the first time, the US deliberately introduced Israeli `experts’ ostensibly to give some specialized training to the mujahideen, and Pakistan had knowingly admitted them. The Americans were also pimping for Israel and promoting discreet liaisons between Pakistan and Israel. At the same time, they were telling Ziaul Haq that if Pakistan recognized the Zionist entity, it would help the administration at the Capitol Hill where pro-Israeli legislators tried generally to obstruct most aid proposals for Pakistan.
`Will do,’ one can imagine Ziaul Haq or one of his highly placed aides saying to the Americans, `but let us first prepare our national public opinion.’ And so for the first time the Pakistanis read a press statement issued in the name of Pir Muhammad Ashraf, saying it was time Pakistan recognized the Zionist entity. The Pir was a nominated member of Ziaul Haq’s majlis-e-shoora (consultative assembly) and generally taken as an `honorable member from the intelligence party’.
In the end, the liaison was to cost dearly to Ziaul Haq and to Pakistan, but there is no evidence that Pakistan had been on the way to recognizing Israel. The continuing moral of Ziaul Haq’s story is that supping with the devil can never pay.
10 – LEGALITY OF THE ENTITY (Israel)
‘Israel Simply Has No Right To Exist’ wrote Faisal Bodi a London based journalist in The Guardian on 3rd January 2001: “Peace might have a real chance without Israelis’ biblical claim says Faisal. Several years ago, I suggested in my students’ union newspaper that Israel shouldn’t exist. I also said the sympathy evoked by the Holocaust was a very handy cover for Israeli atrocities. Overnight I became public enemy number one. I was a Muslim fundamentalist, a Jew-hater, somebody who trivialised the memory of the most abominable act in history. My denouncers followed me, photographed me, and even put telephone calls through to my family telling them to expect a call from the grim reaper.
Thankfully, my notoriety in Jewish circles has since waned to the extent that recently I gave an inter-faith lecture sponsored by the Leo Baeck College, even though my views have remained the same. Israel has no right to exist. I know it’s a hugely unfashionable thing to say and one which, given the current parlous state of the peace process, some will also find irresponsible. But it’s a fact that I have always considered central to any genuine peace formula.
Certainly there is no moral case for the existence of Israel. Israel stands as the realisation of a biblical statement. Former Prime Minister Golda Meir famously delineated its raison d’être. “This country exists as the accomplishment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be absurd to call its legitimacy into account.”
That biblical promise is Israel’s only claim to legitimacy. But whatever God meant when he promised Abraham that “unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the Euphrates,” it is doubtful that he intended it to be used as an excuse to take by force and chicanery a land lawfully inhabited and owned by others.
It does no good to anyone to brush this fact, uncomfortable as it might be, under the table. But that has been the failing with Oslo. When it signed the agreement, the PLO made the cardinal error of assuming that you could bury the hatchet by rewriting history. It accepted as a starting point that Israel had a right to exist. The trouble with this was that it also meant, by extension, an acceptance that the way Israel came into being was legitimate. As the latest troubles have shown, ordinary Palestinians are not prepared to follow their leaders in this feat of intellectual amnesia.
Israel’s other potential claim to legitimacy, international recognition, is just as dubious. The two pacts, which sealed Palestine’s future, were both concluded by Britain. First we signed the Sykes-Picot agreement with France, pledging to divvy up Ottoman spoils in the Levant. A year later, in 1917,the Balfour declaration promised a national home for the Jewish people.
Under international law the declaration was null and void since Palestine did not belong to Britain – under the pact of the League of Nations it belonged to Turkey.
By the time the UN accepted a resolution on the partition of Palestine in 1947, Jews constituted 32% of the population and owned 5.6% of the land. By 1949, largely as a result of paramilitary organisations such as the Haganah, Irgun and Stern gang, Israel controlled 80% of Palestine and 770,000 non-Jews had been expelled from their country. This then is the potted history of the iniquities surrounding its own birth that Israel must acknowledge in order for peace to have a chance.
After years of war, peace comes from forgiving, not forgetting; people never forget but they have an extraordinary capacity to forgive. Just look at South Africa, which showed the world that a cathartic truth must precede reconciliation.
Far from being a force for liberation and safety after decades of suffering, the idea that Israel is some kind of religious birthright has only imprisoned Jews in a never-ending cycle of conflict. The “promise” breeds an arrogance, which institutionalises the inferiority of other, peoples and generates atrocities against them with alarming regularity. It allows soldiers to defy their consciences and blast unarmed schoolchildren. It gives rise to legislation seeking to prevent the acquisition of territory by non-Jews.
More crucially, the promise limits Israel’s capacity to seek models of coexistence based on equality and the respect of human rights. A state based on so exclusivist a claim to legitimacy cannot but conceive of separation as a solution. But separation is not the same as lasting peace; it only pulls apart warring parties. It does not heal old wounds, let alone redress historical wrongs.
However, take away the biblical right and suddenly mutual coexistence, even a one-state solution, doesn’t seem that far-fetched. What name that coexistence will take is less important than the fact that peoples have forgiven and that some measure of justice has been restored. Jews will continue to live in the Holy Land – as per the promise – as equals alongside its other rightful inhabitants.
If that kind of self-reproach is forthcoming, Israel can expect the Palestinians to be forgiving and magnanimous in return. The alternative is perpetual war.”
11 – LEADERS BLUNDERS RISK NATIONAL SECURITY
PM Nawaz Sharif with Indian Steel Magnet Sajjan Jandal and his family in Delhi
Pakistan is one of those great countries in the world, which has survived many set backs in last 55 years because of the poor and faithful soldiers of the land and not because of the Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard educated rich and famous.
Nawaz Sharif born on 25th December in Lahore 1949 grew up as a child of ill-conceived politics. The political scene in Pakistan has been dominated by the feudals with a little sprinkling of urban elite but to Nawaz Sharif belonged the dubious credit of breaking this mould. He studied at prestigious Government College Lahore and had a law degree from the Punjab University Lahore. His family moved from Jati Umra near Amirtasr and by 1960 they owned a few modest size factories – iron foundry, ice making and water pump factory.
Some how Mian Sharif (Abbaji ) managed to reach General Jill, as General Jilani was know and begged him to give a break in politics to Nawaz Sharif. Nawaz Sharif was appointed as finance minister in 1983 of Punjab.
In 1981 the family business group Ittefaq’s turn over was Rs 337 million, but by 1987 it had soared to at least Rs 2,500 million, that is according to the group’s own accounts. Within four years Ittefaq had become one of the wealthiest private industrial groups in Pakistan. ‘Hard work and grace of Allah’ explained Shabaz Sharif.
When President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed Benazir Buhtto ‘ a security risk’ the ground of corruption and mal-administration. It was now Nawaz Sharif’s turn by common acclaim, ‘the lesser evil’ even though the establishment was not too keen to have him as prime minister. Instead the establishment preferred Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi who had briefly acted as caretaker prime minister after the dismissal of Bhutto.
What clinched the appointment for Nawaz Sharif was a word to the presidency by the then ISI chief Lt. Gen Hamid Gull, that the army believed he was a better choice. General Hamid Gull now regrets his misjudgement. Subsequently the President also dismissed him. Nawaz Sharif’s problem was power: a pathological crass compounded by crass incompetence.
General Aslam Beg told a friend that they had chosen Nawaz Sharif in preference to Ghulam Mutafa Jatoi because Jatoi said have a dozen or so ‘girl friends’ and it was difficult to reach him after he had retired for drink after 9 pm.
Nawaz Sharif was no less romantic he asks his women to sing over the telephone for him. He doesn’t drink but he doesn’t dispose the files either. But Jaoti used to he never sat over files.
Nawaz Sharif also seemed to an ungrateful person. He did not feel any obligation towards president Ghulam Ishaq Khan, nor did he ever say ‘thank you’ to General Hamid Gull’. The US loathed Hamid Gull as a ‘visionary’ general. One task given to Benazir Bhutto by the US was to shunt him from the ISI. She managed to do at last before boarded the plane to her first visit ‘thanks-giving visit to Washington.
Gen Aslam Beg retired because Nawaz Sharif felt inferior before him and don’t want to extend his tenure. But he ended up accepting some one who is far more difficult than Aslam Beg, General Asif Nawaz Junjua. The over smart business minded Abbaji invited General Asif Nawaz to his Lahore residence. After a fatherly ‘tête-à-tête’, Abbaji told the new army chief that he was like his son and requested him to take his two sons Nawaz and Shabaz under his wings: and also told the ‘children’ that they must follow and never disregard the General Sahib’s advice. And one last thing Abbaji said to the General Sahib, as he came to see him out off at the porch of his house, ‘my both children have a Mercedes each, and here is the key to yours; you are like a son to me.’ Words to that effect.
Nawaz Sharief’s moto was that he could buy any general if he sent his wife on a day trip to Karachi. It didn’t work with General Asif Nawaz, he felt offended and therefore, instead of being able to buy the General, Nawaz Sharif had instead lost his respect too.
Majeed Nizami editor of the Nawa-e-waqat a closest ally of Nawaz Sharif had to remark that they used to regard Benazir Bhutto as a ‘security risk’, it seemed Nawaz Sharif was a greater security risk. He was indeed the worst thing that had happened to Pakistan since independence. Whether it was money, morals or security, the nation found it difficult to trust him. It is interesting that while Pakistani soldiers and Kashmiri freedom fighters were battling against the Indian army on the freezing heights of Kargil, Nawaz Sharif’s business proxies were selling sugar to India. India did not need to import any sugar and yet if Vajipayee had accepted to buy Pakistani sugar it was only to sweeten his relationship with Nawaz Sharif.
This is not meant to be a dossier on Nawaz Sharif’s wheeling and dealing, but it is about the implication of his wheeling and dealing for national security. Dhirubhai Ambani (late) was one of India’s top magnets. He had set up a big oil refinery in Jamnagar, but what bothered him was the very high premium demanded by the British insurance company. The insurance company said the refinery was only 130 km from Pakistan, which may be in the event of an India-Pakistan war, the first bombing target, but they might consider reducing the premium if Ambani brought a ‘certificate’ from Pakistan that it would not attack the refinery in case of a war with India.
In March 1999 Nawaz Sahrif had received at his London flat and Indian editor, R K Mishra, accompanied by a famous Bombay film star (may be Amitabh Bachan). Mishra chaired the Ambani group of Observer newspapers and Amabani reported to ‘control’ eight ministers in the Vajpayee government at the time and late Mr Ambani known to have visited Nawaz Sharif as Vajpayee’s emissary during and after the Kargil crisis.
In September 1999, Pakistan High Commission in London issued him a multi-entry visa. In any event whatever else went on during these visits Ambani got the ‘certificate’ and the insurance company drastically reduced the premium had demanded.
This writer met Syed Mushahid Husain in London asked about this Ambani gate scandal. Nawaz Sharif’s information minister denied point blank and said even Mushraf government did not make that allegation against Nawaz Sahrif.
The Jamnager refinery was just one instance, where the dismissed and exiled prime minister’s business interests impinged on national security and which were reported in the press.
It is highly significant that when the Kargil crisis broke out both George Fernandez and K S Sudarshan, the former a socialist and India’s defence minister and the later leader of BJP militant wing RSS themselves exculpate Nawaz Sharif of any blame.
If the Indians were trying to protect Nawaz Sharif, they must have had very good reasons to do so, but Nawaz Sharif himself had no qualms in putting himself under the total protection of Washington.
The rise and fall of Nawaz Sharif provides a good reason for his immediate as well as future successors, that they should also use common sense and not juts intelligence.
12 – QADYANI ROLE IN BENZAIR BHUTTO’S DEPARTURE
Mansoor Ejaz – Memo Gate Wittness
After the killing of Ziaul Haq (d.1988), a liberal and liberated Benazir Bhutto was expected to be bold and forthcoming in establishing ties with the Zionist entity. Some of her friends in Washington were Jewish and influential, but the lady did not feel confident enough that she world be able to sustain such a strange about-turn in foreign policy. She admitted that if she did so, she would be called a `traitor’.
Nevertheless, with an immature and inexperienced prime minister heading the government, the old time Zionists in her foreign policy establishment, especially Pakistani diplomats in Geneva and New York were now, as a matter of course, dealing informally with each other. Either the prime minister was going along with it, or did not want to know what was going on, or she knew and decided she could nothing about it.
The Americans were, however, more insistent than before, nagging Pakistan to recognize the Zionist entity. Benazir Bhutto’s first term came to an abrupt end on 6 August 1990 when she was succeeded by a businessman turned politician, Nawaz Sharif. The prime minister who headed a wobbly government sought security in appeasing the master power in Washington. He, therefore, out-stepped Benazir Bhutto by making a declaration of intent. His ambassador to Washington, Mrs. Abida Husain, used an Indian newspaper, India Abroad (31 January 1992) to declare that Pakistan did not have `an independent quarrel with Israel’ and that establishing diplomatic relations with Israel was `down the road’. Abida Husain had said that in January 1992.
While the fear of public reaction prevented Nawaz Sharif, too, from according recognition to the Zionist entity, Pakistan itself has since been going downhill. With principles and convictions getting eroded and replaced by a growing sense of insecurity and inadequacy, the area of the illicit has gone on widening.
Nawaz Sharifs brother and powerful chief minister of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif was reported to be doing business with the Zionist entity. The minister of industries, Shaikh Rashid – now minister of information in the Musharraf regime – said that if need be they would also invite Israeli businessmen to invest in Pakistan. The press never stopped saying that contacts between Tel Aviv and Islamabad were continuing and the government, on its part, kept denying the `rumors’ from time to time.
Rumors aside, the Pakistan ministry of foreign affairs has long kept ready an official summary making a case for recognizing the entity so as to lose no time as soon as a policy decision has been taken. The opportunity came when a former vice president of the World Bank, Moeen Qureshi, was flown in as a 90-day caretaker prime minister to succeed Nawaz Sharif.
Married to an `Austrian’ woman [a la Sir Feroz Khan Noon], the gentleman had long forsaken his Pakistani domicile. On landing at Karachi Airport, he was handed a Pakistani passport and the national long coat, sherwani, so that he may look a `Pakistani’! The name of Moeen Qureshi had been recommended to the then army chief, General Abdul Waheed Kakar, by M M Ahmad and he seemed the most suitable person to present Pakistan with a fait accompli as he would be gone at the end of a mandatory interim period of 90 days. He could not utter the `recognition’ word, however. The move was shot down at the last minute by General Abdul-Waheed Kakar.
Moeen Qureshi denied that there was `currently’ any plan to recognize Israel, yet the Zionists within, who had become more powerful after Z A Bhutto and Ziaul Haq, never ceased their not so secret liaison with Israeli officials. Coming to power, a second time, after Moeen Qureshi, Benazir Bhutto asked her foreign ministry to investigate a report about official Pakistani contacts with Israel. It was not a third party report; the Israeli ambassador in New Delhi, Ephraim Dwek, had himself spoken to the BBC about those contacts.
However, Benazir Bhutto, looked torn between conflicting interests. She did not want to provoke public opinion, nor had the Pakistani military establishment given up its objection to recognizing the Zionist entity. She had, on the other hand, to appease her American friends, mostly liberal and Zionists. She denied that she had decided to recognize Israel, but instead of going up front, she thought of going it in a round about way. She was going to be in Cairo for the UN conference on population and development and she said that after the conference, she intended to pay a visit to Yasir Arafat in Gaza on 4 September 1994.
Strangely, however, instead of welcoming her, Israel decided to snub her. The Pakistani ambassador and his staff going to Gaza Strip to prepare for the visit were asked to `clarify whether Pakistan recognizes Israel and whether the Pakistanis’ passports may be stamped’; failing to get a satisfactory answer, from their point of view, Israeli officials `respectfully sent [them] back to Cairo’.
The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has no independent entry point to the territories it is supposed to administer. Israeli Prime Minister Yazhak Rabin said: `Any country that wants to come there [Gaza Strip] has to coordinate with Israel. The fact that Pakistan has no relations with Israel, does not want to talk with us – even more so – if the prime minister of Pakistan declares, I am going to Gaza; I am not going to see any Israeli; I do not recognize Israel, one has to behave in a more decent way.’
Rabin’s deputy foreign minister, Yosi Beilin, said Pakistan and Israel had `connections at the United Nations and elsewhere’ and `the right way’ to go about was to use those connections. Thus Benazir Bhutto had not conducted herself in a `decent way’.
The Israeli snub to Benazir Bhutto was indecent but calculated; it meant to say that it was not Israel that needed to be recognized by Benazir Bhutto, but miserable regimes like hers, which were in need of being recognized by Israel. The miserable regime was dismissed a second time on 6 November 1996.
Benazir’s faults were many and she was going to be dismissed in any event, but it cannot be said that she had not tried to appease Israel in her own way. Like, for example, becoming the first Pakistani prime minister to grant an interview to the Israeli daily Ma’riv, going missing for over three and a half hours between the JF Kennedy airport and Plaza Hotel in New York in order, allegedly, to meet Yitzhak Rabin.
More significantly she had also allowed her foreign minister, Asif Ahmad Ali, to engage in `quiet diplomacy’ with the entity etc; only that she had been unable to bring herself to utter the `R’ word, which had been haunting almost all governments since the fall of her own father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Exactly a fortnight before her dismissal, she had told the National Assembly that `conspiracies’ were being hatched against her government; she had referred, among others, to `an orchestrated campaign against me both in the local and foreign press’.
One actor in the `conspiracy, she disclosed, had recently met her in Islamabad and asked her to recognize Israel. `However,’ she added, `when I said I cannot do so unless Israel settles issues with the Palestinians, he wrote an article against me in the Wall Street journal.’ (Dawn, Karachi, 21 October 1996) The article was entitled, The IMF’s Recipe for Disaster, WSJ 13 June 1996.
That `actor’, said the then Pakistan foreign secretary, Najmuddin Shaikh, was Mansoor Ijaz, a Washington-based influence peddler who had a `pique’ against the Benazir Bhutto government since he could not `derive sufficient benefit’ from it.
