“All root causes of terrorism lie in politics.”
By Kavita A Chhibber
He has been a legendary cricketer, and remains a global icon with a world wide following. Today Imran Khan is also the most respected figure in Pakistan politics.
A straight shooter, known for his integrity and impeccable honesty, Imran doesn’t mince words when he speaks on Indo-Pak relations in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, why the war on terror has been a disaster and why America has been less than a good friend to Pakistan, in an exclusive interview.
Where were you when you heard about the attacks, and what went through your mind as events starting unfolding?
I was in Pakistan at the time it happened and horrified as any other human being, watching the carnage and killing of innocent people. My immediate feeling was that I hope it has nothing to do with Pakistan.
I was in the Taj a week earlier and I have been at the Taj a lot of times. I’ve never felt unsafe in Mumbai- for that matter in other cities. But then I have never felt unsafe in Pakistani cities-Karachi may be at times, has not been safe, but never in Lahore or Islamabad, even though we have had many suicide attacks in the last couple of years. As far as security is concerned, I think it’s a little bit unfair to expect that security would have been able to stop people who were determined to kill themselves in order to harm others. You have the best security all over the world and you have a situation like in Israel where they have built a wall but every now and then people get away. So if the motive is there, people will attack soft targets.
Sadly I was not surprised at the finger pointing that started almost immediately. There was very understandable public anger in India, so there was pressure from the public upon the government to do something just like 9/11. George Bush made one blunder after the other because he is not a leader. A leader’s job is to stand in the time of crisis, take the pressure and lead public opinion, not follow public opinion. The public was angry and wanted to see some result and what Bush ended up doing exacerbated the whole situation by the way he acted.
Afghanistan is a classic example. They (Americans) came into Afghanistan barely three weeks after 9/11 they bombed the whole country, changed the whole government. And what we have now? The Taliban that were collapsing – they were so unpopular-due to George Bush’s actions you saw the renaissance and renewal of the Taliban. According to one report 70 percent of Afghanistan is under the Taliban today. Not only that, Pakistan which had no Taliban is now facing a Taliban movement happening all over the NWFP (North West Frontier Province) and in the tribal areas.
Thanks to Bush, a million people have died- vast majority of them innocent, a trillion dollars spent and the world is much more prone to terrorism than it was before, there are nurseries for future terrorists.
So India could easily make the same mistake, and succumb. It’s very easy to pander to public opinion and just thrash out wildly. If there are Pakistanis involved which there are, the next question should be-are they non state actors?
Why blame ISI? ISI is itself being targeted by terrorists. Two ISI buses have been blown up by terrorists in Pakistan. Army officers and generals have been killed in suicide attacks and the commando base in Haripur was attacked and 50 commandos were killed by suicide attackers. If these groups are targeting Pakistan army, does it make sense to say that the Pakistan army is patronizing them as well?
In my opinion even if the people came from Pakistan there should be a very careful, rational approach to this whole thing. You need a very calm, cool, calculated leadership on both sides of the border. The blame game, once it starts will bring a corresponding reaction in Pakistan because the government doesn’t want to appear weak in the eyes of the people.
It was considered too weak on the part of the Pakistan government when they immediately decided to send the head of ISI. Zardari got a lot of flak and obviously he is no leader either. Manmohan Singh has probably gone through a process of leadership better than Asif Zardari, who just inherited a party so he was completely lacking in leadership by deciding to send the ISI chief when nobody even knew what was happening. There was still firing going on in the Taj.
So now Zardari’s under pressure to act strong and not to look like he’s given too much away. So what we don’t want is this blame game to spiral out of control. We don’t want some sort of a punitive action that is going to start a spiral of more terrorism and have two nuclear armed countries and armies facing each other eyeball to eyeball as it happened after the attack on the Indian Parliament.
There should be rationality in this and a holistic approach.
