Kamal Ghorui
Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif has delivered a scathing assessment of his country’s past alliances with Washington, telling the National Assembly that Islamabad had been “used like toilet paper and then discarded” after serving American interests in Afghanistan. Speaking during a debate on terrorism following a deadly suicide bombing at a Shia mosque in Islamabad, Asif said Pakistan had repeatedly joined “superpower wars” that were never its own.
“We took part in two wars that were fought on the soil of Afghanistan,” Asif told lawmakers. Referring to the Soviet intervention in 1979, he claimed it was carried out “at the invitation of the government in Kabul” and that the narrative of an outright invasion was shaped by the United States.Pakistan, he said, entered those conflicts “in the name of Islam and religion”, but in reality two former military dictators sought legitimacy and the backing of a global power.“These were not our wars; they were superpower wars,” he said, adding that Pakistan and its land were used and then discarded “like toilet paper.”Asif went on to describe terrorism in Pakistan as the “blowback of mistakes committed by dictators in the past”. He added that Pakistan had failed to learn from history, continuing to shift between Washington, Moscow and London in pursuit of short-term interests.“For our own interests, we sometimes turn to Washington, sometimes to Moscow, and sometimes to Britain. We have built strong franchises here, which was not the case 30 or 40 years ago,” Asif said.Recalling then US President Bill Clinton’s brief stop in Islamabad in 2000, a visit lasting only a few hours at the end of a longer India trip, Asif said it underscored how transactional the relationship had become. Clinton’s engagement with then military ruler Pervez Musharraf was framed by US demands on democracy, non-proliferation and militancy, reinforcing.Asif’s remarks came as parliament passed a resolution condemning the attack on Imambargah Qasr-e-Khadijatul Kubra in Islamabad’s Tarlai area, where a suicide bomber killed 31 people and wounded 169 during Friday prayers. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility. Thousands attended funerals across the capital as grieving families demanded accountability. “What happened yesterday has left us extremely angry and deeply hurt,” said Bushra Rahmani, whose brother was among the wounded.The minister urged political unity, lamenting what he called a lack of consensus even in condemning terrorism. “It is very important that we have a national identity on which no one disagrees,” he said, criticising those who, for political reasons, avoided attending the funerals of victims.
