[Following is the Interview of Imran Khan with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now TV, you can also watch Real Video Stream or listen Real Audio Stream or just MP3 Download ]
Legendary Cricket star turned politician Imran Khan is a Pakistani opposition figure who is boycotting the upcoming elections and calling for an end to military action in the embattled border regions of Pakistan. The staunch critic of Musharraf is the founder and chair of the movement for justice party known in Pakistan as "Tehreek e-Insaaf”. I sat down with Imran Khan on Sunday here in New York after he had just been in Washington visiting congressional leaders. I asked him why he was here.
IMRAN KHAN Well, basically, the Pakistani- American community here, they invited me here to explain the other point of view. There’s a government point of view, Musharraf’s government point of view, and then there’s the other point of view. And they wanted me to explain it to the U.S. lawmakers, to make them understand two things. One is, that they should not back one man, a dictator, against the forces of democracy of Pakistan. Secondly, that a new strategy is needed in this war on terror because at the moment, terrorism is spreading with leaps and bounds. And unless we have a new strategy, the existence of Pakistan is at stake.
AMY GOODMAN Why is the United States relevant to that?
IMRAN KHAN Well, for two reasons. One, that the U.S. is involved in Afghanistan. Secondly, the U.S. feels Musharraf is the best bet, the US Administration they feel that hes their best bet in fighting terrorism.
AMY GOODMAN Your feeling about that?
IMRAN KHAN I think it is the biggest mistake. It is the biggest blunder the U.S. is committing. Because you could only win the war on terror if you mobilize the people and exclude the terrorists. A famous saying of the Chairman Mao, that a terrorist should be a fish out of water rather than fish in water. In other words, if people from whom the terrorists are operating from, if they start considering them as freedom fighters, the war is going to be lost. They should be the hearts and minds of those people should be won, so they too should consider them terrorists. So that is the basic premise. And, at the moment, unfortunately, the battle for hearts and minds is being lost. And the terrorists of 9/11 are gaining ground because people are joining them, the way the war is being fought.
AMY GOODMAN Who do you see are the terrorists, Imran Khan?
IMRAN KHAN Well, the terrorists really were the al-Qaeda. Taliban were really just religious fundamentalists. They were not terrorists. And they inherited Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaeda was already in Afghanistan when The Taliban took power. The best strategy should have been, was to isolate al-Qaeda. But, by attacking the Taliban, of course, then backing a minority which was the Northern Alliance and making them takeover Afghanistan and pushing the Taliban not just did they push the Taliban towards al-Qaeda, but to push—but the Pushtuns who basically or been pushed in that direction also. What should of been a war against al-Qaeda, is evolving into a war against the Pustuns, and if its a war against the Pushtuns, then I’m afraid it is a never- ending war. Because, you know there are millions of Pustuns on both sides of the border, Pakistan and Afghanistan. And unless a change of strategy takes place, I’m afraid not only is the U.S. stuck in a quagmire, but in Pakistan, as I said, the country itself is going to be destabilized, is being destabilized.
AMY GOODMAN The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the day it happened, where were you?
IMRAN KHAN Well that day I had gone to India to attend a wedding. And as I landed in India,and it was only for a day, as I landed there, I found out that she had been assassinated.
AMY GOODMAN You knew her well?
IMRAN KHAN We went to university together, and we were friends until she became Prime Minister.
AMY GOODMAN Where in university?
IMRAN KHAN At Oxford University in England. And so it was a huge shock, not just to me, but the whole country. I’ve never seen such grief in the country.
AMY GOODMAN Her significance? And what was your assessment of her role in Pakistan? Prime Minster twice.
IMRAN KHAN Very significant because she represented one of the two major parties in Pakistan. I did not agree with her politics because I felt that she wanted U.S. backing to get into power in Pakistan. the U.S. did back her. And then she was prepared to do a power-sharing deal with the military dictator, who is Musharraf. And a U.S.-brokered power deal where she would share power with military dictator and abandon people like us who were fighting for democracy in Pakistan. So, I did not agree with her tactics.
AMY GOODMAN Why was the U.S. involved with that? Why did she work with the US?
IMRAN KHAN Well, the U.S. was involved with her because they felt she was a moderate or liberal political force which would back Musharraf who was their man to fight terrorism. And she needed the U.S. and she needed Musharraf. The reason, in my opinion, in fact the opinion of most people in Pakistan, she needed them because she was stuck in corruption cases, in Switzerland and in Spain. And she needed Musharraf to be on her side so of the Pakistan government would not pursue these corruption cases.
