Authors: Humphrey Hawksley
‘No! No!’ he was shouting. ‘I am not getting in and you will not force me.’ His voice was raised and as Khan approached he identified uncertainty on a few of the
soldiers’ faces.
‘Get up,’ snapped Khan.
‘You will hang for this,’ spat Magam.
A cabinet colleague put a hand on Magam’s elbow. ‘Come on, man,’ he said. ‘Let’s do what they say.’
Magam shook off the hand and pushed his way past a soldier, who hesitated enough to let him get through. Khan took a pistol off the nearest soldier, put a round in the breech and held it at
Magam’s head. ‘Get back in line.
Now.
’
Magam took the first half-step of a run. Khan tripped him, pushed him to the ground, face down, and fired a live round in the air inches from the minister’s head. Khan stepped back.
‘Do you want to die?’ roared Khan, emptying the breech, then reloading it again, so that the minister could hear the mechanism move.
‘No,’ Magam whimpered.
‘Do you want to live?’
‘Yes.’
‘Again. Tell me again.’
‘Yes. Yes, please.’
Khan secured the safety catch on the pistol and gave it back to the soldier. The minister, shaking, was helped to his feet by colleagues and climbed into the truck.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London
Local time: 1530 Thursday 3 May 2007
‘One shot fired,
apparently,’ said John Stopping. ‘To persuade a recalcitrant minister not to stretch his luck. Otherwise a flawlessly exercised
takeover.’
Top of the British news agenda of the day were the domestic issues of the single currency and Northern Ireland. The Foreign Office was concentrating on Christopher Baker’s upcoming weekend
visit toWashington, but the headofAsia– Pacific, who was in fact travelling, asked for a special meeting on the Pakistani coup. John Stopping had been asked to chair the meeting in his place.
Stopping was a former Ambassador to Pakistan, and was still chair of the JIC.
The BBC lunchtime radio news had led with the coup in Pakistan, but television gave it thirty seconds voiced over library pictures of the ousted Prime Minister on a previous visit to Britain.
Hamid Khan had declared martial law. He banned all reporting and blocked the transmission of all pictures. Few people in Britain knew the Prime Minister, let alone the military strongman who had
taken power, and the firing of a single warning shot did not arouse national outrage.
Nevertheless, Pakistan had muscled itself to the top of the Foreign Office agenda, and Stopping turned to Martin Andrews, the young head of the South Asian Department.
‘Obviously we’re watching things closely,’ said Andrews. ‘But a military takeover was not unexpected. Pakistan is regarded as a failed state and something had to give. We
don’t expect it to change Pakistan’s foreign policy agenda, although clearly the Foreign Secretary will express concern when he gets to Washington.’
‘And who is Hamid Khan?’
‘An Armoured Corps officer, Chief of Army Staff and former Deputy Head of the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, or the ISIA. We’re requesting more from Washington. He was one of
the key figures involved in the CIA’s war in Afghanistan in the eighties. When that finished, he turned his attention to the insurgency in Kashmir and was largely responsible for filtering
guerrillas across the LoC onto the Indian side in the early nineties. Three years ago he manoeuvred his way to get the job of Commander X Corps in Rawalpindi in charge of operations in Jammu and
Kashmir and the Siachen Glacier. It put him at headquarters and in the most politically and militarily sensitive area, a perfect platform from which to get the top job.’
‘Is he a rabid fundamentalist?’ asked the head of the Hong Kong/China department.
‘No.’ Andrews shook his head. ‘He appears to be a pragmatist. He is not the hunting, shooting and fishing Sandhurst type. The key elements to bear in mind are that, given
India’s steady movement away from secularism, it is inevitable there would be a lurch even further towards Islam. After all, Pakistan was created as an Islamic state. I sense that Khan has
moved in to prevent the extreme sort of revolution which took place with the Taleban in Afghanistan.’
‘The comparison is a bit far-fetched, isn’t it?’ said the head of the Far East department.
‘That’s what they said about Iran. We ignored it and we lost a valued ally in the Islamic world.’ Andrews paused while the man in charge of the Far East accepted his point.
‘In the villages, there is a growing cry for Pakistan to produce its own Ayatollah Khomeini. I think the country has judged democracy as a failure.
