US record in fighting terrorism bad

US diplomacy in Pakistan is doomed to failure despite billions of dollars spent on military operations in the region, a senior Pakistani politician says.

“The US donated billions of dollars to former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, while it knew terrorists were hiding in tribal regions. It granted plenty of US dollars to the criminals in Pakistan’s tribal regions. The US has a bad track record in fighting terrorism,” the vice president of the Pashtun secular-nationalist Awami National Party (ANP), Bushar Gohar, said.

Gohar told IRIB’s Pashtun service in an exclusive interview that “since nine years ago the US knew what was going on in the tribal areas and it also knew about the roles of the Pakistani army and intelligence” in those incidents.

“If the United States knows that Pakistan trains and protects terrorists and at the same time it helps the US in fighting terrorism, why doesn’t it take any concrete action in this regard?” she asked.

According to Gohar, the Pakistani government has protected al-Qaeda leaders since nine years ago.

“However, Pakistan’s National Assembly has passed a bill according to which Pakistan’s tribal regions should be cleaned from terrorists,” she further explained.

Gohar pointed out that the Pakistanis will witness such claims as long as tribal regions are not cleared of terrorists and Pakistan does not comply with its commitments.

“The northern Waziristan region is full of foreign terrorists. They get trained in these regions and the US is duty-bound to inform Pakistan in case it has any relevant information,” she added.

Gohar also pointed out that the Pakistan-based terrorists receive a lot of money from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and it has to be known why and how this money comes to Pakistan.

“Interior Minister Rehman Malik has to explain why such a flow of aid from Pakistan has not yet been prevented,” she noted.

A NATO official was quoted by CNN as saying that the top al-Qaeda leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, live in Chatral region in northwestern Pakistan and in houses located very close to each other.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the NATO official told CNN that certain local officials and ISI members protect the al-Qaeda leaders.