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Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif admitted in Parliament that Pakistan made grave mistakes by supporting US-led Afghan wars, misusing religious narratives and altering education policy, ultimately turning the country into a pawn in foreign conflicts.
Pakistan’s Defence Minister Blames US Role in Afghan Wars
New Delhi: Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif made unusually candid and hard-hitting remarks in the National Assembly, where he openly discussed Pakistan’s role in the wars fought on Afghan soil and sharply criticised the United States. Referring to the Taliban and past conflicts in Afghanistan, Asif said Pakistan did not take part in these wars to defend Islam, as was often claimed, but was instead drawn into them due to external influence and political compulsions.
Asif acknowledged that Pakistan allowed its people to be sent into conflict under the banner of jihad during the Afghan war, leading to immense loss of life. He admitted that despite witnessing the devastating consequences of these decisions, Pakistan failed to learn from its mistakes. According to him, the narrative of religious duty was misused, resulting in long-term damage to society and national stability.
The Defence Minister revealed that Pakistan even altered its educational curriculum to support and justify participation in the Afghan wars. These changes, introduced to promote a specific ideology aligned with wartime objectives, have continued for decades and have not been fully corrected even today. He suggested that these curriculum changes played a role in shaping extremist thinking and left a lasting negative impact on generations.
Khawaja Asif strongly criticised former military rulers, including General Zia-ul-Haq and General Pervez Musharraf, for their decisions to align Pakistan with US-led military campaigns. He said that after 1999, Pakistan once again joined the Afghan conflict to gain American support, a move that proved extremely costly for the country. Using sharp language, Asif remarked that Pakistan was treated “worse than toilet paper,” used for strategic purposes and then discarded.
Asif argued that these choices reduced Pakistan to a pawn in wars that were not its own. He stated that the Soviet-Afghan conflict in the 1980s was instigated by the United States against Russia, and Pakistan’s leadership at the time felt it needed American backing. As a result, Pakistan involved its people in a foreign conflict, a decision Asif described as a grave and historic mistake with consequences still being felt today.
