GVS exclusive interview with Imran Khan; his vision and his priorities.

[GlobalVillageSpace]

GVS exclusive interview with Imran Khan; his vision and his priorities.
GVS had the good fortune of getting an opportunity to interview Imran Khan, Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf.

Election season has for all intents and purposes kicked off and we decided that it would be wise to ask the PTI chief about the specifics of his vision for Pakistan, identifying the greatest issues faced by Pakistanis, and how the nation should confront theses challenges.

Q: You accepted electable candidates from PPP and other parties. This move does not conform with the ideology of your party because of which the younger generation, who were inspired by your slogans during the Dharna, have been left feeling betrayed. Do you have something to say to them?

IK: First of all, the thought process of getting to your objective evolves. With experience, eventually your ideas keep getting reshaped but the objective never changes. You compromise to get to your objectives, you never compromise on your objective.

Secondly, when you have to give one thousand tickets, if there are four or five people who are coming from other political parties and who are controversial in any way it does not affect your vision in any way. Twenty, thirty people do not affect you getting to your objective.

“I challenge anyone who accuses me because there is no big corruption in KP. If anything, there may be a little corruption at very lower levels”

Even if you have angels in Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N and Asif Zardari’s PPP it won’t make any difference because what matters is who is on top.

Is the one on top clean? Does he make strong institutions which do not distinguish between those in power and those outside power?

The reason why the western countries in Scandinavia and Britain have clean governments is not because the people are all honest, it’s because the institutions are so strong that the people are petrified of doing anything wrong because they know they will be caught.

And my last point, when in KP we formed our Ehtisab cell the first person they caught, for the first time in the history of Pakistan, was a PTI minister and the second one was a father of a PTI minister which is why I challenge anyone who accuses me because there is no big corruption in KP. If anything, there may be a little corruption at very lower levels.

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[Flash_Ninja]

Q: You previously held the opinion that we should negotiate with the Taliban in FATA. Now that your party has ruled KPK for one term, has your opinion about the political settlement in FATA evolved in any way?

IK: Well, firstly, it is very important to understand what Taliban was. If you do not understand, as they say, the enemy – know your enemy, it’s a Chinese proverb – ninety-five percent of the people fighting in FATA, the militants, were not ideological Taliban.

The ideological Taliban were only about five percent.

For 95 percent of the people supporting Taliban were doing it because of the collateral damage caused by the bombing of our own forces and American drone attacks. The collateral damage created militants. Also, a mixture of Pashtun nationalism and Jihadism contributed to the insurgency because the Americans were projected as the common enemy.

The real ideological Taliban who you talk about – the religious extremists – were only about 5 percent.

So if my thesis is correct, and by the way, the current Afghan ambassador once told me that even in Afghanistan ninety percent of Taliban were not ideological, in other words, they were people who reacted to American occupation, so if my thesis is correct then it clearly makes sense to talk to those people who are only fighting because of the collateral damage and in reaction to American occupation.

Talking to them is the best solution, and then we must isolate the ones who were hardened ideologues, who are irreconcilable.

Very interesting. He's right that many militants are misled or not ideologically invested, but I wonder what he actually hopes to do about it though.

Maybe something like an amnesty program similar to the one in Balochistan, or greatly expanding the militant re-education system they already have. Introducing governance into FATA and bringing Madrassas under a state curriculum will definitely help prevent those ideological fighters.