December 28, 1982
Dear President Zia-ul-Haq:
Asalaimo Alaikum.
I am a native-born citizen of the United States and I am a strong supporter of your government, primarily for the following reasons:
You are strongly opposed to Communism. You are in favor of the Islamic legal system and are doing your best to establish the Shariat Code as the law of Pakistan. You have allowed nearly 3,000,000 Afghan refugees who are opposed to Communism a temporary refuge in Pakistan, when no other country would have been willing to accept them. Also, there is freedom, peace prosperity and economic progress in Pakistan as opposed to the toil, strife and political repression which existed previously. Finally, you are the only friend America has got in a sea enemies in that region of the world.
Of the above reasons, perhaps the most important to me is your support for the Afghan refugees. I strongly identify with the Afghan cause and have many friends from Afghanistan. I know from experience that every single Afghan supports you, even though some of your own countrymen do not.
Unfortunately, it is ironic that although I am such a strong supporter of your government, your government is unwittingly not such a strong supporter of me.
Perhaps, by now, even you have heard about my situation. I do not want to go into the details here, because I realize that you will not have time for it. However, the most important facts are as follows:
In February, 1980, I married a young woman in Chitral Khonza Gul. (The word "Khonza" means "Queen" in the Chitrali language, because my wife is a direct descendant of the Royal Family of Chitral.) The middleman who arranged this marriage was a Chitrali person named Aziz-ur-Rehman. In compensation for arranging this marriage, Aziz-ur-Rehman demanded and received an all-expenses paid trip in America. However, after having arrived in America, he made some additional demands. He demanded that I keep him as a permanent guest in my home, that I become his personal servant, that I provide him with a high paying job in an executive capacity, that I support him fully, and that I provide money which he would send to his family in Pakistan.
I met these demands as best I could because I had no choice. Because I could not speak my wife's language well, he had the power to take her away from me any time he wanted, and to prove this he exercised this power many times.
After one year, I was going broke meeting his demands, so I had no choice but to cut him off. He immediately removed my wife from my house and secreted her in an unknown location with some Negro Americans. I then went to Chitral, Pakistan to discuss the situation with the mother and brothers of my wife. They supported me fully but, in the end, they were timid people and were afraid to oppose Aziz-ur-Rehman openly. After unsuccessfully attempting to send the brother of my wife America, I returned to the United States myself. After a strenuous effort, I was able to find out where my wife held, and I started a court case to force Aziz-ur-Rehman and his Negro friends to allow my wife and our then newborn child to return to me. However, these Negroes, all of whom had at some time been to jail, were able to obtain numerous postpone the case. Finally, just when I was on the verge of winning, some Bhutto supporters in America, including especially one Raja Ahsan Aziz, found out about this case and realized they could bring about publicity for themselves and their cause as well money and promote anti-Americanism by exploiting this case. They therefore formed a group known as the "Muslim Committee for Sister Hunza Gul" (they still did not know how to spell my wife's name correctly), fired her court-appointed attorney, and hired a lawyer to their liking. They also collected more than $100,000 in donations, through various newspaper articles which they managed to get published in the United States and Pakistan. All of the newspaper articles in America appeared in disreputable publications such as the New York Daily News, and no reputable newspaper carried this story.
I am enclosing several of these newspaper articles so that you can see for yourself what happened. You will see that in addition to slandering me, they have also slandered the following individuals, some of whom are Pakistanis:
Abdul Ahad Bahar, a professor of Islamic philosophy at the University of Peshawar, who is described as a "religious quack."
The Deputy Commissioner of Chitral, who, it is, said, beat up the mother and father of my Chitrali wife and forced them to give me $900.
The Pakistan Vice Consul in New York City, Iqbal A. Khan, who refused to accede to the demand by Aziz-ur-Rehman that my then six months pregnant wife be forcibly returned to Chitral at the expense of the government of Pakistan.
