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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Imran fires Twitter bouncers: Pakistan and people are prime priorities

Setting the record straight, Prime Minister Imran said Pakistan was not involved in September 11 attacks on the US soil.

By Muhammad Saleh Zaafir & Mumtaz Alvi
November 20, 2018

ISLAMABAD: In a strong rejoinder to the US President Donald Trump’s meaningless tirade against Pakistan a day earlier, Prime Minister Imran Khan Monday reminded him, in a series of tweets, that the sacrifices made by Pakistan in the war on terror were unparalleled which could not be ignored or put on the backburner.

Trump’s allegations also triggered an angry retort from the Pakistani leadership irrespective of the political divide. Trump attempted to justify his administration's decision at the start of 2018 to stop "military aid" to Pakistan by linking it with Osama bin Laden being found in Pakistan in 2011 in his talk with a US TV channel on Sunday and said “Pakistan doesn’t do a damn thing for us."

Referring to the compound in Abbottabad where Osama bin Laden was found in 2011, Trump said Osama had been "living in Pakistan right next to the military academy; everybody in Pakistan knew he was there."

Trump claimed he had pointed out Osama bin Laden in his book "just BEFORE" the 9/11 attacks and that his country "of course" should have captured the Al Qaeda leader "long before we did".

"President Clinton famously missed his shot. We paid Pakistan Billions of Dollars & they never told us he was living there. Fools!.." he wrote. Reiterating his earlier comment, Trump said the US no longer pays billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan "because they would take our money and do nothing for us".

He cited the capture of bin Laden in Abbottabad and the Afghanistan war as the two areas of alleged inaction by Pakistan. "They [Pakistan] were just one of many countries that take from the United States without giving anything in return. That’s ending!" Trump said.

Trump also said the US used to give Pakistan $1.3 billion a year, but doesn't do anymore. "I ended it because they don't do anything for us." However, contrary to his statement, former US President Barack Obama had said last year, “We had no evidence that Pakistan was aware of his presence that is something that we looked at.”

Setting the record straight, Prime Minister Imran said Pakistan was not involved in September 11 attacks on the US soil, but still it decided to join the war on terror. He said Pakistan suffered 75,000 casualties and a loss of over $123 billion to its economy in this war.

The prime minister said the US aid was a minuscule $20 billion in comparison with the losses suffered by Pakistan. “Our tribal areas were devastated and millions of people uprooted from their homes due to this war, which also drastically impacted lives of ordinary Pakistanis.”

He said Pakistan continued to provide free lines of ground and air communications to the US and asked Trump to name another ally that had given such sacrifices. The prime minister said instead of making Pakistan a scapegoat for its failures, the US should do a serious assessment of why the Taliban today were stronger than before despite presence of 140,000 Nato and 250,000 Afghan troops and spending approximately $1 trillion on the war in Afghanistan.

In addition to economic losses, the prime minister highlighted the impact of the US war on Pakistan's tribal areas. "Can Mr. Trump name another ally that gave such sacrifices?" Khan asked.

"Trump’s false assertions add insult to the injury Pak has suffered in US WoT in terms of lives lost & destabilised & economic costs. He needs to be informed abt historical facts," the premier said.

"Pak has suffered enough fighting US's war. Now we will do what is best for our people & our interests," he said. In an immediate rejoinder to Trump through a tweet, former minister for defence and Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) stalwart Khawaja Muhammad Asif maintained, “We continue to pay in blood for what we did for the USA from Budbher to fighting wars which weren't ours.”

Khawaja Asif further tweeted, “Reinvented our religion to suit US interests, destroyed our tolerant ethos, replaced it with bigotry & intolerance. A relationship of betrayals & sanctions.” Earlier in the day, Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari also came down hard on Trump over his remarks, saying: "@realDonaldTrump suffers conveniently from perpetual historic amnesia!"

Calling Trump's tirade a lesson for Pakistani leaders "who kept appeasing the US esp after 9/11", the minister added: "Whether China or Iran, US policies of containment and isolation do not coincide with Pakistan's strategic interests."

Relations between the United States and Pakistan, which began to strain in 2011, reached a new low in January when Trump suspended US security assistance to Islamabad over alleged presence of Afghan militant groups in Fata.

The government and the military had rejected the charge as incorrect. The Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) had clarified at the time that the Coalition Support Fund (CSF) received from the US was reimbursement of money spent on operations in support of the coalition.

Former chairman Senate Senator Mian Raza Rabbani said Mr. Trump should desist from using an offensive language, as Pakistan was neither a state of the US nor a colony but an independent sovereign country.

“The interview of the US President, Donald Trump, to Fox News is a denial of historical facts and the language used is offensive for a sovereign country which is not a client state of the United States,” he said.

The American president, he pointed out, has forgotten that to the irk of its people, Pakistan allowed in 50s its airbase in Budbher and recently allowed its Shamsi airbase to be used by the US.

“The loss of civilian and security agencies lives in the US war on terror, illegal killing by drone attacks, support to US sponsored Jihad in the war in Kabul, creation of small drug industry along the Pak-Afghan border to finance the US in Afghanistan, the introduction of the drug and Kalashnikov culture in Pakistan and above all the birth of an intolerant extremist Pakistani society are only a few of the consequences that Pakistan has suffered,” he noted.

Rabbani maintained in actual fact what irked the United States was Pakistan’s refusal to become a part of “contain China and Iran policy” and to accept India as the policeman of the region.

“The Pakistani nation continues to pay through economic and political instability for its alignment with the US. In fact, it is the US that used Pakistan in the region and then cuddled up to India to protect its national security concerns,” he contended.

BBC reports: US Ambassador to Pakistan David Hale was summoned to the Foreign Office of Pakistan on Monday to hear a protest over Mr. Trump's tweet.

Michael Kugelman, a US foreign policy analyst wrote, "The Trump-Khan Twitter battle is officially on. If this were cricket, I doubt POTUS would stand a chance."