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U.S. Should Pay Iran Reparations by DAVID SWANSON, Counter Punch

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

U.S. Should Pay Iran Reparations

BY

DAVID SWANSON

 

Why would I say such an outrageous, treasonous, delusional, OBVIOUSLY-funded-by-Putin thing? Am I hoping to enrage war-crazed sadists who’ve seen too much television “news”?

Not at all. I want them to still be around when I say that it would actually be preferable for the United States to pay reparations to the entire rest of the earth.

Well, then, why would I say such a thing, and exactly what type of mental disorder would allow me to believe the Iranian government to be saintly perfection?

Ah, that’s the key question, isn’t it? Because, as we all know, in every court that has ever ordered anyone to compensate someone else, it’s been necessary to prove that the someone else was a flawless embodiment of paradise. Proving that someone was harmed has never been relevant at all. Nope. The burden of proof has always been on the victim to show that they have never once done any unpleasant thing to anyone. This is why reparations and compensation and restitution never ever happen. In fact these things don’t even exist as concepts. If they did, the following story might matter.

In the 1720s, the newspapers of the colonies that would become the United States wrote positively about the Persian Empire, that place that 2500 years ago held some 60% of humanity. Various U.S. “founding fathers” like Thomas Jefferson sought models in Persian history. From the 1690s to 1800s, based on their school books, U.S. children were unlikely to think of “xylophone” with the letter “x” and likely to think of “Xerxes.” In a staple of U.S. education for generations, Abbott’s Histories, four non-Westerners were included. Three of them were Xerxes, Cyrus, and Darius. Examples from Persian history were tossed around in Congressional speeches. U.S. towns named themselves (and they still are named) Media, Persia, Cyrus.

From the 1830s to 1930s Presbyterian missionaries from the United States lived and raised families in Persia with the goal of converting Christians there to a preferred flavor of Christianity. In that, they largely failed, but they succeeded in providing schools, medicine, and generally positive ideas about the United States.

From the 1850s to 1920s Persian newspapers promoted the United States as a model. Right up through the 1940s the Iranian government generally sought greater U.S. influence in Iran, and the U.S. government usually refused, usually contemptuously.

Iran, from the 1820s on was forced by Russia and Britain and other European nations into a cycle of debt and concessions. It was principally as an alternative to Russia or Britain that Iran was attracted to the United States, or at least to the idea it had of what the United States was. In 1849, with the United States never having had an ambassador in Iran, Iran began secret (don’t tell the British!) talks with the U.S. minister in Constantinople. In 1851 they signed a Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation. It was incredibly fair and respectful by comparison with European treaties with Iran, but it was never ratified. To my knowledge Iran did not ask a single Native American nation what good ratifying it would have done. In 1854, the Shah of Iran asked the United States to put U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf and U.S. flags on every Iranian ship, but the U.S. government wasn’t interested. It wasn’t until 1882 that the U.S. Congress could be persuaded to send any U.S. representative to Iran, and then only because a key Congress Member had a sister there as a missionary and potential victim of “Mohammedan fury.” That representative would not be called an ambassador, due to Iran not being a European country, but his arrival in Tehran in 1883 was cause for a major celebration. Five years later, Iran sent its first envoy to Washington, where the U.S. government generally refused to pay any attention to him and U.S. newspapers were so cruel to him that he resigned after nine months.

In 1891 Iranians publicly rebelled against the Shah’s awarding of a tobacco monopoly to the British. In 1901, for 20,000 pounds, the Shah gave a Brit the right to drill almost anywhere for oil for 60 years. Meanwhile, in 1900 a new minister began representing Persia in the United States and significantly increased trade between the two nations, especially in Persian carpets. The Persian pavilion at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair was a great success (and gave the U.S. the waffle cone).

In 1906 Persia saw a major popular uprising, including widespread use of the sit-in as a tool of nonviolent action (hey, Iran-hating auto worker with a good salary, I’m looking at you), and won the creation of a representative parliament. In 1907, Russia and Britain sought to divide Persia into zones for their respective control. The parliament (Majles) resisted, and the Shah tried hiring bands of thugs to instigate a coup against the Majles. The nation descended into civil war. In 1909 an American named Howard Baskerville became a hero still honored in Iran when he was killed by the royalists.

In 1909 the Majles asked the United States to provide a treasurer-general to oversee the nation’s finances. W. Morgan Shuster got the job. He became more than an accountant. He became a leader of the constitutionalist resistance to the efforts of royalists to overthrow the Majlis. In this, he was not acting on behalf of the U.S. government. When Russian forces demanded Shuster’s ouster, the Majles wrote to the U.S. Congress for help, but Congress had no interest (it did get a good laugh). A violent coup followed. Shuster was out. A Russian puppet government was in. Back in the United States, Shuster was a star. Persian fashion was hot. The U.S. Post Office took its motto from Herodotus’ description of the postal system of the Persian Empire. But actual Persia was of no concern.

 

 

 

 

 

When Europe launched the insanity of World War I, Persia declared neutrality. This was simply ignored by both sides, which proceeded to use the place as a battlefield and to cut off supply lines, resulting in some 2 million Persians starving to death or dying of disease. When Christians massacred Muslims, with the complicity of U.S. missionaries, the good impression those missionaries had made for decades were ruined. Persia nonetheless kept asking the U.S. government for help and for the return of Shuster. In 1916, the Shah asked permission to hide in the U.S. legation and to fly the U.S. flag from the Imperial Palace — both of which requests were turned down. At the end of the war, Persia hoped for some justice out of the negotiations in Paris, but was shut out by British maneuvering, including bribing the Shah. This left Iran without the chance to have its hopes in Woodrow Wilson shattered like the rest of the world’s, blame going instead to Britain. The U.S. minister in Tehran handed out a public statement claiming that the United States had tried its best to get Persia included in the Paris Peace Conference. The country was shut down by pro-U.S. riots. Read that last sentence twice.

The secret dealings of Britain with Persia, behind Wilson’s back, was a key argument in the U.S. Senate for refusing to join the League of Nations. Persia offered the United States oil and continued to implore it to become more involved, but the U.S. government had a higher priority, namely not offending the British. In 1922, the U.S. State Department sent a new financial advisor, but he was no Shuster. When a U.S. oil company was finally chosen to work in Persia, it immediately was hit by the Teapot Dome scandal, and those plans collapsed. Then, in a case of mistaken identity combined with insane murderousness, a mob beat a U.S. consul to death, and the U.S. government insisted that three boys be killed as compensation, and so they were.

Iran kept reaching out to the United States, turning over its archaeological efforts to Americans, welcoming new missionaries and their schools. Up through 1979, many Iranian government officials were graduates of a U.S. missionary school called the Alborz School.

