Pakistan Using Its 'Puppet PM' to Justify Expulsion of Afghan Refugees, Says Amrullah Saleh | Exclusive

To counter the backlash over the expulsion of Afghan refugees, Pakistan is using its “puppet Prime Minister” Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, who is a Pashtun, as its cover, said Afghanistan’s Acting President-in-Exile Amrullah Saleh in an exclusive conversation with CNN-News18.

“As to what they want politically out of it, because their puppets are in power in Kabul, this way they are trying to shift some of the militant training camps under the pretext of the expulsion of refugees into Afghanistan,” he said. “I have no doubt that the Pakistan intelligence establishment has thought of 3-4 other steps…if there’s something happening, then they say it is not us, it has happened from Afghanistan, we are pushing the refugees out. So we have to be vigilant about that angle of this matter also. In the meantime, for us, the political face of it they are using a puppet Prime Minister, who is not elected, and he is a Pashtun.”

With this ploy, Pakistan is trying to minimise the racial aspect of the refugee expulsion, Saleh said.

“It was not done by a Punjabi, it was not done by a Sindhi, it was done by a Pashtun prime minister, from the same clan, same blood, same ethnic background. So they have calculated this also. But we all know that Kakar is a puppet of the GHQ, he is not elected, and his remarks against his own identity in the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) were so disgraceful,” he said. “In the meantime, there are reports that because the Durand Line in recent years had become very blurred, and it had lost relevance, although the caretaker prime minister of Pakistan made several references to the Gandamak treaty, that had also lost relevance psychologically, this year in Pakistan, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, there was no flag of Pakistan hoisted by communities during their independence celebrations.”

Pakistan is very fearful, said Saleh. “And they see this situation as conducive and suitable to apply maximum pressure on their puppets in Kabul to gain some concessions on the Durand Line issue. They are trying everything, including causing massive human pain, causing a massive humanitarian crisis, then using that pain to gain concessions. This is a very old tactic,” he said.