Pakistan's A-bomb bank

Iqbal Chand Malhotra’s thoroughly researched book—The Bomb, the Bank, the Mullah and the Poppies—has laid bare the agenda of Pakistan’s ‘deep state’ and the murky world of how money was acquired from the heads of States and billionaires.

- MAROOF RAZA

It also explains the CIA’s links with drug dealers in Latin America, and how Pakistan’s generals garnered profits from Afghanistan’s poppy plantations. Add to this heady cocktail of pro-Pakistan characters like the Arab sheikhs—especially of Saudi Arabia and the UAE—all of whom gladly funded Pakistan’s quest for an Islamic nuclear bomb.

It all began with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s desire—after the humiliation of Pakistan’s defeat by India in the 1971 war—to acquire an atomic weapon to counter future Indian aggression. Bhutto laid the foundation for a team that would include nuclear experts like A.Q. Khan, and which would raise the money to fund Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions. Thus they created the BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International) which, at one stage, became the fastest growing bank in the world; it had branches in Colombia, Luxembourg, London and, of course, Pakistan.