YouSaid · the spoken record

Husain Haqqani

lines on the record: 62
first: 2015-12-21
most recent: 2015-12-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think that a political solution for Syria has to be found, but it would be difficult unless and until there are just too many moving parts. There are too many actors, too many factors, and you have to talk to each one and try and find a solution to every element. You may not be able to please everybody, but you can do a kind of a transition in Syria that was eventually effected in Iraq and Afghanistan, but for that you will have to get Asad to accept that he will step down and you have to make sure that the regional actors do not try to use ISIS or Anusra, which is the al Qaeda in that region as their force on ground to bring Asad down.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That dragged you in, cost you a lot of lives, and you left. And North Vietnam succeeded in its objective. So understand the objectives of all the actors. Saudi Arabia's objective is essentially to survive as a state, and they are afraid the Iranians are out to get them. That is the way to keep the Saudis out of it is by checking the power of Iran and its influence. Don't think of it as a Shia Sunni conflict, but as two powers trying to assert themselves and spread their wings in the region, with some others like Turkey, trying to actually leverage themselves as well. That region needs to have some kind of an understanding that there can be more than one important nation, and that not everyone doesn't need to pull the other down or to create and generate conflicts through which there can remain significant and important for the West.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where have you did well in Korea where you understood what the Korean elite in South Korea wanted? They wanted economic prosperity you helped them build it. Where have you gone wrong? You went wrong in South Vietnam, for example. Your assumptions about Vietnamese were wrong. You assume that North Vietnam wants to spread communism over Southeast Asia, so you were trying to fight a ghost war. That's not what was happening. North Korea only wanted to Vietnam only wanted to reunite with South Vietnam. But you were fighting false pretences.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you look at history, the United States has done very well in international conflicts where America understood the issues and understood the societies where it was going. So for example, after the Second World War you understood Germany and you understood you had to denazify the place but Germany should Germans are a proud nation they should be able to succeed as a nation. You did well in keeping Italy from going communist. You dealt well with East European nations what would succeed?”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Iran and Saudi Arabia, yes, but Iran and Saudi Arabia should not be seen as the world's largest Sunni state is Indonesia. And they're not in this conflict. So it's not so much about Sunnis. Iran uses the Shia card as its identity. Saudis use the Sunni card as their identity. But it's not like an overwhelming Sunni Shia conflict all over the world. In fact, the Shias constitute only 15% of the world's Muslims. Those shires who are not involved in this conflict directly are usually very westernized shias, Lebanon Shears, Pakistan Shears, India's shears, some of the most famous Bollywood actors and actresses are Shia Muslims. It shouldn't be simplified that way. You have to understand the details. And here I would make a comment directly addressed to Americans who take an interest in politics and world affairs.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The problem is self regenerating. And so if Al Qaeda was terrorism one point zero and ISIS is terrorism two point zero do not believe for a moment that there will not be a terrorism three point zero and for that you need a more comprehensive holistic strategy towards the region which actually tries to marginalize radical Islamists and these extremist groups make sure that they are not able to continue their financing schemes. For example ISIS sells oil. Now it shouldn't be that difficult. I mean oil is not something that can be smuggled because it goes in anybody's pocket. Oil is transported in tankers. There's no way that you can fight ISIS without depriving them of their finances.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All of this represents a trajectory, an ideological trajectory. These are people who came out of the war against the Soviet Union feeling very empowered. They had leveraged connections with the United States to push the Soviet Union out of a Muslim country. Now they think that they can leverage global affairs and situation in a manner in which they can push and topple a barricade from its perch of being the world's leader. So they're not going to stop. What is today ISIS used to be Al Qaeda in Iraq at one point. And once your strategy should not be limited to just tracking down individuals just as you did with Al Qaeda, look, you've killed more top al Qaeda leaders who were top al Qaeda leaders at the time of the 9-11 attacks.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I mean by that is that there is a tendency here to think that, you know, those who attack us are the ones that we need to deal with. Without thinking beyond that and think about those who will be attacking you down the road.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that there might not be deproliferation in the immediate future, but I think there can be a kind of a freeze on how many nuclear weapons these new countries can have. New nuclear countries like Pakistan and India. And secondly, it would be disastrous if Pakistan's battlefield nukes really emerge as the new thread down the road, because there some kernel or major will be controlling the deployment of nuclear weapons. And those are much easier to fall into wrong hands.