Days after Pakistani national security adviser Moeed Yousuf was quoted by British media as a warning that a failure with the Taliban would lead to the same mistakes that resulted in the 9/11 attacks.
“Mark my words … If the mistakes of the 1990s and the abandonment of Afghanistan are committed again, the result will be absolutely the same: a security gap filled with undesirable elements that will threaten everyone, Pakistan and The West, “Yusuf was quoted as saying by The Times on Saturday.
The report, titled “Work with the Taliban or repeat the horror of the 1990s,” West said, “came in the context of support from sections of the Pakistani political leadership for the Taliban’s acquisition of Afghanistan. . Pakistan is one of the few countries that has kept its missions in Kabul open and is leading efforts to build consensus among regional countries for a Taliban-led organization.
“We told the West over and over that it was a war that could not be won … If they had listened to Pakistan, they would not be in this situation,” Yusuf told the Times. The report said Yusuf is leading a “public relations offensive by the Imran Khan government to get the world to engage with the Taliban and start working with them.”
The report added that Pakistan warned other countries that not working with the Taliban would provoke a “massive humanitarian crisis” and “lead the new Taliban regime to more extreme behavior and allow the presence of foreign terrorists.”
Yusuf said the engagement with the Taliban is “the only way,” adding that it should be “the engagement today, not in two weeks or three weeks.” This “will ensure that the Taliban remain moderate and the incentive for that is the legitimacy and assistance that only the West can provide,” he said.
He defended the Taliban, saying there were “good” signs such as the general amnesty announced by the group. He said the “political reality” was that the Taliban had “95% control of the country” and also rejected criticism that Pakistani support had helped the militant group.
A statement issued by Yusuf’s office said the report’s connotation was “fabricated and totally wrong” to the NSA. The Times report was said to be an “erroneous feature” of Yusuf’s conversation with the newspaper’s journalist.
“It simply came to our notice then [Yusuf] they claim that the West should “immediately recognize” the Taliban, as the article says. There was also no “warning” of a second 9/11 related to the formal “recognition” of the Taliban. This is a highly inflammatory misconception of his remarks, which smells like unprofessional journalism, ”the statement said.
“To reiterate, absolutely no threat was intended or made, nor did the NSA subscribe to this inflammatory rhetoric. The NSA clearly stated that the world had recognized that leaving Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1990s was a mistake and presented the his view that we need to learn lessons from the past, ”he added.
The statement said the Pakistani high commission in London sent the newspaper the demand for the withdrawal of the report.