Former ISI official says US imposed war on terror on Pakistan

PESHAWAR: Former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) official Major (R) Muhammad Aamir has said the first Afghan war was Pakistan’s own war but the US-led war on terror was imposed on Pakistan.

Speaking at a seminar at the Area Study Centre, University of Peshawar, on Friday, he said that during the Afghan jihad not a single US soldier had stepped on the Pakistan soil.A number of academics attended the seminar. The Area Study Centre director Dr Safaraz Khan was the host.

“The US did not make any demand of ‘do more’ from Pakistan and Pakistan was not portrayed as the sponsor of terrorism,” Major (r) Aamir pointed out. He said that Pakistan didn’t suffer civil or military losses during that war. Besides, he said the USSR-India nexus was broken.

He said the ongoing war against terror was imposed on Pakistan when General Pervez Musharraf decided to collaborate with the US after a phone call from Washington. “Thousands of US soldiers landed on Pakistani shores in Balochistan. Despite our services, we are being subjected to the ‘do more’ demands,” he added.

He opined that the US decision to give a bigger role to India in Afghanistan was causing problems for Pakistan. He alleged that separatist groups’ camps had become functional in Afghanistan due to this ongoing war. He said the most important fallout of the war was the widening gulf between the citizens of Pakistan and Afghanistan.