New military leadership realises regime change experiment \u2018failed\u2019: Imran Khan
\n ISLAMABAD
\nPTI chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan has blamed the \u201cnegligence\u201d of Pakistan\u2019s security forces and intelligence agencies for the rising incidents of terrorism in the country.
\nImran spoke on the recent criticism surrounding the PTI government\u2019s decision to negotiate with the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) before it was ousted. He was responding to a question by the host, who asked him if he still \u201cstands by\u201d the decision to greenlight the talks. \u201cOne of the reasons that terrorism has spiked in Pakistan is because, according to the National Counterterrorism Authority, the time that was taken for negotiations with TTP was used by that group to reorganise. Those talks started when you were in power. Do you stand by your decision to greenlight those talks,\u201d correspondent Sarah Zaman asked.
\n\u201cWell, firstly, what were the choices [the] Pakistani government faced once the Taliban took over and they decided the TTP, and we\u2019re talking about 30, [30,000] to 40,000 people, you know, the families included, once they decided to send them back to Pakistan? Should we have just lined them up and shot them, or should we have tried to work with them to resettle them,\u201d Imran replied.
\nTalking about his relationship with former army chief retired General Qamar Javed Bajwa, the ex-premier said that his government and the military were on the \u201csame page\u201d, which meant that \u201cwe had the organised strength of Pakistan army to help us\u201d. \u201cWe worked together, and you know, Pakistan was considered one of the success stories of Covid-19.\u201d However, Imran contended that Gen Bajwa \u201cfavoured some of the biggest crooks in the country\u201d and didn\u2019t think about corruption as a big problem. \u201cHe wanted us to work with them. What that meant [was] giving them immunity from their corruption cases,\u201d he claimed, adding that Gen Bajwa has a \u201cvery close\u201d relationship with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. \u201cAnd, for some reason, he conspired, and this regime change took place.\u201d
\nImran added that the leading principle of the balance of power was that the elected government must also have the authority. \u201cYou cannot separate responsibility and authority. So, if the authority lies with the army chief, [but] responsibility lies with the prime minister, no management system works,\u201d he pointed out.
\nIn response to another question, Imran said that he was sure that the new military leadership had realised that the \u201cexperiment of regime change\u201d had gone wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New military leadership realises regime change experiment \u2018failed\u2019: Imran Khan ISLAMABAD PTI chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan has blamed the \u201cnegligence\u201d of Pakistan\u2019s security forces and intelligence agencies for the rising incidents of terrorism in the country. Imran spoke on the recent criticism surrounding the PTI government\u2019s decision to negotiate with the outlawed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-313299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-news"},"yoast_head":"\n