Anti-Pak propaganda slammed
By Sarmad Qazi
"Mohamed Asghar Afridi "
The Pakistani ambassador in Qatar yesterday blasted what he called “insidious” propaganda to characterise his country as a ‘mortal threat’ and urged people from friendly countries to support Pakistan’s fight against militancy.
“The recent official and media comments that attempt to characterise Pakistan as ‘mortal threat’ to world security are contrary to reality,” the South-Central Asian country’s Ambassador Mohamed Asghar Afridi said at a press conference in Doha.
“It is a strong country of 170mn; sixth largest in the world, resolute people with democratic dispensation and fully functioning institutions with vibrant media and dynamic civil society,” he added.
The overwhelming majority of the people, according to the diplomat, opposes the Taliban version of Islam and rejects militancy and extremism.
The Pakistan Army started an all-out exercise to ‘root out’ Taliban from the Swat Valley in the Malakand Division of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) near the Afghanistan border this month, after a peace deal between Islamabad and the extremists broke down.
“They (the army) have suffered more casualties than the total coalition forces in Afghanistan since 2001. The commitment of the armed forces is beyond any question,” Afridi added.
The sustained ‘smear’ campaign by certain media outlets, according to the officials, was directed at the country’s nuclear assets.
“Pakistan’s nuclear assets are under multi-layered custodial controls and there is no question of these assets falling in the ‘wrong hands’. The concerns about the safety and security of our nuclear assets are absolutely unfounded… and must come to an end,” the official said.
Asked why the Pakistan Army did not launch a full-scale operation against the militants when they took over the picturesque valley in 2007, Afridi said the government was showing “restraint”.
“We negotiated a peace deal with them (Taliban) by offering the Shariah law, who in turn were supposed to disarm. But that never happened,” he added.
The diplomat also blamed the West for abandoning Afghanistan after the cold war, leaving Pakistan to deal with humanitarian and infrastructure crises.
“I was the chief of protocol in Peshawar when the Afghan war was being fought in the 80s. Mujahideen, as the “extremists” were then called, would be airlifted from battlefields and taken to as far as Germany for hospitalisation. They were heroes then,” the civil servant said.
The country’s priority, he said, was socio-economic development for millions of people using its rich natural resources.
Afridi: ‘Insidious attempts’
