China supports Pakistan against Trump’s tweet (continued)
The National Security Committee (NSC)
An official statement issued after a meeting of the National Security Committee (NSC), chaired by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, said Tuesday:
The participants of the meeting noted that over the past several years, Pakistan’s counterterrorism campaign had served as a bulwark against the possible expansion of scores of terrorist organisations currently present in Afghanistan — a fact acknowledged by US authorities at the highest levels.
Most of these terrorists have repeatedly launched cross-border attacks against innocent Pakistanis with impunity, exploiting the presence of millions of Afghan refugees in Pakistan, the porous Pak-Afghan border and large tracts of ungoverned spaces inside Afghanistan.
The NSC observed that Pakistan had fought the war on terrorism primarily out of its own resources and at great cost to its economy. It noted that the sacrifices, such as the tens of thousands of Pakistani civilians and security personnel who had laid down their lives — and the pain of their families — could not be trivialised so heartlessly by assigning it an “imagined” monetary value.
“Even today, Pakistan [is] firmly supporting the US-led international effort in Afghanistan… continuously facilitating this through vital lines of communications for smooth counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan,” the meeting noted, adding that as a result of Pakistan’s counterterrorism operations, Al Qaeda had been decimated from the region.
It was mostly because of this support that Pakistan was suffering a brutal backlash, which included the killing of over a hundred schoolchildren by terrorists based in Afghanistan.
The real challenges in Afghanistan, the committee observed, are “political infighting, massive corruption, phenomenal growth of drug production and expansion of ungoverned spaces inside Afghanistan full of sanctuaries for multiple international terrorist organizations”, which posed a serious and direct threat to Afghanistan, its neighbours and the entire region.
“Pakistan cannot be held responsible for the collective failure in Afghanistan and blaming allies certainly does not serve the shared objective of achieving lasting peace in Afghanistan and the region.”
US created Taliban and abandoned Pakistan: Hillary Clinton
In response to the US president’s statement, the country’s civil and military leadership showed an unprecedented restraint, while Pakistan’s media and opposition leaders were harsh in their reaction to Trump’s tweet.
The Daily Times commented: While apportioning blame for the situation in Afghanistan, the Trump administration should keep in mind that the US invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 without any exit strategy in mind. More importantly, the origins of the Taliban militias can be traced back to the Mujahideen that Pakistan and the US trained and funded together during the 1980s.
A Pakistani TV channel showed a clip of Hillary Clinton who appeared before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee in April 2009, when she explained how the militancy in Pakistan was linked to the US-backed proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
“The problems we face now to some extent we have to take responsibility for, having contributed to it. We also have a history of kind of moving in and out of Pakistan,” she told the committee.
“Let's remember here... the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago... and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union.
“They invaded Afghanistan... and we did not want to see them control Central Asia and we went to work... and it was President Reagan in partnership with Congress led by Democrats who said you know what it sounds like a pretty good idea... let's deal with the ISI and the Pakistan military and let's go recruit these mujahideen.
“And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.
“And guess what ... they (Soviets) retreated ... they lost billions of dollars and it led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“So there is a very strong argument which is... it wasn't a bad investment in terms of Soviet Union but let's be careful with what we sow... because we will harvest.
“So we then left Pakistan ... We said okay fine you deal with the Stingers that we left all over your country... you deal with the mines that are along the border and... by the way we don't want to have anything to do with you... in fact we're sanctioning you... So we stopped dealing with the Pakistani military and with ISI and we now are making up for a lot of lost time.”
It was question from Congressman Adam Shciff, a California Democrat that spurred Secretary Clinton to delve into history and come out with an answer that other US politicians have avoided in the past.
"You carried out 57,800 attacks on Afghanistan from our bases," tweets Pakistan's Foreign Minister
On Wednesday, Jan 3, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif shot back on Tweeter saying Islamabad has done enough and the US must not put the blame of their failed policies and actions on them.
Asif's tweet in Urdu language said: “You have asked what did we do? A dictator surrendered on a single phone call, our country witnessed the worse bloodbath, you carried out 57,800 attacks on Afghanistan from our bases, your forces were supplied arms and explosives through our soil, thousands of our civilians and soldiers became victims of the war initiated by you.”
Trump had also accused Pakistan of providing “safe haven” to terrorists in return for USD 33 billion aid over the last 15 years. Asif categorically rejected the US’ claims that it had provided USD 33 billion aid over the last 15 years to Pakistan, saying it was ‘hollow and imprecise’. He reiterated that Pakistan will not compromise on its territorial integrity at any cost and that while the country is ready to resolve issues via bilateral means, it will not do so at the stake prestige.
Asif's tweet also said, Pakistan considered US’ enemies as its own time and again, and rendered services relentlessly. Pakistan left its sources running dry for the sake of the war on terrorism that the US required the nation to fight.
“We considered your enemy as our own, we filled the Guantanamo Bay, we served you with such an enthusiasm that we left our country with load shedding and gas shortage. We tried to please you on the cost of our economy, we provided tens of thousands of visas as a result of which the networks of Black Water spread across our country,” Asif concluded.
Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America.
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Abdus Sattar Ghazali
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