Pakistan too has complaints about India brewing terrorism in Baluchistan in certain parts of the tribal areas. When the Marriot was bombed, the Interior minister said there’s a foreign hand, which in Pakistan means Indian hand, and India blames Pakistan each time something happens in India, especially Kashmir.
What needs to be done is that both agencies RAW and ISI need to sit together, share intelligence and whatever grievances they have against each other should come out, and they should sort it out. Both countries are affected by terrorism and if there’s not a calculated response things could get worse.
Condoleezza Rice came out with a strong statement against Pakistan. You have always been scathing about America’s treatment of Pakistan and lack of understanding of South Asian politics as have many others in Pakistan.
When the Prime Minister (Yousuf Gilani) asked the heads of political parties for this emergency meeting which I attended, I went on record to say there that Pakistan Government should condemn Condoleezza Rice’s statement. It was basically pronouncing Pakistan guilty and here is a country which is suffering the worst form of terrorism just because we had a military dictator and we did not have either the leadership skills, the guts or the legitimacy to stand up to US’s pressure or Bush administration’s pressure and ended up making a mess of the whole situation. A million refugees have come out of Pakistan’s tribal areas as a result of Bush’s war on terror which has no aim; it doesn’t seem to have any end in sight. There are over 10,000 tribal, innocent civilians dead, 20,000 who have lost their limbs and all this is because a military dictator took orders from the Bush administration and Condoleezza Rice is also to blame for this devastation that has been caused in our country. Because of terrorism we have had a flight of capital; our country is facing an economic meltdown.
I wanted them (the Pakistan Government) to take a strong stand against Condoleezza Rice’s statement because it was very irresponsible. Not only that, it is demeaning an ally, its kicking an ally who goes overboard to support the US. We always get this thing that they have given us 10 billion dollars in aid. The, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Maleha Lodhi gave a statement that Pakistan has so far crossed 34 billion dollars for participating in the war on terror, which has nothing to do with Pakistan.
For 9/11 there was no Pakistani involved. AL Qaeda was trained by the CIA, was in Afghanistan. So we got ourselves stuck in this war and then we are being blamed by Condoleezza Rice. Sadly we just have stooges rather than leaders. Zardari is a stooge, and Musharraf was a stooge before him otherwise there would have been a very strong response from Pakistan government to Condoleezza Rice’s statement.
There are great hopes from Obama. He has come across as a man of integrity and a man of intelligence. Pakistan needs to send a high powered delegation of experts of the tribal areas because that’s where the problem is.
I also heard the statement that the next terrorist attack will come from the Pakistan’s tribal areas (Ex Senator Bob Graham made that statement). I’ve never heard such nonsense. Why shouldn’t it come from any of the other 1.3 billion Muslims who are being radicalized by this war on terror which is being perceived as a war against Islam? Why won’t it come from Somalia where they’ve dislodged a government that was actually stable and created complete chaos? Why not Iraq or Afghanistan?
I thought that statement was very irresponsible and as I said, unfortunately we don’t have a leadership that will go to the Obama administration and say look you’ve got to think strategy because we are losing this war on terror and Pakistan is going to be its biggest casualty. It is not a small country. We have 160 million people. Its not just that a nuclear power will crumble; as the State weakens you’ll have more non state actors getting stronger.
If Hamid Karzai today says he is willing to talk to Mullah Omar and he wants NATO to give a time table to withdraw, it shows that George Bush’s strategy was a failed strategy. When their own hand picked man who cannot move out of the Palace without American security-if he is willing to talk to Mullah Omar, it means they should have isolated Al Qaeda and talked to the Taliban instead of isolating them. They should not have alienated the Taliban, later the Pashtoons which is how the Pakistan tribal areas got involved and that is why we have got such a mess in Pakistan.
Pakistan is going the way of Cambodia during the Vietnam War when the US blamed Cambodia for the insurgents coming out of Cambodia. They bombed Cambodia, destabilized it and then you had the killing fields where a million innocent Cambodians died, having nothing to do with anything. So we need a strong govt, to tell the Americans to change strategy.
