‘Pak Army, ISI Trained Al Qaeda In Afghanistan’: Imran Khan Calls Joining US’ War On Terror Biggest Blunder

In what came as an open admission of links with al Qaeda and other terror groups, Pakistani prime minister in an interview said that the Pakistan Army had trained al Qaeda and other terror-groups.

The response came to interviewer’s question about Osama bin Laden’s stay in Abbottabad of Pakistan very close to an army camp. The interviewer asked whether there had been any investigation in how come a globally designated terrorist was staying lavishly in Pakistan.

To this, the Pakistani PM replied that there had been investigations but he is not aware of the conclusions. He fumbled a bit and said, “As far as I know the Abbottabad commission sat down but I don’t know what the conclusion was”.

“But I can tell you one thing,” Khan continued, “the Pakistani Army, ISI trained al Qaeda and all these groups to fight in Afghanistan. There were always links between them. There had to be links because they trained them”.

Khan further said that after 9/11 “we did a 180 degree turn and went after the same groups, not many agreed with us. Many people in the army didn’t agree with us”.

Khan further said that due to these disagreements there were “internal attacks” in Pakistan. “There were to suicide-attacks on General Musharraf,” he said, “which were insider, from within the army.”

The Pakistani PM blamed such internal disagreements within the army for safe haven to Laden. He said that it might be the collusion at the lower levels that sheltered Osama bin Laden but the army chief and higher-ups didn't know about this.

On Monday, Imran Khan also blamed US for its dual policy on terrorism and said that joining former’s War on Terror was the biggest mistake Pakistan made.

Khan was quoted as saying by DNA that the resistance against the Soviets in the 1980s "was organised by Pakistani ISI in training these militants who were invited from all over the Muslim world to do jihad."

He further said that the very groups who were trained to fight Soviet resistance in Afghanistan in the 1980s were deemed as terrorists by the US after they arrived in the country in the aftermath of 9/11.

"They (the insurgent groups) were indoctrinated that fighting foreign occupation is 'jihad.' But now when the US arrived in Afghanistan, it was supposed to be terrorism," said Khan.

"Pakistan government should not have pledged what they could not have delivered. How could they? The groups were close to the Pakistani army, the army was now trying to kill them," he added.

"I opposed this from day one. I said we had first trained this guy to fight jihad. It was a great idea and now we are telling the same group it's terrorism. So we should at least have stayed neutral," he said.