Updated on
Summary Imran Khan says US aid to Pakistan has only fuelled corruption and irregularities in country.
This he said in a interview with a UAE newspaper.Imran addressed Pakistan’s key domestic political concerns, spoke openly about relations with the US, India, China, Afghanistan, the Taliban and the future path Pakistan should take.Q: How would you list priority-wise the key areas that need immediate attention in Pakistan’s socio- economic sectors?A: “Energy is Pakistan’s biggest crisis and affects agriculture and industry and, therefore, employment. Second is governance itself which includes fighting corruption. Then comes education. I feel an education emergency needs to be imposed. Health reforms are also on the same wavelength. Pakistan has to get out of this war to save itself. Even the US is now talking to the Taliban and talking about political settlements, so should Pakistan. We should immediately start a Truth and Reconciliation programme in the tribal areas with all militant groups. The moment you get out of this war, the moment you are no longer perceived to be a puppet of the Americans, you will find this frenzy of fanaticism subsiding. And you have to de-weaponise Pakistan.Do you feel that not doing enough to eradicate militant outfits has been Pakistan’s biggest nemesis?“When Pakistan joined the Afghan jihad and supported these jihadists groups, they should have been disarmed at the end of the Soviet jihad, but they were not. They were instead used as assets, so when we joined the Americans post 9/11 we should have stayed neutral. There was bound to be a problem. The moment you join the ‘American Crusade’, it becomes a contradiction. These groups were brought up on the idea of jihad and now you are preaching the opposite, so suddenly these jihadis became terrorists. If Pakistan had stayed neutral, we would not have had this mess. The moment the Pakistan army went on the side of the Americans, they clashed with the groups they created. This was inherently a contradictory policy that would always breed a double game where not all the security apparatus that had been nurturing them would have considered them terrorists… there would always be those who would have supported them. It was a deeply flawed policy. Pakistanis have paid for the flawed policies of the establishment. It was a disaster for us.”Should Pakistan conduct operations in North Waziristan against the Haqqani network on lines of the US demand?“There is no way we should ever do anything as senseless as waging operations in North Waziristan. Remember there are 350,000 people living there so going after a few hundred of the Haqqani network, you will end up causing massive collateral damage, because that’s what will happen. There are no army positions or tanks they are fighting, these are people living in villages. The fallout will be in cities, suicide attacks, attacks on our security forces, can Pakistan take this? Why are Americans who are now talking to the Taliban asking us to fight them? So surely if there is any leverage Pakistan has with the Haqqani network, that should be used to get them on the table to talk to the Americans rather than to create more enemies.”Can you give us in clear terms the shift in policy in counterterrorism in a PTI government?“End of military operations, end of drone attacks, beginning of dialogue. You can’t go on like this, it is a contradictory policy. You are bombing them and talking about peace. Either you go for a political settlement or bomb them, you can’t do both. The same contradictory policy is going on in Afghanistan. Pakistan military has its limitations, from what I gather. When General Kayani spoke at the All Parties Conference he himself said that we need a political settlement and it is the politicians who have to come up with political settlements.”What should be the power equation between the army and the executive to avoid a tussle as witnessed in the early days of the PPP government?“Let us not talk about the Gilani-Zardari duo because they came under an agreement, they did not come through a free and fair election. They came through an agreement called the NRO, one of those black laws no civilised society would ever pass. Over 8,000 people had corruption cases of a trillion rupees waived off, and not just waived off, but crucially they were allowed to contest elections and come to power. It was a criminal take over of Pakistan.. Asif Zardari then controlled these criminals by bribing them, the stick and carrot method, he would show them corruption cases and at same time give them what they wanted in terms of patronage etc. So the 2008 election brought in this loot and plunder of Pakistan. That’s why the Americans wanted Zardari. If you read Condolezza Rice’s book, she states that clearly. She got the NRO signed between Musharraf and Benazir because the Americans wanted a “moderate opposition”, moderate for them means stooges. You need a better democracy to defeat this democracy.”You have been criticised for your alleged “soft spot for the Taliban”. What is your response to this?“Reason why there is this perception about the soft spot for the Taliban is that Pakistan got divided into two camps, one pro-military operations, one against military operations. Anyone in the anti-military operation was considered to be soft on the Taliban…not realising that some of us knew the history of the tribal areas, knew Afghan history, we were speaking from experience. We knew these operations would start a cycle of revenge and it led to the emergence of the Taliban in Pakistan. There were no militant Taliban in Pakistan when Taliban were in power in Afghanistan, at that time there was no Talibanisation in the tribal areas. It was the military operations that started this and so people like us who opposed it were labelled for having a soft spot for the Taliban. Today 40,000 Pakistani troops are stuck in the tribal areas. According to the government, Pakistan has lost $50 billion in military operations in war-related expenses so we need to end this war at home.Do you think Pakistan should stop taking US aid?“Of course, Pakistan should stop taking US aid, not only has it made us a nation of beggars, we have lost our self-respect and esteem. And what has aid has done so far? It has only fed corruption. Aid has stopped us from making the reforms needed to restructure Pakistan and to make it into a country that can stand on its feet. If we did not take aid, we would have been forced to balance our budget and to do that we would have had to reform our tax structure and cut our expenditures. In fact, all it did was it went to the lavish lifestyles of the ruling elite. There is more poverty than ever before, so aid is a curse for any society. Finally we should stand on our own feet, we should have a relationship with the US as it has with India which is people-to-people with the Indian democracy. These last 10 years should have told us we should never ever be dependent on anyone, never should we take money from someone to fight their war and lie to our people that it’s our war.”What is your assessment of Pakistan’s foreign policy vis-à-vis China, India and Afghanistan?Pakistan should look to develop its relations with China even more. It is the only country with cash surplus. Pakistan needs heavy investments in power generation, if we put our house in order, we can get investments from China and overseas Pakistanis, the two sources of future investments of Pakistan.We should have a completely new relationship with India. We should not put the Kashmir issue on the backburner, it should be brought to the table but it should be a political settlement, and there must be an end to this suspicion, militancy and, backing groups. There should be a new relationship, instead of us blaming India for Balochistan and India blaming us for terrorism there, it should be based on trust. You need strong leadership, it’s in the interest of both countries, to have peace now and move forward.You need a new relationship with Afghanistan, that’s why you need a credible government in Pakistan that takes responsibility. No government should be saying that, look I can’t do anything because the army is not allowing me, the government should take responsibility, if the people have given it a mandate, it should be responsible for foreign policy and all policies.Our relationship with Afghanistan will be determined with how we deal with India. If we can have a decent relationship with India, it will open many venues for us. It will stop this mad arms race, allow us to concentrate on our people and we will discuss issues on the table. There is no need for strategic depth in Afghanistan when we will have a proper relationship with Afghanistan — people to people. And Afghanistan needs us and we don’t need any hostility with Afghanistan. Eventually we should have opened borders with Afghanistan. Once the root causes of conflict disappear, the security needs disappear. I perceive some European Union type relationship with Afghanistan because we are connected anyways
