Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif is now on confession mode. During an interaction at the Asia Society forum on September 27, he said that the United States shares the responsibility for the rise of Jihad in South Asia, adding that Islamabad’s cooperation in America’s proxy war against the Soviet Union is what brought upon the current turmoil in his country.
Khawaja Asif also accused America of using Pakistan for its strategic objectives and then discarding it. “Pakistan has stood very firmly with the US in the Soviet war, which was a wrong decision. It was a proxy war. We were used and discarded,” the minister said, refusing to accept the entire blame for the rise of extremism and terrorism in the region. “It is a collective sin or mistake that we made. You should not have left the way you did after the end of the Cold War,” he said, adding “we have made mistakes.”
In response to blaming Pakistan for the Haqqani network and other militant outfits, the foreign minister reminded the US that these 'terrorists' were considered the 'darlings' of the White House up until a few decades ago. He said, “Don't blame us for the Haqqanis [the Haqqani Network] and don't blame us for the Hafiz Saeeds [referring to the head of banned Jamaat-ud-Dawa]. These were the people who were your darlings just 20 to 30 years back. They were being dined and wined in the White House and now you say 'go to hell Pakistanis because you are nurturing these people'."
Asif also said that some statements made by Mr Trump were ‘blatant lies’. “…no billions of dollars have been dished out to us,” he said. “It was money which was reimbursed for the services we rendered to the USA and its allies,” he said, referring to the Coalition Support Fund (CSF) that America gives to Pakistan for the Afghan war.
Further clarifying Islamabad's position, Khawaja Asif said: "It is very easy to say Pakistan is floating the Haqqanis and Hafiz Saeed and Lashkar-e-Taiba. They are liabilities. I accept that they are liabilities, but give us time to get rid of them because we don't have the assets to match these liabilities and you are increasing them [our liabilities] further."
Asif said before Pakistan joined the war against the Soviet Union, it was a liberal country where people of all faiths and sects could live together. “Sunnis, Shias, Christians, Hindus… all could live together. They were all Pakistanis. Now people change their names ..(to protect their identity) This is a tragedy…Please don’t blame us for the tragedy that we are in...Share this agony and anguish with us,” he said.
He said it was to suit the American interests in the region that Pakistan turned into promotion of jihad. “.. What we did to justify the jihad in 1980, we reversed everything...Because that suited then our friends, the Americans. In that process our ethos was destroyed and the whole generation of my country is paying a very heavy price.”
Khawaja Asif's remarks come amid soaring tensions between Islamabad and Washington. Last month, US President Donald Trump, announcing his South Asia policy, lambasted Pakistan for providing safe havens to "agents of chaos”. Asif said that Pakistan was ready to work with the United States for effective management of the Afghan border to stop terrorist infiltration and to facilitate a peace settlement in Afghanistan.