What happened at OJHRI CAMP in Rawalpindi in 1988.

“Ojhri” is the beef stomach which is cooked in the form of a very spicy and delicious curry in Pakistan and India. The prepared dish looks like this (see image below). However this ‘Ojhri’ camp we are talking about was an ammunition depot in Pakistan.

The famous beef OJHRI curry in Pakistan.

In 1988 Pakistan was in the cruel, corrupt, zealous and extremist iron fist of a military dictator, General Zia ul Haq who came to power after sacking the elected prime minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. He later hanged him through a very dubious court proceedings and it has since been termed as the ‘judicial murder’ of Z. A. Bhutto. This was another dark period of military rule in Pakistan. A time when the military rulers danced to American tunes. This was not the era of ‘Enlightened Moderation’, but that of militant jihad-ism acceptable to the Americans. This was the era of General Zia’s Raj. This was a time when Pakistan was once again a ‘Front Line state’ and the West, particularly America and its allies were supporting the Mujahidin groups, and when of course Osama Bin Laden America’s most favorite freedom fighter was leading the Western inspired Jihad against the Soviets. Hundreds of millions of dollars were given to the Pakistani military to manage the Jihad in Afghanistan, and hundreds of millions of dollars were also spent on providing weapons and logistical support for the Mujahid groups through Pakistan. Who then were of course the sacred, adored, Mujahedeen or ‘freedom fighters’ and NOT the terrorists (as they are hatefully called today by America).

On April 10, 1988, over one million citizens of the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad faced and feared death after that blast. A blast in the ammunition depot of Ojhri camp wrecked havoc as shells and rockets of various shapes and sizes started raining over a radius of ten miles. Thousands perished and many more were wounded.

The weapons stored at OJHRI camp were sent mainly by Americana, but also, by other allies of the US, including Britain. They were shipped to Karachi and from there taken towards North of Pakistan where vicinity of Afghan border was the biggest consideration in storing them. One of the biggest central dumps was Ojhri. This dump was directly controlled by the ISI. It was an open secret that the ISI was not even answerable to the GHQ in Rawalpindi, but directly to General Zia himself.

Ziaul Haq who ordered the explosion at Ojhri camp, Rawalpindi.

Martyred daughter of a martyred leader: Benazir Bhutto shaheed whom shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto loved and mentored.

One of the most important political fall out of this incidence was sacking of the then prime minister Mohammad Khan Junejo, a handpicked, docile politician from Sindh; by General Zia himself. The government of prime minister Muhammad Khan Junejo, installed by General Zia, was dismissed shortly after the Ojhri camp blasts and the newspapers said that an inquiry report by Junejo’s government was the reason for the dismissal.

The first reaction of many citizens was that India had attacked Pakistan. This was during the height of the Afghan conflict, with Pakistan about to sign the Geneva accords four days later. Others argued that the Soviets had attacked Pakistan to teach her a lesson. Two committees were formed by the government to look into the affair. The first was the military committee headed by a serving General. This committee’s findings and recommendations were ignored since it called for the removal of General Zia’s right hand man, General Akhtar Abdul Rehman, along with other senior military officials. Its report, presented within one week of the incident, was rejected. Another more interesting committee was the one set up by prime minister Muhammad Khan Junejo.This was a political committee headed by a Cabinet minister and comprised of four federal ministers. Controversy surrounded the findings of this committee. The members could not reach a consensus on who was responsible for the Ojhri tragedy. In his remarks, the head of the committee, Aslam Khattak concluded, `No one was responsible. It was an act of Allah.’

In this incident, Khaqan Abbasi, the father of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, was also hit by a missile. He was a close associate of General Ziaul Haq and a retired Air Commodore. He defeated PML-N chairman Raja Muhammad Zafarul Haq in the 1985 non-party elections. Khaqan Abbasi was in the post of Federal Minister of Production at that time.

At the time of the Ojhri camp disaster, he was traveling in a car with his son Zahid Khaqan Abbasi on Murree Road. Suddenly, a missile hit his car, which killed him on the spot. While Zahid Khaqan Abbasi went into unconsciousness and then after seventeen years of living in unconsciousness, in 2005, he also died.

At 12 o’clock on the day of the tragedy, Radio Pakistan reported that a fire had broken out in an arms depot. And, it had been brought under control. Moreover, it appealed to the public for patience. The common impression among people about this tragedy was that the weapons lying there caught fire and started exploding. Only a few people know that there was very little capacity to store weapons in this depot.

According to an estimate, the arms of one regiment could be kept in this depot, but there were more arms than the capacity. The second reason was that there were three armories in this depot and there was also a basement. The fire spread through the first and second depots to the basement. Depot contained not only rockets, projectiles, and missiles, but also a stockpile of white sulfur. So, it would have been more dangerous to pour water on it.

News clipping found on October 2017:

A Mirza Imran Ahsan Karim wrote in the Express Tribune, Pakistan, about the eventful day and here is his narration:

Twenty-five years ago, on April 10, 1988, we were sitting in a classroom at Islamabad Model School, F-7/3, when we heard a loud blast. The blast shattered several windows of the school building and we were immediately evacuated. A huge mushroom cloud appeared over the horizon far off in the rough direction of Rawalpindi, a couple of dozen kilometres away. Our biology teacher, Mr Abdus Sami, a very intelligent person, saw this and told us that most likely a known weapons depot in Rawalpindi had exploded at Ojhri Camp. This was quite a remarkable guess as everyone else was talking about the possibility of some sort of an attack by India or even the Soviet Union.

Later that day, we heard stories of missiles flying all over the twin cities. Newspapers and the television reported that nearly 300,000 rockets and some kind of self-igniting phosphorus-fuelled missile had launched by themselves after a massive explosion, in which hundreds of trucks at the Ojhri Camp site were decimated. It was a one of a kind event during the last days of General Ziaul Haq’s rule. The then prime minister, Muhammad Khan Junejo, subtly blamed General Zia for this tragedy, something which contributed to his government’s dismissal soon after.

My father, who worked at a Rawalpindi college at the time, returned home that afternoon carrying a couple of spent rockets and a small missile. We still have the missile in our house as a souvenir.

In the incident at Ojhri Camp, hundreds of people must have perished but due to the dictatorial regime we were living under at the time, we only knew what PTV told us — with the truth about the purpose of having such a huge weapons depot inside a major city being kept a secret. The missiles destroyed property all across the twin cities. People were given inadequate compensation for the damages; for instance, a person whose roof had partially collapsed in our neighborhood in G-9/1 was offered Rs38 as compensation.

The culture of shoving everything that implicates the establishment in displaying incompetency under the carpet is still prevalent. We have a long way to go to change this culture. I expected that our free media would have covered some aspects of this dreadful event on its 25^th anniversary and throw light on the lessons learnt but I have not seen any significant coverage regarding the event.

Mirza Imran Ahsan Karim

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2013.