ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has said the United States had “really messed it up” in neighboring Afghanistan by taking too long to come to the understanding that there was no military solution to the conflict in the war-torn country.
Khan made these comments in an interview to PBS News Hour, broadcast early on Wednesday.
The Taliban have swiftly captured territory in recent weeks in Afghanistan and seized strategic border crossings with several neighboring countries. They are also threatening a number of provincial capitals — advances that come as the last US and NATO soldiers complete their final withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The insurgents are said to now control about half of Afghanistan’s 419 district centers.
“First of all, they [US] tried to look for a military solution in Afghanistan, when there never was one,” Khan said. “When they finally decided that there is no military solution, unfortunately, the bargaining power of the Americans or the NATO forces had gone. When there were 150,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, that was the time to go for a political solution.”
“But once they had reduced the troops to barely 10,000, and then, when they gave an exit date, the Taliban thought they had won. And so, therefore, it was very difficult for now to get them to compromise. It’s very difficult to force them into a political solution, because they think that they won,” the PM added.
Khan said the best outcome for Afghanistan now was a “political settlement which is inclusive“: “So they form some sort of a government that includes all sorts of different factions there. Obviously, Taliban, part of that government.”
“The worst situation in Afghanistan would be if there’s a civil war and a protracted civil war. And from Pakistan’s point of view, that is the worst-case scenario,” Khan added.
The PM denied reports 10,000 Pakistani fighters had crossed over the border to help the Taliban in the most recent fighting.
“This is absolute nonsense. Why don’t they [US] give us evidence of this?” Khan said.
When asked what kind of relationship his country wanted with the US in the future, Khan said the “transactional” relationship of the past was no longer possible.
“Now, Pakistan’s position is very straightforward. We want to help and we have helped getting the Taliban to talk to the US, got them on the dialogue table. We have done our bit,” the PM said. “Now, what we cannot afford now, if there is civil war ... we will immediately get stuck into it. There will be terrorism within Pakistan.”
“We have just recovered from a desperate economic situation,” Khan added. “And we do not want to go through it again.”
US has ‘really messed it up’ in Afghanistan — PM Khan
https://arab.news/pyn33
US has ‘really messed it up’ in Afghanistan — PM Khan
- Pakistani prime minister tells PBS News Hour best solution for Afghanistan is “political settlement which is inclusive“
- Says “transactional” relationship no longer possible with United States, Pakistan can’t afford to get sucked into civil war in Afghanistan
Imran Khan’s party calls for ‘shutter-down’ strike on second anniversary of Pakistan elections
- Khan’s PTI party claims 2024 general elections’ results were rigged in their opponents’ favor
- Pakistan’s government denies the allegations, says polls were conducted in transparent manner
ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has called on the masses to observe a countrywide “shutter-down” strike in protest against alleged rigging today, Sunday, on the second anniversary of the Feb. 8, 2024, general elections.
Millions of people took to polling booths across the country on Feb. 8, 2024, to vote for their national and provincial candidates. However, the polling was marred by a nationwide shutdown of cellphone networks and delayed results, leading to widespread allegations of election manipulation by the PTI and other opposition parties. The caretaker government at the time and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) both rejected the allegations.
Khan’s PTI candidates contested the Feb. 8 elections as independents after the party was barred from the polls. They won the most seats but fell short of the majority needed to form a government, which was made by a smattering of rival political parties led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. The government insists the polling was conducted transparently and that Khan’s party was not denied a fair chance.
“Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and the opposition alliance Tehreek-e-Tahafuz-e-Ayin-e-Pakistan (TTAP) are holding a nationwide shutter-down strike today,” Haleem Adil Sheikh, president of the PTI’s chapter in Sindh, told Arab News.
“We had appealed to the people to keep their businesses closed today because on this day, the people of Pakistan were deprived of their right to send their true representatives to parliament.”
Sheikh said the party was also mourning the victims of a deadly suicide blast in Islamabad on Friday which killed over 30 people.
TTAP chief and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, Mehmood Khan Achakzai, appealed to police in Sindh and Punjab not to disturb people who were participating in the strike.
“The people of Pakistan must express their anger by closing their shops,” Achakzai said on Saturday while speaking to reporters.
Khan was ousted from power in April 2022 after what is widely believed to be a falling out with the country’s powerful top generals. The army denies it interferes in politics.
He has been in prison since August 2023 and faces a slew of legal challenges that ruled him out of the Feb. 8 general elections and which he says are politically motivated to keep him and his party away from power.
In January 2025, an accountability court convicted Khan and his wife in the £190 million Al-Qadir Trust land corruption case, sentencing him to 14 years and her to seven years after finding that the trust was used to acquire land and funds in exchange for alleged favors. The couple denies any wrongdoing.
