Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan criticised the United States government over its affairs in Afghanistan and praised the Taliban for carrying out “jihad” against foreign forces.
However, he backtracked on his comments shortly after and went on to defend US President Joe Biden saying he faced “unfair criticism” over withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In an interview, Imran Khan said that there was so much unfair criticism of President Biden, and what he did was the most sensible thing to do.
Regarding Afghanistan, Khan said that there will be “far-reaching consequences in terms of the refugees”. He also denied that Islamabad helped the Taliban in the fight against the US forces, Dawn reported.
“If we believe this is the case, it means Pakistan is stronger than the US and the whole of the Europeans,” he said.
Earlier in the day, he stressed that Pakistan paid a “very heavy price” of siding with the US in its occupation of Afghanistan, adding that hearing American politicians blame Islamabad for its humiliating retreat hurts.
Khan expressed his anger towards American officials who have pointed fingers at Islamabad when apportioning blame for the US failure in Afghanistan.
His remarks come after the recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings as an example of this frustrating rhetoric where US lawmakers accused Pakistan of facilitating Taliban.
“As a Pakistani, I felt deeply hurt by some of the remarks made by those senators. To blame Pakistan for this debacle in Afghanistan is the most painful thing for us to listen to,” he said.
Pakistan was in a tremulous situation when the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred in the US. Pervez Musharraf, a general who’d come to power through a military coup, had just been elected president and was seeking US assistance for his government. Committing Pakistani support to the invasion of Afghanistan helped secure American military aid, but, Khan believes, was still a wrong call.
It alienated the mujahideen forces, which the Pakistani intelligence helped build up just two decades ago as part of the US anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan.
“We have trained them to fight against foreign occupation. It was a holy war, a jihad,” he said. And with the Americans invading, Pakistan was telling the same people that “a fight against the Americans was terrorism. So they turned against us. They called us collaborators.”
