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Bush can't bowl Laden out: Imran Khan
Imran Khan sits inside his luxurious double-storey house
in Islamabad's finest suburb
with Henry Kissinger's latest book on the coffee table,
CNN on television and anger over
the US bombing of Afghanistan on his mind.
Recognised as one of cricket's finest tacticians and a
national icon, the former Pakistan
captain turned politician believes the US decision to
attack Afghanistan will backfire.
"With each bomb that falls on Afghanistan,
anti-Americanism is growing in Afghanistan,
in Pakistan and across the Muslim world," Khan said in an
interview with Agence
France-Presse.
When it comes to the troubled relationship between the
West and the Islamic world,
Khan is well placed to comment.
The scion of a prominent family of Pashtuns -- the
fiercely independent tribe that
dominates Afghanistan -- Khan was educated at Britain's
prestigious Oxford University,
where he took a degree in politics, philosophy and
economics.
When he announced that he was to marry his wife Jemima,
the daughter of British
Jewish financier Sir James Goldsmith, many expected him
to settle permanently in one
of London's s***ier neighbourhoods.
Instead he has based himself in Pakistan's cultural
capital Lahore, from where he leads
his own political Justice Movement and runs a cancer
hospital he established in
memory of his late mother, Shaukat Khanum.
Khan's beautiful blonde wife, his globe-trotting sporting
career, and his devotion to
Islam are all part of a complex mix from which his views
on events following the
September 11 terrorist strikes on the United States have
been distilled.
"The moment I saw those scenes on television I knew the
world was never going to be
the same again," the 48-year-old says.
"The immediate response we all feared was this clash of
civilisation theory would
become a self-fulfilling prophecy. "We all worried what
the United States was going to
do because there was this raging bull out for revenge but
there was no clear target.
"So we waited for what they were going to do and they
zeroed in on this part of the
world."
Khan says he does not object to Osama bin Laden, the
accused mastermind of the
attacks on the United States who is hiding in
Afghanistan, being brought to justice.
It is President George W Bush's "wanted dead or alive"
form of justice and the military
action that is killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan
that Khan says is wrong for m***
and political reasons.
"The longer and ***ier the attacks become, the greater
the sense of injustice in this
part of the world and the more the hatred will grow
against America," he says.
"This is what bin Laden wants. He wants the sympathies of
the Muslim world with him.
He will play on the double standards of the Western
world."
Khan says Americans do not understand the reasons for the
terrorist attacks on them
and accuses the nation's media and political institutions
of keeping the population in
the dark.
"Unfortunately in the United States there is still this
denial going on. "I keep watching
American television programs and I am shocked that they
are referring to this hatred
which has caused these terrorist attacks and they
attribute it to (Muslim martyrs getting)
***s in heaven.
"They don't want to look deeper into the causes.
Unfortunately the reason is a very a sad
thing -- the Israeli lobby is so powerful in the United
States in the media and Congress,
it just does not allow the debate to take place."
Khan says issues such as Washington's support for Israel
and "denying Palestinians
all their rights" are not discussed in the United States
for fear of being labelled
anti-Semitic.
"But they don't understand they are endangering their
security in the long run by doing
this and they are endangering the whole globe."
Khan describes bin Laden as a product of the CIA, in
reference to the United States'
intelligence agency support for the Saudi-born dissident
when he fought in Afghanistan
against the Soviet invasion between 1979 and 1989.
"Now he's become a symbol of anti-Americanism not only in
the Muslim world, but all
over the world as a resistance to the great power."
Kahn says killing bin Laden, as the United States is
aiming to do, will make him a
martyr. "Then there will be more Osama bin Ladens and
that is playing directly into his
hands -- that's what he wants.
"In my opinion the way to deal with him was how a
civilised world should have dealt with
him and that is to have a powerful international court
where evidence was presented."
Khan says one of his biggest fears is that the US bombing
of Afghanistan will lead to a
massive rise in fundamentalism in Pakistan, leading to a
radical Islamic government
and making centralist parties like his Movement for
Justice organisation irrelevant.
"I see a worst case scenario that Pakistan, by supporting
the United States, ends up
being destabilised, a radical government comes in and
then we get bombed by the
United States for supporting terrorism. I can picture
that worst case scenario."
As for the Henry Kissinger novel "Does America Need a
Foreign Policy" on his coffee
table, Khan gives the impression it is about as
authoritative as a medium pacer
trundling in to the crease with an old ball.