The Shah flirted with Nazism. The theories of an “Aryan” (Iranian) origin of a superior Nordic race — theories largely of U.S. origin — were used by Nazi Germany to appeal to Iran. Yet Iran still declared its neutrality during the sequel to WWI, and it still didn’t matter. The Soviet Union and Britain invaded. Iran, of course, asked the U.S. government to object. The U.S. government, of course, ignored this. During the war, in fact, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin used Tehran as a place to meet while doing their best to ignore the fact that anyone lived there. Stalin was effectively the host. Even the Shah was not invited to a birthday party for Churchill. But when the Great Men left, Roosevelt sent the Shah a note saying he hoped the Shah would someday visit Washington. The Shah clung to that hope and pushed to make it real for years after. Meanwhile some 30,000 U.S. soldiers were in Iran from 1943 to 1945 with the usual drunkenness and rape and Apartheid flaunting of wealth in the face of hunger that has been the trademark of U.S. bases around the world from that day to this.

Once the two world wars had ended, Iran began a golden age of democracy and relative well-being. It wouldn’t last long. In 1947, an Iranian democracy movement asked if it could hold a sit-in demonstration at the U.S. embassy as a symbol of democracy. It was of course told to get lost. The U.S. Ambassador from 1948 to 1951 had extremely Churchillian attitudes toward the irrational natives, who were of course incapable of and unready for democracy. He and the Shah got on well. It was in 1949 that the Shah finally got his first of many visits to the United States, land of democracy. In 1950, Iranians learned of U.S. complicity in British manipulation of their government, and persisted in criticizing the United States in tones of shock and disappointment, using all the language of straying from principles that is so routine in this-is-not-who-we-are speeches from U.S. politicians. Then the Iranians, despite Britain and the United States, elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.

For the first time in forever, an Iranian representative government had represented the wishes of the Iranian public, not those of a king or his foreign sponsors and handlers. This outrage was not to be tolerated. Mossadegh, like most Iranians, believed that Iranians, rather than Britain, should profit from Iranian oil. He nationalized the oil, and his fate was sealed. But before it was, he would appeal in every way he could to the world and to the United States. He compared his actions to the Boston tea party. He traveled to New York and eloquently won his case at the UN Security Council. He immediately headed for Philadelphia to pose with the Liberty Bell. He got himself made Time magazine man of the year. He also negotiated with the U.S. to allow Britain to still play a major role in Iranian oil, but Britain threw that idea in his face. The oil was, after all, a British possession that had somehow found it way under Iranian soil. Gallup found that a full 2 percent of the U.S. public thought the U.S. should take Britain’s side against Iran. My guess is that’s about the percentage of the U.S. public that now know that the U.S. did just that.

Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Teddy, claimed he and the CIA overthrew the Iranian government using $60,000. Norman Darbyshire of Britain’s MI6 claimed he spent over 1.5 million pounds and drafted the coup plans and assassinated the Mossadegh-loyal chief of police and talked Roosevelt out of quitting when their coup first failed. Col. Stephen J Meade of the CIA, who was also involved in the 1949 coup in Syria that is largely erased from coup histories even by those who know about Iran 1953, claimed he was the U.S. partner of Darbyshire in planning the whole thing. Indisputably this coup required electing Churchill in the UK and Eisenhower in the U.S., and Eisenhower appointing the Dulles brothers, who began planning the coup with the British before Eisenhower was inaugurated. It also required that Eisenhower, having campaigned on Cold War anti-communism, believe or pretend to believe his own propaganda and the ridiculous notion that Mossadegh was a commie sympathizer.

The coup at first failed, looking even less competent or threatening than the Beer Belly Capitol Putsch of 2021 in Washington. The Shah, whom the failed coup intended to install as dictator, looked ridiculous fleeing to Rome. But mobs on the streets and a visit of 28 tanks to Mossadegh’s house did the trick. Iran was liberated! The Shah returned! Democracy was out! Quoting Jefferson would now be left to various other Untermenschen banned from the Paris Peace Conference, such as Ho Chi Minh. Freedom was on the march! The Shah was empowered, armed, and turned into the world’s top weapons customer, and the United States into the world’s top weapons dealer. A philanthropic operation called SAVAK was established under the tutelage of the CIA and later the Mossad, specializing in torture and murder. All was right with the world, and the U.S. government was finally paying attention to Iran and funneling money into it. A leader even came to visit Iran for the first time (not counting FDR visiting Stalin), and it was Vice President Richard Nixon.

The Shah’s dictatorship learned well, bought weapons, provided oil, and even created a “two-party system” so ridiculously copied from the U.S. model that Iranians referred to them as the party of “Yes” and the party of “Yes, Sir.” U.S. influence was finally in Iran as a reality rather than a dream. By 1961, there were 5,000 Americans living in Iran, and Hollywood was all over the cinemas and televisions, Newsweek and Time on the news stands. Many were less than pleased at finally having gotten what they’d spent so long asking for. Saying that out loud could get you killed, which may have been a big part of the problem. In 1964 the U.S. got a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) to give U.S. troops immunity for crimes in Iran. Many were enraged. But someone fearlessly spoke against that basing SOFA, a man known as Ayatollah Khomeini.

When the United States elected Jimmy Carter president, the Shah worried momentarily about the “human rights” rhetoric, until realizing it was just for show. The weapons kept flowing as before. Carter even visited the Shah and toasted him as an “island of stability” one week before he was overthrown by a revolution with the slogan “Death to America’s Shah.” The revolution, however, was mainly nonviolent. The Shah was not killed. He spent the better part of a year searching the globe for someplace to live. When Carter let him into the United States, Iranians feared the worst. They did not believe the Shah needed U.S. medical treatment, because the Shah had hidden the fact that he was ill. They did believe that the United States would use its embassy in Tehran, as it had done 26 years earlier, to overthrow the Iranian government and re-install the Shah. So, Iranian students broke in and took over the U.S. embassy, creating a hostage crisis, ending Jimmy Carter’s presidency, and initiating Day 1 of the history of U.S.-Iranian relations in U.S. media, for whom nothing prior to the hostage crisis ever happened. Iran, in 2021 U.S. cultural understanding, came into existence in 1979.