Mansoor Ejaz (Memo Gate Scandal) had been introduced to the government of Pakistan by then ambassador Ahmad Kamal to the UN as `an influential Pakistan-American who could help Pakistan by securing a waiver to resume [US] aid to Pakistan’. He could deliver votes in the US House of Representatives for the passage of the Brown Amendment if Pakistan released 15 million dollars to a satellite company RADA with which he seemed somehow associated. Maleeha Lodhi, then ambassador in Washington, turned down the proposal. She said it would be `illegal’; besides, it might also be a trap. (Maleeha Lodhi is Pakistan High Commissioner in London)
The Pakistan embassy in Washington now also disclosed that Mansoor Ijaz had been `pushing’ the government of Pakistan to recognize Israel and he himself had visited Israel on several occasions, once on the invitation of the mayor of occupied Jerusalem. In 1995 he had been given the `Humanitarian of the Year’ award by major Jewish organizations in the US. Ambassador Ahmad Kamal who joined in praising him for his `philanthropic activities’ also attended the ceremony. Mansoor Ijaz had, however, been so important to Benazir Bhutto that when the then President, Farooq Ahmad
Leghari was traveling to the US in May 1994 to attend the graduation ceremony of his son, she advised him to make sure that he also met the gentleman. It was only after the `pique’ that her foreign secretary and others had found it necessary to speak about his dubious influence peddling and Israeli connections.
The personality of Mansoor ljaz was highly significant from another angle: ‘I he was also scion of a `holy’ Qadiyani family. His mother, Lubna Razia Ijaz, is the daughter of Nazir Husain Khan who was one of the `original 313′ followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiyani (1835-1908). However, Mansoor Ijaz denies being a Qadiyani. Few less known and well-placed Qadiyanis now own up to being what they are.
Benazir Bhutto’s departure and Nawaz Sharif’s second coming did not diminish; it only enhanced the insidious influence of the country’s pro-Zionist lobby. Aiding the work of the Qadiyani pro-Zionists were a number of fellow travelers; they were opportunist Pakistanis who had little idea or feelings about the objective merits of the Palestinian issue and were willing to acquiesce to illegitimate Zionist occupation of the Holy Land.
It is not clear how far `up the road’ was Nawaz Sharif from recognizing Israel, but his return saw an intensification of pre-recognition activity. There seemed a crop of Pakistani Zionists who came from almost all ranks – politicians, businessmen, journalists, diplomats, Kashmiri `freedom fighters’, and an odd member from the `ulama’ and church communities. No one, it seems, wanted to be left behind, including the ubiquitous defense and intelligence communities.
Pakistan has not been able to free itself of the ghost of Zafrulla. After Zafrulla, there were M M Ahmad and Mansoor Ijaz, Ahmad Sadiq, Traiq Aziz and many more cryptos up and down the corridors of power.
General Pervez Musharraf’s coup seemed timely. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said to Newsweek (5 November 2001) I told him [President Bush], we understand your strategy. As a good Jewish boy, I would have never dreamed that I would pray for the safety of Musharraf, the president of Pakistan. That is most unexpected experience.’
December 1946: Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah met with the Grand Mufti, Amin al-Husaini in Cairo and said, ‘From the Balfour Declaration to ‘partition’, Jinnah spared no words to denounce the grave injustice to the Palestinians and warned ‘there will be no peace in the Near East until they give an honest deal to Arabs in Palestine … All our sympathies are with Arabs who are fighting … against the usurpers’.
13 – BENAZIR BHUTTO AND ASIF ZARDARI INNER WITH ISRAELI AMBASSADOR
Benazir Bhutto with Israeli Ambassador to UN
I spoke to Benazir Bhutto face to face on 20th July 2007 at International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, when I asked her vision about Kashmir issue and solutions beyond borders. She was glowing with happiness and confidence. I could see some kind confidence on her face as if all the boxes have been ticked and she is going to walk into throne. I gave my article about Islamabad Red Mosque Operation “Nation is Traumatized Mr President (Musharaf)”published in the Frontier Post on that day. I said to her ‘consider going back to Pakistan in the current situation’. She looked at me as if saying, ‘it is too late’ and put article in her purse’.
Wajidshamusl Hassan (former) High Commissioner of Pakistan in London, M. Ziaudin, senior editor of Dawn Newspaper and writer, sat down in a café at Temple Tube station in front of IISS to discuss the speech. Though Mr Hassan was advisor to late Benazir Bhutto but Rehman Malik by passed all the senior political workers and cronies like him. Why?
It was the same meeting at IISS, where Rehman Malik claimed to have arrested Ramzi Yousaf’ while talking to a senior Arab Journalist. For the record at that time there was no anti terrorist cell in FIA when Mr Malik was on the job. But an ISI team arrested ‘Ramzi Youasf’ which was despatched from Lahore under the supervision of very senior officer’. Rehman Malik is nothing but a key holder of multi billion Corruption Empire of Zardari. He is next in the line to join Khalid Shenshah (Ms Bhutto’s chief security officer appointed by Zardari) as Malik knows too much? Why is Zaradari rewarding Rehman Mailk who took backup life line vehicle’ of Ms Bhutto from the scene just before the blast as if he knew about it? Why there was no reconstruction of the whole incident as suggested by the British Scotland Yard?
Zardari is too busy clearing Mailk’s name as if it is going to affect his British Nationality application? Malik was dismissed from his job on the corruption charges. Now Zardari has issued an order converting his ‘disgraceful dismissal to honourable retirement with full benefit’. It is like one crook scratching back of another thief.
It seems Benazir Bhutto was mostly relying on Indian and Western sources for information and assessments about Pakistan. The quality of advisors like Hussain Haqqani, Rehman Malik, (36 weeks PhD holder) Babar Awan, and others around her at the time was very low.
I wrote on 25th July 2007 in The Frontier Post: “Benazir Bhutto lectured about the future of democracy in Pakistan at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London on 20th July 2007. She was going on about the increase of extremism in Pakistan. I asked her what you would do when the root causes of spreading of extremism are beyond the borders of Pakistan and there are more than two million afghan refugees living in Pakistan, some are also involved in terrorism according to reports. Her response does not worth mentioning because it was based on the reports in western and Indian media. She is not aware with the ground realities now and how people of Pakistan are thinking. There is a high probability of her becoming a terrorist target in Pakistan”.
Benazir Bhutto with Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman who served as Israel’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations from January 2003 – August 2008.
She was eliminated because none of the guarantors and launchers trusted her. She was a person who followed the line of interests and that is how she beat Nawaz Sharif in political manoeuvrings. Zulifqar Ali Bhutto was a great statesman and leader though trained under a ‘dictator’s umbrella’ but not corrupt and so was his daughter late Benazir Bhutto.
I wrote in ‘The Frontier Post’ on 17th October 2007, “The game plan is taking shape and becoming more and more visible. Musharraf and Benazir are like clay pigeons, which could be shot at any time according to some analysts. In Pakistan Benazir and Altaf Hussain are no different than Chilbis and Karzais. Benazir is promising to provide full access to Dr AQ Khan for interrogation and intention to invite US forces to operate in Pakistan as if they are not already secretly. Does any one wonder why Mr Bin Laden always helped President Bush by releasing his messages just before the last US elections and other low ratings moments and now Benazir by allegedly threatening to eliminate her? I don’t see any future of Benazir”.
The US Plan was not changed even after the death of Benazir Bhutto because Asif Zardari who had free coaching lessons from the CIA while in United Stated according to some sources replaced her. He and his wife have been having ‘intimate dinners’ with Dan Gillerman, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations with his wife. What was the reason to meet and dine with the officials of a country whom Pakistan doesn’t recognise it exists? If it was any body else he or she would be jailed by now?
As a shrewd crook Zardari has learn the trick of ‘bypassing the official system of government’ to deliver the goods. That is the most effective way of espionage. That is how delivery and rent boys Zaradri’s PSO Salman Farooqi and Rehman Malik got four US (blackwater/CIA) agents released from the police custody and handed over to the US embassy in Islamabad, without charge. These agents allegedly were arrested in a 4×4 about two miles from sensitive Kahuta Nuclear Plant. They were dressed like Taliban and talking in Pashto and had explosives and sensitive equipments in the vehicle. Was that a plan to take over Pakistan’s nuclear assets by Hollywood style ‘Balckwater/Xe’ dirty operation?
One theory can be that the same people who launched Ms Bhutto third time with the support of locals eliminated her? Zardari gang, Rehman Malik and Hussain Haqqani and others are the people who are not only corrupt and compromised but also have their loyalties signed outside. They are ‘The Asset Plus’ of foreign governments including US, India and Israel.
Since his entry into Presidency we have seen a stream of visits by the US officials, politicians, senators, and generals almost all of them supporting Zardari. “They all come to put pressure on the armed forces and opposition leaders not to bother our man”, said a senior analyst.
In the word of US President Franklin D Roosevelt who reportedly said in 1939 about Anastasio Somoza García the non communist Nicaraguan ruthless dictator, “Somoza may be a son of a bitch but he’s our son of a bitch”
14 – BENAZIR BHUTTO’S MURDER AND ISRAELI FRIENDS
Assassination of Benazir Bhutto served many purposes to the players who want Pakistan in turmoil and chaos? Was it a friendly fire? The speed of war of words against Pakistan is enormous and certain lobbies are putting their full weight to de-stabilize Pakistan.
Those who say just because terrorists have attacked President Musharaf of Pakistan therefore, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are not safe must check their brain’s functioning. US Presidents John F Kennedy was killed on a road and Ronald Regan was shot in the street, Yahizk Rabin President of Israel was shot dead in a rally, Prime Minster Indera Gandhi was shot by her guards and Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi was killed in a suicide attack by a Tamil Hindu terrorist. All the above are nuclear powers so shall we say their Nukes are unsafe? It sound like ‘fox and the lamb’ story?
Benazir Bhutto was surrounded and mostly influenced by non-political actors who had their loyalties signed outside Pakistan? These are the players who want every thing from Western support to bring them in power, education, cloths, and cars but don’t want western freedom of speech, values, respect of poor people. In most democratic countries media, political and campaign advisors are mostly highly qualified professionals and not party loyalists. That is the crucial point when opportunists and power greedy politicians do not give advice to their leader as happened in Benazir Bhutto’s case. Nobody told Benazir not to open the soft rooftop of a bomb/bullet proof car because she could get hurt? One must understand that how one mistake, one violation of security rule could jeopardise one’s life. Bulletproof cars and foreign trained bodyguards can only reduce the risks but cannot rule out dangers?
Beneficiaries and opportunists who wanted to get to the power through her surrounded Benazir. What was the point of travelling with people who could not give warning about risks? How can these incompetent passengers of Benzair’s car trusted for top job? Critics say they were waiting lioness to kill for them so they could enjoy the fruits of power and flagged cars as they did in the past? People say Influence and interference of Rehman Malik and Sherry Rehman made many PPP circles angry? Many believe both are dodgy characters? Rehman Malik himself is owner of a private Spy Agency in London obviously with foreign staff.
People say keeping in view what happened to Benazir, one could bet that Altaf Hussain is not going to return to Pakistan for another millennium? Well if you are frightened of seasickness best place to avoid is to sit under a tree, like Altaf Hussain and his gang sitting in a phone call centre in London?
Stephen Cohen, from The Brookings Institution wrote on December 27, 2007, after Benazir death, “I fear for Pakistan. Its further decay will affect all of its neighbours, Europe and the United States in unpredictable and unpleasant ways. Will it be a death blow? Can Pakistan recover as a state and as a society? It is hard to be optimistic. As I wrote in “The Idea of Pakistan” in 2003, Pakistan will face a fundamental crisis in five or six years, Benazir Bhutto’s assassination may bring that about sooner than later”.
Stephen Cohen stated “When she and her husband came to the Brookings Institution just before she departed for Pakistan, she stated a need to restore her contacts with the Pakistani people. She also displayed a far more realistic understanding of Pakistan’s problems and the importance of reform.”
A senior London based Military Analyst stated, “enemies (of Pakistan) Steve Cohen included – want to turn political dissent into inter-provincial ethnic/sectarian polarisation. No one seems to perceive the true nature of the danger; no one seems to be able to show leadership that such times require. But the elections are neither the problem nor the solution; they are an opportunity.”
A Washington based military analyst responded to Stephen Cohen that, “Pakistan has endured many tragic events in the past. Pakistan is not as delicate as some of our cynical American friends tend to believe and the Pakistani people are far more resilient than the best estimates of our many detractors. We will rise to the occasion and overcome this challenge. Steve may plan another of his books on another of his predicted crises but he may well be disappointed.
Benazir’s assassination is a big national loss but the mischievous suggestions of hidden hands – this time Steve has not followed the popular formula of blaming everything on the ISI and has obliquely blamed the retired intelligence officials – probably the same who were nurtured and tutored by the CIA during the ‘Afghan JIHAD’. Could he for a while also look around and point a finger at other intelligence agencies operating in the country including RAW – who would naturally have an interest in destabilizing Pakistan. There is also a mistaken characterization in American media about Rawalpindi as a Garrison town. In any case if Pentagon can be attacked in Washington, DC why should it be so surprising if a few terrorists attacks happen in Rawalpindi or Islamabad.”
Zbigniev Brzezinski once boasted (“How the US provoked the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan and starting the whole mess”, Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15 – 21, 1998, how he succeeded to trap the Soviets in the war by starting insurgency against the socialist government long time before the Soviet troops came over to help the government.
Similarly who asked Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1990s leading to first Gulf War, full occupation and than execution of Saddam Hussein presenting as Shia revenge? Policy of divide and rule has not stopped. There was no problem of Shias and Sunnis in Iraq and else where. Critics say that, ‘’the attacks on Iraqi holly sites have multiple objectives for example warning to Iran and fanning ethno religious violence’.
Re-launching of Benazir Bhutto has another dimension, which was about to be aired. Wikipedia encyclopaedia wrote, “Bhutto was the eldest child of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Pakistani of Sindhi descent and Shia Muslim by faith, and Begum Nusrat Bhutto, a Pakistani of Iranian-Kurdish descent, of similarly Shia Muslim by faith.” Her husband Mr Asif Zaradri also belongs to Shia faith. Some foreign forces were/are going to use religion to create divide in Pakistani society?
Approximately 3% Shia population of Pakistan is very well integrated with the Sunnis. After the Iranian Revolution and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan Shia and Sunni divide happened at a minor scale resulting in bombings on each other. “Shias of Pakistan are not like Sunnis in Iran”, former foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri told his Iranian counterpart. He was talking in the context of US invasion of Iran scenario and its impact on the region including Pakistan.
Edward Herman wrote in (ZNet Commentary, December 16, 2007), “of Great Satan and Little Satan, of the US and Israel. Whatever these two satans touch, rots. Whoever relies upon their help, loses his soul. The people of Pakistan deserve freedom, prosperity and equality, but no union with Satan will help them. Musharraf served the Great Satan, and Bhutto played ball with the Little Satan. Now the NY Times reported that the US plans to use the native mountain tribes of Pakistan to carry out their war. Unless the people of Pakistan reject Satan and his allies, be it called al Qaeda or ISI or CIA or Special troops, they won’t be free. As long as they still believe that something good can come out of Satan’s friendship, they are doomed. Their country will be dismantled, and their useless nuclear weapons won’t help them”.
One analyst said it is interesting to note that Benazir Bhutto and her husband had been lobbying and investing resources with Pro Israel Jewish lobby and also hired a Washington based Jewish lobbying firm for $160,000 for six months in mid 2007. One critic says, ‘Benazir had a long list of Pro Israel Jewish friends and was openly following their agenda.’ Look at the list of her friends and commentators on Pakistan’s nuclear program, who are they?
Bhutto requesting Israeli secret service Mossad for protection, seeking advice from Stephen Cohen, writing emails to Mark Siegel, Wolf Blitzer, reportedly sharing secrets with David Frost, relaying messages to Israeli Prime minister Ehud Olmert, meeting with President Shimon Peres at several occasions, Benazir and Zaradari having dinner with Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman who recalled a meeting he had with Bhutto just prior to her return to Pakistan. “My wife and I had an intimate dinner with her and her husband,” he said. “We spent over three hours with them.” WHY?
One critic said looking at the list of all Benazir’s friends above it seems like she was playing a dangerous game of pro Israeli Jews, imperialists and neo-cons to denuclearise, destabilise and disintegrate Pakistan? A well respected Jewish analyst and former US Secretary of State Hennery Kissinger once said as reported, “it is irrelevant if US punishes its enemies or not but it definitely punish its FRIENDS”.
15 – TRUTH ABOUT LIBYAN N-PROGRAM AND PAKISTAN
Henry Kissinger infamous US secretary of state once said, ‘its irrelevant if US punishes its enemies or not but it definitely punishes its friends. That list of friends punished or killed by friendly fire is pretty long but General Zia, Sadam, Osama, Yasar Arafat and General Noeriaga, Taliban etc are the popular one. There is a message for President Mushraf and his imported cronies to grow up be brave and get out of the bushes.
In February 1992 Democrat Presidential candidate Senator Gary Hart from Colorado, 1975 to 1987 was in Athens where he was approached by Libyan Naval attaché who told Senator Gary Hart that ‘Libya wanted to negotiate.
Senator Gary Hart went to Geneva where he met head of Libyian intelligence ‘Yussaf Dibberi’, who offered to handover two men wanted for suspected of Lockerbie bombings of flight Pan Am 103 in Scotland and wanted sanctions to be lifted.
Senator Gary Hart reported back to the US State Department their response was cold. Senator Hart flew to Libya and met Prime Minister Abdul Salam Jalud and said that ‘Libya should cease any support to terrorism and abandon weapons of mass destruction programme.
The Libyan PM confirmed that, ‘Every thing will be on the table’. It was clear what Libyans wanted to come out of cold.
Senator Hart reported back to State Department and later Libya that ‘sanction’ will not be lifted even in exchange for the suspects of Lockerbie bombings.
IAEA expressed surprise that Mr Blair did not take the opportunity offered by Mr Cook to abandon the allegation. Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the IAEA, said: “These were blatant forgeries. We were able to determine that they were forgeries very quickly.”
The Libyan foreign minister Abdual Rahman Shalgam was in London on 10th February 2004 on after 20 years on an official visit to the United Kingdom. He also met the Brutish Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Jack Straw British Foreign Secretary while addressed a joint press conference at the Foreign Office with Libyan Foreign Minister.
