Zia ul-Haq

Muhammad Zia ul-Haq was a Pakistani army officer who, as chief of army staff, removed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in a pre-dawn army coup in 1977, named himself president and chief martial law administrator, and governed Pakistan until he was killed when his military transport plane exploded after takeoff from Bahawalpur on August 17, 1988.¹ Through most of that period Agha Hasan Abedi, founder of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), called on him privately whenever he flew into Pakistan, and in May 1985 BCCI's branch in the United Arab Emirates paid him 40 million Pakistani rupees.²

Early Life and Army Career

Zia was born into a middle-class Muslim family in Jullundur, British India, on August 12, 1924. His father, Akbar Ali, was a clerical officer in the British colonial Indian army. Zia was commissioned into the Indian army in 1945 and served in Burma, Malaya and Java during the Second World War. At partition his family crossed 75 miles of Punjab into Pakistan. He graduated from the Staff College at Quetta in 1955 and in 1963 attended the U.S. Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.¹

In 1976 Bhutto appointed him army chief of staff over more senior officers. "Shocked, not surprised, when I was selected chief of the army by the former prime minister," Zia later said. "There were 10 chaps senior to me. I was just one of the army."¹

Coup and the Execution of Bhutto

After three months of street fighting by anti-Bhutto rioters, Zia deposed Bhutto in 1977, appointed himself president and chief martial law administrator, and formed a cabinet drawn mostly from the army, navy and air force. He put Bhutto on trial for the alleged murder of a political opponent.¹ On March 18, 1978, the Lahore High Court sentenced Bhutto to hang for the murder of Nawab Mohammad Ahmad Khan; the Supreme Court of Pakistan rejected his appeal on February 6, 1979, and his review petition on March 24, 1979. The execution order read to Bhutto stated: "The president of Pakistan has decided not to interfere in this matter." He was hanged in Rawalpindi jail, a short walk from Zia's official residence, at four minutes past two on the morning of April 4, 1979, according to the account of the jail's security officer, Lieutenant Colonel Rafiuddin.¹³

In July 1978 Zia's government issued a White Paper on the conduct of the March 1977 general elections that named Abedi as a source of illegal funds for Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party.⁴ The Kerry-Brown Senate report, which placed the coup in 1978, wrote that Abedi "swiftly changed allegiances" to "Bhutto's successor, Islamic 'puritan' General Zia," and that Zia "later executed Bhutto for financial crimes, in which Abedi, among others, was clearly involved, while forming close ties to Abedi, on whose financial skills he increasingly relied."²⁴

Rule

Zia repeatedly promised elections and withdrew the promise as polling dates approached; United Press International reported that many Western diplomats and Pakistani politicians said he knew he would lose. In 1979 he announced the restructuring of Pakistani society to conform to traditional Islamic law, under which theft could be punished by amputation of the right hand, adultery or rape by stoning, and drinking alcohol by five years' imprisonment and 30 lashes.¹

Washington supplied him with 40 F-16 warplanes and other military and economic aid, and channeled aid through Pakistan to the rebels fighting the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan.¹ Zia arrived in Washington on December 6, 1982, and met Secretary of State George Shultz.⁵ Benazir Bhutto, daughter of the prime minister he had hanged, returned to Pakistan in April 1986 after two years of exile, vowing to remove him. On May 29, 1988, Zia dissolved the National Assembly and dismissed Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo, citing a breakdown of law and order, the slow pace of Islamic reform and official corruption; on July 20 he announced national elections for November 16, and the next day declared they would be held on a non-party basis.¹

BCCI

The Senate report found that although Abedi had been close to Bhutto, it was Zia who governed Pakistan during most of BCCI's existence, and "General Zia who did the most for BCCI." Nazir Chinoy, BCCI's branch chief in Pakistan in the late 1970s and early 1980s, told Senate staff:²

Every time Mr. Abedi came, he always called on President Zia. President Zia did not meet Abedi during office hours, but in the night when Mr. Abedi would fly in, they would finish official dinners first and I would be sitting with Abedi and Abedi would leave for two to three hours and meet with Zia. It was the President Zia that he spoke to first before speaking to the finance minister. I think that Abedi used Zia and Zia used Abedi also for the gulf countries, when he wanted some assistance. It was a two way street.

