increased, with classified projects at Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and Kahuta Research Laboratories. Bhutto also funded the classified military science and engineering projects entrusted and led by Lieutenant-General Zahid Ali Akbar of the Pakistan Army Corps of Engineers. The US lifted its arms embargo in 1975 and once again became a major source for military hardware, but by then Pakistan had become heavily dependent on China as an arms supplier. Heavy spending on defence re-energized the Army, which had sunk to its lowest morale following the debacle of the 1971 war. The high defence expenditure took money from other development projects such as education, health care and housing. Baloch nationalist uprisings The Baloch rebellion of the 1970s was the most-threatening civil disorder to Pakistan since Bangladesh's secession. The Pakistan Armed Forces wanted to establish military garrisons in Balochistan Province, which at that time was quite lawless and run by tribal justice. The ethnic Balochis saw this as a violation of their territorial rights. Emboldened by the stand taken by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1971, the Baloch and Pashtun nationalists had also demanded their "provincial rights" from then-Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in exchange for a consensual approval of the Pakistan Constitution of 1973. But while Bhutto admitted the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan to a NAP-JUI coalition, he refused to negotiate with the provincial governments led by chief minister Ataullah Mengal in Quetta and Mufti Mahmud in Peshawar. Tensions erupted and an armed resistance began to take place. Surveying the political instability, Bhutto's central government sacked two provincial governments within six months, arrested the two chief ministers, two governors and forty-four MNAs and MPAs, obtained an order from the Supreme Court banning the NAP and charged them all with high treason, to be tried by a specially constituted Hyderabad Tribunal of handpicked judges. In time, the Baloch nationalist insurgency erupted and sucked the armed forces into the province, pitting the Baloch tribal middle classes against Islamabad. The sporadic fighting between the insurgency and the army started in 1973 with the largest confrontation taking place in September 1974 when around 15,000 Balochs fought the Pakistan Army, Navy and the Air Force. Following the successful recovery of ammunition in the Iraqi embassy, shipped by both Iraq and Soviet Union for the Baluchistan resistance, Naval Intelligence launched an investigation and cited that arms were smuggled from the coastal areas of Balochistan.