PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakh-tunkhwa Ameer of the Jamaat-e-Islami Prof Mohammad Ibraheem Khan Friday admitted his partys failure for not resisting the Nato supplies in the past 11 years but added that they would not allow its resumption now.
We should have presented the provision of supply route to the Nato forces as an issue long before. But now that the supply has been suspended, we should not look into the past and take full benefit of the current situation, he said while speaking at a dialogue on The Implications of Restoration of Nato Supplies arranged by the Institute of Research and Studies (IRS) here.
The dialogue was attended by Prof Mohammad Abbas, director of the institute, Sahibzada Haroonur Rasheed, provincial vice-president of the JI, Prof Dr Fakhrul Islam of the University of Peshawar, Dr Mohammad Iqbal Khalil, Inayatullah Khan, former health minister and provincial president of the Al-Khidmat Foundation, Arbab Fateh Gul, a retired police officer and others. Dr Qadir Bakhsh Baloch made a presentation on the issue.
Prof Ibraheem Khan said the Nato supply was a deal of total loss. The losses caused by the so-called war against terror have crossed 100 million dollars, he claimed. He said the imminent US pullout from Afghanistan was the most important issue. The US does not want to get out of Afghanistan, but it has been badly trapped there and it cannot afford to stay there further, he added.
He was of the opinion that the US was fast losing its status as the world leader. The European countries too are unable to replace the US as the leader of the world, he added.
China, Russia, Japan and India are the emerging leaders of the world, he maintained. However, he remarked that the Muslim Ummah was a potential candidate to become the next leader of the world and this was the reason that the US and other western forces were trying hard to contain the Islamic countries.
He dispelled the impression that the JI had supported the treasury benches resolution for restoration of the Nato supplies in the Senate. We gave our dissenting note on the resolution, which is on record, he said.
Prof Qadir Bakhsh Baloch said the Nato supplies had serious political, military and economic implications for the country. Pakistan started suffering the day the rulers agreed to provide logistics support and intelligence sharing in the so-called war against terror, he said.
He opposed the restoration of the supply route for the Nato forces. The series of terror attack on containers, destruction of infrastructure and protest would restart if the supplies are restored, he argued.
Qadir Bakhsh Baloch said three kinds of commodities lethal weapons, critical equipment and oil and food items were being transported through Pakistan. For the past several years, lethal weapons transportation has been stopped, while food items and oil are mainly being supplied through land routes. He remarked that after the closure of the supply route by Pakistan, the US started using three alternative routes through the Central Asian countries, but these were costly.
He said oil was the most important commodity that needed regular transportation due to the lack of storage capacity in Afghanistan. He added that the US forces had a storage facility of only three million gallons by 2010, which was doubled by 2011, but the daily consumption of oil was 0.9 million gallons. The JI leader added that due to dearth of oil the US had to curtail many operations and patrolling.
He said the supply route was the weakest point of the US and Pakistan should not budge from its principled stand on the issue
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