In 1980 the despotic ruler of neighboring Iraq, a man who had been brought to power with U.S. assistance, Saddam Hussein, invaded Iran. The Iranian revolution, begun as a coalition including leftists and liberals as well as the religious, now moved in the direction of resembling what it had overthrown. It did so in the name of unity and survival. Ronald Reagan’s government aided both sides in the war, hoping to damage both sides and make money from both sides. Both sides unnecessarily prolonged the war. Both sides committed horrors. Iranian-backed militias blew up U.S. Marines in Lebanon. The U.S. helped Iraq know where to bomb people, and helped Iraq acquire and get away with using chemical weapons. The U.S. also secretly sold weapons to Iran, because, just like the Israeli government, the U.S. government had an agenda often at odds with its own propaganda. You, dear reader, are supposed to go on hating Iran and adoring Reagan, and quoting Reagan on “not dealing with hostage-takers,” but the reality was Reagan selling weapons to Iran to try to free hostages in Lebanon and to get money for a war in Nicaragua that Congress had forbidden him to fight. The Bush Senior government finally persuaded Iran to get those hostages freed, by making promises it immediately and casually broke, without so much as an “I’m sorry.” In fact, when the U.S. shot down an Iranian passenger plane full of men, women, and children, Bush announced that he would never apologize for anything and didn’t care what the facts were.

He and every other U.S. president since has, however, very much cared what Israel wanted. Iran offered the U.S. an oil deal in 1995 and Israel killed it. On September 11, 2001, while people across the Middle East cheered, Iranians mourned. The President of Iran offered to come to the site of the World Trade Center and condemn such barbarism. His offer was of course dismissed out of hand. Iran offered to assist the United States with its war on Afghanistan, and that offer was quietly accepted, used, and forgotten. Bush Junior then declared Iran a member of an Axis of Evil with the nation that had waged war on it, Iraq, and a nation it had virtually nothing to do with, North Korea. In 2003, Iran offered to negotiate away its nuclear program, to allow full intrusive inspections, to accept a 2-state solution in Palestine/Israel, and to keep participating in the “war on terrorism.” Iran was told to go Dick Cheney itself.

Since 1957, the United States had been providing Iran with nuclear technology. Iran has a nuclear energy program because the U.S. and European governments wanted Iran to have a nuclear energy program. The U.S. nuclear industry took out full-page ads in U.S. publications bragging about Iran’s support for such an enlightened and progressive energy source. The U.S. was pushing for major expansion of Iran’s nuclear program just before the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Since the Iranian revolution, the U.S. government has opposed Iran’s nuclear energy program and misled the public about the existence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran. This story is well-told in Gareth Porter’s Manufactured Crisis.

When the United States assisted Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in a war against Iran in the 1980s, in which Iraq attacked Iran with chemical weapons, Iran’s religious leaders declared that chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons must not be used, even in retaliation. And they were not. Iran could have responded to Iraqi chemical attacks with chemical attacks of its own and chose not to. Iran says it is committed to not using or possessing weapons of mass destruction. The results of inspections bear that out. Iran’s willingness to put restrictions on its legal nuclear energy program — a willingness present both before and after any U.S. sanctions — bears that out.

When the Soviet enemy disappeared, new ones were quickly found. According to both former NATO commander Wesley Clark and former UK prime minister Tony Blair, the Pentagon made a list of several nations’ governments to be overthrown, and Iran was on it. In the year 2000, the CIA gave Iran (slightly and obviously flawed) blueprints for a key component of a nuclear weapon. In 2006 James Risen wrote about this “operation” in his book State of War. In 2015, the United States prosecuted a former CIA agent, Jeffrey Sterling, for supposedly having leaked the story to Risen. In the course of the prosecution, the CIA made public a partially redacted cable that showed that immediately after bestowing its gift on Iran, the CIA had begun efforts to do the same for Iraq. In 2019, Sterling publishing his own book, Unwanted Spy: The Persecution of an American Whistleblower.

I can only make sense of one reason why the CIA hands out blueprints for nuclear bombs (and in the case of Iran planned to deliver actual parts as well). Both Risen and Sterling claim that the goal was to slow down Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Yet we now know that the CIA had no solid knowledge that Iran had any nuclear weapons program, or if it had one how advanced it was. We know that the CIA has been involved in promoting the false belief that Iran is a nuclear threat since the early 1990s. But even assuming that the CIA believed Iran to have a nuclear weapons program in 2000 (which the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate would later claim had been ended in 2003), we have not been offered any explanation of how providing flawed blueprints could have been imagined to slow such a program down. If the idea is supposed to be that Iran or Iraq would simply waste time building the wrong thing, we run up against two problems. First, they would likely waste vastly more time if working without plans, as compared to working with flawed ones. Second, the flaws in the plans given to Iran were obvious and apparent.

When the former-Russian assigned to deliver the blueprints to the Iranian government immediately spotted the flaws in them, the CIA told him not to worry. But they didn’t tell him that the flawed plans would somehow slow down an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Instead they told him that the flawed plans would somehow reveal to the CIA how far along Iran’s program was. But how that would happen has never been explained either. And it conflicts with something else they told him, namely that they already knew how far along Iran was and that Iran already had the nuclear knowledge that they were providing. My point is not that these assertions were true but that the slow-them-down rationale was not attempted.

One never wants to underestimate incompetence. The CIA knew next to nothing about Iran, and by Sterling’s account was not seriously trying to learn. By Risen’s account, around 2004 the CIA accidentally revealed to the Iranian government the identities of all of its agents in Iran. But incompetence does not seem to explain a consciously thought-out effort to distribute nuke plans to designated enemies. What does seem to explain it better is the desire to point to the possession of those plans, or of the product of those plans, as evidence of a hostile threat of “weapons of mass destruction,” which, as we all know, is an acceptable excuse for a war.

That we are not entitled to find out, even 20 years later, whether giving nuke plans to Iran was incompetence or malevolence, or to ask Bill Clinton or George W. Bush why they approved of it, is itself a problem that goes beyond incompetence and into the realm of anti-democratic tyrannical governance by secret agencies.

We have no possible way of knowing a complete list of countries the U.S. government has handed nuclear weapons plans to. Trump tried giving nuclear weapons secrets to Saudi Arabia in violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty, his oath of office, and common sense. The silver lining is that whistleblowers on giving nukes to the Saudis have apparently been listened to by certain members of Congress who have gone public with the information. Whether the difference is the individuals, the committees, the sides of Capitol Hill, the party in the majority, the party in the White House, the involvement of the CIA, the general culture, or the nation being given the keys to the apocalypse, the fact is that when Jeffrey Sterling went to Congress to reveal the giving of nukes to Iran, Congress Members either ignored him, suggested that he move to Canada, or — with horrible timing — died before doing anything.

Ignoring Iran was a long Congressional tradition before the establishment of the tradition of claiming Iran is a threat to the world. Now lying about Iran is a major industry. The United States now imposes deadly sanctions on the entire nation of Iran, in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Iran made an agreement for more thorough inspections than any other nation on earth to get sanctions relief. The United States violated and tore up the agreement, and now says that Iran had better change its ways if it wants the agreement back.

