Pakistani defence minister Khawaja Asif makes another controversial claim: 'Jihad was created by the West

A day after he triggered a controversy by publicly admitting that Pakistan harbours and funds terror organisations for the West, Pakistani defence minister Khawaja Asif continues to blame the West for his country's internal undoing, stating "Jihad was invented by the West". 

 

Asif reiterated Pakistan's hollow claim that it was a victim of terrorism, attributing it to the policies of the Western governments, mainly the US, tracing back decades. "The introduction of jihad, which was invented by the West, changed the country’s ethos and led to its current issues. The whole ethos of the society was changed to support the jihad," Asif said in an interview with RT News. 

 

His statement was about the decision taken by Pakistan's rulers to join the Soviet-Afghanistan war in the late 1980s. The defence minister said this resulted in the country turning into a "platform for training and indoctrinating jihadists" for the West.  

 

Asif said Pakistan provided all help to the US during the war in Afghanistan only to be abandoned. He recalled how Pakistan joined the coalition post-9/11 attacks and how the supplies to all the facilities would go from their soil. "Both these wars, in my humble opinion, were not our wars", he added, stating how the country bore the consequences of previous policies. "We suffered a lot and the United States abandoned us around ‘89 or ‘90. [They] went away and we were left high and dry," he said. 

 

His desperate bid for damage control comes as he, a day ago, admitted in an interview with Sky News that Pakistan funded and trained terrorists, stating Islamabad did the dirty work for Western powers. "We have been doing this dirty work for the United States for about three decades, you know and the West, including Britain," Asif told Sky News, calling it "a mistake” and Pakistan has "suffered for that."

 

"If we had not joined the war against the Soviet Union and the war after 9/11, Pakistan’s track record would have been unimpeachable," Asif said. 

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