And we need a strong leadership to tell the Americans to change strategy and if anyone could do it, it would be Obama.
There have been several discussions on Islamic terrorists. Many people have said that while there are other terror organizations whenever there is a big attack the terrorists are always Muslim. But no one wants to answer the questions why? Would you like to comment on that?
Of course I will. First of all terrorism has nothing to do with religion. All root causes of terrorism lie in politics, and you can take terrorism anywhere. Whether it’s Sri Lanka, whether it’s in Palestine with the Israelis, whether its Chechnya, where ever it is, the root cause likes in politics -the solution is not in religion.
So when they say Islamist terrorists and start looking for a cure in Islam, they are surprised to find that these young terrorists don’t fit the stereotype of the Islamic terrorist with the big beard. Then they are even more shocked when they find that most of the suicide attackers-one half of them according to one estimate-are university graduates. What is happening is that Muslims are getting radicalized and it’s not because of Islamic extremism, it’s because of political issues which are unresolved.
You can always talk about moderate Islam but the struggle between Israel and Palestine is not going to go away unless there is a political resolution; the Kashmir issue will not go away unless there is a political solution. Before 9/11, 70 percent of the suicide attacks were by the Tamil Tigers but people don’t blame Hinduism for that. People know there’s a political conflict going on and the solution is political. Similarly the conflict between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland-no one blamed religion for it and ultimately the solution to it was political. All religions-not just Islam, preach about compassion and justice-no religion wants anyone to kill innocent people or patronize injustice.
To blame a religion is the biggest injustice we do on people of a certain religious community. So when you say Islamist terrorist and try to find solutions in religion you actually make the situation much worse because among the Muslims this war on terror after 9/11 is being perceived as a war against Islam, and when it is perceived as a war against Islam, there will be no shortage of Muslims willing to kill themselves may be to protect their religion. So terrorism needs to be de linked from religion.
I’m afraid condemning a terrorist attack is not going to solve terrorism. Each time there is a suicide bombing in Pakistan we say Islam does not allow it but its not stopping suicide bombing. There have been over 100 in Pakistan over the last one year. Unless there is a fair settlement these things will go on. When you see one million refugees out of the tribal areas and so many have lost their relatives and children and their limbs- I have been to the hospitals. How can you tell these people not to be radicalized? There is also so much anti-American sentiment. I tell the younger generation that the only way to live in a humane society is to live and let live but political conflicts need to be resolved. Whenever you have injustice in society you will have violence.
Where do you see India-Pakistan relations headed?
I think until the Kashmir issue is resolved and that is where the hopes lie with Obama, India and Pakistan will not have normal ties. I can tell you that a vast majority of people in Pakistan and India, want peace in the subcontinent. We want the countries to have a US-Canada type of relationship but unfortunately this unresolved issue of Kashmir will always get in the way because all you have to do is have an incident like this (Mumbai terror attack) happen and suddenly you’ll again have hostilities spring up. The extremists on both sides will take advantage, the governments on both sides will then have some knee jerk reaction and again we’ll be back to square one.
The important thing to know is you can’t change your neighbors, so do we want to live with each other as civilized neighbors or do we want to live as we have been living? Two nuclear armed countries cannot resolve their problems through the military. We cannot afford to have a military conflict. After the Parliament terrorist attack, the army was moved to the border costing billions of rupees by both the countries to sustain troops across the border. Sometimes a crisis is an opportunity to look for solutions. If Obama goes forward with what he has said, that he will help in mediating a solution for Kashmir and mind you it has to be done with the consent of the people of Kashmir, who are living human beings and must decide their own destiny, the subcontinent has a bright future. We could then be allies and benefit from each other, feed and invest in our people rather than our armies.
Acknowledgement: Special thanks to Babar Khan and Saifullah Niazi for arranging this interview.