A Pakistani head of state has for the first time admitted to the country’s role in creating terrorists. President Asif Ali Zardari said on Tuesday night that militants and extremists were “created and nurtured” in the country for short-term gains.
“Let us be truthful to ourselves and make a candid admission of the realities,” Zardari said, addressing a gathering of the country’s top bureaucrats at the presidential palace.
Militants and extremists emerged and challenged the state not because the civil bureaucracy was weakened and demoralised, but because they “were deliberately created and nurtured as a policy to achieve some short-term tactical objectives”, Zardari said. “The terrorists of today were the heroes of yesteryears until 9/11 occurred and they began to haunt us as well.”
Analysts in Pakistan believe that Zardari’s remarks were actually directed against the country’s all-powerful military and intelligence establishment whose policies have led to the meteoric rise of the Taliban in Pakistan, literally pushing the country to the brink of civil war.
Presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar said Zardari’s remarks were meant to expose the institutions which, instead of implementing the state policy, had assumed the role of policy maker. Former information minister Sherry Rehman said the president’s remarks were directed at the country’s intelligence establishment.
She said that instead of the ISI controlling Pakistan, the elected representatives of the people should be controlling the agency; otherwise, covert terrorist operations abroad would continue to undermine democracy.
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