- Al-Zulfiqar
Al-Zulfiqar was a
leftist organization ofPakistan . It was formed in the late seventies by the sons of former PakistaniPrime Minister ,Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto , who was also the Chairman of Pakistan's biggest political party,Pakistan Peoples Party . Al-Zulfiqar was formed to revenge the killing of Bhutto by theright-wing military regime ofGeneral Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1979. Zia had deposed thepopulist Bhutto regime in aMilitary coup in July 1977.Bhutto was hanged by the Zia regime after a one-sided and controversial trial, Bhutto's two sons,
Murtaza Bhutto andShahnawaz Bhutto went into exile inAfghanistan which was then being ruled by aSoviet -backedcommunist government. There the two sons formed the Al-Zulfiqar along with hundreds of Pakistan Peoples Partymilitant s who had escaped Zia's persecution.The Al-Zulfiqar which was being funded by the Soviet
KGB in andResearch and Analysis Wing of India,to staged a string ofpolitical assassination s, bank robberies and bombings before pulling off its most daring act when in 1981 it hijacked aPakistan International Airlines flight fromPeshawar toKabul .All but on of the three Partner organizations still exist,as KGB and Al-Zulfiqar disolvedThe hijacking drama went on for thirteen days in which Lieutenant Tariq Rahim was shot dead, the hijackers mistakenly believing he was the son of
General Rahimuddin Khan , a prominent member of the Zia dictatorship. This forced the Zia regime to accept the demands of the hijackers of releasing dozens of Pakistan Peoples Party and other leftist political prisoners languishing in Pakistani jails.However, the hijacking was strongly condemned by Bhutto's daughter,
Benazir Bhutto , who was under house arrest in Pakistan and leading a political movement against the Ziadictatorship . The Al-Zulfiqar also attempted to assassinate Zia on a number of occasions and it made an attempt to bomb a rally inKarachi held in honour ofPope John Paul II who was visiting Pakistan in 1980.Cracks started to appear in Al-Zulfiqar after Murtaza Bhutto and one of his most trusted aides,
Raja Anwar , developed differences. Raja wanted to return to Pakistan and help Benazir Bhutto in her political struggle against the Zia dictatorship. Murtaza asked his mainhit man ,Salamullah Tipu , to assassinate Raja and his supporters. Tipu was a former leftist student leader who had joined Al-Zulfiqar in 1980. Fact|date=January 2008Raja was thrown into a Kabul jail on Murtaza's request and eventually so was Tipu when in 1984 his wild antics became a security threat to Kabul and Murtaza. Fact|date=January 2008Murtaza folded the organization's operations in Kabul when his younger brother, Shahnawaz Bhutto, died suddenly in
Paris in 1985, allegedly from poisoning. Both Benazir and Murtaza insisted that he was poisoned by his young Afghan wife who had become an agent of the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI.Murtaza eventually moved to
Syria and continued low-key Al-Zulfiqar operations from there. He returned to Pakistan in 1993 after his sister became the Prime Minister of the country for the second time. However, he returned not to join Banazir, but to oppose her and form his own faction of the Pakistan People's Party. He accused Benazir and her husband,Asif Ali Zardari , of corruption and moving away from the party's originalSocialist agenda.In 1996, Murtaza was assassinated by a group of
police guards when they fired on his convoy of cars in Karachi. The police said that Murtaza's armed guards had fired upon them first. Murtaza supporters believe Asif Ali Zardari ordered his assassination.= See also =
*
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto
*Benazir Bhutto
*Pakistan Peoples Party
*Left-wing terrorism
*Raja Anwar
*Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq External links
*http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/98/0529/feat2.html
* [http://www.fas.org/irp/world/pakistan/threats Security Threats] Federation of American Scientists, 24 May 1998.]
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