There are, not one, but two Iranian shah dynasties with descendants in the United States awaiting their turns.

One includes Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last dictator whom the United States imposed on Iran from 1953 to 1979. Pahlavi lives in Potomac, Maryland, (across the river from Langley) and openly advocates for an overthrow of the Iranian government (because 1953 has worked out so well?) or, as the Washington Post puts it, “runs an advocacy association that is outspoken about the need for democracy in his home country.”

Yet Iranians — like either saints or an abused spouse, you decide — persist in declaring their openness to negotiating with the U.S. government. I, for one, apologize and propose reparations. At the very least, end the sanctions!

Much of what I’ve described above can be found in America and Iran by John Ghazvinian. I also recommend watching a movie called Coup 53.

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is executive director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson‘books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio.He is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and was awarded the 2018 Peace Prize by the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation. Longer bio and photos and videos here. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook

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FIVE RULERS OF PAKISTAN: FAISAL BUTT, NAWAZ SHARIF, ASIF ZARDARI,TAJI KHOKHAR, & MALIK RIAZ

THREE RULERS OF PAKISTAN: ASIF ZARDARI,TAJI KHOKHAR, & MALIK RIAZ

 

FARUKH IS TAJI KHOKHAR ‘S SON: OBSERVE THEIR LAVISH LIFE STYLES

Who rules Pakistan? Malik Riaz of Bahria Foundation

 

WHO STILL RULES PAKISTAN ?

cheaters

Taji Khokhar owned/ owns a guest house in Islamabad where Mr. Asif Zardari used to visit in the

 evenings while in so called detention. He supplies Russian girls to

 Asif Zardari .

MALIK RIAZ 

Malik Riaz of Bahria Town…. …and his crooks!

Malik Riaz was the conduit for bringing the PML Q wing led by Chaudhry

 Shujaat/Chaudhry Pervez Illahi into Asif Zardari’s fold.

Pres. Zardari was so pleased/Jubilant with NICL scandal!

 He said that NICL delivered three people/groups to him who covered to his

 feet. 

1. Yusuf Raza Gilani, as his son/sons were involved

2 Benazir’s nominee for PM…. Makhdoom Amin Fahim

3. Chaudhry Shujaat Husain and Chaudhry Pervez Illahi

How the corruption of some, benefits the other corrupt elements. The threat by MQM was thwarted by NICL as Chaudhries came into the fold, by out smarting the murderous MQM.

Who is Taji Khokhar?

Brother of Nawaz Khokhar formerly, Deputy speaker of National Assembly.

He works on behalf of Malik Riaz for acquisition/ land grabbing in

 Islamabad/ Rawalpindi area on behalf of Malik Riaz, the Don….

 Taji ( Imtiaz Khokhar) lives on the main road connecting Rawalpindi to Islamabad and has his own Zoo, where inter alia he has kept two live lions. The whole menagerie daily expenditure runs over several lakh rupees. He is responsible for killing of at least 100 people in pursuit of land grabbing.

At one point after killing more than four persons at a land site, he came home and shot his long time guard and registered FIR against those killed by him and using as a cause for retaliatory firing. Of course he compensated the family adequately.

 

Who is Faisal Butt? 

He owned/ owns a guesthouse in Islamabad where Asif Zardari used to visit in the evenings while in so-called detention. He supplies Russian girls and provide Asif Zardari’s favorite alcoholics drinks. Asif Zardari asked Faisal Butt of his Choice. He asked for CDA. Asif Zardari, who is known for never forgetting anyone who even offered him a glass of water, when in difficulty (unlike Nawaz & Shahbaz Sharif). Asif Zardari asked his choice for Chairman CDA. Butt suggested Kamran Lashari…. Asif Zardari agreed and

appointed him. He told Lashari to follow orders from Mr Faisal Butt. This continues after Kamran Lashari, former Secretary Defence’s brother amassed Millions of Dollars with full patronage of his powerful brother.

Also it is learnt that real brother of COAS, Ali Kayani has amassed billions through Mr Malik Riaz?

 

Malik Riaz also has Shahbaz Sharif in his pocket and has been successful in causing a breach in PML N. Chaudhry Nisar was the victim. All PML N MNA’s and MPAs from PML N from the area around Pindi/ Islamabad are in the pocket of Malik Riaz.

 

TAJI KHOKHAR IS STILL FREE,WHILE KAMRAN FAISAL’S KILLERS ARE FORGOTTEN 

 

Islamabad Murder and Taji Khokhar

FOUR MURDER ACC– — USED ARRESTED AFTER BAIL PLEA REJECTION

By: Israr Ahmad | October 03, 2012 .

RAWALPINDI – Police arrested four men, allegedly involved in the murder of a woman over property dispute, outside the courtroom after an additional district and sessions judge (ADSJ) Tuesday rejected their pre-arrest bail here on Tuesday. According to details, ADSJ Yar Muhammad Gondal rejected the bail applications of Khalid Khokhar, Muhammad Rafique, Kamran Khan and Tilawat Khan and police arrested them outside the courtroom.

The four men are the bodyguards of Imtiaz Khokhar alias Taji Khokhar, brother of former Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Haji Nawaz Khokhar. The four accused along with several other armed men murdered one Sabira Bibi, 45,at Dhoke Gangal, the area of Police Station (PS) Airport, over land dispute on August 17, 2012 when a local commission on the direction of a civil judge was present to prepare its report on the disputed land.

Earlier on Saturday another accused person already in Adyala Jail namely Irfan alias Niko confessed to have shot dead Sabira Bibi, who had a dispute over the ownership of piece of land with Taji Khokhar, uncle of Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar advisor to Prime Minister on Human Rights.

Two other men Muhammad Waheed and Anwar-ul-Haq besides Niko are also in police custody for killing a woman and firing at her lawyer Ghufran Khursheed Imtiazi and the commission also a lawyer Raja Saim-ul-Haq Satti. It is pertinent to mention here that the main accused Imtiaz Khokhar, commonly know as Taji Khokhar, is on transit bail for the 20 days that he had obtained from the Peshawar High Court (PHC).

Meanwhile, Taxila police arrested four robbers after an encounter and recovered weapons, a vehicle and stolen gold from their possession. However, two robbers managed to escape during the encounter, informed DSP Taxila Circle Raja Taifoor here on Tuesday.

