London, Sept 29: Self-exiled former Pakistan ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf has openly backed the Jalaluddin Haqqani group responsible for the recent attack on the US embassy in Kabul.
In an interview to The Daily Telegraph Musharraf said, it was important for Pakistan to spell out to the world why the Haqqani network was being allowed to operate on its soil.
Asked if Pakistan needed the support of the powerful insurgent family led by Jalaluddin Haqqani and linked to the Taliban, he said: “If I was in government I would certainly be thinking how best to defend Pakistan's interests.
“Certainly if Afghanistan is being used by India to create an anti-Pakistan Afghanistan, we would like to prevent that.”
He said the Haqqani group was the source of a “terrible” lack of trust and confidence and added: “The United States must understand Pakistan has its own national interest. The United States must accept the compulsions of Pakistan and give assurances.”
He added: “When the coalition talk of leaving in 2014, Pakistan has to really think, what will be the environment and fend for itself against all the exterior pressures, all the exterior manoeuvrings and political manoeuvrings against Pakistan.”
Musharraf said Pakistan must “talk straight” about “what their national interest is viz a viz, why are they not acting against Haqqani in North Waziristan [his stronghold], viz a viz was there any complicity in Osama bin Laden being found in Abbottabad.”
He said that surveys showed 70 per cent of people in Pakistan thought that the killing of bin Laden was a hoax.
Musharraf said firmly that he did not believe in such conspiracy theories but admitted his own brother-in-law had told him: “I have my doubts.”
He dismissed suggestions that the Pakistani military had colluded in hiding bin Laden but said the incident was “most embarrassing and negligence of a shameful order.”
The former president said that if he was in power he believed the Americans would have told him about their plans in advance.
“I'm a straight talker and I accept straight talk and I do straight talk,” he said.
But the relationship between the United States and Pakistan is now “very poor” and suffers from “lack of trust and confidence” with “faults on both sides,” he said.
“The United States doesn't understand the sensitivities of Pakistan - that the United States is in league with India, that Indians are allowed to do whatever they are doing in Afghanistan.”
He said the distrust was increased by drone attacks, the killing of Osama bin Laden and tensions over Raymond Davis, the CIA agent who shot dead two alleged robbers in Lahore earlier this year.
“Are we some jungle people that you can do anything with? This is the feeling of the people of Pakistan, are we some animal that they are treating us like this? We are a sovereign country and we have our own human rights.”
He said the relationship with Britain was “a little better but not good” adding that the Prime Minister's comments about Pakistan's failure to take on terrorism during a visit to India were “very, very negative.”
“Isn't it naïve that if you are going to India and you are supposed to be a world power? ...From India you are lecturing Pakistan that Pakistan needs to do more on terror. This is terrible, this is not good diplomacy at all. Britain we know to be very good diplomats but this is not good diplomacy.”
Musharraf frankly admitted he had had an almost openly hostile relationship with Afghan president Hamid Karzai.
“As time passed I realised that president Hamid Karzai is playing more in the hands of Indians who were trying to create an anti-Pakistan Afghanistan,” he said.
“These were irritants that kept developing over the years and got converted into almost open hostility.”
Asked if he thought the Taliban would end up ruling Afghanistan again when Britain and the US pull out in three years' time he offered two possible scenarios, one in which there was “total mayhem” and a “free for all” with “every ethnic group fighting each other.”
On the other hand, if the Taliban managed to unite under one leader, civil war could ensue, he added.
Instead, Musharraf called for “ethnically representative, proportionally balanced, national government” that recognised the strength of the Pashtuns.
But he added that Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, was beyond Pakistani control and described him as “absolutely obstinate and semi-literate and not aware of issues of the world, with very backward, sectarian views.”
The former head of the army has launched the All- Pakistan Muslim League, an attempt to win election for the first time, despite his nine years in power following a military coup in 1999.
He has support in Pakistan, where some drivers have “Bring back the general” signs, but he faces an uphill task as well as criminal charges that he circumvented the constitution.
“I am a person who believes if I try and if I'm failing, I will quit,” he added. “I have no qualms and no ego. I have governed Pakistan for nine years, very successfully and I have no further ambitions, personal ambitions, my ambition is Pakistan.”
