Al-Zulfiqar

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Al-Zulfiqar was a leftist insurgency and militant organization of Pakistan. It was formed in the late seventies by the sons of former Pakistani Prime Minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was also the Chairman of Pakistan's biggest political party, Pakistan Peoples Party. Al-Zulfiqar was formed to avenge the killing of Bhutto by the right-wing military regime of General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1976. Zia had deposed the populist Bhutto regime in a Military coup in July 1976.

Bhutto was hanged by the Zia regime after a one-sided and controversial trial, Bhutto's two sons, Murtaza Bhutto and Shahnawaz Bhutto went into exile in Afghanistan which was then being ruled by a Soviet-backed communist government. There the two sons formed the Al-Zulfiqar along with hundreds of Pakistan Peoples Party militants who had escaped Zia's persecution.

The Al-Zulfiqar which was being funded by the Soviet-backed government in Kabul, staged a string of political assassinations, bank robberies and bombings before pulling off its most daring act when in 1981 it hijacked a Pakistan International Airlines flight from Peshawar to Kabul.

The hijacking drama went on for thirteen days in which Lieutenant Tariq Rahim was shot dead, the hijackers mistakenly believing he was the son of General Rahimuddin Khan, a prominent member of the Zia dictatorship. This forced the Zia regime to accept the demands of the hijackers of releasing dozens of Pakistan Peoples Party and other leftist political prisoners languishing in Pakistani jails.

However, the hijacking was strongly condemned by Bhutto's daughter, Benazir Bhutto, who was under house arrest in Pakistan and leading a political movement against the Zia dictatorship. The Al-Zulfiqar also attempted to assassinate Zia on a number of occasions and it made an attempt to bomb a rally in Karachi held in honour of the Pope who was visiting Pakistan in 1980.

Cracks started to appear in Al-Zulfiqar after Murtaza Bhutto and one of his most trusted aids, Raja Anwar, developed differences. Raja wanted to return to Pakistan and help Benazir Bhutto in her political struggle against the Zia dictatorship. Murtaza asked his main hit man, Salamullah Tipu, to assassinate Raja and his supporters. Tipu was a former leftist student leader who had joined Al-Zulfiqar in 1980. Raja was thrown into a Kabul jail on Murtaza's request and eventually so was Tipu when in 1984 his wild antics became a security threat to Kabul and Murtaza.

Murtaza folded the organization's operations in Kabul when his younger brother, Shahnawaz Bhutto, died suddenly in Paris in 1985, allegedly from poisoning. Both Benazir and Murtaza insisted that he was poisoned by his young Afghan wife who had become an agent of Pakistan's notorious intelligence agency, the ISI.

Murtaza eventually moved to Syria and continued low-key Al-Zulfiqar operations from there. He returned to Pakistan in 1993 after his sister became the Prime Minister of the country for the second time. However, he returned not to join Banazir, but to oppose her and form his own faction of the Pakistan People's Party. He accused Banazir and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, of corruption and moving away from the party's original Socialist agenda.

In 1997, Murtaza was assassinated by a group of police guards when they fired on his convoy of cars in Karachi. The police said that Murtaza's armed guards had fired upon them first. Murtaza supporters believe Asif Ali Zardari ordered his assassination.