‘The political class is thoroughly corrupt. Western-educated leaders such as Benazir Bhutto turned out to be disasters. Her successors simply came from different landowning oligarchies.
The ruling elite takes what it can get and puts nothing back. Since Zia ul-Haq came to power in the late seventies there has been a creeping Islamization. Subsequent governments have used it to
retain legitimacy. The political classes have clung to secularism because that is where their vested interests lie. But the centre of gravity has been shifting for some time. What has become clear
is that the political class is incapable of bringing about change.’
‘You sound as if you rather admire Khan,’ said Stopping.
‘I don’t know him,’ said Andrews. ‘But I know where he is coming from. The country is living beyond its means. The religious parties are well organized –
particularly in the cities, but they perform badly at the polls because the votes are controlled by the landlords. The army is the only professional institution of any size which works and Khan has
stepped in before the conditions created another Iran. Of the two hundred and fifty-odd brigadiers in the Pakistan army, there are thirty known fundamentalists. Of about twenty-five lieutenant
generals, there are five fundamentalists. We should be thankful that Khan is not among them.’
‘So does it mean that we should regard Khan as an OK thing for the time being,’ said Stopping, ‘as long as he keeps his revolver in his holster?’
‘On probation, perhaps.’
‘I suggest we let things settle over the weekend, then test the waters with the Foreign Secretary on Sunday on the way to Washington.’
Stopping shuffled his papers to get to the next item on the agenda. ‘Now. China,’ he said, turning to the head of the Far East department. ‘I understand we have some
intelligence from within Zhongnanhai – from who else, but the Japanese.’
Foreign Ministry Building, Beijing
Local time: 0030 Friday 4 May 2007
GMT: 1630 Thursday 3 May 2007
Jamie Song was
driven out of his office compound with the pressing voice of the American Ambassador in his ear on his mobile phone: ‘Jamie, let’s keep it
informal, but we must meet.’
‘Reece, it’s after midnight.’
‘Drop by the residence for a drink. Give me fifteen minutes of your time.’
‘Things are tricky at the moment.’
Jamie Song and Reece Overhalt trusted each other completely and that is partly why each had got his job. Overhalt was a key player in defusing the earlier Dragon Strike crisis, when both
Washington and Beijing had gone on to nuclear alert. When he left as Chairman of Boeing, it seemed only sensible that he should go to Beijing as Ambassador. In the interim, he helped Song float
Oriental Software successfully on the New York Stock Exchange, sealing an already longstanding friendship which stretched back to post-graduate days at Harvard. Both China and the United States
were aware of the huge ideological and cultural chasms between them, and if any two men could keep the lid on simmering issues it would be Overhalt and Song.
Song hadn’t risen to the top of both global business and the last surviving Communist autocracy without an in-built safety valve that detected disasters. He sensed that while the new deal
with Pakistan would largely go unnoticed, the mayhem which was mushrooming over Tibet and the Lama Togden could test the limits of their statesmanship.
‘Just what hell is going on in Lhasa?’ pressed Overhalt. ‘The networks are comparing it to Phnom Penh after Pol Pot took over.’
‘You want the truth, Reece?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘I haven’t got a clue. Tibet comes under Tang Siju, a deputy chief of General Staff. You want his mobile number? I’m only the Foreign Minister.’
‘Jamie, don’t do this, for Christ’s sake. Drop by the China World Hotel, if you don’t want to be seen at the residence. You’ve got to fill me in.’
Prime Minister’s Residence, Tokyo, Japan
Local time: 0130 Friday 4 May 2007
GMT: 1630 Thursday 3 May 2007
General Shigehiko Ogawa
had been in the waiting room of the spartan official residence for more than half an hour, while the Prime Minister’s nightcap with a
visiting American trade delegation wound up. Ogawa was Japan’s long-serving Director, Defence Intelligence Headquarters and since the Dragon Strike war he had been charged with substantively
increasing the human intelligence network inside the centre of power in China.
More than any other power in the region, including the United States, Japan had the ability to feed agents into China’s institutions. But it had been painstaking work and there was still a
long way to go. While Ogawa knew just about every negotiating tactic in advance from the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation (MOFTEC), he had failed to make any headway in the
Second Artillery Regiment, which controlled China’s nuclear weapons programme.
