General Ziaul Haq was eliminated by the United States with
help from elements from within Pakistan, including military
personnel, according to the former military leader’s
daughter Mrs Rubina Salim.
In a lengthy interview given to Afaq Khayali,
editor of weekly Pakistan Post, New York, the former President’s
daughter, married to a Pakistani banker, who has lived
in the United States since 1980, claimed that she knew
who played what role in her father’s death in 1988
in an air crash over Bahawalpur. Asked if she would like
to identify the murderers, she said, “Our father’s
murderers were the very people who came to rule (Pakistan)
later.” Asked if she meant Ms Benazir Bhutto, she
replied, “Benazir was included and there were several
others whom I cannot name one by one.” Pressed as
to why she was hesitating to name others when she had
named Ms Bhutto, she said, “According to my estimate,
rather my information, or whatever we have come to know,
a large number of military people were also involved.”
When reminded that one of the persons often named was
former Gen Asad Durrani, she answered, “Yes, that
is so, and he was involved and perhaps he knows that too.
A friend of mine said to me, ‘So now it is known
who were responsible,’ to which I said, ‘You
have come to know now; we have known that from the beginning.’”
When asked why her brother Ijaz-ul-Haq,
who had vowed to find and identify his father’s
killers, had failed to do so, she answered that he had
his “political difficulties.” Pressed again
to name names, she said, “After his (her father’s)
death, Ijaz-ul-Haq and Gen, Akhtar Abdul Rehman’s
sons came here to sue the US government because the administration
of the time was involved, had a hand in it, but how can
you fight a power so big as (the United States)?”
She added, “Everyone in Pakistan knows; you can
ask any Pakistani and he will tell you who the people
involved (in the murder) were.” When told by the
interviewer that another name that had often come up was
that of Gen Mirza Aslam Beg, though later he had been
cleared, she remarked, “Those names have already
come up.” She also said that it was right to suspect
Gen Beg as some people had done initially. When reminded
that Gen Beg was no longer one of the suspects, she said,
“Why not his name? I have a tape, his (her father’s)
last tape, the Bahawalpur one. You should listen to that
tape carefully. He invited Gen Beg to travel back with
him as he had invited the American ambassador to do so.
Because he knew what was going to happen to him, but...”
Asked if Gen Zia knew that he was going
to die, Mrs Salim answered, “Yes, absolutely, he
knew but since he was a ‘Fauji Musalmaan’,
he was not afraid. He said God’s will be done. He
invited Mirza Aslam Beg to accompany him in his plane
but Beg sahib told him point blank that he had his own
aircraft and he would return alone.” Had the American
ambassador also refused, she was asked? She answered,
“He was not due to come with him (Gen Zia) either
as his own aircraft was parked there as well. It was all
his doing.” Did that mean, she was asked, if the
American ambassador had committed suicide? Mrs Salim’s
answer to that was, “Yes, he was going to commit
suicide. Where these people’s interest in involved,
they feel no compunction about getting their own killed.
It makes no difference … If you have to do something
for your country and nation, and you have been trained
for that purpose, you will, of course, do what you are
asked to do. (We) tried very hard to meet the American
ambassador’s wife (Mrs Raphel) but America did not
allow anyone to meet her. And to date no one has been
allowed to meet her. America has employed her in its State
Department and that is where she works.”
When asked why the United States would
wish to kill Gen Ziaul Haq, Mrs Salim replied, “The
reason was that Ziaul Haq’s job was done and America
had won the Afghanistan war and Russia had been expelled
from there. America was now a superpower which had been
its ambition.” Another reason she gave in a later
answer as to why the US wished to eliminate Gen Ziaul
Haq was that he was working for an “Islamic bloc”
which would have made the Islamic world strong, something
the United States did not want. She also said that if
her father’s wishes had been carried out and the
Geneva Accords on Afghanistan had not been signed, the
world would not be facing the problems it was facing now
in Afghanistan and the region.
