New Delhi | Jagran News Desk: In an explosive admittance which exposes Pakistan’s support to terror groups for the past several decades, Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday acknowledged that his country’s army and spy agency Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) trained Al Qaeda and other militant groups to fight in Afghanistan.
“There were always links between Pakistan and… there had to be links… because they trained them,” Khan said while speaking at an event at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think tank in New York on Monday.
The startling revelation came when Khan was asked whether there was a Pakistani probe to find out how Osama bin Laden was living in Abbottabad.
Al-Qaida was by Osama in 1988 even as Soviet troops were leaving Afghanistan. Al-Qaida was formed on August 11, 1988 while the Soviet troops had already started leaving Afghanistan on May 15, 1988 and had completely left the country by February 2, 1989. Khan said the Pakistani military continued to have links with them even though the US too quit the scene.
Khan said Pakistan "committed one of the biggest blunders" when it joined the US war on terror after the 9/11 terror attacks by the al-Qaeda.
"I think the Pakistani government should not have pledged what they could not deliver," Khan said, referring to the then military dictator General Pervez Musharraf's decision to side with the US.
Pakistan was one of the three countries which recognised the Taliban government in Afghanistan before the US invasion in 2001 there. After the US invasion of Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan extended support to American forces against the Taliban.
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"In the 1980s, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Pakistan, helped by the US, organised the resistance to the Soviets. The ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) trained militants who were invited from all over the Muslim world to do jihad against the Soviets," Khan said in response to a question.
"And so we created these militant groups to fight the Soviets...Jihadis were heroes then. Come 1989, Soviets leave Afghanistan, the US packs up and leaves Afghanistan...and we were left with these groups," he added.
"Then comes 9/11, and Pakistan again joins the US in the war on terror and now we are required to go after these groups as terrorists. They were indoctrinated that fighting foreign occupation in jihad but now when the US arrived in Afghanistan, it was supposed to be terrorism," Khan added.
"So Pakistan took a real battering in this," the prime minister said, adding that Pakistan should have stayed neutral in the conflict.
He insisted that there could be no military solution in Afghanistan and said he will urge President Donald Trump to resume peace talks. "For 19 years if you have not been able to succeed, you are not going to be able to succeed in another 19 years," he added.
On Pakistan's fragile economy, Khan said his government had inherited "the biggest current account deficit" in the country's history and "so the first year has been a real struggle."
Khan thanked China for helping "when we were at the rock bottom".
"China has given us a great opportunity to lift ourselves up from where we are right now," he added.