He had, however, thanks to a sickness, had some success within Zhongnanhai. While he was unsure of the value of his intelligence, Ogawa, who was just two years from retirement, felt he should
let the Prime Minister know what he had found out, even if it meant wasting his evening waiting for an audience. The intelligence had come by way of the interpreter of Tang Siju, the Chinese
security chief. Tang’s usual interpreter was off with the flu. The replacement was a spy for the Japanese.
The Americans left noisily, passing through the anteroom, eyeing Ogawa as if he was a janitor waiting to clear up. Then Prime Minister Shigeto Wada greeted him formally and offered him tea.
‘I have information that China authorized the coup in Pakistan and has formed a new military alliance with the new government there,’ began Ogawa.
‘But the two governments have always been strategically close,’ said Wada.
‘The Foreign Minister, Jamie Song, and Tang Siju, of the General Staff Department, have both given their personal backing to General Hamid Khan for specific support during this
crisis.’
He handed Wada a transcript of two separate meetings at which Tang had used Ogawa’s agent as interpreter. One was of the conversation within Zhongnanhai with the Pakistani Ambassador,
Jabbar, and the Defence Attaché, Hussein. The second was in the military General Command Centre in the Western Hills just outside Beijing. Hussein and Jabbar were with Tang, being consulted
on moving extra troops towards the Indian border.
‘In order to both threaten and humiliate,’ said Jabbar, ‘I suggest you concentrate your area of attack on the Thag La Ridge, as you did for the 1962 war.’
Prime Minister’s Office, South Block, Delhi, India
Local time: 2130 Thursday 3 May 2007
GMT: 1600 Thursday 3 May 2007
‘We are facing
a scenario which only our doomsday soothsayers would have forecast,’ said Hari Dixit. ‘A military strongman has taken power in Pakistan
on an Islamic Kashmir ticket and China is pouring troops towards our border in a way that is reminiscent of our humiliating war in 1962.’
The Indian press had not yet had time to advise on how Hari Dixit should handle Hamid Khan, but they had had a field day with China’s attack on the Tibetan government-in-exile and Major
Choedrak’s mission into Lhasa. The daring and bravery of the men involved was heralded as if it was a new era of Indian nationalism, and it was conveniently forgotten that the commandos and
aircrew were, to a man, Tibetan. The capture of Dehra Dun airbase and the theft of the Antonov-32, the faked flight-plan for the Mi-26, the refuelling in Sikkim and the sheer ingenuity of the
break-out at Drapchi had fired the public’s imagination. As yet, very little was known about what had happened in Lhasa itself. But reports from Dharamsala implied that Togden was still at
large somewhere in Tibet, protected by men from the Special Frontier Force.
The Times of India
, regarded as the voice of the establishment, suggested that Prime Minister Dixit should distance himself from the whole affair. ‘It beggars belief, during a
decade when relations with China have been so difficult, that the government maintained a fighting force of ten thousand Tibetans, stationed them close to the Chinese border and gave them an
environment in which to carry out the sort of operation we have just seen.’
The reaction of other newspapers was not so restrained. The
Hindu
agreed with Dixit’s decision to disband the SFF, but argued that the ‘Drapchi incident and the unforgivable
violent response in Dharamsala by the Chinese should be used to pull the festering border problem of Tibet to the forefront of Sino-Indian relations. Until this problem is solved, very little can
move forward between the two great Asian superpowers . . . and, on the issue of sanctuary, India would be morally obliged to offer Lama Togden a safe home should he survive his present flight from
Chinese-controlled territory.’
The
Pioneer
was among the more jingoistic newspapers. It ran pictures of Major Choedrak and his senior officers with potted stories of their lives, together with intricate military
details about the two aircraft stolen for the mission. Togden himself received a double-page spread and was hailed as a ‘new global voice’ for the Tibetan cause. The paper’s
columnists called on the Indian air force to give air cover for Togden’s escape and for those SFF troops still in India to go in and give him safe passage. ‘China has stolen territory
from India,’ raged the editorial. ‘It represses the people of Tibet. It is an ally of Pakistan which has caused immeasurable suffering to the Indian people, and, most importantly, China
is not a member of the club of democratic governments. In brief, China is the world’s “Enemy Number One”.’