[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 135 (Friday, September 23, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 23, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
 FORMER PAKISTANI LEADER RAISES SERIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT NARCOTERRORISM 
                              BY PAKISTAN

                                 ______


                         HON. THOMAS J. MANTON

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, September 23, 1994

  Mr. MANTON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call to the attention of my 
colleagues an article which appeared in the September 12 edition of the 
Washington Post. In this article, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz 
Sharif is quoted as saying that former Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Mirza 
Aslam Beg, and Gen. Asad Durrani, the former head of Pakistani Inter 
Services Intelligence Bureau [ISI] informed him that the army and ISI 
wanted to conduct covert activities in other countries and wanted to 
use the proceeds from large scale drug transactions to finance these 
activities. While Mr. Sharif says he assumed the plan was never carried 
out, there is growing evidence to the contrary.
  In March 1993 the city of Bombay was shaken by a series of bombings 
which killed 317 innocent people in one of the most horrible acts of 
terrorism ever. The main bomb destroyed the Bombay Stock Exchange, the 
center of commerce in India. A suspect recently was arrested in this 
case. Yakub Memon has implicated the ISI in this act of terrorism 
saying the ISI provided his brother, several associates and him with 
explosives, arms and funds to carry out these acts of destruction. Mr. 
Memon said the ISI instructed his party where to place the bomb before 
they carried out the killings. Mr. Memon is an Indian citizen yet he 
was found to possess a Pakistani passport and identity card. He said 
the ISI provided him with travel to and from Pakistan. His brother and 
family, also Indian citizens, now live in a fancy home in Karachi, 
which Yakub Memon said also was paid for by the ISI.
  Mr. Speaker, there have been other deeply disturbing developments 
regarding terrorism and ISI. During the past year, Indian security 
forces in Kashmir have arrested Pakistani, Afghani and Libyan 
nationalists who admit to having been trained, funded and armed by ISI 
elements in nearby Pakistan. These arrests have occurred as a result of 
continued acts of violence carried out by terrorist troops which have 
infiltrated the Indian border from camps in Pakistan.
  Mr. Speaker, Pakistan currently is the source of more than 20 percent 
of all the heroin sold in the United States. Our Government has spent 
tens of billions of dollars during the past decade fighting terrorism 
and narcotics. The Post article raises serious questions about the 
activities of the Government of Pakistan at a time when terrorism is on 
the rise not only inside the borders of its neighbor, India, but also 
around the world. The issues raised by former Prime Minister Sharif 
demand the immediate attention of our State Department and the world 
community. I urge my colleagues to read the Post article and ask that 
it be included in the Record at this point.

               [From the Washington Post, Sept. 12, 1994]

                 Heroin Plan by Top Pakistanis Alleged


 former prime minister says drug deals were to pay for covert military 
                               operations

                (By John Ward Anderson and Kamran Khan)