The Subcommittee obtained what it described as a sample BCCI payment to Zia: 40 million Pakistani rupees from BCCI's branch in the United Arab Emirates, which the report valued at several hundred thousand dollars. The report's text dates the payment May 26, 1985; its footnote cites a check to General Zia from BCCI-UAE dated May 25, 1985, reproduced in the Senate hearing record (S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 2, pp. 510-511).²

According to the report, the Pakistani government guaranteed BCCI's ability "to push aside immigration and customs requirements for its distinguished Arab visitors on their holidays in Pakistan," and BCCI in return helped the government evade monetary controls. Chinoy described how in 1979, with Pakistan under World Bank credit ceilings, 50 million dollars was routed through BCCI's Kuwaiti affiliate KIFCO into BCCI Karachi, so that the central bank could report an increase in Pakistan's dollar reserves to the World Bank. An indictment brought by New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau on July 29, 1992, put the sum at 100 million dollars.² The Pakistani BCCI Foundation, which received BCCI's Pakistani profits, obtained tax-free status in 1981 while Ghulam Ishaq Khan was minister of finance; Ishaq Khan held that post under Zia from 1977 to 1984 and chaired the foundation through the 1980s.¹²

According to BCCI's former regional manager Abdur Sakhia, it was generally believed among BCCI officials that had Zia been alive in October 1988, when BCCI was indicted in Tampa after Operation C-Chase, he would have used his influence with the United States government to soften the case.²

Nuclear Program

In May 1986 Representative Stephen Solarz confronted Zia and other officials with his view, based on U.S. intelligence, that the plant at Kahuta was producing weapons-grade enriched uranium; the Pakistanis denied it and refused independent verification. In July 1987 U.S. Customs arrested Arshad Pervez, a Pakistani native living in Canada, while he was trying to export maraging steel and beryllium to Pakistan. In meetings with Zia on August 5, 1987, Under Secretary of State Michael Armacost said that Washington could not "wink" at Pakistani procurement, said that U.S. information indicated "enrichment levels above 90[percent] have been achieved at Kahuta," and told Zia that the State Department had alerted the Pakistani government that "there was an issue here that needed to be addressed urgently." Zia replied: "I understand the idea of warning."⁵

A State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research memorandum of December 29, 1987, concluded that the procurement network "could not exist without the umbrella of government approval, protection, and funding," and that Zia and Junejo had "allowed the nuclear procurement network to flourish and the clandestine ethic to become ingrained in their subordinates and agents." On December 17, 1987, the day a federal jury convicted Pervez, President Ronald Reagan informed Congress that he had "concluded that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device," and in January 1988 the White House invoked the Solarz amendment and waived it in the same determination.⁵ The Senate report separately stated that in the late 1980s BCCI provided 10 million dollars in grants to a science institute named for Ghulam Ishaq Khan and directed by A.Q. Khan.²

Death

On August 17, 1988, a C-130 transport carrying Zia exploded shortly after takeoff from Bahawalpur, 450 miles south of Islamabad, where the party had watched a demonstration of a U.S.-built M-1 tank. The dead included U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel; Brigadier General Herbert Wassom, the senior U.S. military attache; General Akhtar Abdur Rahman, Pakistan's chief of staff; Lieutenant General Mian Mohammad Afzaal, chief of staff of the army; three major generals, five brigadier generals and 13 crew. The State Department counted 39 aboard; Pakistan listed 30 victims. Acting President Ghulam Ishaq Khan said, "There is the possibility of sabotage in the crash," ordered an inquiry, declared a state of emergency, and said elections would be held on November 16. A State Department official discounted sabotage because of the security that surrounded Zia. Vice President George Bush called the death "a great tragedy."¹

Zia was married to Shafiz; they had two sons and three daughters.¹