AMY GOODMAN Who do you think killed Benazir Bhutto?
IMRAN KHAN Very difficult to say. It could have been any of the various groups that are now fighting the Pakistan army now. Benazir Bhutto had specifically stated that she would fight against al-Qaeda, against Taliban, against the fundamentalists. So, clearly, all of those groups – and this is not one group now, there are various groups—which is why I think the way the war on terrorism is being fought is actually creating more terrorists. So, there are various groups now, and all of them would have been gunning for her. And, secondly, it could have also been the stakeholders, people who have been in power for five years who were threatened by her. And, that is why an independent inquiry is needed.
AMY GOODMAN Meeting Musharraf?
IMRAN KHAN Well, Musharraf and the political forces supporters of Musharraf.
AMY GOODMAN At that time of the assassination, it has now come out that the United States quietly approved $500 million worth of fighter jets to go to Pakistan, Lockheed Martin jets. What do you think of that?
IMRAN KHAN One the reason why the U.S. is supporting the Pakistan army is because. the Pakistan army is now the front- line army in fighting not just Taliban, but the people of the tribal area who now are moving now towards the Taliban because the Pakistan army went to the tribal area. And used the tactics which have alienated the people-like bombing from helicopter gunship, fighter jets bombing villages, women and children dying. And so the whole tribes is turning against the Pakistan army. The way of the war is on terror is being fought, its pushing more people on the other side. So, the U.S. is supporting the Pakistani army because it is basically started fighting the U.S. war on terror. When it is suppling it equipment, It thinks it is buying it equipment, because it thinks doing the job—if the Pakistan army was not doing it, the U.S. army would have to do it.
AMY GOODMAN In fact, the US has talked about expanding its presence in Pakistan but most recently, announcing plans to expand military training and equipment to Pakistan in a $2 billion package over the next five years. That would seek to boost Pakistan’s intelligence service, its air, and ground power.
IMRAN KHAN Well, at the moment, and not many people in the U.S. know, that the Pakistan army has lost most soldiers then U.S. army in Iraq and Afghanistan put together. The sort of casualties the Pakistani Army is taking is unsustainable. In my opinion its not long before there is some unrest within the army. Already, there are stories already bought soldiers refusing to fight. And, so the army is fighting its own people now, not terrorists of 9/11. When the Pakistan army went into the tribal area, it broke the treaty with the people of tribal area, which was signed in 1948, that the Pakistan army would not go there. So, by going in there, they’re virtually fighting people in the tribal area, fighting their own people, and they are sustaining heavy casualties.
AMY GOODMAN Who is the army, the Pakistani Army? Who are the soldiers? Where do they come from?
IMRAN KHAN Well, there are mainly Pushtuns, who are from the Northwest Frontier Province, and the Punjabis, which come from the Punjabi Province. Actually the Punjabis are the predominant force, and the Pushtuns, are second in number. They would be the second highest in numbers there.
AMY GOODMAN Do you see U.S. military aid shoring up Musharraf?
IMRAN KHAN Well the US are propping up Musharaff. And thats why I came here, to make them understand this is a tried and failed policy.
AMY GOODMAN Do you think the U.S. should cut off aid to Pakistan under Musharraf?
IMRAN KHAN The U.S. should back the people of Pakistan. Whenever, if ever this war is going to be won, it will be won by mobilizing the people of the country.You back the people, by backing the democratic process, not a military dictator.—and you back the democratic process right now in Pakistan by insisting on free and fair elections with the reinstatement of the judges sacked by Musharraf. Sixty perfect of our judges have been sacked by him. We want them reinstated. And, under them, free and fair elections. Which ever government comes into power, a genuine democratic government, it will be the best bet for the U.S. to work with that to fight terrorism.
AMY GOODMAN You’re boycotting the February 18 elections, why?
IMRAN KHAN Because, how can you fight elections when your Supreme Court Chief Justice is under house arrest? Sixty perfect of the Superior Court judges have been sacked. And Musharaff has his own judges, his own election commission, his own administration, his own caretaker government – how can you have free and fair elections under this situation?
AMY GOODMAN Other opposition parties are going forward, for example Nawaz Sharif, who had originally said he was going to boycott earlier elections, is participating.
IMRAN KHAN Well, more less all political parties have boycotted the elections after November 3 emergency, when Musharaff sacked sixty percent of our judiciary. Unfortunately, Benazir decided to fight the elections, the People’s Party. When she decided to fight the elections-–
AMY GOODMAN You mean to participate in them?
