[Peace-discuss] Pakistan's [assisted] suicide

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The Pakistan government arranges peace, and the Obama administration pays them 
to make war instead. “Hatred of America is much more than of the Taliban.”]

	From The Sunday Times [UK]
	June 14, 2009
	Imran Khan warns of Pakistan’s ‘suicide’
	Christina Lamb

Pakistan's military offensive against the Taliban will backfire and fuel more 
extremism and bomb attacks, the cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan warned 
last week.

“I have never been so depressed in my life,” he said. “Pakistan is on a suicidal 
course.”

Khan was speaking in London, where he was visiting his two sons by his ex-wife 
Jemima before heading to America to raise funds for refugees displaced by the 
fighting.

The 56-year-old leader of Pakistan’s Movement for Justice party has been branded 
pro-Taliban for speaking out against the military operation, which has driven 
2.5m people from their homes.

“I’m not pro-Taliban,” he said. “But my point is: shouldn’t we have looked at 
other options? How do you justify using heavy artillery, helicopter gunships and 
F-16 fighter-jets in civilian areas? Who in the world does this? Meanwhile all 
the top Taliban leadership have escaped. It’s so inhuman, what they have done; 
it will backfire.”

Khan pointed out that the launch of the operation coincided with President Asif 
Ali Zardari’s visit to Washington in late April, after which the US agreed a 
five-year deal worth $1.5 billion (£910m) a year. “Was this operation to save 
the people of Swat or to get dollars from the Americans?” he asked.

“Only 10 days earlier, Parliament had passed a resolution endorsing a peace deal 
in Swat with the Taliban. Why was there no discussion? A military operation 
should have been the last resort.”

Khan insisted that Pakistan would never contain extremism as long as American 
troops remained across the border in Afghanistan. “Hatred of America is much 
more than of the Taliban,” he said.

The first European Union-Pakistan summit will be held in Brussels this week at 
which Zardari will call for more aid for the refugee crisis.

“How do we look after these refugees?” Khan asked. “Already you see the anger. 
This is a very sorry chapter in Pakistan's history.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6493667.ece