Security & defenceThe Afghan decade
Ojhri camp explodes between Rawalpindi and Islamabad
A huge blast at an ammunition depot used to supply the Afghan resistance rained rockets and shells on Pakistan’s twin cities, and its political aftershocks helped bring down the prime minister.
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Ojhri camp, April 1988
between Rawalpindi and Islamabad
33° 38′ N · 73° 04′ E
Ojhri camp, April 1988
between Rawalpindi and Islamabad
33° 38′ N · 73° 04′ E
Background
Ojhri camp, a military storage site on the edge of Rawalpindi close to Islamabad, was used as a depot for weapons and ammunition passing through Pakistan to the Afghan mujahideen. Its location in a densely populated area had long been a concern1.
What happened
On the morning of 10 April 1988 the depot exploded. Rockets, missiles and shells were thrown across Rawalpindi and Islamabad, killing more than a hundred men, women and children and wounding many more2,3. Many Pakistanis believe the true toll was higher. Reports at the time raised questions about sabotage as well as about why so much ordnance had been stored so close to the capital1.
The inquiries
Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo set up two inquiries: a military committee headed by Lieutenant-General Imranullah Khan, the Rawalpindi corps commander, and a parliamentary committee headed by Aslam Khattak4. The military committee submitted a report that declared the explosion an accident; the parliamentary inquiry ended with Junejo’s government4. On 29 May 1988 President Zia dismissed Junejo and dissolved the National Assembly2. The official charge was failure to implement Islamic reforms, but many accounts link the dismissal to tensions over the Ojhri inquiry and over Junejo’s independent line on the Geneva negotiations2,4.
Why it mattered for the United States
The depot held arms supplied under the US-backed covert programme, and the disaster exposed, in the most public way, the scale of the Afghan pipeline running through Pakistan’s cities. It came four days before the signing of the Geneva Accords, at a moment when Washington and Islamabad were committed to continuing support to the resistance after the Soviet withdrawal began1. Questions about responsibility for the explosion, and about what was lost in it, remained unresolved and politically sensitive in Pakistan for years afterwards.
Sources
- Pakistan sorts out debris of blast. Questions linger on sabotage, siting of munitions dump, The Christian Science Monitor, 14 April 1988 · Press
- Dawn report on the Ojhri camp disaster and Junejo’s dismissal, Dawn · Press
- Dawn retrospective on Ojhri camp, Dawn · Press
- Dawn report on the Ojhri inquiries, Dawn · Press
Next in The Long ArcThe Geneva Accords set the Soviet exit
