Daijiworld Media Network - Islamabad

Islamabad, Feb 11: Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has made one of his most candid admissions yet, accusing the United States of exploiting Islamabad for its strategic interests and then discarding it “worse than toilet paper”.

Speaking in Parliament, Asif said Pakistan’s decision to realign with Washington after 1999, particularly in relation to Afghanistan, inflicted deep and lasting damage on the country. He described the pursuit of US support as a grave miscalculation whose consequences Pakistan continues to suffer even decades later.

Challenging long-standing official narratives, Asif rejected claims that Pakistan’s involvement in the Afghanistan conflict was driven by religious duty. He acknowledged that Pakistanis were mobilised and sent to fight under the banner of jihad, calling the framing misleading and destructive.

The defence minister said even Pakistan’s education system was reshaped to legitimise these wars, adding that many of those ideological distortions remain embedded today. He argued that the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan during the 1980s was dictated by American geopolitical interests and not by any genuine religious imperative, insisting that the circumstances never warranted a declaration of jihad.

According to Asif, Pakistan’s participation in conflicts that were not its own resulted in long-term instability and social damage that the country is still struggling to overcome.

Referring to the post-September 11, 2001 period, Asif said the costs of siding with the US-led war on terror were devastating. He blamed former military rulers Zia-ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf for entangling Pakistan in external wars, leaving the nation to deal with the fallout long after its allies moved on.

Using unusually blunt language, Asif told lawmakers that Pakistan was treated “worse than toilet paper”, used for a purpose and then thrown away. He said Pakistan turned against the Taliban to support Washington’s campaign, only for the US to later withdraw while Pakistan remained trapped in violence, radicalisation and economic strain.

“The losses we suffered can never be compensated,” Asif said, calling those decisions irreversible mistakes that reduced Pakistan to a pawn in conflicts driven by others.