The robbers, held by police, identified as Kamran hails from DI Khan, Shabir Khan of Chontra, Muhammad Hanif resident of Lahore and Abdul Rasheed of Rawalakot, he added. According to him, a gang of six robbers had entered Javed Jewelers at Taxila and fled away in a Corolla car with 7 tolas of gold. He said that police cordoned off the area after receiving information. However, the robbers succeeded in fleeing towards Haripur. Taking action, police started chasing the robbers stopped them in a forest near TIP Colony. But, the robbers shot at the police, which also retaliated.

US Reporter Says Nawaz Sharif Propositioned Her

 

Listen to this article. Powered by Odiogo.com

Kim Barker, an American reporter who covered Afghanistan and Pakistan for Chicago Tribune starting in 2003, claims that she was propositioned by Pakistan Muslim League leader Nawaz Sharif when she met him for interviews for her newspaper. 

In an interview with KERA radio, Barker said she followed her bosses advice to try and blend with the local population. However, being a young white female journalist with blue eyes who stands at 5 ft 10 in tall, she says she received unusual attention from the men she met to do her job in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In her recently released book “The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan”, Barker recounts how Nawaz Sharif gave her an Apple iphone as a gift and asked her to be his “special friend”. When she declined Nawaz Sharif’s sexual advance, Foreign Policy Magazine reports that he offered to set her up with President Asif Ali Zardari. 

This latest report adds Sharif’s name to the “illustrious” list of senior Pakistani political leaders who have made news for their dalliances with women. 

A 2007 Youtube video showing Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani groping Sherry Rehman attracted a lot of attention. Then, President Asif Ali Zardari was shown gushing about US Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and asking to “hug” her during a meeting in New York.

Here’s a video clip of Barker’s interview:

 

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Pakistanis Tell Pakistan’s 5300 Billion Rupees Loan Defaulter Euro Gulf Industries, address: D-60, S.I.T.E,Phase 1, Off Super Highway,Karachi. -Pay back the Money

Here is the Web Address of Pakistan’s Biggest Loan Defaulter: Pakistanis please leave a comment on their website,

PAYBACK YOUR LOAN, IT IS THE PROPERTY OF 180 MILLION POOR PAKISTANIS

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Euro Gulf Industries

Address

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D-60, S.I.T.E,Phase 1, Off Super Highway,Karachi.

Tel:

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(092-21) 36880145-6

   

(092-21) 36880290-91

Fax #

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(092-21) 36881569

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www.egpipes.com

E-mail

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[email protected]

 
 
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PAKISTAN THINK TANK INVESTIGATION EXPOSING THE RATS: PAKISTAN’S STATE BANK LOAN DEFAULTERS LIST: NO.1 Defaulter: EURO GULF ENTERPRISES

 

 

Unknown-9Pakistan Think Tank will expose the rats, who have stolen the bread crumbs from 180 million Pakistanis. We will shine a light into their rat holes, where they are hiding. These people have existed in relative anonymity. They stolen from national treasury through unsecured loans from the State Bank of Pakistan. They have given kick-backs to bank officers. They have converted these loans to foreign currencies like dollars and punds

 

We ask our readers from Pakistani backgrounds, members of Pakistan Think Tank Organization, and our global friends to expose these criminals to the world. So, they cannot hide anywhere in the world in cognito. Their children cannot get Ivy League school education paid by the money stolen from poor and indigent 180 million Pakistanis, who do not have the basic life’s necessity like clean drinking water. The biggest thief is EURO GULF ENTERPRISES, who have stolen the monies paid to them for laying down these pipes

 

 

Dear Pakistanis and friends go to the website of these thieves and on their feedback page, demand that they return Pakistan’s money. We will write to Attorney Generals and Justice Departments of other countries, if they have money laundered. We are also concerned that Gulf States like Dubai is the hub of their money laundering activities. The Sheikhs of UAE are protecting them, so the money stolen from Pakistan is kept in UAE Banks.

 

Here is the URL of their company:

 

http://www.egpipes.com/contact.php

 

If Pakistanis have concrete proof of other defaulters, no on this list, we will publish it for all the world to see. Your Privacy will be protected, your name and location will not be exposed.

 

Please e-mail to:

[email protected]

 

 

(Report by Daily Jang, 21.10.2010)


The State Bank of Pakistan presented a list of loan defaulters before the Supreme Court on Wednesday October 20, 2010.

Company Rs. in mil.
Eurogulf Enterprises  5.342.55
Younus Habib  2.476.40
West Pakistan Tank Terminal 1.977.38
Mercury Garments Industries  1.565.89
Siraj Steels Ltd Muridke 1.412.66
Spinning Machinery Co 1.387.60
Saad Cement Ltd Karachi 1.265.97
Pakistan National Textile  1.166.45
Mehr Dastagir Spinning Mills  1.160.50
Karachi Property Investment  1.003.19
Mohib Textile Mills  1.117.49
Redco Textiles Ltd  1.116.77
Chaudhry Cables  1.050.58
Abdullah S Al Rajhiest  1.031.90
Quality Steel Works  981.60
Mekran Fisheries  960.12
Kohinoor Looms  945.41
AH International Private Limited  901.21
Coral Cast Ltd  900.92
Aziz Spinning  864.95
Rashi Testile Mills  859.17
Farooq Habib Textile  827.15
Northern Polythene  825.59
Firdous Spinning Mills  780.14
Muhammad Ibrahim Murad  748.15
Metropolitan Steel  747.67
Tristar Polyester Ltd  737.02
Bindder Insad Tourism  734.44
Commodore Industries  722.76
Target Readymade Garments  696.46
Balochistan Foundary Ltd  663.54
Tawakkal Group of Industries 642.22
First Tawakal Muzarba  628.65
Synthetic Leather Industries  620.56
Nabchoon Garments Factory  597.52
Golden Textile Mills  589.72
Mian Muhammad Sugar Mills  584.90
Saadi Cement  584.11
Service Fabrics Ltd  571.23
Punjab Cooperative Board for Liquidation 538.23
Glamour Textile Mills  533.88
Punjab Road Transport Corporation  524.15
Ravi Agri Dairy Products 509.73
Pakistan Concrete  477.70
Pakpattan Dairies  467.12
AlJamia & Alquasi Trading  462.67
Fabri Tex Limited  454.32
Apparel Trading Establishment  454.00
Adamjee Industries  448.84







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US CONVICTED PAKISTANI HEROIN SMUGGLER MIRZA IQBAL BAIG BUYS PROPERTY ON HALL & MALL ROADS IN LAHORE FOR SHOPPING PLAZA CONSTRUCTION

