Pakistan doing more than its share: Hina Khar

Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar in an interview aired on Sunday said Pakistan was doing more than its share in fighting the Frankenstein of terror created jointly by many world powers including the United States. She argued that instead of casting aspersions on Pakistan, the US and its allies should do their share of the burden in the common struggle.
She cautioned against alienating Pakistani people through the use of “incorrect, biased” statements against their country which had done the most and suffered the most in the common struggle against terrorists operating in the Afghan border region. She also called for more engagement and not disengagement between counter-terror partners, the US and Pakistan. “This Frankenstein was not created by Pakistan,” she pushed back at the claim that Pakistan produced terrorists.
“This Frankenstein was financed and assisted by many world powers including that of the US,” she said during her appearance in CNN’s GPS programme, conducted by Fareed Zakaria — an American of Indian origin — during Khar’s visit to New York for United Nations General Assembly meeting. Her remarks referred to the US-assisted fight against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, when several powers worked together to finance, train and equip militants, who later morphed into Taliban in Afghanistan.
“So while we are left behind to sort out the mess, as the fear of the Pakistanis is that this might happen again (at the end of ongoing Afghan war), we must not forget the historical evidence that we have, which has led to the place we are at now,” she said. “Let us not try to overly simplify a situation which is very complex,” she told the channel. Hina Khar took exception to recent anti-Pakistan statements by now-retired US military chief Mike Mullen, who last week sought to portray the Afghan Haqqani militants as “veritable arm” of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence.
The foreign minister warned against alienating the Pakistanis by public recrimination, saying that her country and its people continued to pay a heavy price in the counter-terror campaign on a daily basis. She urged candid acknowledgement of the Pakistani sacrifices, reminding that the country had lost “too many important people, too many ordinary men, women and children” to terrorist bombings. She cited the tragic case of a Taliban attack on a school bus, which claimed lives of several young students. “Was Pakistan doing it to itself?”
“You take your responsibility of your share of the burden in creating the Frankenstein, which are haunting both of us, we are willing to share the burden; we are actually doing more than our share of the burden,” she said. The foreign minister rejected the notion that Islamabad goes after only those militants, who pose a direct threat to its interests and not after those who target the US or India and Afghanistan. She referred to Pakistan’s longstanding cooperation against Al Qaeda militants, in addition to Islamabad’s recent arrest of Al Qaeda number three operative Al Mauritani.
She also argued that the US-Pakistan relationship should not be over-defined by aid syndrome and cautioned against describing it in transactional terms, saying Pakistan is fighting terrorists for its own sake. She asked Americans to see Pakistan as a worthy partner in the fight. “We need to ensure that as partners we can respect each other’s dignity as sovereign states.”