While responding to a question from the BBC A question to the Libyan Foreign Minister, ‘Do you think if there had not been the war in Iraq, that the dramatic events we have seen of the last few weeks, the opening up of Libya’s cooperation on weapons of mass destruction, your visit here today, would this have taken place?
Libyan Foreign Minister Shalgam’s answer (in directly confirmed that there was an effort to give up so called Libyan WMDs 12 years ago)
“Our London Ambassador, Mr Mohammed Ismael, who is here with us, we are in contact and discussions with America since 1992, 12 years ago almost. We had meetings, several meetings in several places. In 1999 I was responsible for foreign affairs and the popular conference, our Foreign Minister at that time was the late Almar … at that time. We discussed the issue of projects and programmes leading to banned weapons.
He further said, ‘We had a document called the green document for human rights, it was prepared more than 10 years ago. Article 23 of that document says that the Libyans ban weapons of mass destruction and call upon the world to get rid of them. I don’t blame you for problems of language or geography or place, you did not know the facts and these documents. But I blame those who speak our language and who can read that document, and they didn’t, and that is not good, and those who read it and changed that document according to their own interests.
British Foreign Secretary said: If I may just answer Bridget Kendall’s question, as the Minister has said, the contacts, active contacts with Libya pre-date the recent international concerns and the military action in respect of Iraq, and for example the visit of Minister Mike O’Brien took place a good while before military action was contemplated in respect of Iraq, still less took place.
The point I made on 20 December, following Minister Shalgam’s announcement, was not to claim any crude connection – which we do not – between military action in Iraq and what has happened in Iran and in Libya, it was to make a more tentative and more subtle point, which is that I would hope that the removal of Saddam has generally made for a more secure environment in the Middle East and may – but that is for historians to judge – may have therefore eased the negotiations, but that is a very different point from saying there is some crude connection between the two.
Question from the BBC World (Service Arabic) Now can you tell us exactly what part did London play in brokering this new stance of Libya, vis a vis programmes of weapons of mass destruction, and are you now mediating between Tripoli and the rest of the world to improve their relations? And did Libya contribute in any way after the pronouncement of getting rid of weapons of mass destruction and revealing the role played by Dr Abdul Qadir Khan in Pakistan, and leaking information, nuclear in relation to Libya, and in revealing other roles by other partners worldwide?
Libyan Foreign Minister Shalgam said, “I would like to say that Libya never gave any information, we were never asked even. As for Mr Khan, America knows about him and he himself knows about himself.
At the press conference Jack Straw said, ‘Libya’s announcement on 19th December 2003 that it would rid itself of its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes was a courageous step. The announcement opened the way to Libya’s reintegration into the international community, it showed too that problems of proliferation can, with goodwill, be tackled through discussion and engagement.’
Mr Straw said, ‘Libya’s decision should benefit the whole region and make the world a very much safer place. We are making good progress on the implementation of the 19 December agreement and on the wider effort to prevent the proliferation of these weapons.
The Libyan F M said, ‘This visit is a chance for a dialogue with the Minister in which we discussed the relations, bilateral relations, between our two countries in various fields, also the relationships between Libya, Britain and the United States and the positive results from the last meeting here in Britain between Libyan officials as well as British and American officials. We also discussed the relations of Libya with the European Union and also some of the measures which are not being done towards Libya by the European Union, also with regard to our cooperation towards peace, development, stability in Africa.
Amar Sultan, Al-Halam TV, Mr Shalgam, can I ask you in Arabic please, before you gave concessions voluntarily regarding the weapons you had demands regarding operations after the attacks on Libya. Will you concede regarding this concession and stop giving Libya any reparations?
Libyan Foreign Minister said, ‘Concessions is not a correct term. Libya reviewed a number of issues. We considered to whom these programmes and this equipment, called weapons of mass destruction, I would like to tell you the following. We have the equipment, we had the material and the know-how and the scientists. We never decided to produce such weapons.
To have flour, water and fire does not mean that you have bread. We never gave any concessions, we discussed this years ago, and the popular conventions in Libya and fore-sessions decided to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. That is documented, this is a popular demand. It wasn’t imposed on us and we gave no concessions. America was defeated in Vietnam by a small country and she has nuclear weapons.
What will these weapons benefit us, how? We want the Americans to help us, we want the British to help us, and others too, to convert our projects into peaceful projects like nuclear power, desalination of water, that is more beneficial to us. As for the 1986 attacks, any citizen, any man on this earth can sue others, you can sue me now, you can sue others, this is lawful everywhere. We can’t tell anyone don’t sue others, this is lawful and it is up to the individual.
Bill Neeley, ITV News Foreign Minister, ‘can you confirm that Libya handed over blueprints for nuclear warheads to western officials, that it has done that already?
Libyan FM replied, ‘I would like to say something that I have mentioned many times before; this is regarding the programmes of weapons of mass destruction. We are the ones who took the initiative in this matter. What the agencies and other agencies do in Libya is not inspection but verification. They tell us this is what I have in my pocket, you don’t have to inspect me, I showed it.
Libya deals with the issue of nuclear power with the IEA, with Dr Baradei, and we co-ordinated with Dr Baradei with regard to chemical weapons, we received the Director General of the International Nuclear Agency and Energy Agency.
There is an agreement on which we are working, the biological biology has no agency to work upon so we are co-operating through our own experts and our Italian friends are going to send experts of their own, and also in Britain and America. Some of the equipment which violate the non-proliferation agreement, we delivered that to the International Nuclear and Energy Agency, which they have on file. Now it will put it in any safe place with one of the Permanent Members of the Security Council of their choosing, that is within a programme that is called Assurance Safeguard Agreements.
Some of those will want to poison these Libyan initiatives, some of them are close to us, there are others who are far from us. They twist the truth and the facts. They say Libya gave concessions, Libya is afraid. This is politics. Any person when in times of differences, we had our own differences and America attacked us and bombed our country.
We supported liberation movements in South America and Nelson Mandela, now when Nelson Mandela is in Britain or America he has a red carpet reception. Things have changed. Yes we have the courage to review our politics and our directions at will. Those who poison relations by accusation and campaigns, the caravan is moving on anyway.
Foreign Minister, we have heard recently that you had contacts with the Israelis, can you confirm that such contacts took place? And secondly, the Americans are talking about setting up a bureau in Tripoli to co-ordinate the process of getting rid of Libya’s programmes for WMD, what type of an office will it be?
Foreign Minister Shagam said, ‘ Nothing forces us to hide anything in Libya. The talk that Libyans in the past met with Israelis, that is untrue, that is not true. I heard also that I will contact Israelis. This is something that doesn’t deserve to really disconcert all. We don’t have relations between Libya, Costa Rica or Bolivia. Why should we? This is an attempt to poison by press, unfortunately by Arab press. I am a journalist myself regrettably … information, but to lie, this is cheap.
Americans, yes Americans came to Libya to work inside the Belgian Embassy and Libyans will also go to America to work in the Interests Section of Libya. This is a step forward within the positive development between us and Libya, America we heard will reduce measures that will allow their own citizens to enter Libya. We had problems with Britain, we solved them, and we have built the political diplomatic relations, the same with America.
Jonathan Pollard
In November 1985, the FBI arrested Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, on charges of selling classified material to Israel. Pollard was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment. His wife, Anne, got five years in jail for assisting her husband.
Immediately upon Pollard’s arrest, Israel apologized and explained that the operation was unauthorized. “It is Israel’s policy to refrain from any intelligence activity related to the United States,” an official government statement declared, “in view of the close and special relationship of friendship” between two countries. Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres stated: “Spying on the United States stands in total contradiction to our policy.” In November 1995, Israel granted Jonathan Pollard Israeli citizenship. This publicly signalled to the US, Israel’s willingness to accept full responsibility for Pollard.
On May 12, 1998, Israel formally acknowledged Jonathan Pollard was an official Israeli agent. This fact wiped out any remaining doubt about Jonathan Pollard’s motives. Being an official agent is, by definition, the polar opposite of being a mercenary. In the same May 12, 1998 statement, the Government of Israel publicly acknowledged full responsibility for Jonathan Pollard, and indicated its commitment to his immediate repatriation to Israel.
Four Prime Ministers of Israel and three Presidents of Israel have all personally requested Jonathan Pollard’s release from the President of the US. Each one pledged to be personally responsible for their agent who has now served 15 years in prison under harsh conditions, and who has fully expressed his remorse.
So why US kept turning down Libyan offers for cooperation for 12 years? The answer is very simple there will be no body blame everything goes wrong in the world and to keep all the Middle East under pressure and also to keep the public at home quite. The recent history has proved paint some one as terrorist and do whatever you can in the name of counter terrorism like the Israelis doing in the name of security and US in Guantanamo Camps.
It is high time for the policy makers in Pakistan to be more sensible and futuristic because difficult times are coming. Bush administration is going to present Osama bin Laden by the end of October this year to win the election as they allegedly arrested Sadam Hussain. Therefore OSAMA BIN LADEN will be part of the election campaign.
REFRENCES
The founder of the group, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiyani (d.1908), claimed to be a messiah and prophet and described his movement as ‘a plant, which had been cultivated by the British themselves’. He ‘broke’ the sword: abrogated Jihad. His eldest son and second ‘khalifa’ prophesied that if at all Pakistan came into being; it would merge with India eventually. However, instead of waiting for that to happen, the Qadiyanis were expected to try bring an end to that temporary phase. There were, therefore, serious question marks on the role of Sir Zafrulla who had appeared as Pakistan’s counsel before the Boundary Commission. The commission awarded the greater part of the Muslim-majority district of Gurdaspur to India, giving it a land corridor to Jammu and Kashmir thus enabling India to invade and occupy some two-thirds of the territory only three months later.
Zafrulla had been recommended to Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah (d.1948) as the first foreign minister of Pakistan on the assumption that being an old British hand, his appointment might help counter the generally unfriendly attitude of the Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, because Jinnah had denied him his desire to be appointed the governor general of Pakistan as well, while India had obliged him already. The Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan had, however, given dear instructions that no policy decision be taken without his permission. But in practice, it was for Zafrulla to decide what not to refer to the prime minister.
Zafrulla’s own biographical book, Tahdeeth-e Ni’amat (Dacca, 1971), refers to his visiting, among others, a Russian Jewish settlement near Jerusalem and exchanging views with Dr Cohen of the Jewish Agency. There is no mention, however, of his meeting with Weizmann in London and writing to him after the visit.
Major C L Datta, With Two Presidents: The Inside Story, (Delhi, Vikas, 1970), p.147.
Muhammad Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters, A Political Autobiography, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1967) p.155. 3. Ibid, pp 168 – 173.
Both cases, vetoing French nuclear assistance and Soviet military aid, have been reported personally by Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada to the writer of this article. With a public career spanning over half a century, from being a secretary to Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah to helping President Pervez Musharrat as his constitutional fixer, Pirzada is something of an eminence gripe in Pakistani political history.
Israel T Naamani, Israel – a Profile, (London, Pall Mall, 1972) p.75.
P R Kumaraswamy: Beyond the Veil: Israel-Pakistan relation, (Tel Aviv, Jaffe Centre for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, 2000), pp 32-34.
Z A Butto, Speeches and Statements, 7:128-29.
Benazir Bhutto interview in Stanley Wolpert, Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan,
(New York, Oxford, University Press, 1993), p.224.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are not of The London Post
By Dr Shahid Qureshi : –
In this article Dr Shahid Qureshi exposed the secret History of Pakistan & Israel relation and those who conspired against the country and their clones are still doing it.
1 – Ferooz Noon, Sir Zafraullah and MM Ahmad both (Qadiyanis) Zionists of Pakistan
In October 1947, soon after emergence of Pakistan, the Quaid-i-Azam warned that the partition of Palestine would entail “the gravest danger and unprecedented conflict and that the entire Muslim world will revolt against such a decision which can not be supported historically, politically and morally”. Soon afterwards, Pakistan said at the United Nations that all the Holy Land was being nailed and stretched on the cross. All these words are still timely.
In 1950 (May-June) Pakistan’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan visited the United States and American leaders of trade and industry met him. At the meeting they promised all possible military and economic assistance in case Pakistan recognized Israel. The American industrialists also underlined the importance of such a package for the new state of Pakistan. Liaquat Ali Khan in his known gentle tone replied: ‘Gentlemen! Our soul is not for sale.’ (Pakistan’s first prime minister was assassinated on 16th October 1951)
In July 2003 another Pakistani leader En route to Camp David, in Washington and on his way back, General Pervez Musharraf declared his intent to recognize the Zionist entity (Israel). He wants the ‘issue to be taken up seriously and not on emotional grounds’. In a show of typical chutzpah,* he thought he would shut up everyone by telling them he could neither be ‘more Catholic than the Pope’ nor ‘more Palestinian than Palestinian themselves’. The problem is he need be neither a Catholic nor a Palestinian; he only needed to educate himself badly. He was not someone very good at homework, according to his mother.
Musharraf opens debate on Israel relations: “Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has called for a national debate on the possibility of establishing diplomatic ties with Israel, but said formal recognition of the state of Israel was not yet on the cards. He was speaking after lunch in Paris with the French President, Jacques Chirac, during an official visit to France. Mr Musharraf is expected to meet the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, to discuss terrorism, Iraq and India-Pakistan relations. The talks follow the sentencing to death on Monday of three Islamic militants for killing 11 French submarine engineers in Pakistan last year.” (BBC World Service, Thursday, 3 July 2003 )
Zafrulla Khan publicly said in Cairo ‘ in February 1952 that Israel must be ‘ regarded as `a limb in the body of the Middle East’. He further urged Egypt to seek a peaceful solution of the conflict! In other words, to give up any thought, of liberating Arab and Palestinian lands and recognize the illegitimate occupation of Palestine.
“Israel had come to stay” declared Feroz Khan Noon. Mr. Noon was Pakistan’s then Foreign Minister. He was in London for a British-convened conference, 19-21 September 1956, to consider forming a Suez Canal Users Association (SCUSA) in response to Egypt’s earlier nationalization of the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956. SCUSA was actually a prelude to a later military invasion to occupy the Canal.
Feroz Khan Noon’s ex gratia ‘recognition’ of the Zionist entity had not gone down well with the public opinion back home in Pakistan. Naturally, though, one doubts whether the people were truly aware of the enormity of their foreign minister’s collaboration and complicity in the ugly affair. Noon’s remarks were, therefore, dismissed as stupid rather than taken as traitorous. A political nobody, Noon seemed to have become foreign minister more because of intrigue and default than national merit or qualification.
Feroz Khan Noon had, however, a background, but few were aware of it. He came from a typically feudal and toady family in Punjab, the kind of pillars on which the British Raj had stood. Duly knighted along the way, he had served as high commissioner for (British) India in London (1936-41) and as member of Viceroy’s executive council (1941 – 45). Indeed he was the first Indian ever to be given responsibility for the defense portfolio. Along with another Indian, a Hindu, he was sent to represent British India at the founding conference of the United Nations Organization. Sir Feroz, an empire loyalist with an Austrian Jewish wife, seemed to have become a Zionist by marriage.
Feroz Khan Noon was serving as high commissioner for India in London before Partition in 1936-41, when the colonial secretary, Lord Moyne, asked him to prepare a draft scheme for creating a Jewish state in Arab Palestine, but in a way that no blame should lie on the British imperialists for being anti-Arab or pro Zionist. The can-do knight submitted his proposal to the secretary of state for India, Leopold Amery, who too happened to be Jewish. Noon proposed that they first create an Arabian federation, but also slip in an autonomous Jewish state within that federation. This Jewish entity should be a part of the treaty creating the federation.
The full blown Jewish state would come into existence later, Sir Feroz explained, but the federation would provide the cover that they all needed so that no Muslim ruler can blame England for having created a Jewish state in Palestine or part of Palestine’. Noon’s proposals were forwarded by Amery to Churchill on 10 September 1945 (F0372-275-E6190/53/65).
Present and future leaders of Pakistan must understand that Pakistan’s commitment to Palestine was a principled one and it predated Pakistan itself. Its ‘support for the just causes of the Muslim world is organically related to its own national vocation’.
Zulifqar Ali Bhutto (1928- 1979), Prime Minister said in his keynote address to Second Summit Conference of the Islamic Heads of State held in Lahore, 18-22 February 1974, to serve as a reminder that Pakistan’s stand was neither emotional nor ephemeral, it was based on sound principles in history, law and international legality. The stand can be betrayed. It can never be faulted.
In Lahore, 34 years ago, was adopted the celebrated resolution that inaugurated the glorious freedom struggle of the Muslims of the South Asian subcontinent under the leadership of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah (d.1948). It is a fact of no small significance that the same session of the, [All India] Muslim League which adopted the Pakistan resolution also adopted unanimously a resolution on Palestine.
The resolution recorded that, “the considered opinion, in clear and unequivocal language, that no arrangements of a piecemeal character should be made in Palestine which are contrary in spirit and opposed to the pledges given to the Muslim world’. The resolution further warned against the danger of using force in the Holy Land to overawe the Arabs … into submission”.
Pakistan’s support for the just causes of the Muslim world is organically related to its own national vocation. It has never suffered a severance between national impulse and the urges of the Muslim emancipation. When the partition of Palestine was decided, a demonstration was held here in Lahore at which [the great Islamic poet] Iqbal [d.1938] was present. On that occasion, he emphasized the problem of Palestine, and I quote his words, `does not concern Palestine alone but will have wide repercussions in the entire Muslim world’.
Fifty-five years ago, there was no Palestine problem; there was only a country named Palestine. Only the right arrogated to itself by western colonialism enabled one western nation to promise to a section of another people, namely Jews, the country of a third, the Arabs. It,’ needs to be reiterated that it is this fundamental injustice, this uprooting of a people from their homeland and planting alien population on it, that evokes the resentment of the entire Muslim world.
The malady consists of a cancerous outgrowth of colonialism, the establishment of settler regimes or the imposition of immigrant minority rule. The root cause of the conflict is not an innate animosity between the Muslims and the Jews or even between the Arab or the Jew. Muslims, entertain no hostility against any human community; when we say this, we do not exclude the Jewish people.
