Farrukh Khan Pitafi’s Official Website

The establishment seems unnerved by the prospects of a UN probe into Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. If you see clearly the blackmail and the red tapism has already begun. Unfortunately the most effective lever used is the allies in the ruling coalition both outside the parliament and inside. The issue of the restoration of judges is being used to pressure the coalition and to unravel it before it even inches towards requesting the UN to investigate. By using the minor differences on the issue of the restoration of judiciary between the coalition parties an effort is being made that within a matter of days the entire set up is either dismantled or else brought to a compromising situation, It is doubly unfortunate then that some of the zealots in the lawyers’ movement and in the media are indirectly playing in the hands of the establishment owing to the lack of emotional intelligence.
If you can recall the mandate that each member party of the coalition got was a transitory one. The parties that earlier formed the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy had actually promised the abolition of dictatorship and restoring peace and stability to the country. Since Benazir Bhutto was assassinated only too recently the PPP also got the mandate to probe and unearth the conspiracy behind her murder. Now it is clear that only those who either have a hand in the assassination of Ms Bhutto or have affections for the assassins do not want the investigation into the matter. Otherwise the country is only recovering from Musharraf’s legacy where foreigners agencies could quiz or then kidnap any person they didn’t like. Each and every national secret was provided by Musharraf to the west and this establishment didn’t have any problem. Musharraf wrote his book which is a classic obstruction of the official secrets act and there was no objection. Yet now the entire establishment is rising against a simple UN investigation?
First the establishment employed some of the country’s leading intellectuals on the matter, then the bureaucracy like the Foreign Secretary and now the political class to directly challenge the notion in addition to exploiting the differences in the coalition. The main slogan is patriotism. Where was this patriotism then when Musharraf allowed three permanent US bases in Pakistan? Where was it when every national issue was first sanctioned by Washington and then brought to debate in the parliament? Where was this patriotism when Pakistani citizens were sold out to the US and other allies without any extradition treaty?
Here is a class of parasites that has sucked the blood of this golden nation and now thinks that if the UN Commission comes to Pakistan many of their sins will evident to the entire world. It is sad that some of very nice people that I have always respected have decided to sell their souls to the devil too.  Take for instance Mushahid Husain. I call him my teacher and friend. But the way he has started playing with the two issues is very sad. The political class doesn’t understand that if the current coalition fails it will have no future in the country and perhaps no country in the future. Mushahid’s one cryptic remark is very meaningful. He said that if the UN probes the assassination many of the skeletons in the cupboard will be revealed.
An immediate confirmation came in the shape of the following report:

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Technical fault did not cause Gen Zia’s plane crash’
The Post Lahore - April 26,2008

LAHORE: The death of former military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq in a mysterious plane crash in 1988 was not due to any technical fault, a senior official has said, according to the Press Trust of India.
“It was not a technical problem,” technical investigator Naseem Ahmad said in response to a question at a workshop regarding the crash of a C-130 Hercules military aircraft in 1988 that killed Gen Zia, US Ambassador Arnold Raphel and over two dozen senior military officers.

Naseem, who was addressing a media training workshop on the investigation of aircraft accidents organised by the Civil Aviation Authority, said around 82 per cent of aircraft accidents occurred due to human error and not technical problems.

However, he did not say the crash of Gen Zia’s plane occurred due to human error.

Naseem said that aircraft have no upper life limit because air-worthiness determines a plane’s suitability for flights.

He said most parts of aircraft could be replaced with new ones. Since the crash, there have been various conspiracy theories about its cause. Many people believe foreign intelligence agencies were involved in the incident.

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Please read between the lines. The establishment essentially is blackmailing someone or some country. It is threatening to open Zia’s assassination chapter too. Whom? I don’t know. As for my views I believe that there is no harm in investigating such issues too. But since Benazir’s stature has no comparison with pygmies like Zia, the UN investigations should start. The UN functions to facilitate us not trouble us, hence I am sure that any Commission formed would not include any member  who causes embarrassment to the government. But even if there was anyone with troublesome context I really don’t mind because it is a matter of simple assassination not of nuclear proliferation or anything else. As for the coalition it comprises adult people and there is no need for me to them what they need to do. If they let the coalition crumble the consequences for democracy, national integrity and their own safety would be surreal. Is it not a tragedy that while Musharraf is using the entire foreign office to impede a state request to the UN for the probe his cronies are making fun of the government for slow action on tabling the request.
And if you still insist that you want to know exactly who is the person or country that the establishment wants to blackmail by opening up the case of Zia’s murder you need to read my following published article:

Who Killed Zia-ul-Haq
“There were other indications of efforts to limit or divert from the investigation, such as the destruction of telephone records of calls made to Zia and Rehman just prior to the crash, the reported disappearances of ISI intelligence files on Murtaza Bhutto, and the transfer of military personnel at Bahawalpur, which, taken together, appeared to add up to a well-organised cover up” (Edward Jay Epstein in his article, ‘Who killed Zia’).

“I remained there (in Bahawalpur) for about eight months and left just a month before President Zia’s C-130 crashed in Bahawalpur” (Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire).