Interestingly, Iqbal Ahmed Khan is by no means my friend. He has been making trouble for me since 1978 when he was stationed in Islamabad, because it was due to his actions that I was not able to bring my original Chitrali wife, from Moroy, Chitral, to the United States along with her brother. Had I received even some very limited cooperation from Iqbal A. Khan, this entire matter involving Khonza Gul could easily have been resolved without any court action or newspaper publicity. All that I wanted him to do was to arrange a meeting between me and my wife which he easily could have done, but he refused.
You will also notice how cleverly these newspaper articles distort the facts to hide reality. For example, the article from Mag Magazine, published in Karachi, dated April 8-14, 1982, says that there are two persons named Aziz-ur-Rehman. One is the "uncle" in Chitral who arranged the marriage and the second is his "son" in America who, according to the article, just happened to appear on the scene after I supposedly threw Khonza Gul out of the house. In fact, both persons are one and the same but, by splitting them into two personalities, they avoid explaining that the Aziz-ur-Rehman who arranged the marriage also accompanied us on the flight to America and was living with me and my wife all the time that these supposed atrocities were being perpetuated by me. You will also notice that Aziz-ur-Rehman is described as "a respectable man" although he was at least twice in jail in America and eventually was deported at U.S. government expense. Incidentally, the Mag Magazine article plus a long article published in the Daily Jang was actually ghost-written by the wife of Raja Ahsan Aziz, which explains why his activities are described in such glowing terms.
The latest developments are that after Aziz-ur-Rehman was deported, I was able to get a relative of Khonza Gul to come to America and take her back to Chitral at my expense. After Raja Ahsan Aziz realized what had happened and that the Chitrali girl had slipped permanently from his clutches, he became enraged and has been trying to gain revenge against that relative ever since. Iqbal A. Khan also became enraged because he had been planning to have the baby, who is in my custody, sent to Pakistan and had even issued a Pakistan passport for the baby, although the baby is not really a citizen of Pakistan but was born in the United States. Another person who was enraged was a Chitrali in the United States named Sher Malik, who was known as the "Son-of-Bhutto" in Chitral, and who has been trying to use this case as a way to become politically popular in Chitral.
As a result of all this, a number of Pakistanis in the United States have received death threats and have dropped out of sight, including a Pakistani official of the New York City Bureau of Child Welfare and two Chitralis living in New York. The "crime" committed by these people who have been forced to disappear is not that they helped me, but that they did not do more to help the troublemakers who are creating these disturbances. I have also received death threats from Raja Ahsan Aziz, from Sher Malik, and from their cohorts. Enclosed are copies of two murder threats I have received from "BMUMO", the Black Muslim Underground Militant Organization. These death threats are being investigated by the FBI. Notice that the first of the two letters also threatens the murder of the "involved" Pakistanis.
It should be obvious that this situation has escalated out of control and even threatens the good relations between the United States and Pakistan, which is exactly what these Bhutto supporters want. More than that, this situation will continue to escalate unless and until your government takes steps to control it. I therefore recommend that the following steps he taken.
1. First and foremost, my wife should be allowed to return to me, so that she can care for our child. This seems simple but actually it is the very thing which Aziz-ur-Rehman, Sher Malik and Raja Ahsan Aziz have been devoting their full efforts to prevent. Unless these three individuals can somehow be controlled, my wife will not be free to act according to her own wishes.
2. I should be allowed to come to Chitral under police protection to take my wife from there. I have no desire to take my wife from Chitral if she is not willing to go. However, the letters I have received from Chitral indicate that she is willing to return to her life with me in America. In fact, she was happily living with me all along, but left my house when she was tricked or forced by Aziz-ur-Rehman into doing so.
Notice that these measures are strictly in accordance with Islamic law. Khonza Gul is my wife, and will remain so. However, I have heard from many sources that Aziz-ur-Rehman, who is in Chitral, claims that she is not my wife and therefore is trying to force her to marry another man of his choosing, clearly in violation of Islamic rules. If this is true, then it goes without saying that Aziz-ur-Rehman should be punished accordingly.
Very Truly Yours,
Ismail Sloan