Author: Manoj Joshi
Publication: The Times of India
Date: January 17, 2002
A little over three months after
an as-yet-unexplained fire gutted a portion of the Pakistan army headquarters
in Rawalpindi, housing records relating to the army's involvement with
the Taliban, a major blaze razed Islamabad's 16-storey Shaheed-e-Millat
secretariat late on Tuesday.
The secretariat housed a number
of government departments, including the interior ministry. Several confidential
records of religious and jehadi organisations were reportedly kept in the
16th floor of the building.
As with the first incident, the
timing of Tuesday's fire too is significant. While the army headquarters
blaze came just about a day after Gen Pervez Musharraf threw in his lot
with the U.S., the interior ministry incident has come less than a week
after Gen Musharraf banned several sectarian organisations and declared
his intention to fight the jehadis. Incidentally, Gen Musharraf has repeatedly
refused to acknowledge the role of the Pakistani authorities in creating
and sustaining terrorist organisations.
After the Rawalpindi fire, the Pakistan
government had issued a succinct statement, saying a short-circuit in a
paper and stationery store in the premises of the headquarters had resulted
in the fire breaking out at about 4 a.m. However, Indian intelligence officials
pointed out that the fire, which raged for five hours, had in fact been
located at the administration and training directorates, containing files
relating to its involvement in Afghanistan.
Suggesting that the interior ministry
office might have contained vital files providing information about the
relationship between Pakistan government agencies and many of the banned
organisations, an intelligence official said, "Many of the religious and
fundamentalist groups were initially set up by the army to keep the civilian
governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif off balance. In the current
context, such records can prove embarrassing. With the two fires, most
of the significant records of this dark chapter of Pakistani history may
have been eliminated."
Tuesday's fire reportedly broke
out at about 6.10 P.m. (PST), more than three hours after the offices closed
for the day. Although the cause was not immediately known, the police suspect
that it might have been started by an electrical fault. The Shaheed-e-Millat
secretariat, situated about a kilometre from President House, housed the
offices of the interior, local government, education, food and agriculture,
science and technology and water and power division ministries. The fire
reportedly has turned into ashes the records of most of the ministries
and departments.
According to reports from Islamabad,
the blaze began in the higher floors, but quickly spread to the lower ones.
Although most Pakistani papers reported that the exact cause of the fire
could not be ascertained as nobody had been able to reach the top, they
quoted police officials as saying that there might have been a short-circuit
or someone might have left a gas heater on.
The police has ordered an investigation
to ascertain the cause of the fire as sabotage has not been ruled out.
Interior minister Moinuddin Haider has been supervising the fire-fighting
efforts.
The blaze was so intense that at
one stage fire department officials had sought the assistance of army helicopters
as the lone snorkel of the fire engine could not reach the 16th floor of
the building. By the time, the blaze was brought under control by the 100-odd
firemen, some of them brought from nearby Rawalpindi, it had destroyed
13 floors.