Funny but just yesterday I was talking to a Palestinian friend of mine over the issue !

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=105936

Recalling the Ojhery blast



Thursday, April 10, 2008
On a bright sunny morning on April 10, 1988, an explosion rocked Rawalpindi. A mushroom cloud of black smoke bellowed up thousands of feet into the sky followed by an incessant rain of rockets and projectiles that continued the whole day. The flying rockets hit unsuspecting people several kilometres away from the scene of the fire in an ammunition depot in Faizabad at the junction of Rawalpinid and Islamabad.

Not many people were even aware that an ammunition depot existed in the midst of a densely populated locality. Many suspected that Pakistan had perhaps been attacked. Some others suspected a mishap at one of the nuclear installations. The blasts continued at almost regular intervals. When the initial salvo died down the sound of secondary blasts could be heard for the next several days. There was chaos all around. All at once the city roads and streets were littered with the dead and the dying.

Official estimates put the dead at about one hundred and over a thousand injured. Unofficial count placed the dead at several hundreds. The damage would have been worst if a large number of rockets that fell several kilometres had also exploded. These rockets did not explode just because they were not fused. Initial official reaction said that the blast was caused by an act of sabotage. Later however it was claimed that the blast had been caused by an accident and it was an act of God. Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo publicly declared to hold an inquiry and also to make its findings public. The deadly stinger missiles provided by the US for the Afghan mujahideen were also reportedly sucked into the blast raising all kinds of suspicions.

Many questions were being asked. Why was the ammunition stored in a densely populated area? Who decided to store ammunition for Afghan mujahideen in a populated area? What happened to the stinger missiles? When Junejo insisted that the findings of the official military Court of Inquiry be made public, Zia quickly moved sacking the prime minister and dissolving the assemblies, accusing Junejo of not doing enough to bring Islam to the country.

The explosion may have been an accident or sabotage no one knows. Apparently no one was punished. The top military generals heading the agencies continued in their careers although an elected prime minister and an elected assembly were sacked.

A question was asked in the Senate in 2004 as to whether and when the findings of the inquiry into the Ojhery fire would be made public. There was deafening silence for several months. Finally the question was disallowed on the ground that it involved a sensitive and secret issue. Nothing remains secret forever. Twenty years is a long enough period for the inquiry findings to be made public. We owe it to the victims of Ojheri blasts. We owe it to ourselves.

I think we all know the dirty hand behind these accidents.

We hence all know the reason for the secrecy.

What we need to do is invest in ICBM's and then start to reveal these secrets.

Everytime any thing happens in india Pakistan/isi is blamed without evidence. When anything happens in Pakistan when we have evidence why do we expose to the world media?

I dont think there was any indian involvement in that issue. It was by yanks, and for some reasons, we cannot ask them for compensation or at least an apology.

I dont think such an high level incident would have gone without unconlusive investigations.

I feel , it is our right, as citizens of pakistan, to be made aware of findings about such critical issues. so that we can be sure that our lives and property and interests arent going to face similar threats over n over again..

Issues like liaqat ali khan,71',zia ul haq,ojhri camp,kargil,mushaf ali meer etc have all been buried, under unknown pressures, so as to keep the chances of such issues arising again ,open.

There is never a unknown pressure in Pakistan its always the Ameircan pressure.

The only American pressure we had was that we'd get caught.
No evidence is zero proof, plus then we were major allies in war against the Soviets, so the Yanks looked the other way.
And it's no secret anymore.

US had given Stinger's to only Israel and Pakistan (for Afghanistan) then, no other nation had it (then).
Stingers were seen in Iran (by spies/double agents perhaps, as no Amrican went there).
US wanted to take a physical stock, and one team went to Israel, and one travelled to Pakistan.
Before they arrived we blew up the entire place, and made it look like terrorism (Russia related).
We survived, or our F-16's were at risk, what's the big deal, we did what we had to.
Kia haath baand kar to nahi beth jaey-n gey na.

Just to confirm didnt we took them out but blow up the place and made it look like that we have lost stingers in those blasts hence coming to ur conclusion.

Well thats what ive heard all along abt this incident.

If we did take them out, then I must say, we're the best there is.
Personally, I didn't hear of that part, but you could be right.
But then what set off those intermittent blasts and shells flying here & there?

