Colors of Khwaja Asif: From n-threats, tears, to peace-cry—all in a week!
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Only last week, the 75-year-old man, clad in three-piece suits like other Pakistani politicians, was threatening India left, right, and center with nuclear weapons that he believes Pakistan has. Then, when the Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force started war exercises in the Arabian Sea and the Indian skies, his legs trembled and he publicly shed tears on the TV.
Only last week, he admitted to an Australian TV interviewer that Pakistan has been raising terrorists for the last 30 years. “We have been doing this dirty work for the US, Europe, and Britain.”
On Thursday, 12 hours after India ruthlessly destroyed 21 terror camps across nine locations in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and killed around 100 terrorists and wounded many more, he panicked and ‘offered’ peace.
Meet Khwaja Muhammad Asif, Pakistan’s boastful Defence Minister, a U-turn specialist, who has publicly demonstrated all these emotions within a week.
“If India backs down, we will definitely wrap up this tension,” he declared on Thursday, offering peace to New Delhi—without apparently seeking permission from his weak-kneed boss, Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, who himself reports to his super-boss, Army chief General Asim Munir.
“We have been saying all along… that we’ll never initiate anything hostile towards India. But if we’re attacked, we’ll respond. If India backs down, we will definitely wrap up this tension,” Khawaja Asif said.
“Islamabad is ready to ‘wrap up’ (?) tensions with India, if New Delhi de-escalates the situation,” he said hours after India reduced to dust Pakistan’s carefully put up infrastructure terror factories across the Line of Control and inside the PoK.
Asked about the possibility of talks he has offered, Asif said he was not aware of any such potential engagements—proving that he is completely out of the loop in Pakistan’s political, security, and defense establishment bankrolled by the army chief.
Even at his advanced age, Khwaja Asif has been a highly controversial figure in Pakistani politics. He was arrested in 2020 by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on corruption charges, has been accused of double nationality, has faced election rigging charges, and raised a storm for sexist comments against women politicians.
Indian armed forces early Wednesday carried out missile strikes on nine terror targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and destroyed 21 terror camps, killing around 100 terrorists waiting to be launched on Indian targets,
