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- <text id=89TT1483>
- <title>
- June 05, 1989: World Notes:Pakistan
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- June 05, 1989 People Power:Beijing-Moscow
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 33
- World Notes
- PAKISTAN
- Bhutto Gets Tough
- </hdr><body>
- <p> When she was elected to power last year, many wondered
- whether Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto would dare confront the
- nation's military establishment. Last week she did so, ordering
- the transfer of Hamid Gul, 52, the powerful head of the ISI,
- Pakistan's military-intelligence agency. A protege of the late
- President Zia ul-Haq, Gul has wielded enormous power ever since
- his appointment in 1987. Besides keeping tabs on Zia's political
- foes, including the Bhutto family, the ISI also distributed
- foreign money and arms to the mujahedin rebels fighting the
- Soviet-backed Najibullah regime in Afghanistan.
- </p>
- <p> In addition to mutual distrust, Bhutto has valid reasons to
- sideline the intelligence chief. An ISI-orchestrated attack by
- Afghan rebels on Jalalabad, has degenerated into a protracted
- struggle and a propaganda victory for Najibullah. Bhutto was
- particularly enraged by what appeared to be ISI disinformation
- blaming her for the mess. Gul has also defied Bhutto by openly
- siding with the fundamentalists among the mujahedin. Bhutto has
- called the ISI's emphasis on a mujahedin military victory a
- "fundamental mistake." Gul's exit opens the way for a more
- flexible approach to helping resolve the Afghan war.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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