Nevertheless, the point still is, that I was trying to tell our guys here, to read, before just saying ISI or CIA or Americans did it. The reality is that we ourselves did it, and it was not an accident.

Once I recall there was a thread running about CIA killed Zia Ul-Haq, and it ran for a good number of pages, finally I stepped in and told them that again, it's no secret anymore, The Russians assasinated Zia for his role in Afghanistan.

You could be right, ur older than me and know exactly what happend at that time. All what i heard is hearsay and what certain ppl belive abt that incident. Well according to one ex-PN (sailor, cant recall what he really was) said that it was all preplanned and done by the military, that way we kept our hand on the missiles and made it look like that they were all destroyed.

as for flying shells and blasts, well i think any kind of rocket storage would ensure that we can have such flying shells or blasts.



Ofcourse, i was just trying to add bit more to it, from what ive heard.

At that time it was claimed that just 4 hours into Ojhri Camp blasts we received US officials at Chaklala base coming from USA on a C-130 for the inspection of Ojhri camp.

Of course it was assumed that we did not but the flying rockets was a sort of a mistake, however, today since 2 decades have passed, I was just wondering if we are ready to open up this episode to normal public like us ?

No, there were actual Stingers in there, as Amriki's wanted to see the burnt/empties from the wrekage.
We were not going to put hurdles in our F-16's for Afghani Stingers, we actually burnt them!

Just heard that last night, couldn't stop laughing, our guys are good, I'm amazed.

Well there were two theories going around. The first was that CIA wanted to destroy those stinger missiles left in Pakistan which Pakistan claimed it did not have. The second theory is that Pak military did it themsleves to show that those missiles are now destroyed, but had already secretly hidden the missiles. I think until the govt reveals the truth, we will keep on making these conspiracy theories. I would like to believe that the CIA did the blast as our military would not endanger the lives of innocent civilians.

LOL. everything is zia fault. man these guys just wont quit.

"facts" are clear. corrupt army blew it to hide the corruption. simple as that. All the anti-zia people can buy these "facts" and stay happy.

The reality is that afghans were never given the full inventory of stingers. CIA never knew where the money and weapons were going. And somehow, being extremely poor, our nuke program and the balistic programs were still progressing. any idea how much money was being invested in there along with the source of that?

stinger were sold or sent to god knows who. (iran and china will be my first guess). and as shez said already, we had to hide it so we blew the depot. by the rumors were in town that the used stingers and remains from afghanistan or other sources were brought there to display as "chalay patakhay". And then here is the real kicker. a huge lot of bombs, missiles were disposed of in "tilla jogian",jhelum after declaring them to be unsafe. tons of missiles went there for "disposal".

if we had a south park bigger longer and uncut was made in pakistan, it would have a song "blame army and zia" rather than "blame canada".

That's your birth right.
The facts are that CIA were in a plane, and barely 6 hours before they touched down (first in Karachi, to buy time for us), we started the fireworks.
At that point, we had bigger concerns, such as the under construction F-16's, we couldn't care less for missiles that were not ours to begin with.

Sorry for reviving this old thread but this whole we did it ourself theory is new for me. And frankly I don't get it. So the Americans were coming to do what? take our missiles? ok so if we blasted the actual stingers in ojhri camp then why couldn't we have just given them back?? What did we get by destroying them?

Ghias .. the Americans wanted an inventory of the stingers, as at that time Iran had brought done a couple of Iraqi AF fighter planes and was claiming to have the equivalent of stinger. However at the retreat of Basra in the left over arms of Irani forces the Iraqi's had found Stinger missiles whose serial numbers were suppose to be meant for the Afghan Mujahideen.

Of course the Americans were at that time with Saddam Hussain and did not want this to happen, hence, the so called inventory of the missile stocks with Pakistan !

Again this is all an accumulation of the thinking of many Pakistani ex-armymen & intellectuals .. It might be wrong, however, now that 20 years have passed .. can somebody write facts for general public !

Yaar Must, the stories have slight variations, as to the exact steps, as it's a secret which now even the US wants dead.
But the only common thing repeated is that 'we' did it, and that is for certain.

We even refuse to talk about it, when it comes to terrorist bombings or sabotage, the govt. or media doesn't include Ojhri in their archives.



We were denying that we ever had it, how can we give it back?
Those Stingers were meant for Afghan Mujahideen, and not for PA or Iran, how would we have begun to explain that!

