TeaThat end came on Blood Street in Amsterdam’s Red Light District, delivered by a hitman who fired four bullets into the old mafia patriarch’s face and three more into his heart. For a generation, Ibrahim Abdullah was the sky ruled a criminal empire which spread across the western Indian Ocean, driving heroin and marijuana from Pakistan through Kenya to Europe. Life sometimes mimics the movies: the drug king’s second wife, Egyptian-born Ghazi Hayat, holds him in her arms as blood collects on the pavement.
Late last month, Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif, a supporter of Imran Khan, was shot dead on a deserted dirt road outside Nairobi. still unexplained circumstancesEngineered execution by his friends to end the ongoing investigation of corruption at the highest levels of Pakistan’s military.
Official voices are supporting these allegations. Lt Gen Tariq Khan, former commander of Pakistan’s Elite I Strike Corps, wrote that the murder was carried out From a “dishonest, unimportant hired hand”. He insisted that the killer acted “at the behest of patriots who would rather kill than be exposed”.
Twenty-two years apart, the mafia and journalist murders have been tied by a common thread: the strange story of how generals running Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) colluded with Afghan and Pakistani drug cartels to raise funds. For the jihadists—and to enrich themselves.
ISI’s Heroin Empire
Even though it engaged in the unethical business of trading rice, Magnum Africa Limited protected its privacy like an offshore bank. company registration record There was only one post office box number, and the column for the nationality of the directors was left blank. The owner, Anwar Muhammad, had a Pakistani passport, but that was not his name or nationality. The owner of Magnum Africa was Munaf Halari, who was sought by the authorities providing three vehicles It was used in the 1993 Mumbai bombings, in which 257 people died.
After the bombings, Gujarat police allegationHalari is transferred to Kenya with the help of the ISI with a passport provided by Ganglord Ibrahim ‘Tiger’ Memon. There, he set up a rice business to act as a front for the heroin run from Pakistan, which was shipped to markets in Europe.
Since the beginning of the Afghan jihad in 1979, the ISI has encouraged Mujahideen groups to raise cash by running heroin. Large landowners and drug cartels collaborated with the Mujahideen to ensure the smooth movement of the opium crop to the port of Karachi. Mujahideen Commander, Mullah Naseem Akhundzada, Specialist Gretchen Peters reportsThreatened the farmers for refusing to sow opium. The crop grew.
Military ruler General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s rule in Pakistan, expert David Winston RecordsEd, “heavily engaged in the heroin trade” in a study published by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Xia, he wrote, “fostered an ecosystem of government patronage of heroin dealers, government officials benefiting from the heroin trade, and the heroin syndicate’s significant political influence in government”. After the assassination of General Zia, the ISI continued to tap drug money to pay for its growing operations in Kashmir.
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif later alleged that he was approached for authorization by Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen Mirza Aslam Baig and Director General of ISI Asad Durrani. massive drug deals To fund “a series of covert military operations in dire need of money”.
The United States chose to ignore ISI drug-running and focused on defeating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The Director of Afghanistan Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Charles Kogan later told Journalist Loretta Napoleon That America sacrificed its war on drugs to win the Cold War.
Read also: Imran Khan has Pakistani army ducking and defending. Why a historic moment for the subcontinent
opium entrepreneur
Packed two kilograms of heroin in his suitcase and made his way through transit at Frankfurt airport. The son of a free-spirited American socialite and a Pakistani broadcaster—one eye blue, the other brown, with remarkable evidence of his mixed heritage—David Coleman Headley hoped that shipping drugs from Pakistan to America would solve growing financial problems. . However, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) had other ideas, and Headley received a four-year prison sentence in 1988.
In early 1997, the DEA re-arrested Headley – this time only releasing him after signing up as an informant, This journey will eventually take Headley to the jihadists of Pakistan and the dark world of 26/11.
