In August 1947, when Joseph Stalin concluded examining the map of the two winged Pakistan that emerged from the partition of the subcontinent that “this country cannot last”. A quarter century later, Soviet Union’s leader Leonid Brezhnev and KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov, vindicated Stalin’s prophecy.
The intelligence caches provided by KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin exposed the KGB’s systematic infiltration of Pakistan’s Government circles and diplomatic corps, confirmed that the then KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov and his agents of the KGB First Chief Directorate waged a secret war against Pakistan from the moment of its creation.1
The Kremlin’s “special relationship” on the subcontinent was with India, not Pakistan. India’s leader Indira Gandhi could not have won the Bangladesh war without New Delhi’s Friendship Treaty with the USSR.
Yuri Andropov distrusted Pakistan’s head Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, thought him a Chinese agent of influence ever since he joined Ayub Khan’s Cabinet as foreign minister in 1964, “was disgusted by the idea of a Berkeley–Oxford educated Sindhi feudal landowner donning a Mao cap and waving his little Green Book”. Bhutto visited Moscow twice but neither (Soviet higher leaders) Brezhnev, Podgorny nor Gromyko reciprocated with a state visit to Islamabad. The Kremlin distrusted Bhutto’s new friends and patrons in the Islamic world – the Pahlavi Shah of Iran, Saudi King Faisal, Colonel Gaddafi, the Gulf oil sheikhs.
Prime Minister Bhutto was deposed and executed by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq on April 4, 1979. His son Murtaza Bhutto founded Al–Zulfiqar in Kabul, declared war against the Islamic world’s most powerful military regime. Al-Zulfiqar began covert-ops against Zia’s Pakistan in earnest, with KHAD/KGB support. The Kremlin, of course, also wanted to punish General Zia for allowing America, China and Saudi Arabia to finance the Afghan mujahideen revolt against its Marxist Kabul vassal regime, Khaleej Times writes.
Murtaza’s men bombed the Sindh High Court, assassinated Zia cronies in the Punjab who had signed his father’s death warrant, used the terrorist Tipu to hijack a PIA airliner at Karachi to divert it to Kabul. Murtaza welcomed Tipu on the tarmac at Kabul airport with the KGB resident watching and listening to everything in the control tower. Women and children were released from the hijacked PIA plane and a triumphant Tipu spoke to Babrak Kamal, the President of Afghanistan installed by the USSR after the invasion. An aide to Prime Minister Bhutto who the paranoid Tipu thought was an Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) agent, Captain Tariq Rahim, was machine gunned, thrown to the tarmac to bleed to death. The KGB had armed Tipu and his men with grenades, explosives, timers, machine guns, money. Outraged by the killing, Andropov ordered Afghan intelligence chief, a de facto KGB general Najibullah to order the flight to Damascus, where President Assad negotiated the end of the hijack. Al-Zulfikar’s stock soared in Kabul and the Kremlin, Khaleej Times concludes. Murtaza was a hero to the Sindh and Baluchistan secessionists. It was a message from Andropov to Zia, KGB to ISI.
Two assassination attempts organized by Mir Murtaza against Zia’s Falcon private jet went wrong. Al-Zulfikar’s shooters bungled the SAM-7 missile’s viewfinder and aircraft heat sensor.
