ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said on Monday there was no confusion those who killed innocent people were “terrorists,” two days after the foreign minister of the country drew slack for TV comments about Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and the Afghan Taliban that were widely seen as appeasing militants.
Bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was killed in 2011 by US Navy Seals who raided his hideout in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad.
In an interview with Afghanistan’s TOLOnews that was run on June 19, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said: “I’ll let that pass” when asked if Bin Laden was a “martyr.”
The interviewer referred to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s June 2020 comments before parliament that the US had “martyred” Bin Laden.
On Monday, the Pakistani information minister took to Twitter and in a post in which he hash-tagged TOLOnews, said:
“There is no confusion at any level re anyone who kills innocents. That is terrorism and the perpetrators are terrorists. We [Pakistan] have suffered pain of terrorism in our own land and can understand pain of all who have lost their loved ones in these cowardly attacks.”

There is no confusion at any level re anyone who kills innocents. That is terrorism and the perpetrators are terrorists. We have suffered pain of terrorism in our own land and can understand pain of all who have lost their loved ones in these cowardly attacks. #Tollo

— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) June 21, 2021

The minister’s comment was seen as a veiled reference to Qureshi’s remarks from the TOLOnews interview, particularly when he was asked by the interviewer to define the Taliban — “students, insurgency, terrorist group?” — and kept saying that they were Afghans.
“Who are the Taliban? You have a definition?” the interview asked. “The Afghans,” Qureshi said several times, and then when pushed that some Afghans were “terrorists” while others were not, the Pakistani foreign minister added:
“Depends who’s looking at things how? At times, people are dubbed as terrorists, at times people are seen and viewed and they proclaimed to be an element fighting for an occupation, wanting freedom of their land. So depends how you look at it.”
The interview has drawn widespread condemnation on social media:

The inability of ’s political leadership to answer a basic question related to Osama bin Laden, at a time when wants to move forward in its relations with , is going to reinforce the view in DC that not much has changed in ’s outlook towards international terrorism. https://t.co/duamu1lcg6

— Uzair Younus (@UzairYounus) June 20, 2021

Watch SMQ try to answer a simple question. pic.twitter.com/Ihl05PWwN2

— Khurram Husain (@KhurramHusain) June 20, 2021

Foreign Minister of Pakistan Shah Mahmood Qureshi avoided to answer “is Osama Bin Laden a martyr?”
Irony that same SMQ was FM when OBL was hunted down. Then we wonder how the world’s most wanted terrorist was hiding near the military academy of Pakistan. pic.twitter.com/fZSalGsX8e

— Shama Junejo (@ShamaJunejo) June 20, 2021