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“Pakistan started religious militancy since 1979 for safeguarding its national interests and expelling the then USSR from Afghanistan, Musharraf confessed in a TV interview”
AT Monitoring Report-KABUL: The former president and military leader of Pakistan Pervez Musharaf in an interview to Pakistan’s leaving TV Channel “Dunya” on Tuesday said that Pakistan started religious militancy since 1979 in its national interests. “We mustered up Mujahideen from across the world. We trained the Taliban. We sent them to Afghanistan. They were our heroes. Haqqani was our hero. Osama bin Laden was our hero. Zwahiri was our hero,” confessed Musharraf.
“Later they became villains,” Musharaf added.
The report further states that Musharraf admitted in the interview that Pakistan supported and trained other militant groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) in 1990s to carry out jihad in Kashmir.
“In 1990s the freedom struggle began in Kashmir. At that time Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and 11 or 12 other organizations were formed. We supported them and trained them as they were fighting in Kashmir. Though they were beaten and put to rout by Indian troops, but we received them as our heroes,” Musharraf gave it out in the interview.
He said that terrorists like LeT’s Saeed and Zakur Rehman Lkhvi, who have been blamed by India for attacks, were also heroes for Pakistan at one time.
“The Kashmiri freedom fighters including Hafiz Saeed and Lakhvi were our heroes at that time. Later on the religious militancy turned into terrorism. Now they (referring to terrorism in Pakistan) are killing their own people here and this should be controlled and stopped,” Mussaraf said.
