In an interview with PBS Newshour, Judy Woodruff asked Prime Minister Imran Khan about Pakistan’s alleged military, intelligence, and financial support to Afghanistan.
PM Khan replied, “I find this extremely unfair.”
The premier added that when the Pakistani government decided to join the United States (US) war on terror, “we were devastated by that”. PM said that 70,000 Pakistanis died because of the US war in Afghanistan, even when “Pakistan had nothing to do with what happened” [in New York on September 11, 2001].
Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan at the time, and “there were no militant Taliban in Pakistan,” he said, maintaining that Pakistan was not involved in the 9/11 attacks.
“We had nothing to do with it,” he repeated, regretting that the war in Afghanistan had resulted in a loss of $150 billion to Pakistan’s economy.
PM further added that the US “really messed it up in Afghanistan”.
Judy Woodruff asked PM Imran about claims of Taliban sanctuaries being present in Pakistan and a report about 10,000 fighters crossing the border to help the group in Afghanistan.
“Judy, for a start, this 10,000 Taliban — or as the Afghan government says, Jihadi fighters — have crossed over, is absolute nonsense. Why don’t they give us evidence of this?” asked PM Imran.
To a question about safe-havens, the premier questioned where the sanctuaries are located in Pakistan.
“Taliban are not some military outfit. They are normal civilians. If there are some civilians in these camps, how is Pakistan supposed to hunt these people down? How can you call them sanctuaries?” asked PM Imran.
“First of all, they tried to look for a military solution in Afghanistan when there was never one. And people like me, who know the history of Afghanistan and kept saying there isn’t a military solution, were called anti-American. I was called Taliban Khan,” said PM Imran.
The prime minister further added, “I don’t know what the objective was in Afghanistan, whether there was to have some nation-building, democracy or liberate the women. Whatever the cause was, the way they went about it was never going to be the solution.”
“When they finally decided there is no military solution, unfortunately, the bargaining power of the American or North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) forces had gone,” said the premier.
“Once they had reduced the troops to barely 10,000 and when they gave the exit date, Taliban thought they had won,” said PM Imran. He added that it is difficult right now to ask the group to compromise or “force them” to take a political solution.
“It’s very difficult to force them into a political solution because they [Taliban] think that they won,” said PM Imran.
PM Khan further said, “Pakistan is hosting over three million Afghan refugees. And what we fear is that a protracted civil war would [bring] more refugees. And our economic situation is not such that we can have another influx.”
“Secondly, the worry is that the civil war will flow into Pakistan because Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns. Now there are more Pashtuns on our side of the border than Afghanistan. And so the worry is if this goes on, the Pashtuns on our side will be drawn into it and that is also the last thing we want,” said PM Imran.