A new generation of poppy entrepreneurs like Headley were setting up businesses around the same time – the most important of them being Dawood Ibrahim’s Halari-like lieutenants who fled India after the 1993 bombings.
Ethnic Asians—with kinship and trade ties to Karachi, and often involved in the smuggling of gold or consumer electronics—provided the backbone for this expansion, Simon Hessum Recorded, The Akash and Tahir Sheikh Saeed families in Kenya, Ali Khatib Haji Hassan in Tanzania, Ghulam Rasool Moti and Mommed Rasool in Mozambique: Small drug kingdoms flourished off the coast of East Africa.
The Taliban regime in Afghanistan saw a dramatic increase in heroin production. Initially, lines of trafficking in Europe ran through Iran to North East Turkey and Central Asia to Russia. The Dawood Cartel pushed south into the Indian Ocean using the services of smugglers such as Mir Yakub Bijenjo, an outspoken supporter of former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, who was designated as a world leader. top four cartels,
Faced with mounting pressure from America, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto occasionally threw a bone at Washington, Extradition of notorious smugglers Like Mohammad Anwar Khattak and Mirza Iqbal Baig.
Islamabad, however, ran into drug money. Waris Khan Afridi who was appointed Minister of Tribal Affairs by Bhutto was later arrested for smuggling Haji Ayub Afridi, who once played an important role in heroin Nawaz Sharif’s Islamic Jamhoori Ittehad, also played an important role in it. building narcotics networks,
ISI’s impunity guarantee allowed the cartel to flourish. Karachi businessman Jabir ‘Motiwala’ Siddiq, who narrowly escaped extradition to the US last year on a technicalCartel funds are believed to have invested in the property along with the Karachi Stock Exchange and business in dubai and East Africa. Indian intelligence officials say the property was shared liberally with senior generals, leading the Pakistani government to vigorously lobby for Siddiq’s release.
Journalists in Karachi Written by Ghulam Hasnain In 2001, Dawood took advantage of this patronage to lead a high life. Don’s evenings, he said, were spent in bliss—”usually involving drinks, mujras and gambling”. Dawood and his companions stay awake all night and leave early in the morning and then offer prayers together.
tide of blood
cause of murder on blood street a wave of murders, The first Egyptian-born cartel member to die was Magadi Yusuf, whom Ibrahim Akash had planned to visit for coffee to discuss a long-pending $2.5 million-dollar payment. Magadi’s brother, Munir, was assassinated in 2004. Sam Klepper, a Dutch drug dealer who owed Magdis money, and his lieutenant John Flemer also die. Akash’s second son Kamaldeen had died in a family dispute over payment.
Fifteen years after the assassination of Ibrahim Akash, a crackdown team of elite Special Forces personnel surrounded his palm-fringed mansion outside Mombasa. The US-led sting operation resulted in the arrest of Akash’s sons, Baktash Ibrahim, as well as his Indian ally, Vijayagiri Goswami. Brother will spend next two decades in jail for smuggling drugs and weapons,
However, killings and arrests have left the heroin trade untouched. The United Nations warned this month that Afghan production has increased Again under Taliban. there was one jump in tour Across the Indian Ocean Rim.
Police sources say that in Karachi, the Dawood cartel is working to ensure an orderly succession following the death of his paternal grandfather, whose control is being shared by his son, Moeen, and brothers Anees and Mustakim as well as the ISI. Is.
Arshad Sharif’s murder may prove further proof of how far the ISI will go to save its deepest secrets. Ethnic-Baloch journalist Sajid Hussain, who reported on drug dealer Bizenjo, found dead under unexplained circumstances, Journalist Ahmed Waqas Goraya, one of the most outspoken critics of the ISI, escaped what is credibly suspected to be S.I.Tate Sponsored Murder attempt. Scholar Ayesha Siddiqui and journalist Taha Siddiqui have received death threats.
The poisonous aroma of the poppy helped the generals hide the stench of blood.
Thoughts are personal.
(Edited by Likes)