To Jews as Jews we bear no malice; to Jews as Zionists, intoxicated with their militarism and reeking with technological arrogance, we refuse to be hospitable. The pogroms inflicted on them during the centuries and to holocaust to which they were subjected under Nazism fill some of the darkest pages of human history. But redemption should have come from the western world and not have been exacted, as it was, from the Palestinians.
The tragedy of Palestine has agitated Muslim minds for half a century. The outrage of its partition in 1947 and the graver injury of its occupation by Israel in 1967 have been intolerable because the territory is part of the spiritual center of the Muslim world. The Palestine question was referred to the UN at a time when the organization was hardly representative of the international community.
The partition plan of Palestine at the UN would not obtain a passing consideration today from the majority of its membership, consisting of third world nations that are sworn to the principle of self-determination of peoples. Even at that time, the Muslim nations reminded the western world of its own long-term interests and of the folly of forcibly driving a wedge into the Middle East. These reminders proved fruitless. These importunities were scorned.
After 1967 war Israel became more and more arrogant; it derided the censure of its action by the United Nations. Its advocates became increasingly apathetic to the growing signs of the un-tenability of the situation arising from the war of 1967. The result was that an iniquitous, indeed and absurd, situation was frozen and the forces of sanity became immobile.
The (October 1973) war has released currents, which could flow towards a just settlement of the Middle East problem. The Arab cause has been actively supported by a vast segment of humanity. The nations of Africa have demonstrated their solidarity with Arabs and placed principle above expediency. Under the pressure of the economic forces, if not through a perception of the rights and wrongs of the situation, the western powers have awakened to the urgency of a definitive settlement of the Middle East problem. The mediatory processes, which have thus been put into, are not to be disdained.
These are good auguries. But they can vanish if an apathy towards the root of the problem, and a satisfaction at partial solutions, begins to sway the policies of those who have supported Israel. On their part, the Arab states have shown that their approach to the problem is not theological, like Israel’s, but one, which visualizes a series of peaceful adjustments beginning with disengagement. Disengagement, however, is not peace. It can turn peace into a mirage if it operates as a substitute for a comprehensive settlement.
We have a right to expect that the peace, which is negotiated in Geneva, will deal with all the issues integral to the Middle East conflict. The withdrawal of Israeli forces from all Arab territories occupied since 1967, the restoration of the Holy City to Arab sovereignty and the restitution of the rights of the Palestinian people are the essential elements of a settlement. All these elements derive from the rational principles of a just and durable peace. All of them come within the four corners of resolution 242, if that resolution is rightly interpreted.
The exponents of the Israeli view contend that the Security Council resolution envisages the possibility of Israel retaining part of the occupied Arab territories. This contention is sought to be based on the provision regarding the right of every state in the region `to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries’. The perversity of such an interpretation is evident from that fact that the resolution as a whole states its objective to be `the fulfillment of the Charter principles’. What principle is more basic to the Charter of the United Nations than the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by the use of force?
Furthermore, no state can arrogate to itself the right to determine its secure borders even if these encroach on the territory of another. No state claims such a right. The security of a state’s frontiers depends on their conformity to international law. A nation’s defense strategy is based on its recognized frontiers and not on its aggressive appetites.
Finally the question arises: whose security comes first? Certainly; on the record of the aggressions committed by Israelis for years, it is the Arabs who need the secure borders against Israel and not Israel against the Arabs.
Among the Arab territories occupied by Israel, Al-Quds holds a special place in Muslim hearts. A unique symbol of the confluence of Islam with the sacred tradition of Abraham, Moses and Jesus, all of them Prophets whom Muslims hold in the highest reverence, Jerusalem is inscribed on our souls as the site of, in the words of the Holy Quran, `the Farther Mosque, the precinct of which Allah has blessed.’ Associated as it is with the Ascension of the Last Prophet, it is tied to our inmost spiritual fiber. Except for an interval during the Crusades, it has been a Muslim city – I repeat a Muslim city – from the year 637.
For more than 1300 years, Muslims have held Jerusalem as trust for all who venerated it. Muslims alone could be its loving and impartial custodians for the simple reason that Muslims alone believe in all three prophetic traditions rooted in Jerusalem.
We gladly recognize that Jerusalem affects the cherished sensibilities of men and women of the three world faiths. But there are 2000 million Muslims and Christians, and 15 million Jews, in the world. Out of these, less than three million owe their allegiance to Israel. What principle of justice would confer on this minority right to hold dominion over the Holy city? What except a kind of cynicism can allow the City of Peace to be treated by Israel as the spoils of war?
I must make it clear that is not our position on Jerusalem but Israel’s, which is contrary to the objective criteria by which the status of territories is determined. It is Israel, which cites the name of religion and culture and invokes its memories or emotions in order to lend justification to acts that are wholly illegal. Such attempts can only make a conflict implacable and bring in its train a religious war.
Viewed in non-religious perspective, the question of Jerusalem’s status cannot be unrelated to the sovereign rights of the people of Jerusalem itself, the majority of whom were Arabs, violently expelled and uprooted from the western part in 1948. Nor can the special attachment of Jewish people to Jerusalem override the principle of admissibility of territorial acquisition by force. The Jewish right to Jerusalem certainly connotes the right of access worship.
On the basis of all these considerations, the issue of the Holy City of Jerusalem admits of no doubt or division in our ranks. Let me make it clear from this platform that any agreement, any protocol, any understanding which postulates the continuance of Israeli occupation of the Holy City or the transfer of the Holy City to any non-Muslim or Arab sovereignty will be worth the paper it is written on.
This is not a threat. [But] Not to give this warning would be to encourage an illusion, which will be fatal of the establishment of lasting peace in the Middle East. In this respect, there is a fire in our hearts which no prevarication, no skilful evasions on the part of others, will ever be able to quench.
The international community and particularly those states, which sponsored the partition of Palestine in 1947, bear heavy responsibility. They have to redress the injustices perpetrated on the Palestinian people. If it were not so tragic, what could be more bizarre than the phenomenon of a people being dispossessed of its homeland and condemned to live in agony and dispersion, not in imperialism’s hoary past but in our day and age?
Who cannot understand their anger at seeing immigrants from all over the invited, nay cajoled, to settle on their own homeland? It is not the eruptions of insensate violence, disowned by their leadership, but the purity of their rights, which must influence the world’s attitude to their problem.
The states gathered here today are committed by the very fact of their adherence to the Charter of Islamic Conference to strive for restitution of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. This is our obligation not only to the people of the Palestine, not even merely to the cause of the Islamic brotherhood, but also to the larger cause of universal peace.
2 – FEROZ KHAN NOON ZIONIST BY MARRIAGE
“Israel had come to stay”, the gratuitous declaration was made as an aside almost half a century ago by Pakistan’s then Foreign Minister Feroz Khan Noon (1893-1970). He was in London for a British-convened conference, 19-21 September 1956, to consider forming a Suez Canal Users Association (SCUSA) in response to Egypt’s earlier nationalization of the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956. SCUSA was actually a prelude to a later military invasion to occupy the Canal.
The operation started on 29th October 1956 when Israeli paratroopers landed in Sinai, 68 kilometers east of Suez. Next afternoon, 30 October, the British government gave an ultimatum to both Egypt and Israel to withdraw their forces at least 16 kilometers from the Canal. The ultimatum meant that while the Egyptian forces, which were in full occupation of the Canal, would have left it virtually undefended, the Israeli forces were able to move 32 km closer to the Canal, from 68 km to 16 km.
Following the ultimatum, British and French warplanes started bombing Egyptian airfield on 31 October. They said they wanted to separate the two sides, the invaders and the invaded, and protect the Suez Canal!
On 5 November the Anglo-French forces themselves invaded the Suez Canal, seized Port Said and began to move southward along the Canal. However, the Anglo-French-Israeli adventure came to a rather scandalous end after President Eisenhower had given his own ultimatum to the three plotters to get out or else face American sanctions. They did, though the Israelis took another four months to complete the withdrawal.
Feroz Khan Noon’s ex gratia ‘recognition’ of the Zionist entity had not gone down well with the public opinion back home in Pakistan. Naturally, though, one doubts whether the people were truly aware of the enormity of their foreign minister’s collaboration and complicity in the ugly affair. Noon’s remarks were, therefore, dismissed as stupid rather than taken as traitorous. A political nobody, Noon seemed to have become foreign minister more because of intrigue and default than national merit or qualification.
He had, however, a background, but few were aware of it. He came from a typically feudal and toady family in Punjab, the kind of pillars on which the British Raj had stood. Duly knighted along the way, he had served as high commissioner for (British) India in London (1936-41) and as member of Viceroy’s executive council (1941-45). Indeed he was the first Indian ever to be given responsibility for the defense portfolio. Along with another Indian, a Hindu, he was sent to represent British India at the founding conference of the United Nations Organization. Sir Feroz, an empire loyalist with an Austrian Jewish wife, seemed to have become a Zionist by marriage.
He was serving as high commissioner in London when the colonial secretary, Lord Moyne, asked him to prepare a draft scheme for creating a Jewish state in Arab Palestine, but in a way that no blame should lie on the British imperialists for being anti-Arab or pro Zionist. The can-do knight submitted his proposal to the secretary of state for India, Leopold Amery, who too happened to be Jewish. Noon proposed that they first create an Arabian federation, but also slip in an autonomous Jewish state within that federation. This Jewish entity should be a part of the treaty creating the federation.
The full blown Jewish state would come into existence later, Sir Feroz explained, but the federation would provide the cover that they all needed so that no Muslim ruler can blame England for having created a Jewish state in Palestine or part of Palestine’. Noon’s proposals were forwarded by Amery to Churchill on 10th September 1945 (F0372-275-E6190/53/65).
However, by early 1947, as the Pakistan bandwagon had begun to roll, Feroz Khan Noon renounced his I knighthood and all his other honors, and issued a press statement supporting ‘ the All India Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan. Having thus covered up his toady past – few knew about his Zionism – Noon was able to infiltrate the necessarily nebulous Pakistani power structure.
By December 1957 he had come to hold the highest political office of prime minister in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. His career was cut short by another toady, Iskandar Mirza, who abrogated the constitution and imposed martial law. (Twenty days later, Mirza, too, was packed off by his pro-American army chief, Ayub Khan.)
But Noon was not the only Zionist or imperialist agent among the many feudal and bureaucratic elite who had positioned themselves in the corridors of powers of the would-be new Islamic country. In those hectic and crucial last stages of the battle for Pakistan each and every person with experience or expertise in government and administration was more than welcome. Then few were aware of what subsequently came to be known as `game of nations’.
Thus, along with the dedicated and committed, also came a host of shadowy characters, opportunists of one kind or another. That the country managed to survive in spite of such characters was no less than a miracle. But after 56 years of attrition and infiltration, Pakistan seems to have been virtually occupied by elements totally alien to the founding ideals and objectives of the new republic. Pakistan was an Islamic and not a nationalist ideal; that is why they had no sectarian, ethnic or territorial problem about their self identity; nor did they have an inferiority complex about being Muslim.
They were `Muslims first’ and that is how they were able to win a new country in the teeth of opposition from the British and Hindus – and without firing a single bullet.
They were `Muslims first’, and, therefore, even though they were not free but `subjects’ of one of the most powerful empires of history, they never condoned or collaborated with any imperialist intrigues or aggression against any Muslim land, from Maghreb in the West to Indonesia in the East.
The freedom and independence of Palestine was a central plank in this One-Ummah and Muslims first `foreign’ policy, which the Pakistani state inherited from the Pakistan freedom movement. However, that was as far the nation was concerned, but then there were also imperialist moles and native Zionists within who were quietly doing their own things. The moles had begun their work even before Pakistan had achieved independence.
3 – SIR ZAFRLLUA KHAN FATHER OF QADYANI – ZIONIST AXIS
A recent Israeli study (P R Kumaraswamy: Beyond the Veil: Israel Pakistan relation, Jaffe Centre for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, March 2000) brings to light, has Pakistan’s own `pro-Israeli’ lobby’ has been doing since the word go.
How about the very first foreign minister of Pakistan, Sir Zafrulla Khan (1893-1985)? The man who was acclaimed all over the Arab world for his eloquent advocacy of the Palestinian and Arab cause at the UN and other international forums while he acted as foreign minister of Pakistan (1947-54). So far it only seemed that he made record-breaking, long speeches but did not win the case, Beyond the Veil reveals: for the first time that the reputed! Advocate was not quite honest to his brief.
Zafrulla’s background was little different from Feroz Khan Noon’s except that he also belonged to the heterodox Qadiyani group. A British creation, the Qadiyanis were empire loyalists by their `faith’.’
Then a judge at the pre-independence Federal Court of India, Zafrulla was in London in 1945 to represent the British Indian government at a conference on Commonwealth Relations. He met the head of the Jewish Agency Chaim Weizmann and proceeded on a six-day visit to Palestine. Weizmann (later president of the Zionist entity) told his men in Jerusalem to `see to it that (Zafrulla’s) stay in Palestine, and his contacts with our work, are made as, interesting and as agreeable as possible ‘. And so it happened. Having allowed himself to be taken on a conducted tour by the Jewish Agency, it seems Zafrulla did undergo an `agreeable’ change of mind. He wrote to Weizmann that he found the problem of Palestine `much more complicated than I had imagined, but let its hope hat a just and equitable solution may soon be discovered’.
Zafrulla did not indicate, though, what complications had since entered his mind, nor, what would, according to him, make `a just and equitable solution’. He was economical with the truth. However, two years later after the UN had adopted the partition resolution (29 November 1947), Israeli orientalist Uriel Heyd, who was also working for the Zionist intelligence in London, reported `noticeable changes in the position of Zafrulla Khan … During his talks in Damascus, Zafrulla Khan indicated that partition, which he [as Pakistan’s foreign minister had] vehemently opposed, was the only solution for Palestine. He even counseled the Arabs to allow the establishment of the Jewish state’. It was not a volte face, it was a double face.
Encouraged, naturally, by his intelligence report, Weizmann wrote to Zafrulla telling him how similar were the partition of India and partition of Palestine. In other words, he expected that Pakistan would be appreciative of the Israeli position. However, Pakistan had not only voted against the partition resolution, but had also opposed Israel’s admission to the UN. Pakistan did not even acknowledge the letter when Israel formally requested recognition.
That was beyond Zafrulla, obviously. Yet, very much against the historical national consensus and, certainly, behind the back of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan (1895-1951), Zafrulla and his boys in the Pakistan foreign office continued to promote the Zionist cause. Whoever had given him the `good news’ (Zafrulla himself or A S Bukhari, the permanent Pakistan representative at the UN), the then Israeli representative at the UN, Abba I Eban (later foreign minister), reported to Tel Aviv in late 1949 that `the I Pakistani representative (Patras Bukhari) at the UN was scheming to embarrass India by bringing his government to recognize Israel’.
It seems, however, that either the pro Zionists in Pakistan foreign office had been unable to gather enough courage to present their proposal for the cabinet’s approval or the foreign minister had done it, but the cabinet had talked out the not so cute idea of embarrassing India by recognizing Israel.
Nevertheless, it seems, Zafrulla had ‘kept telling Israelis that Pakistan was about to recognize the entity. So when, Abba Eban saw him in New York on 14 January 1953, as part of their continuing dialogue, Zafrulla ‘disclosed’ to him that while the ” previous government of Liaquat Ali Khan favored the policy of recognizing Israel, the government now headed by Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin (1894-1964)’had retreated from the favorable approach adopted by his predecessor’. This government `was weaker and more susceptible to public pressure from Muslim extremists’. He himself, Zafrulla told Abba Eban, `was attacked for his moderation’.
Liaquat Ali Khan had been assassinated two years earlier (16 October 1951) and so it was not so difficult for anyone to lie about his policy. What is, in any case true, is that no matter what, Zafrulla was not deterred and he continued to promote the Zionist case by other means.
It is significant that while the prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was opposed to joining any military bloc (he had declined even to send a token paramedical staff to South Korea), Zafrulla was promoting the American idea of a Middle East Defence Organization (Medo) and more. He wanted Israel, too, to be included in the proposed anti-communist bloc, where it would sit along with Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and possibly others. Zafrulla believed it was `inconceivable’ to have a Middle Eastern defence ‘ organization without Israel.
Zafrulla was able to say publicly in Cairo ‘ in February 1952 that Israel must be ‘ regarded as `a limb in the body of the Middle East’. He further urged Egypt to seek a peaceful solution of the conflict. ! In other words, to give up any thought, of liberating Arab and Palestinian lands and recognize the illegitimate occupation of Palestine.
After Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan was led into one military alliance after another: a Mutual Defence Agreement’ with the US (May 1954), Seato (September 1954) and Baghdad Pact (February 1955). After the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy, Baghdad Pact was christened as Cento (Central Treaty Organization). Although Pakistan had no security conflict in that region, ‘ Zafrulla had put the country into South-East Asia Treaty Organization, without consulting or even telling the army. The commander-in-chief, ‘ General Ayub Khan, said he was informed only after Pakistan had joined the alliance.
Beyond the Veil also shows the Israelis were very much into the scheme of ‘ drawing Pakistan into these American led alliances. They had no reservations either about the US giving some military `aid’ to Pakistan. The Zionists were being assured by Zafrulla and his minions that being tied Pakistan had no I conflict with Israel. In fact the Israelis believed that remaining tied to the US would only soften Pakistan’s position on Israel. They have been proved right.
Zafrulla was on the way to becoming prime minister but following serious public unrest about his own role, as also ‘, the role of fellow Qadiyanis, he ‘ eventually resigned from the government in 1954 – not before he ‘ collected his reward. In a repeat ballot on 7th October 1954, Yom Kippur, he was elected to the international Court of justice at The Hague. Unknown even to the government of Pakistan, his name had been sent in to the UN by the US State department.
The Israeli delegate, Abba-i- Eban, was absent at the voting but a member of his delegation said if they been able to be present they would have voted for Zafrulla.
Pakistan’s `pragmatism’, albeit with ‘ regard to the Zionist entity, had – according to the Tel Aviv study – begun with Zafrulla but it did not end after his departure from the foreign ministry. He never really left. After finishing his first term at The Hague, he returned to serve another four years (1961-64) as Pakistan’s permanent representative at the UN.