HOW MIRZA IQBAL BAIG INTRODUCED HEROIN INTO PAKISTAN

PML(N) & PPP ARE REWARDING HIM WITH A SHOPPING PLAZA CONSTRUCTION PERMIT ON THE CORNER OF HALL & MALL ROAD LAHORE

SHAHBAZ SHARIF & NAWAZ SHARIF IMPROVEMENT SCHEME FOR LAHORE 

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Pakistani Drug Lord Iqbal Baig has set-up shop in Lahore, specifically in the vicinity of Hall and Mall Road, in an area formerly called Lakshmi Mansion. He acquired these properties to build a Shopping Mall under blessing of Shahbaz Sharif, Nawaz Sharif, and Asif Zardari. Iqbal Baig is money laundering, by converting drug money into legitimate cash by buying properties in Lahore. He bought almost whole of Lakshmi Mansion and Hall Road properties. He is a known accomplice of Taliban and is clear and present danger to the global community including the US and Europe. He is the financier of Taliban and funnels money to every terrorist organization through money laundering in legitimate business enterprises. During the PPP government, he stayed under the radar and kept building assets to finance his patrons the Taliban. Pakistan’s ISI and US CIA should look into the activities of this dangerous criminal on par with Pablo Escobar. In 1995, Iqbal Baig, Pakistan’s most notorious drug lords was extradited to the United States, where he was charged with 100 counts of heroin and hashish smuggling. Iqbal Baig and Anwar Khattak were put on a U.S. government plane in 1995 night only hours after his appeals against extradition was turned down by the High Court in Rawalpindi.Baig and Khattak together ran one of Pakistan’s biggest heroin- and hashish-trafficking networks, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials. Both were imprisoned in Pakistan, where they had been convicted of drug smuggling.Baig and Khattak will face 102 counts of smuggling heroin and hashish into the United States. The trials are likely to take place either in Michigan or New York City, where the offenses allegedly occurred, a U.S. official said. Pakistan has been cooperating with the United States since 1993, when the Americans gave Pakistan a list of 17 suspected drug barons it wanted extradited. Seven were extradited in 1993; most others are in custody in Pakistan. 

 
 
 

Heroin Scourges Million Pakistanis

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: April 05, 1995
 

In lucid moments, Mohammed Ilyas has happy memories of life as a fisherman on one of Karachi’s deep-sea shark boats. But that was 10 years ago, before Mr. Ilyas began smoking the low-grade heroin he knows as “brown sugar,” and before home became a threadbare blanket tacked to a grimy Karachi wall as a windbreak.

Now, Mr. Ilyas’s addiction brings him to the same lonely spot each night, with a sliver of silver paper to hold the heroin bought with a day’s panhandling in the docks, and a lighted taper to heat the powder into the vapors he inhales. On either side, fellow addicts crouch in their own pitiful isolation, ignored by the police and passers-by.

“What can I do, sir?” Mr. Ilyas asked on a recent evening, between pulls on the tube of rolled paper he uses as a pipe. “I would like to do something. I would like to be back with my family. But the brown sugar tastes too good.”

For Mr. Ilyas, who is 25, and 1.5 million other heroin addicts in Pakistan, there is little to prevent a slide that often leads to a lonely death. In a country of 120 million people, most of them poor and illiterate, heroin addicts are left mostly to fend for themselves. There is little in the way of help, and not much ceremony in the morning sweeps by private charities that carry wasted addicts’ bodies to the morgue.

The tragedy for Pakistan set in much deeper 15 years ago, when Afghan warlords, thrown into turmoil by the Soviet military intervention in their country, stepped up the growing of opium poppies as other forms of commerce collapsed. The product, as opium gum, traveled down old trade routes into the deserts and mountains along Afghanistan’s border, where Pakistani frontiersmen, who grow tons of opium themselves, took the gum and ran it through refineries, producing the cheap “brown sugar” smoked by Mr. Ilyas, as well as heroin in its purer, more lucrative forms.

Over the years, as ever larger quantities of the narcotic began flowing into Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and other cities, the drug ate its way into the fiber of Pakistan. Political life was corrupted, to the point that one of the country’s most notorious drug barons, Ayub Afridi, sat as an elected member of Parliament from 1988 to 1990, dropping out only when an ordinance was passed barring any known drug trafficker from running in an election.

Drug barons have continued to exercise a pervasive political influence, discouraging decisive government action against them.

What’s more, the backwash from the Afghan conflict has brought a flow of weapons into Pakistan, creating a nexus between the drug barons and new generation of heavily armed gangs. In Karachi mainly, but also in other cities, these gangs have established a terror that is overwhelming the local authorities.

Along with Afghanistan, and to a much smaller extent India, Pakistan has become one of the world’s leading producers of heroin — and by some estimates, a larger producer now than the Golden Triangle countries of Southeast Asia.

With growing anxiety, Western nations, including the United States, have been looking at Pakistan in the way they have long looked at countries like Colombia and Thailand — as a place where narcotics trafficking, left to run rampant, has become a danger not only to the country itself but also to much of the world.

Pakistani leaders have made no secret of their belief that drug money was in some way linked to the March 8 attack that killed two Americans working at the United States Consulate in Karachi, and to the terrorist underground that supported Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, a 27-year-old fugitive and suspected mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing in New York in 1993. Mr. Yousef was arrested in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, in February.

These links are likely to be discussed when Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, arrives in the United States on April 5. For five years, the main stumbling block to improved ties has been Pakistan’s persistence with a covert program to develop nuclear weapons. But on this visit, Pakistan’s Prime Minister may find American leaders at least as concerned about Pakistan’s role as a center for drugs and terrorism.

When she recently met with American reporters in Islamabad, Ms. Bhutto offered a stark picture of Pakistan as a society where torrents of drugs and weapons have combined to undermine the basis for a civil society.

“We are a clean Government,” she said. “For the first time in our history, we are going to take action against drug barons, militants and terrorists.”

Western embassies that have pressed for years for a narcotics crackdown were encouraged three months ago when the Government froze $70 million in assets belonging to seven leading Pakistani drug lords, and took steps, for the first time in Pakistan, to curb money laundering by drug bosses. The Government also announced the biggest raid on a narcotics laboratory in North-West Frontier Province, site of many of the heroin refineries, seizing 132 tons of hashish and nearly half a ton of heroin.

Ms. Bhutto also promised to speed up action by Pakistani courts on United States requests for the extradition of six drug lords held in Pakistan, and for the arrest and extradition of two others, including Mr. Afridi, the former legislator.

Maj. Gen. Salahuddin Termizi, the country’s anti-drug chief, has won the confidence of Western narcotics experts. But few with experience in combatting the drug world in Pakistan are ready to congratulate Ms. Bhutto just yet.

