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350 Submachine guns, 40 incendiary hand grenades, 921 magazines, 22,000-30,000 rounds of 7.62 mm ammunition loaded in magazines, another 26,000 rounds of 7.62 mm, 10,000 rounds of.303 mm and 40,000 rounds of ammo of various rifle cartridges, long range radio transmission and reception systems, guerilla warfare and close combat training equipment. This was the cache that was discovered at the Iraqi Embassy in Islamabad on February 10, 1973.
Conflicting accounts suggest that it was either the Iranian intelligence services that alerted Islamabad about Iraq’s smuggling of arms; or that it was the Shah, who had visited Islamabad only a few weeks ago; or that an enroute container got damaged and exposed the gunrunning.
On that day, the Iraqi Ambassador was summoned to the Foreign Office and sternly confronted with the fact of his mission’s illegal smuggling of arms. He denied the charge, and told Islamabad that he could not allow them to search his embassy without first obtaining the consent of Baghdad. But the Pakistanis told the Ambassador that their concerns for national security overrode all considerations of diplomatic immunity.
In the presence of reporters and the Iraqi Ambassador Hikmat Sulaiman, the office of the consular attaché, Nasir al-Saud, was pried open. Police found three crates marked ‘Foreign Ministry, Baghdad’. The Ambassador claimed there were books inside the crates. But the police recovered 30 submachine guns. A search in the adjoining rooms revealed a far bigger amount of weapons, and Saud’s house was found to possess two long-range radio transmitters as well. He had disappeared from Islamabad three days before. Pakistan Customs was then ordered to seize and search three more seal crates in a diplomatic pouch at Islamabad airport, but they contained empty magazines. When reporters inquired about the origin of the weapons, Sulaiman said: “I don’t know anything about this all.” He was declared persona non grata and expelled from Pakistan along with Saud, who had already escaped.
Who were the arms for? What was the intended use? Which countries were involved? Were they meant for Iranian dissidents or separatists in Balochistan? Or were they meant for stirring trouble in Islamabad?
In a letter to President Nixon on February 14, Bhutto blamed India and Afghanistan, besides Iraq and the Soviet Union, for involvement in a “conspiracy … [with] subversive and irredentist elements which seek to disrupt Pakistan’s integrity”. A memorandum to President Nixon from Secretary of State William Rogers described the tone of Bhutto’s letter as signifying “an air of urgency” and indicated that the “ultimate destination [of the arms] remains unclear; conceivably they could have been intended for Iranian dissidents.”
Seizing his opportunity, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto dismissed the National Awami Party (NAP) Governors of both Balochistan and the NWFP. He abolished the NAP cabinet in Balochistan and placed the province under President’s rule for thirty days. The NAP-JUI government in NWFP resigned. Two days later, Governor Mustafa Khar announced that all NAP leaders in Punjab would be placed under house arrest. Bhutto exploited the arms cache further and Wali Khan and NAP were verbally charged with complicity in the affair. The government claimed they were party to a sinister plan to destroy Pakistan, and Radio Pakistan described the two provinces under their reign as “seat(s) of conspiracy”. Addressing a press conference in Rawalpindi, the former ruler of Lasbela, Jam Mir Ghulam Qadir Khan Aliani, alleged that the arms discovered were of the same type as ones distributed by the NAP leadership in his district.
The consolidation of the federal government and PPP power in the two provinces was now complete. Also, NAP had been discredited. It is to be noted, however, that their dismissals were not linked officially with the arms discovery, though the public perception had been successfully turned against them.
On February 11th, the government-owned Pakistan Times wrote: “…In Baghdad, the Iraqi government had been harbouring certain Baluchi elements who have been openly working for the creation of an independent ‘greater Balochistan’.” While Nawab Akbar Bugti claimed that large quantities of arms had already been shipped to Balochistan and stored by rebels, he did not “reveal their locations” as he had promised to do when he became Governor only four days later. Clearly, opportunism was the order of the day.
But if the government so strongly believed that NAP was involved in instigating an uprising in Balochistan, why would Bhutto say that the weapons were meant for creating turmoil specifically in Islamabad?