Zafrulla can rightly be described as the ideological father of Pakistan’s laidback and ever-submissive foreign policy. His influence in shaping the minds and ideology of a totally raw and unformed diplomatic service proved to be profound and long lasting. The first batches of the foreign service were `trained’ in Britain, Canada or the US; when they came back they very well knew how to mix their drinks; otherwise, they were pretty mixed up as to the vision and raison d’etre of the great nation they were required to represent to the world.
However, by the time Zafrulla had resigned formally, the Pakistan foreign office had sunk deep into the Qadiyani-Zionist worldview. Zafrulla’s successor, Hamidul Huque Chowdhury, came from East Pakistan and did not have a toady background. Nevertheless, in the short period that he was foreign minister (26 September 1955-12 September 1956), he too had the same foreign office brief, a la Zafrulla and Noon that `Israel had come to stay’.
After Hamidul Huque Chowdhury, came Sir Feroz Khan Noon, the original author of the cute plan to create a Jewish state in Arab Palestine, but in a way that no one is able to accuse the British imperialists of being anti-Arab or pro-Zionist.
The arrival of the Raj Zionist, Sir Feroz Khan Noon, at the helm of foreign policy coincided with the tripartite Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Suez. The people of Pakistan were out and out in support of Egypt and denouncing the naked aggression, but the foreign minister had already dismissed his critics by telling them that right or wrong, insofar as they were concerned, the Zionist occupation of Palestine had come to stay.
However, more significantly, Noon’s views had the fullest support of both the prime minister, Husain Shaheed Suhrawardy (d.1963) and the president, Iskandar Mirza (d.1969). Suhrawardy had been an untroubled playboy and Mirza had started his career as a British Political Agent in the tribal districts of the North West Frontier. They had no problem in dittoing whatever advice they received from their foreign ministry bureaucrats.
But the foreign minister’s aside seemed only the tip of a policy iceberg that lay hidden in the deep waters of Pakistani kleptocracy in which there is no culture of opening up the public records, after a reasonable period of time, for the benefit of both history and future policy making. Every succeeding regime finds it necessary to let the cupboards remain ever tightly closed lest his successors too should bare the skeletons left behind by him.
Beyond the Veil is necessarily incomplete based on Israeli and other published records with only a few Pakistani sources. The quest for a fuller picture has, therefore, to await the emergence of a bold and honest leadership in Pakistan that is not afraid of facing the truth. Even so, as they are, parts of the Tel Aviv University study make a disgraceful reading.
4 – ZIONISTS & QADYANIS IN PAKISTANI FOREIGN OFFICE
Gen Musharraf’s Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri with Isreali Foreign Minister Silivan Shalom
The date was 23 December 1956, less than two months after the Anglo French-Israeli invasion of Suez but before the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai. Indian Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru (d.1964) was visiting Canada and the Indian high commissioner threw a reception in his honor. Attending the reception, among others, were the Pakistan high commissioner, Mirza Osman Ali Baig, and Israeli ambassador, M S Comay.
Nothing unusual, except what the Israeli ambassador reported to his government: … Pakistan High Commissioner Mirza Osman Ali Baig publicly came up to me, shook me by the hand, and warmly congratulated me on the “wonderful show your splendid little army put up in beating the Egyptians”. His only regret was that the British and the French had intervened; otherwise we [Israelis] might have gone right through to Cairo.
`In thanking him, I expressed regret that his government apparently did not share his views, and continued to display great hostility towards us. He assured me that not all Pakistanis were pro-Arab or anti-Israel and that some of them, like myself, realized quite well what a menace Nasser was. He hoped that a way could be found some time of procuring a modus vivendi between! Pakistan and Israel, and thought that Turkey was in the best position to bring it about because of its association with both countries. When I suggested this was a matter he and I might explore further some time, he welcomed the idea …
Baig was perhaps within his right to hold a personal view on the question, even if patently absurd, but he certainly had no business to convey it to the ambassador of an entity his country did not recognize. Yet, he had gone over the top wishing the Israeli had `gone right through to Cairo’.
It is impossible to assume that Baig was speaking for himself alone. He certainly represented a certain small but insidious and powerful toady-Zionist Qadiyani nexus within the country’s foreign policy establishment, especially that has continued to blight Pakistan’s foreign policy and external relations to this day. Perhaps there is no other country today, which is as friendless and as isolated as Pakistan.
But treachery is also telepathic. If a Pakistani ambassador had told an Israeli ambassador that he wished their `splendid little army’ had gone right through to Cairo, only a decade later almost similarly rude sentiments were expressed by President Nasir of Egypt.
President Dr Radhakrishnan of India recounted this to a former ADC of his, Major C L Datta: `Nasser asked me when I was at Cairo airport on my way back from Ethiopia: “Why didn’t you! take Lahore [in the September 1965 war with Pakistan]? We were waiting to hear this news.”‘ Radhakrishnan, however, went on to add: `You know, I hate hiding the truth, and I just couldn’t tell him [President Nasir] that they [the Pakistanis] fought like tigers, across the Ichhogil canal.’ ‘
In the event both Pakistanis and Arabs – Egyptians in particular – came to nurse a mutual grievance about the other sympathizing with the enemy and not supporting them in their just cause. Both were right but that was because neither of those who made policies were inspired by Islamic values and objectives.
Pakistan had become progressively bereft of its founding vision after the assassination of its first legitimate prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan (d.1951), and policy making passed into the hands of characters like Zafrulla and Noon, their children and their children’s children. Ayub Khan (d.1974) who followed Noon and Mirza had to work with the same pro-Zionist and pro-imperialist policy tools of the old. His own reflexes were Pakistani, however.
When he went to Cairo in November 11, 1960, he, in a sense, apologized and told a rally of the Socialist Union that Pakistan’s representatives may have acted in a “clumsy” manner at the time of the Suez crisis but every sensible man in Pakistan had been deeply distressed by the invasion and their sympathies were all with Egypt’.
He had also, as commander-in-chief of the Army, `approached the government at the time and warned them about the possibility of Egypt being attacked by Britain in conjunction with others.’ It would be interesting to find out what the governments of the period (Choudry Muhammad Ali (d.1980), 12 August 1955-12 September 1956; Husain Shaheed Suhrawardy (d.1963) 12 September 1956-17 October 1957; Ismail Ibrahim Chundrigar (d.1960) 17 October 1957-16 December 1957; Feroz Khan Noon 16 December 1957-7 October 1958) and their foreign office had done with the c-in-c’s warning. Certainly they were not communicated to Egypt otherwise Nasir may not have become as rudely hostile as he came to be.
5 – MM AHMAD TOPPLED FRENCH NUCLEAR OFFER TO PAKISTAN
M M Ahmad born in (1913-2002) was reputedly one of Pakistan’s most powerful bureaucrats. He belonged to the elite ICS (Indian Civil Service, later, (CSP or the Civil Service of Pakistan) and was a district officer in 1947, but by 1966, he had risen to head Ayub Khan’s powerful Planning Commission. He helped to shape the Country’s economic as well as defence and foreign policies.
Ayub Khan also wished Arab states to join the Baghdad Pact and turn it into a `powerful Muslim forum’, but he understood why they were suspicious of the alliance. However, although he did have foreign ministers like Manzur Qadir (1959-62; d. 1972) and Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada (1966-68), both pro-western but also Pakistani, but key policy decision had also to be cleared with a Qadiyani bureaucrat M M Ahmad. Though only the head of Ayub Khan’s Planning Commission, he had come to exercise veto over political decisions as well. Taken as someone with influence in the World Bank, he could shoot down anything by simply saying it may not go down well with Washington.
According to Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, French President de Gaulle had personally told Ayub Khan in 1967 that France was ready to provide `full’ nuclear assistance to Pakistan. In return he simply asked that France be allowed to mine for uranium in the northwest and share it equally with Pakistan. `Our “friends” may not like it,’ M M Ahmad told Ayub, and in any case, what do we need this expensive technology for.’ Words to that effect. But that is how Pakistan missed the opportunity of becoming a nuclear power at least two decades earlier than it did – and minus all the blackmail and intimidation that knows no ending.
In an as yet unpublished interview, the eminent constitutional expert and authority on Qnaid-e-Azam Jinnah (d.1948) and Pakistan movement, Sharifuddin Pirzada also, told Ahmed Irfan a London based journalist that as far back as October 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle (d.1970) had offered Pakistan ‘full’ nuclear assistance and know-how; the only thing he wanted in turn was to he allowed to mine for uranium in Northwest Pakistan for a 50% share.
6 – SOVIET MILATRY ASSISTANCE: Vetoed again
In April 1965, Ayub Khan had also gone to Moscow. This was the first ever visit by a Pakistani leader to the Soviet capital. Ayub Khan came back with the understanding that the visit `might prove a turning point in our relations and that there were tremendous possibilities of cooperation’.
The Soviets had actually agreed to give military aid to Pakistan, but writing two years later Ayub Khan had to understate the achievement, because the same Qadiyani bureaucrat too had vetoed this. This offer had been made by Brezhnev at a meeting set for recreation and shoot some clay pigeons outside Moscow, but with only Ayub Khan and Pirzada attending.
Others including the then foreign secretary had been exclusive, still Ayub Khan had to consult M M Ahmad and the `turning point’ which Ayub Khan had seen coming never arrived. ” The Qadiyanis maintain a ‘special mission’ in Israel and unlike Arabs, `the Ahmadi sect of some 600 people from Pakistan (sic) can also serve in the [Israeli] army.” (*Israel T Naamani, Israel a Profile, London, Pall Mall, 1972) p.75
M M Ahmad was also a committed preacher of his `faith’; although no records are available, it is improbable that with M M Ahmad at the bureaucratic helm, there were no liaisons between Pakistan and the Zionists entity.
However, insofar as Ayub Khan was concerned, he had offered military aid to Nasir during the Israeli invasion in June 1967, but it was all over in no time. Kumaraswamy’s assertion that it was mere `verbal support’ is not correct. (By March 1969, Ayub Khan was out of office.)
Yahya Khan (d.1980) who had taken over from Ayub Khan had only a short and catastrophic tenure. But, along with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia (d.1975), he had played a crucial role in the founding of what came to be known as the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) specifically as a response to the Zionist threat to the Aqsa Mosque and Israeli occupation of Palestine, Sinai and the Golan Heights. There was no discernible change in the government of Pakistan’s pro Palestinian and pro-Palestinian policies, even, if like in the past, probably some of Zafrulla’s children and M M Ahmad’s minions were hobnobbing secretly with the Israelis.
7 – M M AHMAD AUTHORED 1971 DIVISION OF PAKISTAN
Ayub quit in March 1969 and MM Ahmed acquired yet more influence. He emerged as economic supremo of the new Chief Martial Law Administrator, General Yahya Khan (d.1980). After Yahva was forced out in December 1971, MM Ahmad continued as Zulfikar AIi Bhutto’s (d.1979) economic adviser. But a few months later, he went to Washington DC and joined the International Bank For Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank). There he rose to be the deputy executive secretary of the joint Development Committee in 1974.
However M M Ahmad’s imprint on Pakistan’s fiscal and development policies was to last for ever. As Yahya Khan’s ‘finance minister’, he devalued the rupee by 131% per cent. As one economist pointed out (Dawn, Karachi, 1st February 2002), ‘that was the start of the deficit finance, inflation and trade imbalance’ from which the country has not been able to free itself.
In 1974 Bhutto amended the constitution to clarify the non-Muslim slants of (the Oadiyani creed to which M M Ahmad belonged; yet influence over the country’s bureaucratic and political elite remained unaffected.
Many owed their position to his patronage and almost everyone wanted to benefit front his Washington connections’. In 1993, then army chief Abdul Waheed Kakar was looking for a caretaker prime minister to replace Nawaz Sharif. M M Ahmad is believed to have solved the ‘ problem. The job went to Moeen Qureshi, who had recently retired as executive vice president of the World Bank; He was given a Pakistani `passport’ on arrival.
MM Ahmad kept a low profile, but after October 1999 coup, he seemed to have become the regime’s `holy man’. He was a grandson of the Qadiyani `prophet’, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiyani, (d.1908) and son-in-law of the second Qadiyani `khalifa’, Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad (d. 1965).
Besides being an international bureaucrat, M M Ahmad was all active `missionary’ of his Qadiyani creed. After retiring from the World Bank in 1984 he formally became the `amir’ and missionary in charge’ of the group in the US with headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland.
While many power holders in Pakistan seemed proud of being `secular’, for MM Ahmad, it was his `religious’ vocation as a Qadiyani that really defined his relationship with Pakistan. The relationship was in conflict with the existence of Pakistan itself.
According to a Qadiyani `prophecy’, revealed a few months before the independence of Pakistan, if at all India and Pakistan did separate, it would be `transient’ and the Qadiyanis were asked to try to bring an end to this phase soon. (Al Fzal, 4 April 1947 and 17 May 194’7)
In a 1995 article, `Pearls of Memory’ (Al-Nahal„ Spring 1995), M M Ahmad wrote that close to independence, lie was `designated by Pakistan’ as additional deputy commissioner of Amritsar to take over the charge of the district if it was awarded to Pakistan. One day the British deputy commissioner of Amritsar told him `casually that Gurdaspur district is likely to go to India’. The award of Gurdaspur gave India a land corridor to Jammu and Kashmir and so enabled it to Occupy the territory after three months.
A preliminary version of the award was ready on 8 August 1947. Tile definitive version was with the Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten ((1.1979) on 12 August. However, Mountbatten informed India and Pakistan on 16 August- after the `process of the Transfer of Power had been completed’.
M M Ahmad gives no date when this `top secret’ information was given to him. However, instead of rushing to report the matter to the Government of Pakistan, he traveled to Qadiyan to inform his `khalifa’. This contrasted with I the conduct of Indian officers who I immediately reported any sensitive leak or information to Nehru (d.1964) and Nehru took it up with Mountbatten.
We hear of M M Ahmad in another CSP officer, Qudratullhah Shihab’s memoirs, Slihab Nama,, (Sang-e-Meel, Lahore, 1991) that the 1965 war with ‘ India was ‘a Qadiyani conspiracy’. It was planned by an able (Qadiyani officer, Major General Akhtar Husaiu Malik’ and `backed by several powerful people, among them, at the lot of list was said to be Mr MM Ahmad’. Shihab checked this with the West Pakistan governor Nawab of Kalabagh (d.1967) and he concurred.’ That the Qadiyanis have their own particular agenda on Jammu and Kashmir is an open secret. Like the Oadiyani Nobel Laureate, Abdus Salam, M M Ahmad too was opposed to Pakistan becoming a nuclear power.
In an as yet unpublished interview, the eminent constitutional expert and authority on Qnaid-e-Azam Jinnah (d.1948) and Pakistan movement, Sharifuddin Pirzada, told Ahmed Irfan a London based journalist that as far back as October 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle (d.1970) had offered Pakistan ‘full’ nuclear assistance and know-how; the only thing he wanted in turn was to he allowed to mine for uranium in Northwest Pakistan for a 50% share.
President Ayub Khan said he would reply after consulting with his officials back home in Pakistan. In the event the offer was vetoed by M M Ahmad and the army chief Yahya Khan. They warned Ayub Khan that the US would not take it kindly. Pirzada was Ayub Khan’s foreign minister and is a personal witness to the affair.
M M Ahmad is also believed to have been a key architect of the split between East and West Pakistan. ‘Planned’ for economic disparity between the two wings and laid the grounds for an eventual conflict and break.
Former cabinet secretary and author of The Separation of East Pakistan (OUP, Karachi, 1995) Hasan Zaheer (d.1998) quotes Brigadier, later Major General, M I Kareem telling him that Colonel Chaudhary, Staff Officer of Lt-General S G M M Peerzada (had) told him that he had read a top secret paper of MM Ahmed, suggesting that it was time for friendly separation of two Wings rather than elections and warning of serious consequences for the entire country otherwise’. Peerzada was Principal Staff Officer to President Yahya and Brig. M I Kareem his deputy.
For M M Ahmad, however, helping to end the `transient’ was a duty ordained by his `khalifa’. Born on 28 February 1913, in Qadiyan, Gurdaspur, M M Ahmad died on 23, Ju1y 2002, Washington DC and was buried, 30,July 2002, ‘in Baltishti Maqbrah’ in Ghenahnagar (formerly Ribwah), Pakistan.
8 – ABDUS SALAM QADYANI-ZIONIST – SPIED ON PAKISTAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Dr Abdus Salam Nobel Prize winner is considered one of the intellectual giants of theoretical physics, not far behind Albert Einstein and Paul Dirac. His major scientific achievement was to take the first step towards an idea that his scientific peers still dream about: the unification of the four fundamental forces of nature. Scientists believe these forces to be: gravity; the `strong’ force between particles in an atom; the `weak’ force that causes radioactive decay; and electromagnetism.
Salam shared the 1979 Nobel Prize with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow for showing that the weak force and electromagnetism are one and the same. Salam’s theoretical work was successfully demonstrated at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in 1983.
Professor Abdus Salam was a Pakistani. However, as Anthony Tucker’s obituary in The Guardian (22 November 1996) noted that `in spite of his powerful influence in world physics, his eminence in the West and lifelong commitment to science in developing countries, in his own country Abdus Salam is blamed for the starvation of important areas of science through encouraging theoretical and nuclear physics and by inference, weapons research’. In 1961, President Ayub Khan appointed Abdus Salam his scientific adviser and a member of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC). He would accordingly visit Pakistan, once or twice in a year, be received as a celebrity and gave his advice directly to the president.
The former PAEC (Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission) chairman, Munir Ahmad Khan, said after Abdus Salam’s death that in the early 1960s he had proposed to Ayub Khan the setting up of a nuclear reprocessing plant but the idea was shot down by the country’s finance officials. However, this was not the impression of other leading scientists in Pakistan nor of Munir Ahmad Khan’s own predecessor at the PAEC.
Abdus Salams’s position as scientific adviser, however, came to an abrupt end in 1974 when the ministry of interior told the PAEC not to allow him anymore into its laboratories. Abdus Salam had just arrived in Islamabad and was staying as the commission’s guest. Abdus Salam visited the commission and was given the usual VIP reception, but. He was not taken on the usual tour of its laboratories. One scientist who was present on the occasion found Abdus Salam to be quite observant.. He remembered all the old faces, noted the new ones and went to them and asked them about their work.
