Pashto → English transcript

In a historic speech,

Pakistan's defense minister admitted

that his government has been interfering in Afghanistan for several decades.

Khawaja Asif said in a session of that country’s

National Assembly that for several decades

Pakistan has acted in Afghanistan as a hired force for Western interests and

is still repeating these mistakes. The only purpose was that General Musharraf…

For several decades we were engaged in Afghanistan as a hired force,

because General Musharraf needed the support of the United States.

We still have not

admitted our

past mistakes.

Until we admit our

historic mistakes,

we will not be able to reform ourselves.

For about twenty- two or twenty- three years,

we were involved in Afghanistan,

and today we ask,

why has terrorism spread in our country?

This is the direct result of those same policies.

This is not the first time that a senior Pakistani official In Afghanistan,

he admits to this country’s wrong policies,

and even earlier Pakistan’s defense minister had said that his

country had supported terrorist groups for three decades and this was done for the

interests of America and Western countries. All the actions or measures that it

took for Western countries,

it did them knowingly and for

its own interests, in order to take money, and secondly, that Pakistan itself was

created for these very projects by Western countries, so it had to carry out these

missions and it will carry them out in the future as well.

In past years Pakistan has

several times accused Afghanistan of having facilitated

the attacks,

but now the remarks of Pakistan’s defense minister have brought many aspects

of Islamabad’s previous positions into question.