The Klashnikov arrives
Things for the failed Islamic revolutionary changed dramatically when, in 1978, Daoud was toppled in a communist coup led by the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), and its supporters in the Afghan military. Soon after, when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, the American CIA showed interest in helping Islamist groups stationed in Peshawar.
At the start of the CIA-ISI backed anti-Soviet ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan in 1979, Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami was the biggest anti-Soviet group in Peshawar. It was also one of the first groups of Afghan jihadists to receive arms and aid from the CIA, ISI and Saudi Arabia.
When in 1977 General Zia-ul-Haq overthrew the elected government of Bhutto and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), he invited the staunchly anti-PPP Jamat Islami (JI) to join his first ‘civilian cabinet.’
By 1979, the JI was vowing to help Zia bolster public support for the ‘Afghan jihad’ and expunge all leftist and pro-Soviet elements in Pakistan’s intelligentsia, journalistic circles and campuses. The JI also developed strong links with Hekmatyar opening up channels of regular contact between IJT and Hekmatyar.
As the first batches of Afghan refugees started to cross into Pakistan from war-torn Afghanistan, with them also came black marketers dealing in captured and smuggled AK-47s and heroin.
By late 1979, markets in the tribal regions of Pakistan were flooded with AK-47s and heroin. The Afghans trading in these items were profitably escorted by assorted Pakistanis looking to make a fast buck. These included Army personnel, tribal leaders, pro-Zia politicians and some enterprising civilians.
The AK-47 first made its proper introduction in urban Pakistan in mid-1979 when the then leader of the IJT in Karachi and president of the student union at the University of Karachi, Hussain Haqqani, appeared on the campus with ‘bodyguards’ armed with AK-47s.
The bodyguards were led by Rana Javed, the notorious leader of IJT’s militant wing, the ‘Thunder Squad’ – a violent group formed in the 1960s (at the University of Karachi and Punjab University) to “curb immoral activities on campuses.” NSF, BSO, the Peoples Students Federation (PSF), and the Liberal Students Organisation (LSO) had a history of regularly clashing with IJT and its moral squad.
During one such clash in Karachi in 1979, the Thunder Squad announced the first known usage of an AK-47 in urban Pakistan when it fired upon a gathering of progressive students. There were no deaths, but the incident left anti-IJT forces badly shaken and awake to the reality of an enemy that was fast changing its tactics.
Javed and his men had come into contact with a Pakistani middle-man who had gotten them in touch with an Afghan gun dealer in Peshawar. Funds were raised by the IJT in Karachi (accommodated by the JI and its connections with Hekmatyar), and a group of IJT men travelled to Peshawar to buy their first cache of AK-47s.
The guns were stashed under the beds of the hostel rooms occupied by IJT members at the University of Karachi and the NED University. These guns were once again used in mid-1980 during a clash between NSF and IJT in which one NSF student was killed. This is reported to be the first casualty witnessed in a clash at the university.
Alarmed by the rapid arming of the IJT – allegedly a part of Zia and JI’s designs to push out ‘pro-Soviet students’ from campuses – the PPP’s student-wing, the PSF, and the nationalist BSO, were the first two non-IJT organisations to acquire AK-47s. Already put under tremendous pressure by constant arrests, torture and jailing by the dictatorship, the PSF in Karachi grew a more militant wing, led by Salamullah Tipu.
Tipu, who belonged to a lower-middle-class Urdu-speaking family of Karachi, had been a member of NSF in 1974-75 and was considered to be ‘a terror’ by the IJT. He switched to the PSF sometime in 1977 and soon became the leading member of PSF’s somewhat anarchic militant wing. This wing was not under the direct control of the PPP.
Soon after the death of the NSF member at the University of Karachi, Tipu and a few members of the BSO travelled to Peshawar There they got in touch with a Pakistani middle-man who drove them to the open weapons and drugs markets in the tribal areas of NWFP. These markets were now flush with smuggled AK-47s and drugs arriving from the war zones in Afghanistan. Many of the guns were also pinched away for private sale by administrators handling the arming of the Afghan jihadists.
There, Tipu and BSO activists bought themselves a couple of AK-47s and smuggled them via train back to Karachi. Tipu and members of the United Students Movement (USM) – a progressive students alliance at KU – also raided an IJT arms’ ‘warehouse’ in Karachi’s Shah Faisal Colony, and got away with a number of AK-47s.
In early 1981, Tipu, along with at least three more PSF members, entered the University of Karachi in a white Toyota Corolla with a PPP flag. He started shouting pro-Bhutto and anti-IJT slogans in front of an IJT camp on the campus. To the IJT members’ surprise, he whipped out an AK-47 and started to fire at the camp. No one was hurt.
Tipu then sped forward in his car and looking at an IJT leader, Hafiz Shahid, strolling outside the university’s library, he started to shout anti-Zia and anti-IJT slogans mixed with a barrage of choice Urdu abuses, all the while waving his brand new AK-47.
Incensed by the commotion, Shahid pulled out a pistol and fired at Tipu’s car. He is reported to have fired at least three shots that missed the target. Tipu jumped out from his car and fired a burst from his AK-47 at Shahid, who was hit in the chest and head. He soon succumbed to his injuries at the hospital.
After the killing, Tipu and his group of PSF militants escaped to Peshawar, and with the help of some members of a small pro-Soviet party in the Frontier province, tracked across the tribal areas into Kabul, where he joined Murtaza Bhutto’s anti-Zia guerrilla outfit, the Al-Zulfikar Organisation (AZO).
Three alliances emerged in the wake of IJT’s attacks and the PSF’s counter-attack. At the University of Karachi, BSO, PSF, the Pakhtun Students Federation (PkSF), Punjabi Students Association (PSA), and the newly formed All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organisation (APMSO) further shaped the USM. NSF got together with a militant faction of PSF to form the Jamhoori Mehaz (Democratic Front). At the NED University, the progressives formed the Progressive Students Front.
With temperatures rising, IJT members now started distributing AK-47s to Thunder Squad personnel at Punjab University as well. Distressed by IJT’s violent growth there, breakaway militants from PSF, NSF and Tehrik -e-Istaqlal’s student-wing, the Istaqlal Students Federation (ISF), formed the Black Eagles. Outside the IJT, the Eagles were the first student group to acquire AK-47s in Lahore.
In mid-1981, the AK-47 claimed its third victim at the University of Karachi when IJT members allegedly mowed down Shaukat Cheema, a member of the USM. USM responded by asking its BSO members to deliver the alliance the connections that had supplied BSO and PSF militants AK-47s.
To avenge Cheema’s murder, during the 1981 student union elections, USM militants led by BSO’s Boro and PSF’s Shirin Khan, entered the University of Karachi from the NED University with AK-47s and long-range rifles. They attacked IJT militants standing outside the Chemistry Department, and soon an intense gun fight ensued in which at least one IJT member, Danish, was killed.
By 1982, IJT, PSF, PkSF, BSO, USM and Black Eagles all had caches of AK-47s stashed in their hostel rooms. Universities and colleges in Karachi and Lahore were now sitting on a volcano. Adding to the violent environment was the arming of the separatist Jeeay Sindh Party’s student-wing, Jeeay Sindh Students Federation (JSSF) – allegedly by Zia’s intelligence agencies “to neutralise PSF’s influence on Sindh campuses.”