They all felt so honored being greeted by a Nobel laureate. Abdus Salam later visited China where. He was received as an eminent Pakistani scientist’ and, it is probable, the Chinese ‘, spoke to him freely about their cooperation with Pakistan’s nuclear program. It may have been a hire coincidence but the Pakistan `Islamic bomb’ became news soon after.
The BBC1 TV current affairs program, Panorama, aired in June 1980, mentioned Abdus Salam as one of those who were present at a 1972 ‘ meeting where Zulfikar AIi Bhutto had ‘ allegedly taken a decision to make a nuclear bomb.
A London based journalist rang Abdus Salam at the ICTP (International Centre for Theoretical Physics) in Trieste and asked was he present at any such meeting held by Bhutto? Is it true that Bhutto had asked him to help Pakistan acquire a nuclear capability; and, if so, what was his response?
Dr Salam listened calmly and said (words to that effect): Was there such a TV program? Yes. It is something serious. I am going to he in London after two days and I will tell you when I am there. This is my telephone number in London. Subsequent calls to the telephone number given by him were never answered.
Anthony Tucker also said that Abdus Salam `was a vigorous supporter of Pugwash’ and he `sought nuclear disarmament’. His unwillingness to contribute to the development science in Pakistan can also be attributed to his being a committed and proselytising member of the heretic Qadiyani community (founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiyani who claimed to be a prophet). At Trieste Dr Salam would lead, as imam, unknowing Muslim students from across the world in Friday prayers, and distributed Qadiyani tracts about the `persecution of Ahmadiya Muslims in Pakistan’.
In September 1995, The News reported that “during the Afghan war highly skilled Israelis provided guerrilla training to some Afghan groups and in the later stage of the Afghan war the chief of Pakistan’s most respected intelligence service [ISI] had held a top secret meeting with a senior Mossad official in Vienna.”
In May 1996, another report suggested that Pakistani law enforcement officials met with the top brass of Israeli intelligence during a conference on counter-terrorism in the Philippines. In several one-on-one sessions during the conference, two senior major generals and three brigadiers from Israeli intelligence met the senior Pakistani officials to listen and explain their methods and strategies to deal with the worse wave of terrorism facing the two nations.
The Tel Aviv-based Jafee Center for Strategic Studies has recommended four models for Pakistan to recognize Israel:
1. The Turkish Model: Pakistan can recognize Israel without establishing diplomatic relations immediately.
2. The Iranian Model: Pakistan can follow the precedent set by the Shah of Iran and recognize the Jewish State, but maintain its relationship under wraps.
3. The Jordanian Model: It can imitate the Jordanians prior to full recognition and maintain close political as well as military relations with the Jewish State without granting any official recognition.
4. The Chinese Model: It can adopt the Chinese example and view military contacts as a means of promoting political relations.
9 – ZA BHUTTO VISIONARY STATESMAN OF PAKSTAN
For all his generally assumed culpability in the break up of the country, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who succeeded Yahya Khan was the first world class statesman that Pakistan had got after Qxaid-e-Azam Jinnah (d.1948) and Liaquat Ali Khan (d.1951). He had not been so at the outset; from being a bridge and boon companion to Iskandar Mirza in his young and playful days, Bhutto learnt realpolitik the hard way and had come know the world, as it happened to be.
Beyond the Veil only shows how Bhutto’s views had evolved over time. In September 1957 when Feroz Khan Noon was still foreign minister, he was representing Pakistan at the UN Conference of the Law of Sea in Geneva. Israeli archival material shows `a different picture of Bhutto’ in those early days.
Then he met and dined with his Israeli counterpart Shabbatai Roseanne’ whose mother had been a cousin of Sir. Godfrey, Davis who had been the chief justice of Sindh, the province from where Bhutto’s family came. According to her, Bhutto disliked Arabs and the way they conducted their politics, but he believed the 1947 decision of the General Assembly [to partition into Arab and Jewish states] was bad, and was correctly opposed by Pakistan then’. However, he now thought that `it would be in Pakistan’s interest to recognize this fact’ [Israel].
It was different in 1973, when Prime Minister Bhutto `could hardly contain his delight’ as Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal. He told his service chief on 11 October that a `ceasefire will not do’ and `it is essential that Arab territories held by Israel – illegally by Israel – should be vacated. Pakistan air force pilots are also believed to have taken part in the October War on the Syrian front.
Bhutto now also showed a vision, again, a long time after Liaquat Ali Khan. In the words of his daughter, Benazir Bhutto, who herself became prime minister (12 December 1988-6 August 1990 and 19 October 1993-5 November 1996): `He carved out this bloc of Islamic countries … uniting the countries of the Muslim world, which gave birth not only to [the Organization of] the Islamic Conference … but also to a new found assertiveness.” After the East Pakistan debacle, he probably also wanted to redeem himself.
He packed off M M Ahmad, purged almost all the known Qadiyani generals from the army and did what no one had dared to do before him: he amended the constitution to define the legal status of the Qadiyanis, a non-Muslim minority, and set Pakistan on course to building its own nuclear deterrent.
Later Bhutto ordered the chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission not to take the Qadiyani Nobel laureate Professor Abdus Salam round the Pinstech (Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology) labs, anymore, when he visited them the `following day’. Abdus Salam had been a celebrity scientific adviser to all heads of the government since Ayub Khan and perhaps few knew that he was opposed to any third world country acquiring nuclear defence capability.
Z A Bhutto’s approach to the Qadiyani problem had probably little to do with theology. He had come to see the Qadiyanis purely as a political and security problem, which explains the sequence of policy decisions along side the strategic decision about acquiring nuclear deterrence.
Not only did Z A Bhutto lose power but also ultimately his life because, for all his sharp intellect, he had made the mistake of fighting on two fronts. The feudal within him did not allow him to conciliate enough with his own people and build a strong internal front and the international visionary in him could not but scare all those who would not think of Muslim and third world countries coming into their own.
Paradoxically for those who had, in the words of Henry Kissinger, `wanted to make an example’ of Bhutto, his successor, an unimpressive looking chief of army staff, General Ziaul Haq (chief martial law administrator and president 5 July 1977-17 August 1988, d.1988), too was to prove no less difficult than the prime minister he had deposed.
Like Bhutto’s wining and dining with Shabbatai Roseanne, Ziaul Haq had his past as well. As military adviser to the Jordanian army, he had been closely involved in the suppression of the PLO uprising in September 1970. Not as well profound or experienced in international affairs as Bhutto, Ziaul Haq was showing national and international ambitions similar to Bhutto.
The Americans were constantly telling him to desist and forget the idea of making an `Islamic bomb’, but he behaved as if he was not hearing those words. He ignored all pressures and pressed ahead with the country’s nuclear program. He also decided, on his own, to go forward and support the Afghan mujahideen even if President Carter was prepared to acquiesce and let the historically neutral Afghanistan go under the Soviet sphere of influence. However, as the US realized that the Afghans were, nevertheless, going ahead in their jihad against the other superpower, it jumped on the jihad bandwagon. And gradually the Americans occupied the `jihad’ itself.
Supping with the devil had due consequences for both Ziaul Haq and Pakistan. Perhaps for the first time, the US deliberately introduced Israeli `experts’ ostensibly to give some specialized training to the mujahideen, and Pakistan had knowingly admitted them. The Americans were also pimping for Israel and promoting discreet liaisons between Pakistan and Israel. At the same time, they were telling Ziaul Haq that if Pakistan recognized the Zionist entity, it would help the administration at the Capitol Hill where pro-Israeli legislators tried generally to obstruct most aid proposals for Pakistan.
`Will do,’ one can imagine Ziaul Haq or one of his highly placed aides saying to the Americans, `but let us first prepare our national public opinion.’ And so for the first time the Pakistanis read a press statement issued in the name of Pir Muhammad Ashraf, saying it was time Pakistan recognized the Zionist entity. The Pir was a nominated member of Ziaul Haq’s majlis-e-shoora (consultative assembly) and generally taken as an `honorable member from the intelligence party’.
In the end, the liaison was to cost dearly to Ziaul Haq and to Pakistan, but there is no evidence that Pakistan had been on the way to recognizing Israel. The continuing moral of Ziaul Haq’s story is that supping with the devil can never pay.
10 – LEGALITY OF THE ENTITY (Israel)
‘Israel Simply Has No Right To Exist’ wrote Faisal Bodi a London based journalist in The Guardian on 3rd January 2001: “Peace might have a real chance without Israelis’ biblical claim says Faisal. Several years ago, I suggested in my students’ union newspaper that Israel shouldn’t exist. I also said the sympathy evoked by the Holocaust was a very handy cover for Israeli atrocities. Overnight I became public enemy number one. I was a Muslim fundamentalist, a Jew-hater, somebody who trivialised the memory of the most abominable act in history. My denouncers followed me, photographed me, and even put telephone calls through to my family telling them to expect a call from the grim reaper.
Thankfully, my notoriety in Jewish circles has since waned to the extent that recently I gave an inter-faith lecture sponsored by the Leo Baeck College, even though my views have remained the same. Israel has no right to exist. I know it’s a hugely unfashionable thing to say and one which, given the current parlous state of the peace process, some will also find irresponsible. But it’s a fact that I have always considered central to any genuine peace formula.
Certainly there is no moral case for the existence of Israel. Israel stands as the realisation of a biblical statement. Former Prime Minister Golda Meir famously delineated its raison d’être. “This country exists as the accomplishment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be absurd to call its legitimacy into account.”
That biblical promise is Israel’s only claim to legitimacy. But whatever God meant when he promised Abraham that “unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the Euphrates,” it is doubtful that he intended it to be used as an excuse to take by force and chicanery a land lawfully inhabited and owned by others.
It does no good to anyone to brush this fact, uncomfortable as it might be, under the table. But that has been the failing with Oslo. When it signed the agreement, the PLO made the cardinal error of assuming that you could bury the hatchet by rewriting history. It accepted as a starting point that Israel had a right to exist. The trouble with this was that it also meant, by extension, an acceptance that the way Israel came into being was legitimate. As the latest troubles have shown, ordinary Palestinians are not prepared to follow their leaders in this feat of intellectual amnesia.
Israel’s other potential claim to legitimacy, international recognition, is just as dubious. The two pacts, which sealed Palestine’s future, were both concluded by Britain. First we signed the Sykes-Picot agreement with France, pledging to divvy up Ottoman spoils in the Levant. A year later, in 1917,the Balfour declaration promised a national home for the Jewish people.
Under international law the declaration was null and void since Palestine did not belong to Britain – under the pact of the League of Nations it belonged to Turkey.
By the time the UN accepted a resolution on the partition of Palestine in 1947, Jews constituted 32% of the population and owned 5.6% of the land. By 1949, largely as a result of paramilitary organisations such as the Haganah, Irgun and Stern gang, Israel controlled 80% of Palestine and 770,000 non-Jews had been expelled from their country. This then is the potted history of the iniquities surrounding its own birth that Israel must acknowledge in order for peace to have a chance.
After years of war, peace comes from forgiving, not forgetting; people never forget but they have an extraordinary capacity to forgive. Just look at South Africa, which showed the world that a cathartic truth must precede reconciliation.
Far from being a force for liberation and safety after decades of suffering, the idea that Israel is some kind of religious birthright has only imprisoned Jews in a never-ending cycle of conflict. The “promise” breeds an arrogance, which institutionalises the inferiority of other, peoples and generates atrocities against them with alarming regularity. It allows soldiers to defy their consciences and blast unarmed schoolchildren. It gives rise to legislation seeking to prevent the acquisition of territory by non-Jews.
More crucially, the promise limits Israel’s capacity to seek models of coexistence based on equality and the respect of human rights. A state based on so exclusivist a claim to legitimacy cannot but conceive of separation as a solution. But separation is not the same as lasting peace; it only pulls apart warring parties. It does not heal old wounds, let alone redress historical wrongs.
However, take away the biblical right and suddenly mutual coexistence, even a one-state solution, doesn’t seem that far-fetched. What name that coexistence will take is less important than the fact that peoples have forgiven and that some measure of justice has been restored. Jews will continue to live in the Holy Land – as per the promise – as equals alongside its other rightful inhabitants.
If that kind of self-reproach is forthcoming, Israel can expect the Palestinians to be forgiving and magnanimous in return. The alternative is perpetual war.”
11 – LEADERS BLUNDERS RISK NATIONAL SECURITY
PM Nawaz Sharif with Indian Steel Magnet Sajjan Jandal and his family in Delhi
Pakistan is one of those great countries in the world, which has survived many set backs in last 55 years because of the poor and faithful soldiers of the land and not because of the Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard educated rich and famous.
Nawaz Sharif born on 25th December in Lahore 1949 grew up as a child of ill-conceived politics. The political scene in Pakistan has been dominated by the feudals with a little sprinkling of urban elite but to Nawaz Sharif belonged the dubious credit of breaking this mould. He studied at prestigious Government College Lahore and had a law degree from the Punjab University Lahore. His family moved from Jati Umra near Amirtasr and by 1960 they owned a few modest size factories – iron foundry, ice making and water pump factory.
Some how Mian Sharif (Abbaji ) managed to reach General Jill, as General Jilani was know and begged him to give a break in politics to Nawaz Sharif. Nawaz Sharif was appointed as finance minister in 1983 of Punjab.
In 1981 the family business group Ittefaq’s turn over was Rs 337 million, but by 1987 it had soared to at least Rs 2,500 million, that is according to the group’s own accounts. Within four years Ittefaq had become one of the wealthiest private industrial groups in Pakistan. ‘Hard work and grace of Allah’ explained Shabaz Sharif.
When President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed Benazir Buhtto ‘ a security risk’ the ground of corruption and mal-administration. It was now Nawaz Sharif’s turn by common acclaim, ‘the lesser evil’ even though the establishment was not too keen to have him as prime minister. Instead the establishment preferred Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi who had briefly acted as caretaker prime minister after the dismissal of Bhutto.
What clinched the appointment for Nawaz Sharif was a word to the presidency by the then ISI chief Lt. Gen Hamid Gull, that the army believed he was a better choice. General Hamid Gull now regrets his misjudgement. Subsequently the President also dismissed him. Nawaz Sharif’s problem was power: a pathological crass compounded by crass incompetence.
General Aslam Beg told a friend that they had chosen Nawaz Sharif in preference to Ghulam Mutafa Jatoi because Jatoi said have a dozen or so ‘girl friends’ and it was difficult to reach him after he had retired for drink after 9 pm.
Nawaz Sharif was no less romantic he asks his women to sing over the telephone for him. He doesn’t drink but he doesn’t dispose the files either. But Jaoti used to he never sat over files.
Nawaz Sharif also seemed to an ungrateful person. He did not feel any obligation towards president Ghulam Ishaq Khan, nor did he ever say ‘thank you’ to General Hamid Gull’. The US loathed Hamid Gull as a ‘visionary’ general. One task given to Benazir Bhutto by the US was to shunt him from the ISI. She managed to do at last before boarded the plane to her first visit ‘thanks-giving visit to Washington.
Gen Aslam Beg retired because Nawaz Sharif felt inferior before him and don’t want to extend his tenure. But he ended up accepting some one who is far more difficult than Aslam Beg, General Asif Nawaz Junjua. The over smart business minded Abbaji invited General Asif Nawaz to his Lahore residence. After a fatherly ‘tête-à-tête’, Abbaji told the new army chief that he was like his son and requested him to take his two sons Nawaz and Shabaz under his wings: and also told the ‘children’ that they must follow and never disregard the General Sahib’s advice. And one last thing Abbaji said to the General Sahib, as he came to see him out off at the porch of his house, ‘my both children have a Mercedes each, and here is the key to yours; you are like a son to me.’ Words to that effect.
Nawaz Sharief’s moto was that he could buy any general if he sent his wife on a day trip to Karachi. It didn’t work with General Asif Nawaz, he felt offended and therefore, instead of being able to buy the General, Nawaz Sharif had instead lost his respect too.
Majeed Nizami editor of the Nawa-e-waqat a closest ally of Nawaz Sharif had to remark that they used to regard Benazir Bhutto as a ‘security risk’, it seemed Nawaz Sharif was a greater security risk. He was indeed the worst thing that had happened to Pakistan since independence. Whether it was money, morals or security, the nation found it difficult to trust him. It is interesting that while Pakistani soldiers and Kashmiri freedom fighters were battling against the Indian army on the freezing heights of Kargil, Nawaz Sharif’s business proxies were selling sugar to India. India did not need to import any sugar and yet if Vajipayee had accepted to buy Pakistani sugar it was only to sweeten his relationship with Nawaz Sharif.
This is not meant to be a dossier on Nawaz Sharif’s wheeling and dealing, but it is about the implication of his wheeling and dealing for national security. Dhirubhai Ambani (late) was one of India’s top magnets. He had set up a big oil refinery in Jamnagar, but what bothered him was the very high premium demanded by the British insurance company. The insurance company said the refinery was only 130 km from Pakistan, which may be in the event of an India-Pakistan war, the first bombing target, but they might consider reducing the premium if Ambani brought a ‘certificate’ from Pakistan that it would not attack the refinery in case of a war with India.
In March 1999 Nawaz Sahrif had received at his London flat and Indian editor, R K Mishra, accompanied by a famous Bombay film star (may be Amitabh Bachan). Mishra chaired the Ambani group of Observer newspapers and Amabani reported to ‘control’ eight ministers in the Vajpayee government at the time and late Mr Ambani known to have visited Nawaz Sharif as Vajpayee’s emissary during and after the Kargil crisis.
In September 1999, Pakistan High Commission in London issued him a multi-entry visa. In any event whatever else went on during these visits Ambani got the ‘certificate’ and the insurance company drastically reduced the premium had demanded.
This writer met Syed Mushahid Husain in London asked about this Ambani gate scandal. Nawaz Sharif’s information minister denied point blank and said even Mushraf government did not make that allegation against Nawaz Sahrif.
The Jamnager refinery was just one instance, where the dismissed and exiled prime minister’s business interests impinged on national security and which were reported in the press.
It is highly significant that when the Kargil crisis broke out both George Fernandez and K S Sudarshan, the former a socialist and India’s defence minister and the later leader of BJP militant wing RSS themselves exculpate Nawaz Sharif of any blame.
