LAHORE: Interior Minister Rehman Malik’s outburst against the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in the National Assembly, saying the party had become an orphan after the death of Osama bin Laden who used to finance Nawaz Sharif in the past, has dusted off an old controversy, which is set to blemish the PML-N leadership.
In fact, it was way back on April 30, 1999 that the slain PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto had accused Osama bin Laden, Mian Nawaz Sharif and a corps commander of toppling her first government in early 1990s. “Bin Laden financed an operation to topple me in cooperation with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the Pakistani intelligence services,” she had stated in an interview with the London-based al-Hayat newspaper. “Ramzi Yussef (implicated in the 1993 New York World Trade Centre bombing) tried to assassinate me on two occasions in 1993 to facilitate Nawaz Sharif’s rise to power. Yussef admitted to Pakistani investigators before his extradition to the United States that it was his duty to assassinate me, only because I was a woman in charge of the government,” she had added.
Almost 20 months later, Benazir repeated her allegations in more detail in an interview with Herald magazine on January 11, 2001. “Osama paid $10 million to overthrow my government during my first term. A serving Corps Commander held several meetings with PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif and Bin Laden to chalk out the plan to topple my government. Osama bin Laden was told that a woman in the prime minister’s position in an Islamic country was against Islam and so he should give them money to overthrow her. Nawaz Sharif told bin Laden he would bring Islam to Pakistan.” “No one had heard of Osama Bin Laden at that time, neither had me. He has become famous now. He would be sitting there and interfering with the government’s work,” Bhutto said and added that Osama also paid $10 million to a PPP member [of the National Assembly] to finance the no-confidence motion against her government, but they had voted against the motion. However, the then ameer of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, was the first Pakistani politician to have endorsed the allegation levelled against Osama and Nawaz Sharif by Benazir Bhutto, almost five years later. In an interview with Suhail Warraich that had appeared in the daily Jang on March 18, 2006, Qazi Hussain Ahmed said Bin Laden visited Mansoora and was willing to buy parliamentarians’ loyalties to ensure Nawaz Sharif’s election as prime minister. “Osama bin Laden said that if there was a way to buy votes [to topple Benazir Bhutto’s government and to bring Nawaz Sharif into power], he was willing to pay for them. Osama was a big supporter of the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad and Nawaz Sharif, who was the IJI president at that time,” Qazi Hussain Ahmed had added in his interview.
However, PML-N Information Secretary Siddiqul Farooq had rejected Qazi’s claim at that time, saying that Osama bin Laden never met Nawaz Sharif nor they ever talked about any political cooperation. “I want to keep it on record that American intelligence agencies, the then Pakistani government, the Inter Services Intelligence and other secret agencies, the Afghan Mujahideen, several religio-political parties including the Jamaat-e-Islami and Osama bin Laden were jointly fighting to liberate Afghanistan from the Soviet occupation. Bin Laden was a highly dignified person in the eyes of the US at that time. Later, differences developed between Osama and the US on the issue of Afghanistan and now they stand adversaries to each other. But Nawaz Sharif has no relevance to this situation,” Farooq said.
About Qazi Hussain’s claim that Osama wanted to see Nawaz Sharif as prime minister and was ready to buy loyalties of assembly members for this purpose, Siddiqul Farooq said: “It was Osama’s personal desire. And remember, Nawaz Sharif’s politics has been revolving around preserving and promoting the interests of Pakistan and its people”.
On March 21, 2006, hardly two days after Qazi Hussain Ahmed’s interview was published, a former ISI official Khalid Khwaja, who was considered close to Osama bin Laden, alleged that Nawaz Sharif had met Osama bin Laden and received funds from him to topple rival Benazir Bhutto’s government. “Let me tell you, Nawaz Sharif met Osama bin Laden on at least three occasions and was desperately seeking financial assistance to topple the Bhutto government,” Khalid Khwaja had told a Hong Kong-based web newspaper Asia Times Online in an interview which was also reported by Adnkronos International (AKI) on March 22, 2006. Killed in April 2010 after being kidnapped by Taliban militants, Khalid Khwaja, a retired officer of the Pakistan Air Force who was in the ISI in the late 80s, rejected a recent denial by the PML-N that its leader had only sought political cooperation from Bin Laden. Khwaja said the al-Qaeda head wanted the secular PPP government overthrown to ensure that Pakistan continued supporting the Afghan jehad. Khwaja claimed that Bin Laden gave him funds, which he personally delivered to Nawaz Sharif. Giving a graphic account, he said Nawaz wanted to have a direct meeting with the Sheikh, which ‘I arranged in Saudi Arabia’. Nawaz met Osama thrice in Saudi Arabia. The most historic meeting between the two men was held at the Green Palace Hotel in Madinah. Osama asked Nawaz to devote himself to jehad in Kashmir. Nawaz immediately said: “I love jehad”. Osama smiled, and said: ‘Yes, you may love jehad, but your love for jehad is this much’, pointing to a small portion of a nearby pillar. “Your love for your children is this much,” he said, pointing to a larger portion of the pillar. “And your love for your parents is this much,” he continued, pointing towards the largest portion. Khwaja said such arguments were beyond the comprehension of Nawaz Sharif, who kept asking, in Punjabi, ‘Manya key nai manya?’ (Has he agreed or not to pay money?).
Going by Khalid Khwaja’s claim, Nawaz Sharif was hoping for a grant of Rs500 million. Although Bin Laden gave a smaller amount, Khwaja said he arranged for Sharif to meet the Saudi royal family, which had pledged political support for him and kept its word until he was dislodged by Musharraf in 1999. “It was the royal family that secured Sharif’s pardon and exile to Saudi Arabia,” he reminded. “Now with these immortal accounts secured in my memory, I see the denials in newspapers, that Nawaz had nothing to do with Osama, and I think how can people forget their mentors,” Khwaja added.
The alleged links between Osama and Nawaz Sharif were once again highlighted by the British author and journalist Simon Reeves in his book titled “The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousaf, Osama bin Laden and the future of terrorism”, which was published in September 2009. Simon also claimed that Bin Laden not only sponsored the election campaign of the former prime minister and PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif in 1988, but paid him large sums of money to ensure protection of al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and to ‘Islamise’ the state and society. According to Simon Reeves, the ABC News also confirmed the same incident of payoff by quoting former FBI agent Jack Cloonan who used to interrogate one of the key al-Qaeda operatives in US custody, Ali Muhammad. Cloonan, who is currently working as an ABC News consultant, claimed that Ali had once told him that Osama paid Nawaz’s representatives $1 million for not cracking down on the militants in the Frontier Province. The book further states that after re-establishing al-Qaeda, one of Osama’s first actions was to try and guarantee the security of his men living in Pakistani refugee camps by throwing money at the election campaign of Sharif, ‘an energetic Pakistani politician’ standing for the election of Prime Minister. According to Simon Reeves, Nawaz Sharif had received the money from Osama with a promise to convert Pakistan into a strict Islamic state. An American website - History Commons - has not only confirmed Cloonan’s claim but has also mentioned another book by Scott-Clark and Levy, claiming that General Hameed Gul had contacted Osama Bin Laden who was then known to provide financial support to the Afghan mujahideen, to pay for a coup and assassination of the late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. However, the central secretary information of the Nawaz-led PML-N, Ahsan Iqbal has strongly rejected all these claims as a pack of lies.