IMRAN KHAN She participated in the elections. And this was the American Administration pressure, and this was to save Musharaff. If she had also boycotted the election that was the end of Musharraf. But she actually gave him a life line by deciding to participate. And then others followed in because they feared they would be left out.
AMY GOODMAN Pakistanis opposition leader, Imran Khan, we will come back to this interview and a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We return to my conversation with Pakistani opposition leader Imran Khan. He was arrested by Musharraf last year. I asked him why he moved from being a cricket star to a politician. He could well be prime minister or president of Pakistan one day. This was Imran Khan’s response.
IMRAN KHAN: Well, simply because I discovered that in our country there’s a tiny elite who has usurped the resources of the whole country. The whole country panders to this tiny elite. By the way, I belong to them. And the rich are getting richer. And the vast majority of people don’t even have basic rights. And so, I felt that the way to fight for rights is—and that’s why we were called Movement for Justice—we felt that we have to have an independent justice system. Only when you have an independent justice system is there a check and balance on the executive, because what is happening is, the elite has basically captured the government. Whether it’s one party or the other, basically the interests are the same. And so, they come into government, and they plunder the country. They usurp the resources. And so, common people are deprived of all the basic needs: health, education, water, housing, justice. And the only way we can check this elite and have even free and fair elections, even have prosperity, if our justice system is independent. So that’s what my movement was eleven years ago.
AMY GOODMAN: You’ve been in this country for a few days now. What do you think of the U.S. media here and its portrayal of Pakistan, your country?
IMRAN KHAN: Well, unfortunately, you know, they do not have—this whole war on complex—on terrorism is extremely complex. This—what they call terrorism and all the people they think are terrorists, not all of them have anything to do with al-Qaeda or even Taliban. And here, people seem to think that there is one man who is fighting this war on terror, and so they should support one man. And if he went, the country would implode, and the Pakistan nukes would fall in the hands of the extremists. And so, this sort of a fear is prevailing in the U.S., actually not understanding the ground realities of the country.
The realities are, whenever we’ve had elections, even religious parties, not all of them are extreme, all of them have been marginalized. People always vote for centrist parties in Pakistan. So people are politically very aware. They don’t buy this whole thing about people trying to use religion to come into power. So, you know, even our elite underestimates the population of Pakistan.
And secondly, the different strands of terrorism, all of them have different origins and they have different solutions. You cannot all put them in one basket. If you do that, the danger is they morph into one movement, so that you all then have a common enemy. So it has to be dealt very carefully, and military is not the solution. Political dialogue is the solution to isolate the terrorists.
AMY GOODMAN: Most of the nineteen who flew those four planes were from Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia is a close ally of the United States, even also the royal family very close to the Bush family and the United States. Nawaz Sharif, another opposition leader in Pakistan, was exiled in Saudi Arabia. What is your assessment of Saudi Arabia?
IMRAN KHAN: Well, you know, he is a Democrat, so when you ask me this question, I would always say that the problem—basic problem with the Muslim world is we don’t have democracy. And Saudi Arabia is one of those countries that, too, doesn’t have democracy. And sadly, the reason always given is that, you know, we are not ready for democracy, you know, our people are not ready for democracy. It’s like saying our people are not ready for freedom, that they like being slaves. You know, it’s just—the forces of status quo always have used various excuses to deprive people of their freedom.
And the problem with the U.S. is that, unfortunately, it always ends up backing military dictators or dictators at the expense of the people and unnecessarily alienates the people. I mean, when I spoke to the lawmakers, I asked them a simple question. I said, look, why would people in Pakistan—if you have a democratic government in Pakistan and back a democratic government which comes through free and fair elections, well, you do not pick horses. I mean, the U.S. backed Benazir Bhutto. I thought that was absolutely wrong. They should not interfere in the domestic politics, because if they back one party, then everyone else goes against the U.S. So if a government comes through free and fair elections, why would it not want to work with the U.S.? It’s bizarre. I don’t understand this. Why would a democratic elected government in Pakistan not want to work with the only superpower in the world? I mean, after all, we have to—if I’m a Democrat, I have to go to the people to get their vote, and if I don’t bring them prosperity, they’re not going to vote for me. And if I pick a fight with the only superpower, how am I going to help my people? So it’s so bizarre that they end up sort of picking one dictator, and this is our man, at the expense of and alienating the people.
AMY GOODMAN: Osama bin Laden, believed to be in the northwest frontier of Pakistan. Your thoughts?