[ In a crackdown on the eve of the Bhutto trip, two suspected drug barons, Mirza Iqbal Baig and Anwar Khattak, were flown to the United States on April 3. The extraditions were cited by General Termizi as further proof of Pakistan’s commitment to rolling back booming drug production and trafficking. General Termizi said on April 4 that Pakistan had smashed the bulk of its heroin factories and arrested all but 2 of 12 leading drug barons. ]

Top army officers have been accused in the past of conniving with the drug lords, to the extent of running heroin shipments to Karachi aboard army-owned trucks.

And even if Pakistan were to live up to all of Ms. Bhutto’s promises, it would not tackle what has always been the core of the heroin problem: Afghanistan’s role as a secure hinterland for the traffickers. Years of efforts and millions of dollars have been spent by Western governments in an effort to persuade Afghan warlords to stop growing poppies and plant other crops, but poppy acreage has increased every year.

United States officials who have seen the blaze of white, red and pink poppies that cover much of Afghanistan each spring argue that little will be achieved until Washington shifts its spending priorities. The officials say spending $80 million of the State Department’s anti-narcotics budget on efforts to combat cocaine production in South America, and barely a tenth as much on all of Asia and Africa, means that efforts against heroin have to take a back seat.

Currently, the closest thing to a United States Government anti-narcotics program in Afghanistan is a $100,000 grant to Mercy Corps, an American volunteer agency that is trying to persuade communities in a small part of Helmand Province to substitute other cash crops for poppy-growing. Narcotics experts say that their work is hampered because Washington has no embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital, and that the Clinton Administration has played virtually no part in efforts to negotiate peace between Afghan factions that have been fighting a civil war since Soviet troops withdrew.

When Mrs. Bhutto meets President Clinton, she seems likely to argue for an American responsibility to help Pakistan and Afghanistan deal with their narcotics problems. The argument is that Washington’s decision to channel billions of dollars in weapons and financial backing to the Afghan rebel groups in the 1980’s, without close scrutiny of the some of the Afghan leaders involved, contributed to a climate in which some of those leaders turned to heroin trafficking.

“We have been getting a bad name, and it is clear that our activity needs to be geared up,” Brig. Gen. Mohammed Aslam, deputy director of the new anti-narcotics force, said at his office in Rawalpindi.

But the general smiled when he was asked what part of the blame he attributed to the United States.

“I will only say this,” he said. “I believe that we in Pakistan are doing what we can to undo our part of the crime.”

Reference: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/05/world/heroin-scourges-million-pakistanis.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Pakistan Extradites Drug Suspects to U.S. : Crime: Turning over alleged kingpins is latest move by Islamabad that pleases American officials.

April 04, 1995|JOHN-THOR DAHLBURG | TIMES STAFF WRITER

NEW DELHI — Two days before Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto leaves for a U.S. visit, her government handed over two alleged heroin kingpins to the United States and a court opened the way for more quick extraditions.

Haji Mirza Mohammed Iqbal Baig, once reputedly the head of Pakistan’s largest drug syndicate, and his lieutenant, Mohammed Anwar Khattak, were flown to the United States on Sunday night aboard an American aircraft, said officials at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, the capital. The two Pakistanis’ names appear in more than 100 U.S. narcotics cases.

“There is a lot of evidence that these guys are big-time heroin dealers. We’re happy to bring them to justice,” a U.S. drug official in Islamabad said.

In Washington, Justice Department officials said the men were due to arrive Monday night in Hawaii and will be flown to Travis Air Force Base in Northern California’s Solano County before being transferred to New York for arraignment.

Baig and Khattak are wanted on various federal charges, including conspiracy to smuggle heroin into the United States. They had already been convicted by a Pakistani court in the 1985 seizure of more than 17 tons of hashish in the southwestern province of Baluchistan.

The drug dealers’ extradition, which the Clinton Administration had sought since 1993, is the latest of several tough-on-crime measures by Bhutto’s government that–by design or not–have especially pleased the United States.

On Feb. 7, Pakistani and U.S. agents joined forces in Islamabad to arrest Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the alleged mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing. He was flown to New York to stand trial.

Such actions will undoubtedly be cited by Bhutto, who leaves for the United States today, as proof of her determination to do her part in combatting the global narcotics trade and Islamic terrorism, two major U.S. security concerns.

Next Tuesday, Bhutto is scheduled to meet President Clinton at the White House. She has been seeking more U.S. help–including the lifting of a law that has barred most American aid to Pakistan since October, 1990, because of the Asian country’s nuclear weapons program.

Late last year, U.S. drug czar Lee P. Brown warned Bhutto that Pakistan could lose badly needed World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans unless the country, the world’s No. 3 opium producer, did more to stem narcotics production and trafficking.

*

U.S. drug officials have praised what has happened since. On March 23, more than 2,000 paramilitary troops staged an unprecedented drug raid in the remote, lawless Khyber region bordering Afghanistan. They seized 6.3 tons of highly refined heroin, as much as Pakistan normally confiscates in a year.

Baig and Khattak had been served notice earlier this year that they could be extradited to the United States. Pakistan’s law allows citizens in such a position to file a petition in court opposing extradition.

On Sunday, their petitions were rejected and they were quickly put on a plane for the United States.

Special correspondent Jennifer Griffin in Islamabad contributed to this report.

 

Drug barons' extradition challenged in SC 
-------------------------------------------------------------------  
*From  Nasir Malik 
 
ISLAMABAD, April 4: The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday  
about the admissibility ) of three petitions filed by the wives of  
alleged drug lords Mirza Iqbal Baig and Anwar Khattak against the Lahore  
High Court decision that cleared the way for their extradition to the  
United States. 
 
The Lahore High Court on Sunday allowed the extradition of seven drug  
barons, including Baig and Khattak. The two were immediately flown to  
the United States in a US military plane. 
 
Though apparently the petitions will make  little difference for Baig  
and Khattak who have already been sent abroad, they can affect the  
remaining five accused who are in Adiala Jail. 
 
One of the five accused, Nasrullah Hanjera has applied to the Supreme  
Court to grant an order blocking his possible extradition. 
 
Khawaja Haris, lawyer for the accused, has maintained in his petitions  
that the extraditions are in isolation of Section 5 (2) of Extradition  
Act 1972 which bars extradition until an accused has been  acquitted or  
completed a sentence in his own country. 
 
Interior Minister Naseerullah Babar told reporters on Monday that the  
alleged drug barons were handed over to the US authorities after  
completing all legal requirements. 
 
But constitutional experts say the government acted in haste by  
immediately parcelling the two accused thus denying them of their  
constitutional right to appeal before the Supreme Court. They also point  
out that the extradition was also contrary to Article 4 of the  
Extradition Agreement signed between the two countries. 
 