The truth was that the government had used this event to throw NAP out of power in Balochistan and NWFP, and would later use it as a justification for the military operation in Balochistan. The leaders of NAP were to be labeled traitors time and again – a time-tested tactic in Pakistani politics. The expulsion of dissidents like Kasuri and the “resignation” of the governor of Sindh, Rasul Bux Talpur, suggested to some that the whole incident might have been a smokescreen. A report in the Pakistan Forum asked whether “the five Pakistani employees of the Iraqi Embassy were actually agents of Pakistan’s intelligence agency who were working in collaboration with al-Saud”.
Meanwhile, the theory that the weapons were destined for Iran was the most widely believed. The idea, described perfectly by Pakistan Times, was that Iraq had been at “loggerheads with Iran. Since the Baluch people straddle the Pakistan-Iran border, Iraq has been trying to incite the Baluch people against Tehran. This also means incitement of the Baluch people in Pakistan.”
According to the Director General of the Intelligence Bureau, Mian Anwar Ali, it was the ISI and MI that had been responsible for both the intelligence and the operation. The Political Attaché, Al-Saouf (it said on the crates that they could be opened only by him), who was working with an Iraqi “student” living in a high-end Karachi apartment, had been coordinating the shipments from Karachi. Neither Al-Saouf nor his Iraqi affiliate was under surveillance, and both had left Pakistan in the month before the discovery of the arms.
Airway bills revealed that the arms shipments had started in September of the previous year. In fact, the Iraqis had become so confident of their ability to smuggle arms that they had become careless and even resorted to shipping guns in canvas bags.
Mian Anwar Ali wondered why the Iraqis had brought the arms to Islamabad (and taken an extra risk) if the intent was infiltration into Balochistan, since it would have been easier to smuggle them via the Arabian coast in the Makran region. He also dismissed the idea of the arms being intended for the NWFP – the border with Afghanistan was porous and a much more viable route. In the end, he thought that the intention was to make trouble in the capital itself. (Even the Iranian Ambassador in Islamabad didn’t believe that the arms were meant for the Baloch.)
As for the countries allegedly involved in the arms smuggling, their roles were never proven. The submachine guns were of Soviet origin, though there was little evidence of direct Soviet complicity. But Defense Secretary Ghiasuddin Ahmed told an American Embassy official (this was recorded in a diplomatic cable) that he believed the Soviets were behind the affair and were trying to use the Iraqis as agents. He also believed that the real destination was indeed Islamabad, and charged the “Charsadda family” (i.e. Wali Khan) with complicity.
Now Iraq had been the first Arab country to recognize Bangladesh, and its relations with Pakistan were not great. However, the Iraqis had very little reason to carry out such an operation or support dissidents in Pakistan. One plausible reason for Iraqi involvement may have been the strengthening of dissidents in Balochistan to guard against Iran, but that would have risked Iraq’s relations with Pakistan too seriously.
The Iraqi government maintained an eerie and unnerving silence over the issue, even though the weapons had been discovered under the fierce gaze of the media. Quickly they resorted to tit-for-tat: on February 11, two Iranians and a Pakistani were arrested in Baghdad and charged with spying. On February 13, the Iraqi foreign spokesman said that the “only possible explanation” was that Pakistan must have been under foreign pressure to implicate Iraq, and the Pakistani Ambassador and Second Secretary in Iraq were declared persona non grata. (Pakistan had in fact already recalled both of them.) Iraq also threatened to deport all Pakistanis within 15 days if they did not leave the country.
In the end, it was assumed by most people that the weapons were meant to be transported to Iran for dissidents to rise up there against a regime that was hostile to Iraq. The Tehran correspondent of the Times wrote on February 23: “[I]n spite of the absence of official comment, it is increasingly admitted here that the bulk of the arms discovered in the Iraq Embassy in Islamabad, on 10 February … were destined for rebels in Iran”.
Prima facie Pakistan’s forced entry into the Embassy was a violation of Article 22 of The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, although Iraq had first violated Article 41(3) of the same convention which prohibits use of the chancery in any way incompatible with provisions of the convention.
Funnily enough, a couple of bags and shoes filled with explosives were found next to the toilet in Nasir al-Saud’s apartment. These too were photographed by the press.
Ghiasuddin Ahmed was quoted as saying that there was a “possibility we will never know” who was behind this episode.
Perhaps the declassification or “wiki-leaking” of government documents will one day shed light on the mysterious incident.
Shahid Saeed, a student, is interested in Pakistani history and politics. He can be reached at
shahid@live.com.pk
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