Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday said that there is “no other alternative to Taliban in Afghanistan,” so the “only option the world has right now is to engage with the Taliban for things to move forward.”
In an exclusive interview with CNN’s GPS host FareedZakaria, the prime minister said half of the population in Afghanistan is in a very precarious situation because of hunger, malnutrition and food shortages. “The present situation was already developing into one of the worst humanitarian crises in Afghanistan,” he said.
Imran Khan said that sooner or later, the Taliban will have to be recognised by the world as it is about the well-being and future of about 40 million Afghans.”Forty million people in Afghanistan are in dire straits because of the ongoing situation in the country,” the premier said, adding that the people of the United States should understand that disliking the Taliban government is one thing but thinking about the welfare of the Afghans is another as they are facing “extreme difficulties.””So now the world wants some guarantees before they recognize the Taliban. So how far the US is going to push the Taliban to actually conform them to what they expect them to do in terms of human rights.”
Taliban was a very strong ideological movement. They represented culture which was completely alien to the western societies, he commented adding, “So therefore somewhere there has to be give and take. But by not recognizing them and freezing their accounts and the banking system, only people are going to suffer, and not the Taliban government because no one can replace them right now. So what is happening is that half of the Afghan population, about 20 million people are at a severe risk.”
“Afghanistan is on the verge of experiencing the worst humanitarian crisis,” Imran Khan said. “Considering the circumstances, is there any other alternative to the Taliban in Afghanistan? No, there isn’t.”
The premier questioned how would it be beneficial for the people of Afghanistan if the Taliban government is overthrown.”Therefore, the only alternative we have is to work with the Taliban government [for the sake of the Afghans] because turning the Taliban away would only lead to chaos in the country,” PM Imran Khan reiterated.
Answering a question, the PM said that Pakistan already has three million Afghan refugees so the country does not have the capacity to accept more. “The Afghan people are being severely affected by the non-recognition of the Taliban government and the freezing of their banking system,” the premier said.
He went on to say that the United States’ War on Terror backfired and increased the number of terrorists worldwide, adding that because of the war, there had been extensive casualties in Pakistan as more than 80,000 Pakistani citizens lost their lives during the war.”Pakistan had to bear the brunt of the war in Afghanistan by witnessing numerous suicide attacks,” he said. “The US must reconsider its policy on carrying out drone attacks.”
“We watched what happened there. They were telling people in the United States that the drones were very accurate and they actually got the terrorists. Bombs exploding in villages, how they would only get the terrorists. So there was a lot of collateral damage and I am afraid the public in the United States does not really know the amount of collateral damage.We bore the brunt because what happened was, we were considered the collaborators of the U.S so all the revenge attacks were against the Pakistani soldiers and against the people of Pakistan. There were suicide attacks occurring all over the country and we lost 80,000 people,” he added.
When questioned about China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims, PM Imran Khan said that Pakistan’s ambassador to China MoinulHaq had visited the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and said that the situation over there is “not what the Western media portrays.”