“A short, nervous, ineffectual-looking man whose pomaded hair was parted in the middle and lacquered to his head.” This is how Benazir Bhutto remembers late General Ziaul Haq. Zia indeed was a symbol of his times when a shrinking superpower almost next door was on the verge of collapse. It seemed that Washington was keen to tell the Soviets that it could crush their empire even through such a character. Zia’s death remains just as mystified as his personality. I will neither waste your precious time by copying the needless details about his plane or his reluctant visit to witness the demonstration of Abrams tank, for they have been repeated ad nauseam. Edward Jay Epstein’s article, ‘Who killed Zia’, which appeared in the September 1989 edition of Vanity Fair and is thought to be the most credible piece written on the issue, does considerable justice to the disaster and is available on his website. I will use this space to elaborate what I read between the lines.

I clearly remember having seen a snap captured from the PTV footage recorded just before Zia’s Pak One’s fateful flight. Zia’s face had death writ large on it. The plane crash claimed the lives of many of our treasured family friends. Since then, I have been looking for more clues. But clues have been hard to come by. Epstein believes that a systematic cover up took place. He claims that just before the launch of the report, Robert Oakley, the new US ambassador to Pakistan, sent a secret telegram from Islamabad providing “press guidance”. Just on the eve of the finalisation of the report, a press leak tried to divert attention from the fact that its conclusions written by the US team headed by Colonel Daniel E. Sowada pointed to sabotage and not to mechanical failure. And while in Pakistan autopsies are often performed on pilots who die while performing their duty, post mortems were not allowed to take place on the Pakistani bodies owing to flimsy religious and cultural excuses.

According to his version, structural failure, onboard fire, missile attack, electronic failure, poor judgment of the pilots, controls failure were all ruled out by the 365-page classified investigative report. And since the laboratory of Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco in Washington found traces of pentaerythritol tertranitrate (PNET), a secondary high explosive, antimony and sulphur, there were chances that the pilots died immediately owing to a likely can of VX or some other nerve gas planted in the air vent of the plane. Since such gas could be obtained from an advanced military power, he saw in it the hand of either the US or the USSR, albeit with the slight help of a faction of the Pakistan army. Again, since a policeman was found dead in the vicinity on the same day and civilian technicians were given access to Pak One without any search, it should not have been too onerous a task. His analysis finally discounts the USSR, leaving collusion between the US and some Pakistani disillusioned officers as the only rational explanation.

Apparently there was considerable reason for both alleged parties to cooperate. A military reshuffle was on the anvil and many officers were to be sent packing. The US, on the other hand, was apparently worried that since the USSR was on the verge of withdrawing from Afghanistan, Kabul may fall in the hands of Hikmatyar’s gang. Brigadier M Yousaf in his book The Bear trap sees a link between the Ojhri camp incident and the US endgame. So both sides could join hands. Initially, people suspected two senior officers, namely General Aslam Beg and the then Major General Mahmud Durrani, but such suspicions were finally forgotten. I was hoping that Musharraf would produce his theory in his autobiography but for some reason he shied away from it. Today, Durrani is his ambassador to the US and Beg is stoutly defended by the ISI on nuclear issues. Yet the truth remains that both generals were somehow involved, at least in the cover up. Durrani, for instance, still believes in the debunked mechanical failure theory.

Yet miraculously no one thought of the possible involvement of the Israeli MOSSAD in the act. The silence was broken on this aspect last year by then US ambassador to India John Gunther Dean, who despite himself being Jewish, claimed that Israel was behind the assassination and when he tried to convince the US of this, he was declared mentally deranged and hence his career came to an end. From what he narrated to Barbara Crossette, the gist of which was published in the fall 2005 edition of World Policy Journal, it appears that he had personal baggage behind his naming of Israel. We will not go into much of his theory that he himself fails to prove.

However, one fact that he repeatedly observed and experienced should not escape our attention. He says that the Jewish lobby repeatedly approached him to speak against Zia’s agenda and to broker a deal between New Delhi and Tel Aviv. He says he refused and hence became persona non grata for the Jewish lobby. It becomes clear that even at that time Israel and the US were trying to develop a nexus between the three countries and it was only the Gandhi dynasty’s refusal to let go the relations with Arafat that was marring the prospects. I have already pointed out elsewhere that by then the conservative Americans had already started developing propaganda material portraying Islam as the next enemy after communists, paving the way for the subsequent so-called war on terror. An example is the movie called The man who saw tomorrow on the predictions of Nostradamus, which was released in 1981. Zia then essentially had to die if such an alliance had to become a reality. But is it possible that Indira and Rajiv Gandhi were also killed for the same purpose as the Indian establishment too was willing to work in such a set-up?

Some think that the relationship between India and the US developed owing to the Kargil conflict. Kargil, however, seems a formal wedding ceremony between the two, a ready excuse provided by Musharraf. The economic sanctions slapped on us under the Pressler Amendment in October 1990 in essence prove the presence of such an alliance soon after Rajiv Gandhi government’s dismissal. This convinces me further that it was the US that killed Zia to facilitate the development of this axis and then the war on terror.

People ask whether Musharraf also would succumb to an accident like Zia’s plane crash, ignoring the fact that his plane crash has already occurred in the shape of his book’s publication. Now whether he disappears all of a sudden or fades away is only a matter of detail. Just the way the Soviets killed the war in Afghanistan by pulling out, North Korea mercifully effected a premature abortion of the war on terror by successfully conducting its nuclear and ICBM test and by doing so brought an early end to the neo-con hoax. Since unilateralism is no more relevant, there is hardly any space for those who facilitated it, at least for the foreseeable future.

Posted on April 29th, 2008 under General •  Print This Post •  Email This Post • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback