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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Pakistan Refuses to Release 1988 Blast Reports |
| 2004-05-04 |
| Pakistan Army bosses have once again taken cover behind the flimsy excuse of ‘protecting the national interest’ and have refused to submit to the Parliament the inquiry reports of the 1988 Ojhri Camp bomb blasts, in which many retired generals were involved. Almost 1,500 people had died in the blasts which showered rockets and missiles all over Islamabad-Rawalpindi area and within a month led to sacking of the civilian government of Prime Minister Mohammed Khan Junejo who had ordered an inquiry into the incident. The demand to make these inquiries public was made by Opposition Senators but the Defence Ministry has now taken the position that the contents of these inquires cannot be made public and have been withheld in the national interest. It is obvious that if released, the Pakistan Army will be deeply embarrassed and General Musharraf cannot afford to annoy his constituency. This was the case when the ISI was apparently selling missiles on the blackmarket that were meant for the Afghanistan. Luckily, most of them should be inoperable now. Shortly before the blasts at Ojhri Camp, located in the heart of Rawalpindi, it had been announced that an American team would visit Pakistan to audit the stocks and accounts of the weapons provided to the Pakistan Army through the ISI. The blasts destroyed all records and most of the weapons thus making it impossible for anyone to check the stocks. Two inquiries teams, one led by a Military General and other by the Defence Minister of the Junejo government, Rana Naeem, had completed the task soon after the incident but both were dumped and never made public. According to sources, the Committee headed by a General had come to the conclusion that General Zia’s right hand man, General Akhtar Abdul Rehman, along with other senior military officials was involved. Its report, presented within one week of the incident, called for sacking General Rehman but the military ruler General Zia rejected it. Another committee was set up by Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo. This was a political committee headed by a Cabinet minister and comprised four federal ministers. However, controversy surrounded the findings of this committee. The members could not reach a consensus on who was responsible for the Ojhri tragedy. In his remarks, the head of the committee, former NWFP Governor Aslam Khattak concluded, "No one was responsible. It was an act of Allah." A book by Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson, published a few months back, revealed the CIA had stockpiled weapons in Pakistan to deal with the remnants of Soviet-backed elements in Afghanistan after the Soviet pullout. These weapons were stored at the Ojhri Camp which blew up and with it went $100 million worth war equipment, made up of 30,000 rockets, millions of rounds of ammunition, vast number of mines, Stingers, SA-7s, Blowpipes, Milan anti-tank missiles, multiple-barrel rocket launchers and mortars. The book said General Zia called his Ambassador in Washington, Jamshed A Marker, and asked him to tell the CIA and Charlie Wilson to replace the weapons. Within 24 hours, huge US cargo planes were unloading Stingers and other weapons into Pakistan direct from the frontline stores of NATO. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |