Imran Khan says he was sure that new military leadership had realised that ‘experiment of regime change’ had gone wrong
LAHORE, Feb 12 (SABAH): Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan has blamed the “negligence” of Pakistan’s security forces and intelligence agencies for the rising incidents of terrorism in the country.
In an interview with “Voice of America English” aired on Saturday (Feb 11), Imran Khan spoke on the recent criticism surrounding the PTI government’s decision to negotiate with the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) before it was ousted.
He was responding to a question by the host, who asked him if he still “stands by” the decision to greenlight the talks.
“One of the reasons that terrorism has spiked in Pakistan is because, according to the National Counterterrorism Authority, the time that was taken for negotiations with TTP was used by that group to reorganise. Those talks started when you were in power. Do you stand by your decision to greenlight those talks,” correspondent “Sarah Zaman” asked.
“Well, firstly, what were the choices [the] Pakistani government faced once the Taliban took over and they decided the TTP, and we’re talking about 30, [30,000] to 40,000 people, you know, the families included, once they decided to send them back to Pakistan? Should we have just lined them up and shot them, or should we have tried to work with them to resettle them,” Imran Khan replied.
He went on to say that his government had had a meeting at that time and the idea behind that was resettlement with the “concurrence of politicians all along the border”, the erstwhile FATA region, security forces and the TTP.
“But that never happened because our government left and once our government was removed, the new government took its eye off the ball,” he said.
The former premier stated that it was possible for the TTP to regroup and then questioned: “But then where were the Pakistani security forces? Where were the intelligence agencies? Could they not see them regrouping?
“How could we be held responsible for their negligence,” the PTI chief asked.
The PTI chief, while talking about Pakistan’s foreign policy and the relationship with the Afghan Taliban, stressed that the country had to somehow get Kabul to “work with us again” and jointly deal with the issue of terrorism.
“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but do we want a repeat of what happened to Pakistan from 2005 onwards to 2015, where Pakistan was going under, suffering from terrorism all along the Afghan border? I think we are not in a position to have another war on terror,” he said.
Imran Khan further said that whatever government was functioning in Afghanistan, it was important for Pakistan to have a good relationship with them. He recalled that he tried his best with the government of former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani.
“Our interest is that having a good relationship with the government in Kabul means that we have a 2,500-kilometer border with them. This means that if there are problems of terrorism, then they will help us.”
Imran Khan also criticised incumbent Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, saying that he had not even paid a single visit to Afghanistan yet.
Talking about his relationship with former army chief retired General Qamar Javed Bajwa, the ex-premier said that his government and the military were on the “same page”, which meant that “we had the organised strength of Pakistan army to help us”.
“We worked together, and you know, Pakistan was considered one of the success stories of Covid-19.”
However, Imran Khan contended that General (retd) Qamar Javed Bajwa “favoured some of the biggest crooks in the country” and didn’t think about corruption as a big problem.
“He wanted us to work with them. What that meant [was] giving them immunity from their corruption cases,” he claimed, adding that Gen Bajwa has a “very close” relationship with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. “And, for some reason, he conspired, and this regime change took place.”
Imran Khan added that the leading principle of the balance of power was that the elected government must also have the authority. “You cannot separate responsibility and authority. So, if the authority lies with the army chief, [but] responsibility lies with the prime minister, no management system works,” he pointed out.
In response to another question, Imran Khan said that he was sure that the new military leadership had realised that the “experiment of regime change” had gone wrong.