Jinnah did not want India-Pakistan to be permanent enemies: Husain Haqqani

Former ambassador to US backtracks from earlier claim regarding ISI's involvement in Mumbai attacks

Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah did not want Pakistan and India to be permanent enemies, said former Pakistan ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani in an interview with an Indian publication on Thursday.

“Immediately after Partition, Jinnah realised two things: one was that minorities had to be protected in Pakistan. The second was peace and prosperity in Pakistan will depend on its long-term relations with India,” the diplomat said in response to a question on whether Jinnah was a pragmatist, who was full of contradictions.



The former ambassador’s recent remarks came during an interview with HuffPost India in Bangalore about his recent book India vs Pakistan: Why Can’t We Just Be Friends?

‘ISI, army was involved in 26/11 attacks’

During the interview, the former ambassador backtracked from his earlier claim in which he said then Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief General (retd) Shuja Pasha had admitted the agency’s role in planning the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

“This has been misread here a lot. I’m not saying the ISI or the army was involved. I narrated a conversation between the ISI chief and myself,” Haqqani said in response to a question on whether ISI insinuated that the army was involved in the attacks.

“The ISI chief only said these were ‘our people’, which, I think, refers to Pakistanis who had state support in the past. He didn't say it was ‘our operation’, which would mean it was executed by the ISI,” the diplomat added.

On November 26, 2008, 10 heavily-armed gunmen laid siege to the capital of India’s Maharashtra, including luxury hotels, a Jewish centre, a hospital and a bustling train station, killing 166 people. The lone surviving gunman Ajmal Kasab was hanged in India on November 21, 2012.



Haqqani further said the remarks by the former ISI chief let him to think if a state had people it considered its own acting without its approval that was a very dangerous thing.

“Pakistan will have to bear the consequences of the 26/11 attackers without having full control over their participation or planning in it,” upheld Haqqani.

“The other interpretation could be that there was planning, which has been offered by Indian and American experts. If that's the case, then it's even more dangerous,” he added.

The former ambassador advised the government to do away with militias fed on ideologies and rhetoric of people like Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar, who, according to him, have some grand delusion to pursue instead of advancing the cause of the Pakistani state.

“If you read Lashkar-e-Taiba’s literature, it talks about how their job is to liberate all territories that used to be under Muslim control and are no longer so. Any tolerance for it is going to only come back and bite Pakistan,” he said.

This article originally appeared on The Huffington Post.