Pakistan’s finance minister has launched a passionate defence of his country’s policy towards extremist and terrorist elements on its borders, and attacked the behaviour of Afghanistan and its backers.
Omar Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s Minister of State for Finance, told Emerging Markets, that countries expecting Pakistan to do more to tackle extremists were being unrealistic. “When somebody says ‘do more’, we’ve done as much as possible. We’ve lost soldiers on the ground. I’ve lost friends serving on the border,” he said.
“We haven’t done it at anyone’s behest. We want to get these people out. Do more? I’m sorry, it just can’t happen.”
The minister’s comments come ahead of an election that will demonstrate whether or not extremist groups have popular support in Pakistan. Khan’s perspective is useful, since he is from the Pakistan’s North-West Frontier province, which borders Afghanistan and shares its ethnicity.
Indeed, when Khan – the grandson of one of Pakistan’s first presidents, Muhammed Ayub Khan – recently met his counterpart from the Afghanistan government, they conversed not in Urdu or English but Pashto, the language of the Pashtun people, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group.
“I’m in the field. I defeated the extremist party candidates,” Khan said. “Their performance leaves a lot to be desired. People have realised it [the popularity of extremist parties] was a flash in the pan, a knee-jerk reaction because of the US action in Afghanistan.
“There’s going to be a swing back to moderate elements,” he said. “It [the question voters ask] is basically: how do I make a decent living and what are elected representatives delivering on the ground?”
Pakistan is often criticised in the west for border security, as it is believed that militants drift freely in and out from Afghanistan. But Khan said that when Pakistan talks about fencing the border, “the other side [that is, Afghanistan and its backers] says don’t fence it. What do we do then?”
He said Pakistan had established more than 1000 posts along the border, far more than had been established on the Afghan side. “Let’s call a spade a spade: they need to do more on that side.”
He also said Afghanistan and the foreign forces present in the country needed to curtail the power of drug lords. “With a foreign force there, under their noses, what gives? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist. If they are flying over Afghanistan, seeing these fields, why don’t they do something about it? That’s what the crux of the problem is.”
In other comments, the minister clarified the precise order of the country’s future asset sales. The landmark sale of Pakistan State Oil should go ahead once the Supreme Court deals with a complaint by a disqualified bidder and will be followed by Pakistan Petroleum Limited. (See And the Beat Goes On, page 18.)
Pakistan’s recent successful GDR programme, which has involved well-received issues from MCB bank and from Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDC), will continue with a Merrill Lynch-arranged launch for United Bank. It will be followed by another GDR from National Bank of Pakistan, and then Habib Bank, though the latter must first complete a domestic listing.