Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

Frontline Pakistan
critical juncture. The most charismatic of the ISI chiefs, he openly
aligned himself with the hardline Afghan mujahidin leader, Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar, and right-wing Pakistani Islamic parties. He would later
take credit for dismantling the Soviet Union. General Gul had worked
closely with the CIA, but turned anti-American after the Geneva
Accord in 1987, which paved the way for the withdrawal of Soviet
forces from Afghanistan. The Accord was signed by the Pakistani
civilian government led by Prime Minister Mohammed Khan Junejo
against the wishes of President Zia, who believed it deprived the
Afghan mujahidin of the opportunity to take over Kabul. Resentment
among the military and ISI officers deepened in 1990, just one year
after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan and the US administration
imposed sanctions on Pakistan for its nuclear programme. The CIA
ended its support for the Afghan rebels and its links with the ISI went
cold. It was a sudden end to the strong link between the two agencies.
The military leadership accused the United States of dumping Pakistan
after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Long before the Afghan war was over, General Gul had started
organizing a new jihad front in Kashmir. ‘It is the years of our work that
has realized the armed uprising against the Indian forces in Kashmir,’
he told me in early 1990 when he was commanding the country’s elite
armoured corps. 22
The death of General Zia ul-Haq in a mysterious air crash in
August 1988 brought an end to Pakistan’s longest-serving military
government. 23 It left the generals with the choice of either imposing
martial law again or holding elections and transferring power to a
democratically elected civilian government. They went for the second
option, realizing that a perpetuation of military rule might provoke
public resistance and exacerbate the turmoil in an already highly
polarised society. However, the generals were not prepared to pull
out completely and leave the political field solely to the politicians,
particularly to the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto,
who now led the Pakistan People’s Party, which was certain to sweep
the polls.
To contain Benazir, the military cobbled together the Islamic
Democratic Alliance (IDA), uniting all the right-wing parties under the
leadership of Nawaz Sharif. General Aslam Beg, then Chief of Army
Staff, and General Gul justified the move by saying it was necessary
for the viable functioning of a democratic system. The main objective,
however, was to ensure the military’s continued role in the new