Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto has said that Pakistan’s tribal areas need to be brought under a system of laws and representation to empower people of these areas, and allow them to be independent of Afghan-Arab fighters who dominate their society. In an interview with the German daily Junge Welt, Ms Bhutto talked about issues related to the Taliban, tribal areas and the Charter of Democracy and her plans to return to Pakistan. She said that it should be recognised that the Taliban went to war with the world under a military dictatorship in Pakistan in 2001. She said that until military dictatorship in Pakistan ended, “the environment that nourishes the Taliban and their sympathisers will continue to grow in strength”.
She asked Islamabad to work closely with Kabul to stop infiltrations into Afghanistan. “A resurrection of their (Taliban) regime in Kabul will covertly bring back Al Qaeda, and the world will be back to square one,” she said.
Ms Bhutto said that Islamabad also needed to reform its security apparatus and end the “duality of control” that currently existed and bring them under the control of parliament and the prime minister. The Pakistani foreign minister recently said in Kabul he was not denying that people were coming to Afghanistan from across the border, she said, adding that this statement proved that the military dictatorship was “unable” to establish the writ of the government in Pakistan. Ms Bhutto said that on the other hand, a political government was able to establish its writ in the tribal areas towards the end of the 1980s, when narcotics lords ran mafias similar to those of the Taliban.