Pakistan’s deep state is at the centre of The Bomb, the Bank, the Mullah and the Poppies: A review

Opium poppies growing in Helmand, Afghanistan, in May 2011. ‘The Poppies’ in the book title is a stand-in for the narcotics trade that has kept capital flowing into Pakistan and Afghanistan. (Photo by ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office from Kabul, Afghanistan, via Wikimedia Commons)

Former Pakistan Prime Minister, Imran Khan, was arrested on August 5, making him the seventh former PM to be arrested in the country’s history. Interventions by the Pakistani military have been alleged by Khan’s supporters. Military establishment ousting publicly elected leaders isn’t unheard of in Pakistan. But why and how is Pakistan’s military so influential?

Bloomsbury India; 218 pages; Rs 799.

In his latest book, The Bomb, the Bank, the Mullah and the Poppies (BBMP), Iqbal Chand Malhotra explores the Pakistani deep state as seen through the various lenses highlighted in the title. It distills 40 years of research during which Malhotra also produced a documentary, Nuclear Tango: Why a hero fell from grace?, on the subject of Pakistan’s nuclear programme and how its architect, Dr Abdul Qader Khan, was made to take a fall.

Malhotra has previously written Red Fear: The China Threat and two books on Kashmir titled, Dark Secrets: Politics, Intrigue and Proxy Wars in Kashmir and Kashmir’s Untold Story. Given Malhotra’s penchant for geopolitics explored via the multiple documentaries he has produced, BBMP adds another feather to his repertoire.

To give an overview, ‘The Bank’ refers to Bank of Credit and Commerce International or BCCI, which was created in 1972 and was run by banker Agha Hasan Abedi, who would later be a convicted felon after the bank imploded in 1991. ‘The Bomb’ refers to Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions and how it built a nuclear bomb. ‘The Mullah’ is Mullah Omar, the now-dead Taliban founder who was propped up by the late General Pervez Musharraf. And finally, ‘The Poppies’ is a metaphor for the narcotics trade that has kept capital flowing into Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Even though the timeline explored in the book goes from Pakistan’s independence in 1947 to 2004, it shines a light on the geopolitics in the larger sub-continent today. It explains how the Pakistani Army and Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) have always been in the driver’s seat in Pakistan’s political history.

The most corrupt bank?

Over its tenure, BCCI boasted clients from the Pakistani, Middle-Eastern and CIA elites to even the Pablo Escobar-run Medellin drugs cartel. The bank had its own ‘black-ops’ cell which helped with money laundering, financing arms deals that governments wanted to be kept secret and it was involved in drug trade. The BCCI’s complex ownership structure allowed it to slip under the regulators’ radar in all the years it was operational. Without the shady dealings done by BCCI, Pakistan’s nuclear programme would have suffered serious monetary setbacks, the book proposes.

BBMP ties the various threads that connected not just BCCI to Pakistan, but also how the US had to ignore a lot of Pakistan’s misdemeanors to be able to use this country to supply weapons to the mujahideens during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Post the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks, Pakistan again found itself in a position of strategic importance as the US could use the country as a base to launch attacks against the Taliban in Afghanistan. While continuing to ensure that it was in the good books of the US, Pakistan also managed to attract capital from Libya and North Korea and expertise from China when it came to its nuclear program.

The narcotics trade

One aspect that gets pushed to the background in Pakistan’s geopolitical narrative is the narcotics business. In BBMP, Malhotra highlights how the poppy cultivation and narcotics trade was an important source of revenue, not just for the many deep state programs but also used by the Pakistani military elites to increase their personal wealth. It was also a critical element in ensuring the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s after the Soviets departed. The book goes into how General Pervez Musharraf played a key role in grooming Mullah Omar, who would go on to lead the Taliban.

Even during the peak of the Soviet-Afghan war, narcotics trade was carried out while the CIA looked the other way. As Malhotra notes,“The trucks of the Pakistan Army’s National Logistics Cell (NLC) arrived in north-west frontier province (NWFP) with arms from Karachi unloaded from ships chartered by the CIA and returned laden with heroin under ISI protection back to Karachi for global distribution. Legal cover for this activity was provided by the CIA, as a result of which this trade mushroomed to gigantic levels never before conceived.”

To put things in perspective, in 1986 when the global drug trade was estimated to be around $100 billion, Pakistan’s share was $30 billion. Even after the US and NATO forces drove Taliban out of Afghanistan post-2001, President Hamid Karzai merely gave lip service with regards to banning opium production.

Webs of deception

Commercial Pakistani planes being used to smuggle nuclear tech into North Korea; Libya’s General Muammar Gaddaffi putting in the initial capital for building an ‘Islamic Bomb’ in Pakistan; Pakistan using Chinese expertise to fill in the technology gaps in making the nuclear bomb; former US President George H.W. Bush being involved with BCCI during his stint as the CIA director are just some of the fascinating aspects the book explores.
Things reach a stage where one is left wondering who is pulling the strings and who are the puppets?

The book is detailed in terms of the larger story it’s stitching together. But I can’t really say that it's a breeze to read. In most of the chapters, for instance, the narrative seems to be heavily biased towards a dull chronology of dates and incidents. There is not much build-up. Every chapter has so many new personalities that it’s hard to keep up after a point. Kudos to how Malhotra has juggled so many personalities, each stringing their own threads throughout the book. But from a reader’s perspective, it gets weary to read so many names per chapter.

In many areas, the reading experience could’ve been more streamlined had the book been formatted in a way that one has a grasp of the current narrative thread and the historical contexts. For instance, while explaining how BCCI became a ‘Banker to Jihad’ in Afghanistan (an interesting topic in itself), the author switches to how the CIA used another bank for the anti-Castro insurgency leading to mysterious deaths of a few of that bank’s heads - all in the same paragraph.

Narrative criticisms aside, the book manages to answer these critical questions convincingly: How was Pakistan’s nuclear program realized despite its terrible economic state? Why did the USA turn a blind eye to the massive narcotics trade that was carried out by Pakistani generals, while it fought narco-trade in other countries? How Pakistan’s geographic location has always given it a strategic advantage. If any of these questions pique your interest, this book is a recommended read.