NEW DELHI: Two days after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s brief visit to Islamabad, Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Imran Khan said his country would not fight ‘anyone else’s war.’
In his address at the Defence Day ceremony at Army headquarters in Rawalpindi on Friday, Imran said he had been against the involvement of Pakistan in foreign wars from the very first day. The day, originally called Martyrs’ Day to pay tribute to its soldiers on the 53rd anniversary of the 1965 war with India, was renamed as Defence Day in 2014.
Imran recalled that when he was 12, he wanted to join the army to fight against the Indian forces that invaded Pakistan in 1965. “If I had not become a cricketer, I would have joined the Army,” he said.
Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, in his address, said his country had learnt a lot from the 1965 and 1971 wars. Pledging that “we will avenge the blood flowing on the border,” he said Pakistan supported the people in J&K in their “struggle for the right to self-determination”.
What was Imran alluding to? “The only foreign war Pakistan is fighting is the US-backed war against terror in Afghanistan,” said journalist Mubashir Ahmed based in Lahore. “To me, it seems the PM is trying to send a strong message to the Americans, who recently refused to pay us for services rendered in this war, despite all our sacrifices,” he said.