If the Indians were trying to protect Nawaz Sharif, they must have had very good reasons to do so, but Nawaz Sharif himself had no qualms in putting himself under the total protection of Washington.
The rise and fall of Nawaz Sharif provides a good reason for his immediate as well as future successors, that they should also use common sense and not juts intelligence.
12 – QADYANI ROLE IN BENZAIR BHUTTO’S DEPARTURE
Mansoor Ejaz – Memo Gate Wittness
After the killing of Ziaul Haq (d.1988), a liberal and liberated Benazir Bhutto was expected to be bold and forthcoming in establishing ties with the Zionist entity. Some of her friends in Washington were Jewish and influential, but the lady did not feel confident enough that she world be able to sustain such a strange about-turn in foreign policy. She admitted that if she did so, she would be called a `traitor’.
Nevertheless, with an immature and inexperienced prime minister heading the government, the old time Zionists in her foreign policy establishment, especially Pakistani diplomats in Geneva and New York were now, as a matter of course, dealing informally with each other. Either the prime minister was going along with it, or did not want to know what was going on, or she knew and decided she could nothing about it.
The Americans were, however, more insistent than before, nagging Pakistan to recognize the Zionist entity. Benazir Bhutto’s first term came to an abrupt end on 6 August 1990 when she was succeeded by a businessman turned politician, Nawaz Sharif. The prime minister who headed a wobbly government sought security in appeasing the master power in Washington. He, therefore, out-stepped Benazir Bhutto by making a declaration of intent. His ambassador to Washington, Mrs. Abida Husain, used an Indian newspaper, India Abroad (31 January 1992) to declare that Pakistan did not have `an independent quarrel with Israel’ and that establishing diplomatic relations with Israel was `down the road’. Abida Husain had said that in January 1992.
While the fear of public reaction prevented Nawaz Sharif, too, from according recognition to the Zionist entity, Pakistan itself has since been going downhill. With principles and convictions getting eroded and replaced by a growing sense of insecurity and inadequacy, the area of the illicit has gone on widening.
Nawaz Sharifs brother and powerful chief minister of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif was reported to be doing business with the Zionist entity. The minister of industries, Shaikh Rashid – now minister of information in the Musharraf regime – said that if need be they would also invite Israeli businessmen to invest in Pakistan. The press never stopped saying that contacts between Tel Aviv and Islamabad were continuing and the government, on its part, kept denying the `rumors’ from time to time.
Rumors aside, the Pakistan ministry of foreign affairs has long kept ready an official summary making a case for recognizing the entity so as to lose no time as soon as a policy decision has been taken. The opportunity came when a former vice president of the World Bank, Moeen Qureshi, was flown in as a 90-day caretaker prime minister to succeed Nawaz Sharif.
Married to an `Austrian’ woman [a la Sir Feroz Khan Noon], the gentleman had long forsaken his Pakistani domicile. On landing at Karachi Airport, he was handed a Pakistani passport and the national long coat, sherwani, so that he may look a `Pakistani’! The name of Moeen Qureshi had been recommended to the then army chief, General Abdul Waheed Kakar, by M M Ahmad and he seemed the most suitable person to present Pakistan with a fait accompli as he would be gone at the end of a mandatory interim period of 90 days. He could not utter the `recognition’ word, however. The move was shot down at the last minute by General Abdul-Waheed Kakar.
Moeen Qureshi denied that there was `currently’ any plan to recognize Israel, yet the Zionists within, who had become more powerful after Z A Bhutto and Ziaul Haq, never ceased their not so secret liaison with Israeli officials. Coming to power, a second time, after Moeen Qureshi, Benazir Bhutto asked her foreign ministry to investigate a report about official Pakistani contacts with Israel. It was not a third party report; the Israeli ambassador in New Delhi, Ephraim Dwek, had himself spoken to the BBC about those contacts.
However, Benazir Bhutto, looked torn between conflicting interests. She did not want to provoke public opinion, nor had the Pakistani military establishment given up its objection to recognizing the Zionist entity. She had, on the other hand, to appease her American friends, mostly liberal and Zionists. She denied that she had decided to recognize Israel, but instead of going up front, she thought of going it in a round about way. She was going to be in Cairo for the UN conference on population and development and she said that after the conference, she intended to pay a visit to Yasir Arafat in Gaza on 4 September 1994.
Strangely, however, instead of welcoming her, Israel decided to snub her. The Pakistani ambassador and his staff going to Gaza Strip to prepare for the visit were asked to `clarify whether Pakistan recognizes Israel and whether the Pakistanis’ passports may be stamped’; failing to get a satisfactory answer, from their point of view, Israeli officials `respectfully sent [them] back to Cairo’.
The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has no independent entry point to the territories it is supposed to administer. Israeli Prime Minister Yazhak Rabin said: `Any country that wants to come there [Gaza Strip] has to coordinate with Israel. The fact that Pakistan has no relations with Israel, does not want to talk with us – even more so – if the prime minister of Pakistan declares, I am going to Gaza; I am not going to see any Israeli; I do not recognize Israel, one has to behave in a more decent way.’
Rabin’s deputy foreign minister, Yosi Beilin, said Pakistan and Israel had `connections at the United Nations and elsewhere’ and `the right way’ to go about was to use those connections. Thus Benazir Bhutto had not conducted herself in a `decent way’.
The Israeli snub to Benazir Bhutto was indecent but calculated; it meant to say that it was not Israel that needed to be recognized by Benazir Bhutto, but miserable regimes like hers, which were in need of being recognized by Israel. The miserable regime was dismissed a second time on 6 November 1996.
Benazir’s faults were many and she was going to be dismissed in any event, but it cannot be said that she had not tried to appease Israel in her own way. Like, for example, becoming the first Pakistani prime minister to grant an interview to the Israeli daily Ma’riv, going missing for over three and a half hours between the JF Kennedy airport and Plaza Hotel in New York in order, allegedly, to meet Yitzhak Rabin.
More significantly she had also allowed her foreign minister, Asif Ahmad Ali, to engage in `quiet diplomacy’ with the entity etc; only that she had been unable to bring herself to utter the `R’ word, which had been haunting almost all governments since the fall of her own father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Exactly a fortnight before her dismissal, she had told the National Assembly that `conspiracies’ were being hatched against her government; she had referred, among others, to `an orchestrated campaign against me both in the local and foreign press’.
One actor in the `conspiracy, she disclosed, had recently met her in Islamabad and asked her to recognize Israel. `However,’ she added, `when I said I cannot do so unless Israel settles issues with the Palestinians, he wrote an article against me in the Wall Street journal.’ (Dawn, Karachi, 21 October 1996) The article was entitled, The IMF’s Recipe for Disaster, WSJ 13 June 1996.
That `actor’, said the then Pakistan foreign secretary, Najmuddin Shaikh, was Mansoor Ijaz, a Washington-based influence peddler who had a `pique’ against the Benazir Bhutto government since he could not `derive sufficient benefit’ from it.
Mansoor Ejaz (Memo Gate Scandal) had been introduced to the government of Pakistan by then ambassador Ahmad Kamal to the UN as `an influential Pakistan-American who could help Pakistan by securing a waiver to resume [US] aid to Pakistan’. He could deliver votes in the US House of Representatives for the passage of the Brown Amendment if Pakistan released 15 million dollars to a satellite company RADA with which he seemed somehow associated. Maleeha Lodhi, then ambassador in Washington, turned down the proposal. She said it would be `illegal’; besides, it might also be a trap. (Maleeha Lodhi is Pakistan High Commissioner in London)
The Pakistan embassy in Washington now also disclosed that Mansoor Ijaz had been `pushing’ the government of Pakistan to recognize Israel and he himself had visited Israel on several occasions, once on the invitation of the mayor of occupied Jerusalem. In 1995 he had been given the `Humanitarian of the Year’ award by major Jewish organizations in the US. Ambassador Ahmad Kamal who joined in praising him for his `philanthropic activities’ also attended the ceremony. Mansoor Ijaz had, however, been so important to Benazir Bhutto that when the then President, Farooq Ahmad
Leghari was traveling to the US in May 1994 to attend the graduation ceremony of his son, she advised him to make sure that he also met the gentleman. It was only after the `pique’ that her foreign secretary and others had found it necessary to speak about his dubious influence peddling and Israeli connections.
The personality of Mansoor ljaz was highly significant from another angle: ‘I he was also scion of a `holy’ Qadiyani family. His mother, Lubna Razia Ijaz, is the daughter of Nazir Husain Khan who was one of the `original 313′ followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiyani (1835-1908). However, Mansoor Ijaz denies being a Qadiyani. Few less known and well-placed Qadiyanis now own up to being what they are.
Benazir Bhutto’s departure and Nawaz Sharif’s second coming did not diminish; it only enhanced the insidious influence of the country’s pro-Zionist lobby. Aiding the work of the Qadiyani pro-Zionists were a number of fellow travelers; they were opportunist Pakistanis who had little idea or feelings about the objective merits of the Palestinian issue and were willing to acquiesce to illegitimate Zionist occupation of the Holy Land.
It is not clear how far `up the road’ was Nawaz Sharif from recognizing Israel, but his return saw an intensification of pre-recognition activity. There seemed a crop of Pakistani Zionists who came from almost all ranks – politicians, businessmen, journalists, diplomats, Kashmiri `freedom fighters’, and an odd member from the `ulama’ and church communities. No one, it seems, wanted to be left behind, including the ubiquitous defense and intelligence communities.
Pakistan has not been able to free itself of the ghost of Zafrulla. After Zafrulla, there were M M Ahmad and Mansoor Ijaz, Ahmad Sadiq, Traiq Aziz and many more cryptos up and down the corridors of power.
General Pervez Musharraf’s coup seemed timely. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said to Newsweek (5 November 2001) I told him [President Bush], we understand your strategy. As a good Jewish boy, I would have never dreamed that I would pray for the safety of Musharraf, the president of Pakistan. That is most unexpected experience.’
December 1946: Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah met with the Grand Mufti, Amin al-Husaini in Cairo and said, ‘From the Balfour Declaration to ‘partition’, Jinnah spared no words to denounce the grave injustice to the Palestinians and warned ‘there will be no peace in the Near East until they give an honest deal to Arabs in Palestine … All our sympathies are with Arabs who are fighting … against the usurpers’.
13 – BENAZIR BHUTTO AND ASIF ZARDARI INNER WITH ISRAELI AMBASSADOR
Benazir Bhutto with Israeli Ambassador to UN
I spoke to Benazir Bhutto face to face on 20th July 2007 at International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, when I asked her vision about Kashmir issue and solutions beyond borders. She was glowing with happiness and confidence. I could see some kind confidence on her face as if all the boxes have been ticked and she is going to walk into throne. I gave my article about Islamabad Red Mosque Operation “Nation is Traumatized Mr President (Musharaf)”published in the Frontier Post on that day. I said to her ‘consider going back to Pakistan in the current situation’. She looked at me as if saying, ‘it is too late’ and put article in her purse’.
Wajidshamusl Hassan (former) High Commissioner of Pakistan in London, M. Ziaudin, senior editor of Dawn Newspaper and writer, sat down in a café at Temple Tube station in front of IISS to discuss the speech. Though Mr Hassan was advisor to late Benazir Bhutto but Rehman Malik by passed all the senior political workers and cronies like him. Why?
It was the same meeting at IISS, where Rehman Malik claimed to have arrested Ramzi Yousaf’ while talking to a senior Arab Journalist. For the record at that time there was no anti terrorist cell in FIA when Mr Malik was on the job. But an ISI team arrested ‘Ramzi Youasf’ which was despatched from Lahore under the supervision of very senior officer’. Rehman Malik is nothing but a key holder of multi billion Corruption Empire of Zardari. He is next in the line to join Khalid Shenshah (Ms Bhutto’s chief security officer appointed by Zardari) as Malik knows too much? Why is Zaradari rewarding Rehman Mailk who took backup life line vehicle’ of Ms Bhutto from the scene just before the blast as if he knew about it? Why there was no reconstruction of the whole incident as suggested by the British Scotland Yard?
Zardari is too busy clearing Mailk’s name as if it is going to affect his British Nationality application? Malik was dismissed from his job on the corruption charges. Now Zardari has issued an order converting his ‘disgraceful dismissal to honourable retirement with full benefit’. It is like one crook scratching back of another thief.
It seems Benazir Bhutto was mostly relying on Indian and Western sources for information and assessments about Pakistan. The quality of advisors like Hussain Haqqani, Rehman Malik, (36 weeks PhD holder) Babar Awan, and others around her at the time was very low.
I wrote on 25th July 2007 in The Frontier Post: “Benazir Bhutto lectured about the future of democracy in Pakistan at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London on 20th July 2007. She was going on about the increase of extremism in Pakistan. I asked her what you would do when the root causes of spreading of extremism are beyond the borders of Pakistan and there are more than two million afghan refugees living in Pakistan, some are also involved in terrorism according to reports. Her response does not worth mentioning because it was based on the reports in western and Indian media. She is not aware with the ground realities now and how people of Pakistan are thinking. There is a high probability of her becoming a terrorist target in Pakistan”.
Benazir Bhutto with Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman who served as Israel’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations from January 2003 – August 2008.
She was eliminated because none of the guarantors and launchers trusted her. She was a person who followed the line of interests and that is how she beat Nawaz Sharif in political manoeuvrings. Zulifqar Ali Bhutto was a great statesman and leader though trained under a ‘dictator’s umbrella’ but not corrupt and so was his daughter late Benazir Bhutto.
I wrote in ‘The Frontier Post’ on 17th October 2007, “The game plan is taking shape and becoming more and more visible. Musharraf and Benazir are like clay pigeons, which could be shot at any time according to some analysts. In Pakistan Benazir and Altaf Hussain are no different than Chilbis and Karzais. Benazir is promising to provide full access to Dr AQ Khan for interrogation and intention to invite US forces to operate in Pakistan as if they are not already secretly. Does any one wonder why Mr Bin Laden always helped President Bush by releasing his messages just before the last US elections and other low ratings moments and now Benazir by allegedly threatening to eliminate her? I don’t see any future of Benazir”.
The US Plan was not changed even after the death of Benazir Bhutto because Asif Zardari who had free coaching lessons from the CIA while in United Stated according to some sources replaced her. He and his wife have been having ‘intimate dinners’ with Dan Gillerman, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations with his wife. What was the reason to meet and dine with the officials of a country whom Pakistan doesn’t recognise it exists? If it was any body else he or she would be jailed by now?
As a shrewd crook Zardari has learn the trick of ‘bypassing the official system of government’ to deliver the goods. That is the most effective way of espionage. That is how delivery and rent boys Zaradri’s PSO Salman Farooqi and Rehman Malik got four US (blackwater/CIA) agents released from the police custody and handed over to the US embassy in Islamabad, without charge. These agents allegedly were arrested in a 4×4 about two miles from sensitive Kahuta Nuclear Plant. They were dressed like Taliban and talking in Pashto and had explosives and sensitive equipments in the vehicle. Was that a plan to take over Pakistan’s nuclear assets by Hollywood style ‘Balckwater/Xe’ dirty operation?
One theory can be that the same people who launched Ms Bhutto third time with the support of locals eliminated her? Zardari gang, Rehman Malik and Hussain Haqqani and others are the people who are not only corrupt and compromised but also have their loyalties signed outside. They are ‘The Asset Plus’ of foreign governments including US, India and Israel.
Since his entry into Presidency we have seen a stream of visits by the US officials, politicians, senators, and generals almost all of them supporting Zardari. “They all come to put pressure on the armed forces and opposition leaders not to bother our man”, said a senior analyst.
In the word of US President Franklin D Roosevelt who reportedly said in 1939 about Anastasio Somoza García the non communist Nicaraguan ruthless dictator, “Somoza may be a son of a bitch but he’s our son of a bitch”
14 – BENAZIR BHUTTO’S MURDER AND ISRAELI FRIENDS
Assassination of Benazir Bhutto served many purposes to the players who want Pakistan in turmoil and chaos? Was it a friendly fire? The speed of war of words against Pakistan is enormous and certain lobbies are putting their full weight to de-stabilize Pakistan.
Those who say just because terrorists have attacked President Musharaf of Pakistan therefore, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are not safe must check their brain’s functioning. US Presidents John F Kennedy was killed on a road and Ronald Regan was shot in the street, Yahizk Rabin President of Israel was shot dead in a rally, Prime Minster Indera Gandhi was shot by her guards and Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi was killed in a suicide attack by a Tamil Hindu terrorist. All the above are nuclear powers so shall we say their Nukes are unsafe? It sound like ‘fox and the lamb’ story?
Benazir Bhutto was surrounded and mostly influenced by non-political actors who had their loyalties signed outside Pakistan? These are the players who want every thing from Western support to bring them in power, education, cloths, and cars but don’t want western freedom of speech, values, respect of poor people. In most democratic countries media, political and campaign advisors are mostly highly qualified professionals and not party loyalists. That is the crucial point when opportunists and power greedy politicians do not give advice to their leader as happened in Benazir Bhutto’s case. Nobody told Benazir not to open the soft rooftop of a bomb/bullet proof car because she could get hurt? One must understand that how one mistake, one violation of security rule could jeopardise one’s life. Bulletproof cars and foreign trained bodyguards can only reduce the risks but cannot rule out dangers?
Beneficiaries and opportunists who wanted to get to the power through her surrounded Benazir. What was the point of travelling with people who could not give warning about risks? How can these incompetent passengers of Benzair’s car trusted for top job? Critics say they were waiting lioness to kill for them so they could enjoy the fruits of power and flagged cars as they did in the past? People say Influence and interference of Rehman Malik and Sherry Rehman made many PPP circles angry? Many believe both are dodgy characters? Rehman Malik himself is owner of a private Spy Agency in London obviously with foreign staff.
People say keeping in view what happened to Benazir, one could bet that Altaf Hussain is not going to return to Pakistan for another millennium? Well if you are frightened of seasickness best place to avoid is to sit under a tree, like Altaf Hussain and his gang sitting in a phone call centre in London?
Stephen Cohen, from The Brookings Institution wrote on December 27, 2007, after Benazir death, “I fear for Pakistan. Its further decay will affect all of its neighbours, Europe and the United States in unpredictable and unpleasant ways. Will it be a death blow? Can Pakistan recover as a state and as a society? It is hard to be optimistic. As I wrote in “The Idea of Pakistan” in 2003, Pakistan will face a fundamental crisis in five or six years, Benazir Bhutto’s assassination may bring that about sooner than later”.
