Khan found the Deputy Chief of Air Staff at the huge Sarghoda airbase in the centre of the country, mixing with the F-16A pilots of No. 9 Squadron. ‘The Prime Minister has called an emergency session of Parliament,’ said Khan. ‘We expect him to order our withdrawal from the Kashmir front.’
‘To save his own bloody cronies and US dollar accounts,’ replied Air Marshal Yasin Kalapur, a former fighter pilot. ‘I bet his bloody wife’s nagging him about not being allowed to the London sales any more. Good luck, General.’
Khan got Masood to call up a map of Pakistan on the computer screen in his office. He watched as Masood used green to colour in sections of the armed services upon which he could count. In Pakistan, the army controlled almost all military power. Technically, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was his senior, but that role was adviser to the Prime Minister. Hamid had a line of command. The Chairman did not.
Hamid had spoken to three of the army’s nine corps commanders. The air force would hesitate, but the Deputy Chief of Air Staff would bring it into line. The navy, less important in the first hours, was on board. He anticipated confrontation in Rawalpindi because it was the headquarters of many different sections of the military. He did not rule out exchanges of fire and casualties. But the cantonments around Chaklala were Khan’s home turf and within twenty-four hours he expected that the trouble would be over. He shaded in neutral grey the corps commanders he had not contacted at Mangla, Gujranwala and Bahawalpur, and he marked two areas in hostile red, Quetta and Peshawar, both near the Afghan border and both corps commanded by men who supported the civilian administration.
Khan turned to Masood. ‘What time will all cabinet members actually be in the Parliament building?’ he asked.
‘At sixteen hundred, sir.’
Khan closed the country map and brought a city plan up onto the screen. He examined the images from the surveillance cameras around the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, the Supreme Court Building and Parliament House, gleaming modern buildings with landscaped lawns, sprinklers and balustrade driveways. Unlike the monuments to modern government in New Delhi, the architectural symbols of Islamabad had not been built by the departing colonial power. They were the creation of corrupt leader after corrupt leader. While citizens scraped for food and soldiers fought in the mountains of Kashmir, the country’s leaders lavished money on buildings no Pakistani needed. Khan loathed the ruling oligarchies with their foreign education, property and bank accounts. But he also loathed what seemed to be the only alternative: Islamic revolution and the repressive fanaticism which he had seen in Afghanistan and Iran.
Constitution Avenue, Islamabad, Pakistan
Hamid Khan arrived for his meeting with the Prime Minister wearing full battle dress and travelling in an armoured personnel carrier. He led a column of ten M113 tracked vehicles down Constitution Avenue to the Parliament building, from X Corps’s 11 Brigade, the unit responsible for security in the capital. The column broke into the administrative nucleus of Pakistan, throwing a military cordon of roadblocks around it, sealing off the heart of the capital with a ring of battle-ready armour. Troops took up positions with heavy machine guns. Khan ordered an APC every 200 metres and a main battle tank at the junctions.
The cordon ran right along Ataturk Avenue Ramna 5, north through Ataturk Shalimar 5. Two T-59 tanks blocked the junction with Kyayaban-e-Iqbal, then the cordon of APCs ran around the back of the Prime Minister’s official residence, joining the narrow Nurpur Road and Fourth Avenue right down to the start of the diplomatic enclave, where Khan deployed another tank. Infantrymen with bayonets fixed to their G3 rifles were positioned as a human barrier between the armoured vehicles.
He avoided going into the diplomatic enclave itself and ran the cordon west along Isfahani Road, past the Australian, French, Japanese and Egyptian Embassies until it got to Khayaban-e-Suhrawardy. Troops moved into the main government buildings. Parliament House, the Cabinet Offices, the telephone exchange, the state-run television and radio complex and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs all fell within Khan’s cordon. The most substantive roadblock was across the highway into Islamabad from Rawalpindi where four T-59 tanks, their 105mm gun barrels horizontal, were parked across the road. An infantry battalion and two Huey Cobra helicopters were positioned behind them, with pilots ready in the cockpit.
Khan turned his 12.7mm machine gun towards the Parliament building. Commandos of the elite Cherat Special Services Group jumped out of the APCs and rushed in to reinforce troops who had just secured the building and its grounds. Not a shot was fired. Not an order was shouted.
The strange quiet which had suddenly enveloped the government buildings was broken by the roar of six F-16 fighters, screaming in at less than 500 feet from their base in Sarghoda. The pilots dipped their wings, circled and flew back again before heading north towards the Muree Hills.
Khan jumped down from his APC. He strode into Parliament House. Commandos, led by Masood, covered him from behind as if breaking cover on the front. He threw open the double doors to the Parliament chamber and walked to the front, his men covering every terrified member with their small-arms, then spreading right round the chamber and taking positions against the walls. Their machine pistols had full magazines, but no bullets in the breech, to prevent any soldier becoming trigger-happy. Khan himself was unarmed.
‘Sit down, everybody. Sit down,’ shouted Masood in both Urdu and English. ‘Don’t panic. This is a military takeover. We apologize for any inconvenience caused. You are requested to stay calm, stay down and listen to what we have to tell you.’
Khan mounted the steps to where the Speaker sat and turned to face the Parliament chamber: ‘Mr Prime Minister, please lead your cabinet team down to the exit door at the right of the chamber,’ he said. ‘Parliamentary staff, please assist my men in their job and do not attempt to resist. The remainder of the members must stay in their seats. Mr Prime Minister, will you lead your team. Now.’
The Prime Minister had to be yanked out of his seat by his right arm. He was paralysed more by shock than any desire to resist. Other members shuffled in an obedient line towards the exit. Only one, a Deputy Finance Minister, shouted in English: ‘This is a disgrace. I warn you, you will never get away with it.’ He was wrong. Fifteen minutes later, he was begging for his life.
With the cabinet held at gunpoint in the lobby area outside, Khan turned his attention back to the members. ‘I have taken over government, not for power or personal gain, but to save our country from bloodshed,’ he said. ‘Outside this lavish building, ordinary people are living difficult lives. You, the ruling classes, have let them down. When a citizen comes into contact with the government he faces indifference and extortion. And when they march on Parliament to complain, the Prime Minister commands my troops to shoot them with live ammunition.
‘No longer are Pakistani soldiers going to protect the ruling classes by killing Pakistani people. This afternoon, the government of Pakistan was the enemy of the people. As from this moment it will be their friend.
‘The educated youth believe that the solution to our problem lies with Islam, not in the ritual sense of beards, bombs and Jihad, but in the faith, discipline and loyalty which the religion brings to people all over the world. Those are the guiding principles of military life. They will now become the guiding principle of our whole country.’