       Karachi, Pakistan.--Pakistan's army chief and the head of 
     its intelligence agency proposed a detailed ``blueprint'' for 
     selling heroin to pay for the country's covert military 
     operations in early 1991, according to former prime minister, 
     Nawaz Sharif.
       In an interview, Sharif claimed that three months after his 
     election as prime minister in November 1990, Gen. Aslam Beg, 
     then army chief of staff, and Gen. Asad Durrani, then head of 
     the military's Inter-Services Intelligence bureau (ISI), told 
     him the armed forces needed more money for covert foreign 
     operations and wanted to raise it through large-scale drug 
     deals.
       ``General Durrani told me, `We have a blueprint ready for 
     your approval,''' said Sharif, who lost to Benazir Bhutto in 
     elections last October, and is now leader of the opposition 
     in parliament.
       ``I was totally flabbergasted,'' Sharif said, adding that 
     he called Beg a few days later to order the army officially 
     not to launch the drug trafficking plan.
       Beg, who retired in August 1991, denied Sharif's 
     allegation, saying, ``We have never been so irresponsible at 
     any stage. Our politicians, when they're not in office and in 
     the opposition, they say so many things. There's just no 
     truth to it.''
       Durrani, now Pakistan's ambassador to Germany, said: ``This 
     is a preposterous thing for a former prime minister to say. I 
     know nothing about it. We never ever talked on this subject 
     at all.''
       Brig. Gen. S.M.A. Iqbal, a spokesman for the armed forces, 
     said, ``It's inconceivable and highly derogatory; such a 
     thing could not happen.''
       The interview with Sharif, conducted at his home in Lahore 
     in May, was part of a broad investigation into narcotics 
     trafficking in Pakistan. It marked the first time a senior 
     Pakistani official has publicly accused the country's 
     military of having contingency plans to pay for covert 
     operations through drug smuggling.
       Officials with the U.S. State Department and the Drug 
     Enforcement Administration said they have no evidence that 
     Pakistan's military is or ever has been involved in drug 
     trafficking. But U.S. and other officials have often 
     complained about the country's weak efforts to curtail the 
     spread of guns, money laundering, official corruption and 
     other elements of the deep-rooted drug culture in 
     Pakistan, which along with Afghanistan and Iran lies along 
     the so-called Golden Crescent, one of the world's biggest 
     drug-producing regions.
       In a scathing report two years ago, a consultant hired by 
     the CIA warned that drug corruption had permeated virtually 
     all segments of Pakistani society and that drug kingpins were 
     closely connected to the country's key institutions of power, 
     including the president and military intelligence agencies.
       About 70 tons of heroin is produced annually in Pakistan, a 
     third of which is smuggled abroad, mostly to the West, 
     according to the State Department's 1994 report on 
     international drug trafficking. About 20 percent of all 
     heroin consumed in the United States comes from Pakistan and 
     its northern neighbor, Afghanistan, the second largest opium 
     producer in the world after Burma. The United Nations says 
     that as much as 80 percent of the heroin in Europe comes from 
     the region.
       It has been rumored for years that Pakistan's military has 
     been involved in the drug trade. Pakistan's army, and 
     particularly its intelligence agency--the equivalent of the 
     CIA--is immensely powerful and is known for pursuing its own 
     agenda. Over the years, civilian political leaders have 
     accused the military--which has run Pakistan for more than 
     half its 47 years of independence--of developing the 
     country's nuclear technology and arming insurgents in India 
     and other countries without their knowledge or approval and 
     sometimes in direct violation of civilian orders. 
     Historically, the army's chief of staff has been the most 
     powerful person in the country.
       According to military sources, the intelligence agency has 
     been pinched for funds since the war in Afghanistan ended in 
     1989 and foreign governments--chiefly the United States--
     stopped funneling money and arms through the ISI to Afghan 
     mujaheddin guerrillas fighting the Soviet-backed Kabul 
     government. Without the foreign funds, the sources said, it 
     has been difficult for the agency to continue the same level 
     of operations in other areas, including aiding militants 
     fighting Indian troops across the border in Kashmir. Such 
     operations are increasingly being financed through money 
     raised by such private organizations as the Jamiat-i-Islami, 
     a leading fundamentalist political party.
       A Western diplomat who was based in Islamabad at the time 
     of the purported meeting and who had occasional dealings with 
     Beg and Durani, said, ``It's not inconceivable that they 
     could come up with a plan like this.''
       ``There were constant rumors that ISI was involved in rogue 
     drug operations with the Afghans--not so much for ISI 
     funding, but to help the Afghans raise money for their 
     operations,'' the diplomat said.
       In the interview, Sharif, claimed that the meeting between 
     him and the generals occurred at the prime minister's 
     official residence in Islamabad after Beg called one morning 
     and asked to brief him personally on a sensitive matter.
       ``Both Beg and Durrani insisted that Pakistan's name would 
     not be cited at any place because the whole operation would 
     be carried out by trustworthy third parties,'' Sharif said. 
     ``Durrani then went on to list a series of covert military 
     operations in desperate need of money.''
       Sharif, in the interview, would not discuss operational 
     details of the proposal and refused to disclose what covert 
     plans the intelligence agency wanted to fund with the drug 
     money.
       Sharif said he had ``no sources'' to verify that the ISI 
     had obeyed his orders to abandon the plan but that he assumed 
     the agency had complied.
       ``I told them categorically not to initiate any such 
     operation, and a few day later I called Beg again to tell 
     that I have disapproved the ISI plan to back heroin 
     smuggling.''
       Embittered that his political enemies cut short his term as 
     prime minister last year and helped engineer the return of 
     Bhutto, Sharif has gone on an intense political offensive to 
     destabilize her 10-month-old government. He claimed recently 
     that Pakistan has a nuclear bomb and said he made the 
     information public to prevent Bhutto from dismantling the 
     program under pressure from the West. The government has 
     denied possessing a nuclear bomb but repeated previous 
     statements that it has the ability to build one.
       Calling Sharif a ``loose cannon,'' a second Western 
     diplomatic source said, ``I'd have a hard time believing'' 
     his allegations about the military's drug trafficking 
     proposal. The official suggested that Sharif's disclosure 
     might be designed to keep Bhutto and Pakistan-India relations 
     off balance. ``If anything should bring these two countries 
     together, it is their common war against the drug problem, 
     but this seems to fly in the face of that,'' he said.

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