 "imran khan")
The US made mistakes in Afghanistan and Pakistan was blamed for America's failures and not given credit for the sacrifices it made in the global war on terror, Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Monday.
Addressing the opening session of the Margalla Dialogue 2021 seminar in Islamabad, organised by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) think-tank, Khan said Pakistan faced the biggest collateral damage in the Afghan war.
"Pakistan was held responsible for the shortcomings of the United States," he said.
Pakistan faced the biggest collateral damage in the Afghan war as it was the only US ally that suffered more than 80,000 casualties, displacement of millions of people and over 100 billion dollars economic losses, Khan said.
Khan said Pakistan was blamed for the wrong reasons by the international community, whereas it remained silent on the Kashmir issue. He regretted that Pakistan was not able to effectively present its point of view before the world.
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Noting that only military power was not a guarantee for national security, which was an all-encompassing concept, Khan asserted that, You can't have national security until there is inclusive growth.
Unequal distribution of resources leads to anarchy among the people who are left out of the mainstream development. The uplift of the underprivileged segment of the society was critical to ensure across the board national security," he said.
He also emphasised that rule of law and equality for all were the preconditions for democracy.
"Corruption, particularly of the elite, was detrimental to the development of a country," he said.
Khan stressed on research to promote original thinking within a society and said that lack of in-depth research led to reliance on second-hand information by the western think tanks on important issues such as Afghanistan.
He also talked about Islamophobia and urged for a strong response by Muslim think tanks to neutralise the concept that Islam and terrorism were linked.
Afghanistan has been under Taliban rule since August 15 when the Afghan hardline militant group ousted the elected government of President Ashraf Ghani and forced him to flee the country and take refuge in the UAE.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