Article 4 says: The extradition shall not take place if the person aimed  
has already been tried, discharged or punished or is still under trial  
in the territories of the high contracting party (applied to in this  
case Pakistan) for the crime or offence for which his extradition is  
demanded. If the person claimed would be under examination or under  
punishment his extradition shall be deferred until the conclusion of the  
trial or the full execution of any punishment awarded to him." 
 
Haris told reporters that Baig and Khattak were still serving their  
five-year jail term awarded to them by a Karachi magistrate. Besides,  
two cases were also pending against them. 
 
For Drug Traffickers, Balochistan a Safe Haven
 
The Nation
 
March 7, 1995
 
Balochistan provides land and sea exist routes to international drug traffickers who operate in this province or in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Owing to the ineffectiveness of governmental control, for drug traffickers to use these exit routes to their best advantage is not so difficult.

Balochistan’s Makran Coast along the Indian Ocean is the most active zone for drug smuggling operations, in which Afghan and Pakistani drug barons are allegedly engaged in the trafficking business. Drug traffickers are seemingly scared of operating through Iran, for fear of being hanged by its revolutionary authorities. Otherwise, Iran would have provided them a relatively easier road access to Turkey and then to Europe, the final destination for drugs.

Here comes the strategic importance of the Makran coastal range for drug traffickers. To some extent, the port of Karachi also acts as a drug trafficking exit point, in the wake of the current lawlessness in Pakistan’s financial centre. Khyber Pass and Vash crossing point at the Kandahar-Balochistan border remain the two normal road passages for drug traffickers, stationed in Afghanistan and bringing purified drugs from there to the southern coast of Balochistan.

Even otherwise, much of the Durand Line remains open for any sort of smuggling. Among other means of road transportations, trucks are frequently used to traffic drug. On these, the agents of drug barons travel hundreds of miles—and often without any fear, since their safely is assured allegedly by the government officials, including those belonging to Anti-Narcotics Task Force (ANTF), Customs and Police departments, and the border security forces.

In some instance, state agencies are also helpless. For instance, the encounters between drug traffickers and jawans of the Frontier Corps (FC), patrolling along Balochistan’s borders with Kandahar, take place routinely. Many a times, the druglords of Afghanistan have kidnapped FC personnel men and taken them inside Afghanistan as hostages. They are released only after these barons are assured of “safe passage.”

Much of the poppy which after purification takes the shape of heroin and other drugs is still being grown in the war-ravaged Afghanistan. The rise of Taliban in southern Afghanistan has not made much of difference in the country’s poppy production capacity. In Helmand, for instance, the poppy cultivation remains as popular a profession as before.

The last of the drug processing factories in Balochistan were destroyed in December 1990, following a bloody skirmish between the FC and Notezai tribal forces. Such units, however, still exist reportedly in other parts of the lawless tribal areas. It is in the war-ravaged Afghanistan that heroin and other drugs are principally processed and produced. The drug barons are said to be benefiting the most form the prevailing anarchy in Afghanistan.

The operational ineffectiveness, willful collusion or helplessness of other state agencies aside, even ANTF has so far failed to make headway in checking the growing drug trafficking in the country. As a part of the Pakistan Narcotics Control Board (PNCB), the ANTF was created by the caretaker government of Moeen Qureshi in October 1993. The other three steps which the government had taken for the purpose were: the issuing of the Dangerous Drugs (Arms) Ordinance, 1993, under which drug traffickers can be hanged after being declared guilty of crime by the court of law; the extradition of five Pakistani drug traffickers to the United States who were facing drug charges in various US courts and, finally, the appointment of Maj Gen Salahuddin Trimzi as head of the PNCB and the ANTF.

One particular incident depicting the PNCB-ANTF failure—rather, ineffectiveness—was the arrest and, then, sudden release of Shorang Khan by the Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) in Karachi in June 1994. Known as the king of heroin in Karachi, Shorang Khan is of Afghan origin a familiar name as far as Balochistan’s Chamman district. Despite protests by Gen. Trimzi, the CIA released him.

In terms of the powers vested in it, ANTF can override the authority of any other state security agencies in its anti-drug trafficking operations. It can employ the Army commandos during the operations. The Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate assists it in tracing the international connections of drug traffickers based in Pakistan. For the purpose, ANTF can also receive information from the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and Interpol.

In recent years, even some arrested or convicted drug barons in the Frontier province escaped from prison. In November 1994, three drug traffickers, two Afghans and one Pakistani, escaped from Peshawar jail. They were to be extradited to the US. In October 1993, Ammanullah Kundi, related to a former Federal Minister, escaped from his hospital confinement in Dera Ismail Khan. He was serving seven years in jail, after the court had proven him guilty of smuggling heroin to Germany. He also feared extradition. No one has been aware of his whereabouts since his escape.

Five of them—including Salim Malik, Khalid Khan, Taweez Khan, Shahid Hafeez Khawaja and Mishal Khan—were extradited by the former caretaker government. The sixth one, Muhammad Azam, was extradited in 1994 by the Benazir Bhutto government.Similarly, Haji Ayub Afridi who allegedly runs a drug empire from his stronghold in the Khyber Agency is still at large. In 1994, the tribal jirga freed him from all the charges leveled against him by Pakistani government and American courts. Like Shorang of Karachi and the Notezais of Chaghai, he is on the government’s Most Wanted list of drug traffickers. The United States had demanded the extradition from Pakistan of some 20 traffickers.

Many of the arrests of persons already extradited to the US or to be extradited were made following the joint PNCB-FC action against the Notezais in October and December 1990. For instance, those among the Notezais arrested following the action, confessed the names of their copartners such as Salim Malik (already extradited), Anwar Khattak and Mirza Iqbal Baig (facing extradition).

A major obstacle to combating drug trafficking is the political clout of drug barons in provincial and central governments. Additionally, the continuing tribal warfare in Balochistan—between Hamidzais and Ghaibezais, Bugtis and Kalpars, Raisanis and Rinds. The government of Chief Minister Zulfiqar Magsi is considered to be very weak—a loose coalition, with majority of parliamentarians out of a total of 43, elected as independents. Magsi himself does not have any political association.

And in the police station of Tahl Magsi, the seat of his tribe, some 300 miles south west from Quetta, in an FIR registered against him by his uncle Sardar Yousaf Ali Khan Magsi, the Balochistan Chief Minister is accused of committing multiple murders, with court decision on the issue still pending. With such circumstances prevailing in Balochistan, which are nothing less than anarchic, the trans-national drug traffickers, based in this province or elsewhere, are having a field day.

 

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