Pakistani Lieutenant General is son of UN-listed terrorist linked to Osama bin Laden

Pakistan’s military narrative on the India-Pakistan conflict is being shaped by a man whose own bloodline is steeped in terror links. Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the current Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), is the son of Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a declared terrorist and former nuclear scientist who was linked to al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden.

While Chaudhry appears regularly to position Pakistan as a victim of terrorism, the irony is stark. His father was placed on the UN Security Council’s al-Qaida Sanctions Committee list in 2001 for his role in aiding Islamist terror outfits with sensitive nuclear expertise.

Mahmood's trajectory

Mahmood, once a senior figure in Pakistan’s nuclear programme, met Osama bin Laden and Taliban leaders as part of a group named Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN), an outfit that served as a cover for disseminating nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons knowledge to jihadist groups.

A 2009 New York Times Magazine report noted that Mahmood’s “religious intensity, combined with his sympathy for Islamic extremism, scared his colleagues.”

According to the UN committee, Mahmood was listed on December 24, 2001, for "supporting acts or activities of Usama bin Laden, al-Qaida and the Taliban," including “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing or perpetrating” terror activities.

Panic within American agencies over nuclear concerns

The revelations caused panic in the US intelligence community. American agencies were especially alarmed after discovering that Mahmood, described as the brain behind parts of Pakistan’s nuclear program, had directly discussed nuclear weaponisation with al-Qaida operatives.

During a meeting, bin Laden's associate told Mahmood they had nuclear material and wanted guidance on using it, to which he reportedly provided detailed insights on infrastructure and impact.

Mahmood had also collaborated with Abdul Qadeer Khan in Pakistan’s uranium enrichment programme and later worked on plutonium bomb development. His ties to extremist ideology, however, led to his early retirement and eventual arrest in 2001 after documents recovered from UTN outlined plans for kidnappings and nuclear weapon basics.

Despite his father’s notoriety, Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry rose through the ranks of the Pakistan Army and now leads its information warfare efforts, the same institution his father once alarmed with extremist leanings.

(With inputs from Yudhajit Shankar Das)