Stephen Cohen stated “When she and her husband came to the Brookings Institution just before she departed for Pakistan, she stated a need to restore her contacts with the Pakistani people. She also displayed a far more realistic understanding of Pakistan’s problems and the importance of reform.”
A senior London based Military Analyst stated, “enemies (of Pakistan) Steve Cohen included – want to turn political dissent into inter-provincial ethnic/sectarian polarisation. No one seems to perceive the true nature of the danger; no one seems to be able to show leadership that such times require. But the elections are neither the problem nor the solution; they are an opportunity.”
A Washington based military analyst responded to Stephen Cohen that, “Pakistan has endured many tragic events in the past. Pakistan is not as delicate as some of our cynical American friends tend to believe and the Pakistani people are far more resilient than the best estimates of our many detractors. We will rise to the occasion and overcome this challenge. Steve may plan another of his books on another of his predicted crises but he may well be disappointed.
Benazir’s assassination is a big national loss but the mischievous suggestions of hidden hands – this time Steve has not followed the popular formula of blaming everything on the ISI and has obliquely blamed the retired intelligence officials – probably the same who were nurtured and tutored by the CIA during the ‘Afghan JIHAD’. Could he for a while also look around and point a finger at other intelligence agencies operating in the country including RAW – who would naturally have an interest in destabilizing Pakistan. There is also a mistaken characterization in American media about Rawalpindi as a Garrison town. In any case if Pentagon can be attacked in Washington, DC why should it be so surprising if a few terrorists attacks happen in Rawalpindi or Islamabad.”
Zbigniev Brzezinski once boasted (“How the US provoked the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan and starting the whole mess”, Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15 – 21, 1998, how he succeeded to trap the Soviets in the war by starting insurgency against the socialist government long time before the Soviet troops came over to help the government.
Similarly who asked Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1990s leading to first Gulf War, full occupation and than execution of Saddam Hussein presenting as Shia revenge? Policy of divide and rule has not stopped. There was no problem of Shias and Sunnis in Iraq and else where. Critics say that, ‘’the attacks on Iraqi holly sites have multiple objectives for example warning to Iran and fanning ethno religious violence’.
Re-launching of Benazir Bhutto has another dimension, which was about to be aired. Wikipedia encyclopaedia wrote, “Bhutto was the eldest child of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Pakistani of Sindhi descent and Shia Muslim by faith, and Begum Nusrat Bhutto, a Pakistani of Iranian-Kurdish descent, of similarly Shia Muslim by faith.” Her husband Mr Asif Zaradri also belongs to Shia faith. Some foreign forces were/are going to use religion to create divide in Pakistani society?
Approximately 3% Shia population of Pakistan is very well integrated with the Sunnis. After the Iranian Revolution and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan Shia and Sunni divide happened at a minor scale resulting in bombings on each other. “Shias of Pakistan are not like Sunnis in Iran”, former foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri told his Iranian counterpart. He was talking in the context of US invasion of Iran scenario and its impact on the region including Pakistan.
Edward Herman wrote in (ZNet Commentary, December 16, 2007), “of Great Satan and Little Satan, of the US and Israel. Whatever these two satans touch, rots. Whoever relies upon their help, loses his soul. The people of Pakistan deserve freedom, prosperity and equality, but no union with Satan will help them. Musharraf served the Great Satan, and Bhutto played ball with the Little Satan. Now the NY Times reported that the US plans to use the native mountain tribes of Pakistan to carry out their war. Unless the people of Pakistan reject Satan and his allies, be it called al Qaeda or ISI or CIA or Special troops, they won’t be free. As long as they still believe that something good can come out of Satan’s friendship, they are doomed. Their country will be dismantled, and their useless nuclear weapons won’t help them”.
One analyst said it is interesting to note that Benazir Bhutto and her husband had been lobbying and investing resources with Pro Israel Jewish lobby and also hired a Washington based Jewish lobbying firm for $160,000 for six months in mid 2007. One critic says, ‘Benazir had a long list of Pro Israel Jewish friends and was openly following their agenda.’ Look at the list of her friends and commentators on Pakistan’s nuclear program, who are they?
Bhutto requesting Israeli secret service Mossad for protection, seeking advice from Stephen Cohen, writing emails to Mark Siegel, Wolf Blitzer, reportedly sharing secrets with David Frost, relaying messages to Israeli Prime minister Ehud Olmert, meeting with President Shimon Peres at several occasions, Benazir and Zaradari having dinner with Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman who recalled a meeting he had with Bhutto just prior to her return to Pakistan. “My wife and I had an intimate dinner with her and her husband,” he said. “We spent over three hours with them.” WHY?
One critic said looking at the list of all Benazir’s friends above it seems like she was playing a dangerous game of pro Israeli Jews, imperialists and neo-cons to denuclearise, destabilise and disintegrate Pakistan? A well respected Jewish analyst and former US Secretary of State Hennery Kissinger once said as reported, “it is irrelevant if US punishes its enemies or not but it definitely punish its FRIENDS”.
15 – TRUTH ABOUT LIBYAN N-PROGRAM AND PAKISTAN
Henry Kissinger infamous US secretary of state once said, ‘its irrelevant if US punishes its enemies or not but it definitely punishes its friends. That list of friends punished or killed by friendly fire is pretty long but General Zia, Sadam, Osama, Yasar Arafat and General Noeriaga, Taliban etc are the popular one. There is a message for President Mushraf and his imported cronies to grow up be brave and get out of the bushes.
In February 1992 Democrat Presidential candidate Senator Gary Hart from Colorado, 1975 to 1987 was in Athens where he was approached by Libyan Naval attaché who told Senator Gary Hart that ‘Libya wanted to negotiate.
Senator Gary Hart went to Geneva where he met head of Libyian intelligence ‘Yussaf Dibberi’, who offered to handover two men wanted for suspected of Lockerbie bombings of flight Pan Am 103 in Scotland and wanted sanctions to be lifted.
Senator Gary Hart reported back to the US State Department their response was cold. Senator Hart flew to Libya and met Prime Minister Abdul Salam Jalud and said that ‘Libya should cease any support to terrorism and abandon weapons of mass destruction programme.
The Libyan PM confirmed that, ‘Every thing will be on the table’. It was clear what Libyans wanted to come out of cold.
Senator Hart reported back to State Department and later Libya that ‘sanction’ will not be lifted even in exchange for the suspects of Lockerbie bombings.
IAEA expressed surprise that Mr Blair did not take the opportunity offered by Mr Cook to abandon the allegation. Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the IAEA, said: “These were blatant forgeries. We were able to determine that they were forgeries very quickly.”
The Libyan foreign minister Abdual Rahman Shalgam was in London on 10th February 2004 on after 20 years on an official visit to the United Kingdom. He also met the Brutish Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Jack Straw British Foreign Secretary while addressed a joint press conference at the Foreign Office with Libyan Foreign Minister.
While responding to a question from the BBC A question to the Libyan Foreign Minister, ‘Do you think if there had not been the war in Iraq, that the dramatic events we have seen of the last few weeks, the opening up of Libya’s cooperation on weapons of mass destruction, your visit here today, would this have taken place?
Libyan Foreign Minister Shalgam’s answer (in directly confirmed that there was an effort to give up so called Libyan WMDs 12 years ago)
“Our London Ambassador, Mr Mohammed Ismael, who is here with us, we are in contact and discussions with America since 1992, 12 years ago almost. We had meetings, several meetings in several places. In 1999 I was responsible for foreign affairs and the popular conference, our Foreign Minister at that time was the late Almar … at that time. We discussed the issue of projects and programmes leading to banned weapons.
He further said, ‘We had a document called the green document for human rights, it was prepared more than 10 years ago. Article 23 of that document says that the Libyans ban weapons of mass destruction and call upon the world to get rid of them. I don’t blame you for problems of language or geography or place, you did not know the facts and these documents. But I blame those who speak our language and who can read that document, and they didn’t, and that is not good, and those who read it and changed that document according to their own interests.
British Foreign Secretary said: If I may just answer Bridget Kendall’s question, as the Minister has said, the contacts, active contacts with Libya pre-date the recent international concerns and the military action in respect of Iraq, and for example the visit of Minister Mike O’Brien took place a good while before military action was contemplated in respect of Iraq, still less took place.
The point I made on 20 December, following Minister Shalgam’s announcement, was not to claim any crude connection – which we do not – between military action in Iraq and what has happened in Iran and in Libya, it was to make a more tentative and more subtle point, which is that I would hope that the removal of Saddam has generally made for a more secure environment in the Middle East and may – but that is for historians to judge – may have therefore eased the negotiations, but that is a very different point from saying there is some crude connection between the two.
Question from the BBC World (Service Arabic) Now can you tell us exactly what part did London play in brokering this new stance of Libya, vis a vis programmes of weapons of mass destruction, and are you now mediating between Tripoli and the rest of the world to improve their relations? And did Libya contribute in any way after the pronouncement of getting rid of weapons of mass destruction and revealing the role played by Dr Abdul Qadir Khan in Pakistan, and leaking information, nuclear in relation to Libya, and in revealing other roles by other partners worldwide?
Libyan Foreign Minister Shalgam said, “I would like to say that Libya never gave any information, we were never asked even. As for Mr Khan, America knows about him and he himself knows about himself.
At the press conference Jack Straw said, ‘Libya’s announcement on 19th December 2003 that it would rid itself of its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes was a courageous step. The announcement opened the way to Libya’s reintegration into the international community, it showed too that problems of proliferation can, with goodwill, be tackled through discussion and engagement.’
Mr Straw said, ‘Libya’s decision should benefit the whole region and make the world a very much safer place. We are making good progress on the implementation of the 19 December agreement and on the wider effort to prevent the proliferation of these weapons.
The Libyan F M said, ‘This visit is a chance for a dialogue with the Minister in which we discussed the relations, bilateral relations, between our two countries in various fields, also the relationships between Libya, Britain and the United States and the positive results from the last meeting here in Britain between Libyan officials as well as British and American officials. We also discussed the relations of Libya with the European Union and also some of the measures which are not being done towards Libya by the European Union, also with regard to our cooperation towards peace, development, stability in Africa.
Amar Sultan, Al-Halam TV, Mr Shalgam, can I ask you in Arabic please, before you gave concessions voluntarily regarding the weapons you had demands regarding operations after the attacks on Libya. Will you concede regarding this concession and stop giving Libya any reparations?
Libyan Foreign Minister said, ‘Concessions is not a correct term. Libya reviewed a number of issues. We considered to whom these programmes and this equipment, called weapons of mass destruction, I would like to tell you the following. We have the equipment, we had the material and the know-how and the scientists. We never decided to produce such weapons.
To have flour, water and fire does not mean that you have bread. We never gave any concessions, we discussed this years ago, and the popular conventions in Libya and fore-sessions decided to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. That is documented, this is a popular demand. It wasn’t imposed on us and we gave no concessions. America was defeated in Vietnam by a small country and she has nuclear weapons.
What will these weapons benefit us, how? We want the Americans to help us, we want the British to help us, and others too, to convert our projects into peaceful projects like nuclear power, desalination of water, that is more beneficial to us. As for the 1986 attacks, any citizen, any man on this earth can sue others, you can sue me now, you can sue others, this is lawful everywhere. We can’t tell anyone don’t sue others, this is lawful and it is up to the individual.
Bill Neeley, ITV News Foreign Minister, ‘can you confirm that Libya handed over blueprints for nuclear warheads to western officials, that it has done that already?
Libyan FM replied, ‘I would like to say something that I have mentioned many times before; this is regarding the programmes of weapons of mass destruction. We are the ones who took the initiative in this matter. What the agencies and other agencies do in Libya is not inspection but verification. They tell us this is what I have in my pocket, you don’t have to inspect me, I showed it.
Libya deals with the issue of nuclear power with the IEA, with Dr Baradei, and we co-ordinated with Dr Baradei with regard to chemical weapons, we received the Director General of the International Nuclear Agency and Energy Agency.
There is an agreement on which we are working, the biological biology has no agency to work upon so we are co-operating through our own experts and our Italian friends are going to send experts of their own, and also in Britain and America. Some of the equipment which violate the non-proliferation agreement, we delivered that to the International Nuclear and Energy Agency, which they have on file. Now it will put it in any safe place with one of the Permanent Members of the Security Council of their choosing, that is within a programme that is called Assurance Safeguard Agreements.
Some of those will want to poison these Libyan initiatives, some of them are close to us, there are others who are far from us. They twist the truth and the facts. They say Libya gave concessions, Libya is afraid. This is politics. Any person when in times of differences, we had our own differences and America attacked us and bombed our country.
We supported liberation movements in South America and Nelson Mandela, now when Nelson Mandela is in Britain or America he has a red carpet reception. Things have changed. Yes we have the courage to review our politics and our directions at will. Those who poison relations by accusation and campaigns, the caravan is moving on anyway.
Foreign Minister, we have heard recently that you had contacts with the Israelis, can you confirm that such contacts took place? And secondly, the Americans are talking about setting up a bureau in Tripoli to co-ordinate the process of getting rid of Libya’s programmes for WMD, what type of an office will it be?
Foreign Minister Shagam said, ‘ Nothing forces us to hide anything in Libya. The talk that Libyans in the past met with Israelis, that is untrue, that is not true. I heard also that I will contact Israelis. This is something that doesn’t deserve to really disconcert all. We don’t have relations between Libya, Costa Rica or Bolivia. Why should we? This is an attempt to poison by press, unfortunately by Arab press. I am a journalist myself regrettably … information, but to lie, this is cheap.
Americans, yes Americans came to Libya to work inside the Belgian Embassy and Libyans will also go to America to work in the Interests Section of Libya. This is a step forward within the positive development between us and Libya, America we heard will reduce measures that will allow their own citizens to enter Libya. We had problems with Britain, we solved them, and we have built the political diplomatic relations, the same with America.
Jonathan Pollard
In November 1985, the FBI arrested Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, on charges of selling classified material to Israel. Pollard was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment. His wife, Anne, got five years in jail for assisting her husband.
Immediately upon Pollard’s arrest, Israel apologized and explained that the operation was unauthorized. “It is Israel’s policy to refrain from any intelligence activity related to the United States,” an official government statement declared, “in view of the close and special relationship of friendship” between two countries. Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres stated: “Spying on the United States stands in total contradiction to our policy.” In November 1995, Israel granted Jonathan Pollard Israeli citizenship. This publicly signalled to the US, Israel’s willingness to accept full responsibility for Pollard.
On May 12, 1998, Israel formally acknowledged Jonathan Pollard was an official Israeli agent. This fact wiped out any remaining doubt about Jonathan Pollard’s motives. Being an official agent is, by definition, the polar opposite of being a mercenary. In the same May 12, 1998 statement, the Government of Israel publicly acknowledged full responsibility for Jonathan Pollard, and indicated its commitment to his immediate repatriation to Israel.
Four Prime Ministers of Israel and three Presidents of Israel have all personally requested Jonathan Pollard’s release from the President of the US. Each one pledged to be personally responsible for their agent who has now served 15 years in prison under harsh conditions, and who has fully expressed his remorse.
So why US kept turning down Libyan offers for cooperation for 12 years? The answer is very simple there will be no body blame everything goes wrong in the world and to keep all the Middle East under pressure and also to keep the public at home quite. The recent history has proved paint some one as terrorist and do whatever you can in the name of counter terrorism like the Israelis doing in the name of security and US in Guantanamo Camps.
It is high time for the policy makers in Pakistan to be more sensible and futuristic because difficult times are coming. Bush administration is going to present Osama bin Laden by the end of October this year to win the election as they allegedly arrested Sadam Hussain. Therefore OSAMA BIN LADEN will be part of the election campaign.
REFRENCES
The founder of the group, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiyani (d.1908), claimed to be a messiah and prophet and described his movement as ‘a plant, which had been cultivated by the British themselves’. He ‘broke’ the sword: abrogated Jihad. His eldest son and second ‘khalifa’ prophesied that if at all Pakistan came into being; it would merge with India eventually. However, instead of waiting for that to happen, the Qadiyanis were expected to try bring an end to that temporary phase. There were, therefore, serious question marks on the role of Sir Zafrulla who had appeared as Pakistan’s counsel before the Boundary Commission. The commission awarded the greater part of the Muslim-majority district of Gurdaspur to India, giving it a land corridor to Jammu and Kashmir thus enabling India to invade and occupy some two-thirds of the territory only three months later.
Zafrulla had been recommended to Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah (d.1948) as the first foreign minister of Pakistan on the assumption that being an old British hand, his appointment might help counter the generally unfriendly attitude of the Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, because Jinnah had denied him his desire to be appointed the governor general of Pakistan as well, while India had obliged him already. The Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan had, however, given dear instructions that no policy decision be taken without his permission. But in practice, it was for Zafrulla to decide what not to refer to the prime minister.
Zafrulla’s own biographical book, Tahdeeth-e Ni’amat (Dacca, 1971), refers to his visiting, among others, a Russian Jewish settlement near Jerusalem and exchanging views with Dr Cohen of the Jewish Agency. There is no mention, however, of his meeting with Weizmann in London and writing to him after the visit.
Major C L Datta, With Two Presidents: The Inside Story, (Delhi, Vikas, 1970), p.147.
Muhammad Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters, A Political Autobiography, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1967) p.155. 3. Ibid, pp 168 – 173.
Both cases, vetoing French nuclear assistance and Soviet military aid, have been reported personally by Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada to the writer of this article. With a public career spanning over half a century, from being a secretary to Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah to helping President Pervez Musharrat as his constitutional fixer, Pirzada is something of an eminence gripe in Pakistani political history.
Israel T Naamani, Israel – a Profile, (London, Pall Mall, 1972) p.75.
P R Kumaraswamy: Beyond the Veil: Israel-Pakistan relation, (Tel Aviv, Jaffe Centre for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, 2000), pp 32-34.
Z A Butto, Speeches and Statements, 7:128-29.
Benazir Bhutto interview in Stanley Wolpert, Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan,
(New York, Oxford, University Press, 1993), p.224.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are not of The London Post