IMRAN KHAN: How can anyone say where he is? I mean, I don’t understand. This is all pure speculation. He could be anywhere in the mountains of Afghanistan. I don’t think people have any idea of what this whole region is. These are wild mountainous countries. There is no border. There’s a 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is no border, there is no check post. There are no—you know, people have always crossed from one side to the other. The same Pashtun tribes, half of the tribe would be on one side of the Durand Line or the border, half is on the other side. How can anyone say what is going on where? And so, this is pure speculation that he’s on the Pakistan side of the border. He could easily be on the other side of the border.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re here in the midst of the presidential race. Senator Barack Obama just won in South Carolina. In the debates, he talked about authorizing the U.S. military to carry out unilateral attacks inside Pakistan without the support of the Pakistani government if there was actionable intelligence against al-Qaeda.
IMRAN KHAN: Well, OK. The U.S. has already conducted attacks inside Pakistan, and I’ll give you one example. They attacked this place where they thought some Taliban commander was hiding, a seminary, a madrasah. They ended up killing eighty-three people in this bomb attack in Bajaur. Out of those eighty-three, sixty were children below the age of eighteen. As a result of that attack, there was an immediate suicide bombing. A bomber walked into a camp, Pakistan military camp, killed fifty soldiers. Now, if the U.S. gets it wrong and does these attacks, which it has got wrong several times, killed innocent people, all that is happening is that those people, because the U.S. is just doing aerial bombing, those people then attack the Pakistan army. And as I said, the casualties that the Pakistan army is taking, it’s unsustainable. You know, they are having forty, fifty soldiers dying a day. When the Pakistan army—when innocent people are killed among the Pashtuns, they take revenge against the Pakistan army. They have done suicide bombings inside the GHQ in Rawalpindi. They’ve gone inside the commando base and blown up soldiers. So if the U.S. has this intelligence, surely if the Pakistan army is taking these casualties, they should take them into confidence and tell them to deal with the situation, rather than taking unilateral action and then most of the time getting it wrong, ending up alienating the people and then people taking their anger out on the Pakistan army.
AMY GOODMAN: There has been polls done in Pakistan that show a serious amount of support for Osama bin Laden, that he is actually more popular than President Bush.
IMRAN KHAN: Well, you know, this is the issue. Why is it the case? On 9/11, when everyone in Pakistan from across the political spectrum stood with the U.S., why is it now that the situation has come to this, that basically when you say support for Osama bin Laden, it basically means anti-American? At the moment, anti-Americanism is growing in Pakistan. This should be, you know, carefully tackled. It’s not a black and white thing that you are with us or against us. You know, they hate us; why do they hate us? You should find out: why is this alienation going on? And if all the root causes are explored, one of them would be that the country is backing an unpopular military dictator against the people of Pakistan, against the democratic forces in Pakistan. And all those people who are turning against Musharraf are also turning against the U.S.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, hasn’t Pakistan, the ISI, the intelligence services, been working closely with the Taliban, shoring them up, building them up in Afghanistan for many years?
IMRAN KHAN: Well, if you go a little further back, then ISI and CIA were shoring up the Afghan Mujahideen. In fact, they trained the Afghan Mujahideen. The whole of ’80s, the people who were being trained in acts of terrorism against the Soviets were the Mujahideen, who most of them later on became Taliban. So the relationship actually goes right back to the ’80s, you know, when the CIA also had relationship with them. Then, of course, when the Soviets left, the Americans basically abandoned Afghanistan, and chaos prevailed, where the warlords took over various parts of the country. And the movement of Taliban was a genuine popular movement started against these warlords. And then, unfortunately, this movement then degenerated into a total Islamic fundamentalist.
AMY GOODMAN: Have you ever considered a power-sharing agreement with Musharraf?
IMRAN KHAN: Absolutely not, because that would be negating a democracy. Remember, Pakistan—you know, when we talk about Pakistan’s democracy, you should only look at India, because our history is similar to India. We were the same country, separated in 1947. And we came—and Pakistan came into being through democracy, through a vote. And people in Pakistan are quite prepared for democracy. There’s a level of maturity that prevails amongst the people. Our problem has been, unfortunately, because of this threat of a neighbor seven times the size, we became a security state, and army became very strong and actually kept interfering in the democratic process. So the way to go about bringing democracy to Pakistan is free and fair elections, independent justice system, not power-sharing with a military dictator.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think Musharraf should resign?
IMRAN KHAN: He should have resigned a year back, but he certainly—if we want stability in Pakistan, he must go. He is now the cause of instability in the country. He is attracting terrorism. The people who were not terrorists before, because of him, are now picking up the gun, because they’re losing faith in the democratic process. When you have rigged elections, when people feel that through their vote they cannot change the system, there are eventually going to pick up the gun.
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