Pak rulers, functionaries condemned US drone attacks in past

LAHORE: During the course of his speech on Thursday evening, Prime Minister Imran Khan asserted that both the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) leaders never had the courage to ‘utter a single word’ against the American drone attacks during their respective tenures.

Imran said: “During General Pervez Musharraf’s tenure, only 11 drone attacks had taken place, but the 10 years of PPP and PMLN governments had seen 400 such offensives getting launched on the country’s territory. They did not utter even a single word against it.”

As far as raising voice in this context is concerned, a research shows that between July 23, 2007 and mid-2017, numerous Pakistani rulers, foreign ministers and federal ministers, including the likes of General Pervez Musharraf, Yusuf Raza Gilani, Asif Ali Zardari, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, the-then interior minister and senator, Rehman Malik, PPP’s ex-information minister Sherry Rehman, PPP’s ex-defence minister Ahmed Mukhtar, and former premier Nawaz Sharif’s advisor on foreign affairs, Sartaj Aziz, had condemned the American drone attacks on Pakistani soil at least 33 times.

The displeasure in this regard was shown at the highest level with the American administrations during this 10-year period under review. Moreover, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministers Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Hina Rabbani Khar had also urged the American administrations on record to pay heed to the fact that the US missile strikes were counterproductive and instrumental in fanning insurgency in Pakistan’s tribal belt, besides resulting in collateral damage whereby innocent people were also losing lives along with high-value targets.

Apart from the aforementioned people, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, and at least three Foreign Office spokespersons (Tasneem Aslam, Moazzam Ali Khan and Abdul Basit) were also among the key Pakistani government functionaries who had criticised Washington DC for “unacceptable violation” of their country’s territorial integrity.