There were a lot of other repercussions associated with our move.
Pressler ammendment wasn't there at that time, and hence we were worried about our F-16's.
We had been warned, and the threat of countries sponsoring terrorist, we could have become a part of that list.
India wouldn't have missed that opportunity.
American involvement was still a secret then, USSR had no substantial proof, and that would have opened a pandora's box.
Saudi's and Israeli's were both helping us and US, and KSA had requested that we keep it low.

We had a whole lot more to loose by not doing it.

Guys I don't mean to claim credit, but my house in Pakistan is less than a mile from the camp, we knew it was a military site but never determined that it
was an ammunition storage facility.
What I have learned is that all weapons and equipment destined for Afghan war, and supplied by the US was stored in this camp for onward transit.
The likes of Stingers and related weaponary wasn't performing up to the expectation and was drawing alot of criticism from other quarters.
The Americans became curious and suspicious and wanted to examine the storage. On the other hand, it is said that Pakistan stood up several new Brigades with what the Americans supplied and replaced it with Chinese and other old stock piled equipment. But as the Americans were adamant to review the stock,
it all went up in smoke, it was apparently the brain child of Gen. Akhtar Rehman, who later died in Gen. Zia's plane crash.

American involvement was still a secret then, USSR had no substantial proof, and that would have opened a pandora's box

Shehz : Don't forget after the drubbing which the US got in Vietnman it did not have the balls to face USSR ona war front. USA until last supplied Pakistan & Mujahedeen with old Russian equipment taken from Egypt & PLO (Palestinians) to show their neutrality.

Of course India was with USSR all along in this war especially when RAW supported KGB in doing terrorism & bombing on daily basis amongst Pakistani civilians.

It was an eye sore that Pakistan with it's limited resources and size withstood an open war with the mighty USSR ! Geez .. we have been stupid for friends .. and today the fruit whichwe are getting from the West for the loss of our blood !

it all went up in smoke, it was apparently the brain child of Gen. Akhtar Rehman, who later died in Gen. Zia's plane crash

Zia's team of Generals was really praise worthy but the C-130 incident literally wiped out our control on so many militia's .. I Remember how Hikmatyar & other's were dying to be burried alive live infront of TV cameras with the coffin of Ziaul Haque ! Although I was totally against Gen. Zia's thinking in his last years of rule but We all wept when they buried him.

sir g, it was not that bad even after his death. problem started when bb thought that introducing taliban will be a good idea. later ganja didnt help either.

anyway. it was natural for incompetent to come in governing role cause all the competent died in crash.

Sobank .. come on .. Taleban were an outcome of 1995 - 1996 ... you should have seen how BB sold out Khalistan liberation force ! By doing one to one with Rajiv Gandhi ..

At that time Nawaz in the opposition went to USA and talked about our Nuclear devices .. The same thing BB did when in the opposition in the term of Nawaz ! What a circus we saw after Zia .. you could not have realized ! All the public phones booths in Karachi installed during Zia were taken out ! ... You cannot imagine that at that time we were at least 5 years ahead in communication industry from India .. They earned in the early & end 90's, while we were sleeping & selling ourselves during our democracy ! (No media wants to remember that !) .. We were making software for IBM ! Why don't you remember that one of first virus "Brain" was actually made by Pakistani's ? Why because these guys were sub-contractors for IBM & IBM & company was stealing their programmes !

Had a good dictator been around .. today we would be owners of WIPRO & INFOSYS type of companies .. While we bled & fought internally the world minted money in the IT boom !

I lived & saw the life under BB & NS .. & it was full of $hit, just like today !

Must, guys here 30 and under, don't have recollection as such.
If we inform them of certain things, instantly they will reply with source/link, or go read history.
Dawn's archives are the oldest today, 2002, no other Pakistani print media goes beyond.

I remember, there were Phone booths all around Karachi, step out of a shopping centre and one could make a phone.
I remember post boxes, not post offices, 2 or 3 in every neighbourhood, buy fixed price stamp book, and mail it at your own convenience.
I remember mail being delivered in 3 days max, and 5 days in FATA, today, mail gets lost.

I remember walking in British/American Embassies, no security, walk in, go in their library, and read any book, with a librarian to asist you.
We were growing and progressing, and at that rate, we were predicted to become Asian Tigers, moving from developing to second world.
And then we had democracy, every hope crashed.

BB/AZ & NS have destroyed my country.