The end came on Blood Street in Amsterdam’s seedy Red Light District, delivered by a hitman who put four bullets into the face of the ageing mafia patriarch and three more through his heart. For a generation, Ibrahim Abdalla Akasha had ruled a criminal empire that stretched across the western Indian Ocean, running heroin and marijuana from Pakistan through Kenya into Europe. Life sometimes mimics movies: Egyptian-born Gazi Hayat, beloved second wife of the drug king, cradled him in her arms as his blood pooled on the sidewalk.

Late last month, Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif, an Imran Khan supporter, was shot dead on a deserted dirt road outside Nairobi in still-unexplained circumstances—an execution engineered by his friends to end his ongoing investigation of corruption at the highest levels of Pakistan’s military.

Authoritative voices are supporting these allegations. The former commander of Pakistan’s elite I Strike Corps, Lieutenant General Tariq Khan, wrote that the killing was carried out by an “unscrupulous, insignificant hired hand”. The killer, he asserted, acted “at the behest of those patriots who would rather kill than be exposed”.

Twenty-two years apart, the murders of the mafioso and the journalist are tied together by one common thread: The strange story of how the Generals who ran the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) worked together with Afghan and Pakistani drug cartels to raise funds for global jihadists—and to enrich themselves.

The ISI’s heroin empire

Even though it engaged in the unglamorous business of trading rice, Magnum Africa Limited protected its privacy like an offshore bank. The company registration records bore just a post-office box number, and the column for the nationality of the directors had been left blank. The owner, Anwar Muhammad, held a Pakistani passport, but that wasn’t his name or nationality. Magnum Africa’s owner was Munaf Halari, sought by authorities for providing three vehicles used in the Mumbai bombings of 1993, which claimed 257 lives.

Following the bombings, the Gujarat Police alleges, Halari relocated to Kenya with a passport provided by ganglord Ibrahim ‘Tiger’ Memon with the help of……

To read full article:

https://theprint.in/opinion/security-code/behind-killing-of-arshad-sharif-lies-isis-deepest-secret-an-empire-of-heroin-in-east-africa/1192567/