The Bomb, the Bank, the Mullah and the Poppies

When and why did Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto decide to build a nuclear weapon? Did he mandate Agha Hassan Abedi to launch the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) to fund Pakistan’s nuclear programme? Why did the BCCI become privileged bankers to Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel, General Manuel Noriega of Panama and Pakistani president General Zia-ul-Haq? Was George H.W. Bush embarrassed by his ties to General Noriega, General Zia-ul-Haq and the BCCI when he decided to run for presidency in 1988? Did Pervez Musharraf, as Director General of Military Operations, select Mullah Omar to head the Taliban?

The Bomb, the Bank, the Mullah and the Poppies is a historical account from a forensic perspective of how the Pakistani state innovatively used a dodgy bank, poppy cultivation and trade as a means to finance its nuclear programme. It reveals the convoluted psyche of the men in charge of Pakistan who clandestinely transformed Pakistan into a state where a premium was placed on thuggery, deceit and deception. This enabled Pakistan to grow from being a US pawn in the Reagan administration’s war against the erstwhile Soviet Union to a narco-nuclear state with an independent nuclear deterrent. In the process, the patrons of the Pakistani deep state enriched themselves with drug money at the expense of the citizens mired in abject poverty.
This is a story of a succession of powerful men who cleverly fooled the world into believing their innocence and helplessness when in fact the opposite was true at every juncture in the history of their nation.