Though the title seems quite straightforward yet there are layers within layers that are unraveled in this book revealing the role played by various actors across the globe and their linkages.
The book covers a timeline starting from 1965 till 2004.
The Bomb, the Bank, the Mullah and the Poppies by Iqbal Malhotra is a deep dive into the Pakistani Deep State innovatively who used ‘the world’s sleaziest bank’, poppy cultivation and narcotics trade as a means to finance its nuclear programme. Though the title seems quite straightforward yet there are layers within layers that are unraveled in this book revealing the role played by various actors across the globe and their linkages. It’s a remarkable piece of research to say the least.
The book reveals the psyche of multiple actors who transformed Pakistan into a state the foundation of which lay on deceit and deception. The book brings out how Pakistan benefitted the most from the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan and this was used by its Generals to not only fill up their inventory of arms and weapons but also accumulate personal wealth. Their proxies were the various warlords whom they all supported at various times and discarded when they no longer suited their purpose, these included the Mujahideen, Northern Alliance and Taliban and names such as Hekmatyar, Dostum, Masood and Mullah Omar. They were able to install a pro Pakistani regime, the Taliban and created a dangerous state.
This enabled Pakistan to grow into a narco-nuclear state with an independent nuclear deterrent while the US was compelled to support it. In the process, the patrons of the Pakistani deep state enriched themselves with drug money while the majority of the population was battling poverty.
The range of characters is phenomenal, Presidents and Prime Ministers, Army Chiefs, powerful Ministers, Heads of Intelligence Agencies, Generals and Bankers and of course Nuclear Scientists and Terrorists all depending on each other and both supporting and turning against each other when the situation demands.
Iqbal first learned of the Bank of Credit and Commerce (BCCI) through Hashim Khan Hoti, a classmate of his in Cambridge when he visited him in Hong Kong in 1983. That’s where he was introduced to someone from their Peshawar branch and was taken aback when many years later in 2001, he was welcomed by the same person in Northern Afghanistan when he had gone to shoot a documentary on Ahmed Shah Masood. By now Zubair ‘had been recruited as a deep cover sleeper agent to understand how the nascent Afghan-Pak heroin industry was structured’. The next day he was taken to a remote village where in the compound of a house there was a ‘steel container buried with millions of dollars and a warehouse packed with heroin’.
The book covers a timeline starting from 1965 till 2004. Agha Khan Abedi was Pakistan’s ‘first banker to fund the jihad against India’ through the United Bank Limited overseen by AB Awan, a Police Officer who had the ear of Ayub Khan, funded the “Master Cell” in Kashmir. When UBL was nationalised in 1974 he launched BCCI, incorporated in Luxembourg ‘which had an unregulated financial area, its shareholders all came from the Persian Gulf and its Headquarters was in London. In no time it became ‘the fastest growing bank in the world’.
The book also talks about a meeting in Multan on 20 January 1972 when Bhutto called ‘all eminent physicists and scientists in Pakistan’ to discuss how to make a nuclear bomb. He then decided to ‘tap the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world for funds.’ Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi ‘was willing to support Pakistan in creating a financial vehicle that would ostensibly be private and at an arm’s length from both governments.’ Abedi who at that time was under house arrest for ‘routing non -performing loans to the Saighol group’ was released from detention and asked to head the bank. Kamal Adham, the Chief of Saudi Intelligence who was the CIA’s principal liaison man for the entire Middle East, was a frontman for the BCCI takeover of an American Bank.
General Zia was in charge of Pakistan during its boom years and did most for the bank. Till it closed down in July 1991 due to ‘false and deceitful’ accounting; the bank was involved in a ‘murky web of toxic illegality’ ranging from laundering drug money in Afghanistan and Colombia when it transformed from being a coffee to cocaine producing country by buying Banco Mercantil Nassau de Colombia; financing purchase to nuclear materials for Pakistan and even the Iran Contra deal.
Lieutenant General Fazle Haq from the Guides Cavalry, was a close friend of General Zia, as the Corps Commander of 11 Corps he had arrested Bhutto. He would go on to serve as Governor of NWFP and took advantage of the political upheavals in Afghanistan which post the overthrow of the Shah of Iran ‘had blocked the Westward route of Afghan opium ‘set up a lucrative opium refining business in NWFP and shipped refined heroin to Western Europe and North America. Abedi met General Fazle Haq through Ghulam Ishaq Khan and BCCI funded these refineries as well as ships owned by Gokal brothers to transport the drugs. He also played a major role in training the Mujahideen, many years later after having joined politics he was assassinated in 1991.
Once the Soviets agreed to a withdrawal from Afghanistan, Pakistan realised that US aid would eventually dry up. They now turned towards Iran to leverage the KRL’s skills and assets. AQ Khan was soon trading in nuclear goods with diverse nations such as Iran, Libya and North Korea all with the backing of the deep state. The book also talks about his interview with Kuldip Nayar in 1987 during Exercise Brasstacks when he mentioned that Pakistan ‘had the atom bomb and would not hesitate to use it if it had its back to the wall.’
General Zia ‘believed he was one step ahead of the US’ and along with General Mirza Aslam Beg and Hamid Gul prepared a regional strategic consensus paper proposing that Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan come together’ in a pact lubricated by nuclear cooperation’. To add greater complexity Pakistan had agreed to be an intermediary between China and Saudi Arabia to supply the latter long-range missiles to offset US military aid to Israel. In return Pakistan would secure renewed financial assistance for its nuclear programme’.
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