Lieutenant General Ahmed Shareef Chaudhry, the Director General of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR, the Media and Public Relations wing of the Pakistani Armed Forces), has a close relation with Osama bin Laden, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and Jinn (or Djinn, supernatural, as well as unseen, beings created from smokeless fire, similar to humans in many ways, including having free will and the ability to choose between good and evil, as per the Islamic tradition), thanks to his father Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood! Lieutenant General Chaudhry has been repeatedly issuing statements to the Pakistani media regarding the recent India-Pakistan conflict since India carried out Operation Sindoor on May 7. With this, he and his family have come under the scanner of India.

Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood (born in 1940 in the northern Indian city of Amritsar), a prominent nuclear technologist of Pakistan and a scholar in Islamic Studies, reportedly maintains a close connection to various terrorist organisations, including al-Qaeda. After enjoying a distinguished career in the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), he founded the Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN) in 1999, a right-wing organisation that was banned and sanctioned by the US in 2001. Mahmood was among those who were listed, as well as sanctioned, by the al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee in December 2001. He was also sanctioned as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, with an address listing of the al-Qaeda Wazir Akbar Khan safe house in Kabul. The UN alleged that he met bin Laden in August 2001, just before 9/11!

After completing his studies in Britain, Mahmood joined the PAEC in 1968. He played a crucial role in building Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure, nuclear arsenal and reactors to produce plutonium-based weapons. In their 2008 publication ‘The Man from Pakistan: The True Story of the World’s Most Dangerous Nuclear Smuggler‘, journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins mentioned that Mahmood viewed Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal as belonging to the Ummah, the global Islamic community. Once, the New York Times reported that he also believed “it (the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan) should be used as a means of collective defence and protection for Muslims worldwide“. According to Mahmood, the Islamic nations should share nuclear weapons with each other to combat the Western powers.

It may be noted that Mahmood received the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, the third-highest civilian award of Pakistan, from Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, way back in 1998. Later, he became a fierce critic of Sharif. The post-retirement (from PAEC) activities of Mahmood became a serious concern for intelligence agencies of several Western countries in 1999. Interestingly, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI, the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan), too, started monitoring his activities.

The UTN, jointly founded by Mahmood and prominent Pakistani Islamic scholar Dr Israr Ahmed (1932-2010), was active in Afghanistan in the first decade of the 21st Century. This right-wing organisation built various infrastructures, including schools, in devastated Kandahar and also helped the top Taliban leadership in different ways. Later, the US and Pakistani intelligence agencies came to know that Mahmood and Dr Ahmed founded the UTN mainly to communicate with various terrorist networks, apart from providing them with necessary support. Constructing school buildings was just an eyewash.

According to the UN, Mahmood might have played a role in the infamous 9/11 terror attacks in New York. However, there is no concrete evidence against him. In a report, the UN mentioned that Mahmood, the former Director General of the PAEC, met bin Laden in Kandahar in August 2001. Mahmood’s colleague Chaudhry Abdul Majeed, a Pakistani nuclear chemist and an expert in nuclear weapons and reactor, was also present in that meeting. It is believed that bin Laden and Mahmood discussed nuclear weapons, apart from exchanging designs of such weapons, during their meeting. Later, the ISI detained Mahmood for interrogation, but released him due to lack of evidence. The Pakistani intelligence agency claimed that Mahmood did not possess the technical knowledge to pass on nuclear weapons secrets to al-Qaeda.

The Western intelligence agencies have been keeping an eye on Mahmood for a long time. Some news agencies have reported that he is hiding in Islamabad. Mahmood has penned a number of books on the relationship between Islam and science. Interestingly, one can find explicit references to the jinn in his works. He has repeatedly mentioned that humans would have to seek help from the jinn to solve the global energy crisis! “I think that if we develop our souls, we can develop communication with them,” Mahmood said about jinn during an interview to The Wall Street Journal in 1998. He stressed: “Every new idea has its opponents. But there is no reason for this controversy over Islam and science because there is no conflict between Islam and science.“

Meanwhile, his son Lieutenant General Ahmed Shareef Chaudhry started his career as a trained Army official. He has served in various departments of the Pakistani Armed Forces, including the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DESTO). The US imposed sanctions on the DESTO after Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in May 1998. However, the ban was lifted after 9/11 as Washington DC decided to use the Pakistani air bases to counter terrorism in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Like Lieutenant General Chaudhry and his father, several top officials of the Pakistani Armed Forces allegedly maintain close ties with various terrorist outfits.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das