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think nuclear weapons work that way. I think Pakistan's nuclear weapons are controlled by Pakistan's military. Can there be elements within the military? And the Pakistani military has been infiltrated by jihadis. I hope you know that. Many important bases have been attacked by people who have had great intelligence and information from within the bases. So could that happen? Absolutely. And therefore a stronger Pakistan, that is willing, that sees itself more as not in a permanent state of war, but basically that realizes that we built nuclear weapons so that we will not be overrun by a larger conventional Indian force. Now we need to calm down, talk to India and find some peace at home and abroad.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the concern is legitimate, but the concern is not the way people see. People think some religious fundamentalist, jihadi group is going to steal Pakistan's nuclear weapons and then bring them to some other country as a kind of like in the movies they show these things”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, fragile countries should not have nuclear weapons. And so the problem is Pakistan's fragility that raises this prospect, and very frankly all those people, and I write about it in my book in great detail, the book I've written on US Pakistan relations, that there were Americans in the eighties who thought it's not such a big deal if Pakistan gets nuclear weapons. And now those guys must really be tossing and turning in their beds every night. Oh God, what have we done? The solution to this fear is a stable government in Pakistan that is civilian, that controls the nuclear program, and has effective security and safety mechanisms and responds to some international regime of control. Pakistan's program is totally uncontrolled, totally outside international restrictions or management.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“on Afghanistan's front and end to support for militancy and jihadis all through. And I think One of the two major political parties leading a civilian government that is truly effective and that is able to control Pakistan's own military instead of being at war with the military constantly. Can you imagine a situation where the President of the United States is constantly living under the dread of the chairman joint chiefs walking in and saying Mr. President? Listen, this is one of the”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, the Islamist forces have continuously put pressure, but the great advantage there is that they have repeatedly failed to win elections. And so if Pakistan has a democratic process, the Islamists are marginalized because they are not in parliament. What needs to be done is to strengthen Pakistani democracy. Now, Pakistan's democracy, of course, suffers from the same kind of problems that many other democracies do. People accuse elected officials of engaging in corruption, the patronage, politics basically sort of debilitates the economy, etc. Those problems are very much there. And the army feeds that. It keeps telling the people, oh, the civilian politicians, incompetent, incompetent and competent. But right now, every Pakistani major political party wants three things peace with India”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You will have to deal with those areas as well, the staging areas, but the real answer to all of this is stronger local governments. I mean, local governments as national governments, strong governments that can withstand the onslaught of the jihadis themselves. But then they have to be governments that are committed to withstanding the onslaught of the jihadis. I think the Afghan government is committed to not letting the Taliban come back to power. The problem then lies in Pakistan. And there you then have to find the right mix of pressure points for Pakistan to change its policy.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“History is irrelevant. And the second thing Americans don't do well is patience. But very frankly, lower cost operation may be with some other nations pitching in towards the costs of the Middle Eastern countries who also want Afghanistan not to have the Taliban when pitching in something money wise keep your basic level of troops, advisors that enable the Afghan army to become sufficiently strong to resist.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is a tough cell, but here's the problem. I mean, this is something since you know American politics far more than I do. But Americans need to sometimes understand that things can take a little longer. I often joke that Americans are good at many things, they aren't good at two things. One is history. America is the only country where when you are dismissive about someone you say, David, he's history. That's a dismissive way of saying, which basically means that”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Anybody you recruited 10 years ago as a second lieutenant will make a good colonel. But if you accelerate his promotion and give him the title of general doesn't mean he has the experience to be a general. So I think that the Afghan government can hold on to Afghanistan with the help of the Afghan forces if the Americans can continue to give it some, shall we say, protection and support, not be deeply involved.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Afghanistan has a very strong sense of nationhood. It's very interesting. The state in Pakistan is much stronger. If you consider the military, the government, but the sense of nationhood is weaker, Pakistan's Pakistan is the result of the birth, was born through the division of India, then it got divided between Bangladesh and Pakistan. So Pakistan lives under the fear of further division, subdivision. Afghanistan has a much stronger sense of being together because they've been together for longer. Yet their government was always weak. They never had a strong military. For the first time they have a substantial military. But you must remember, David, that a second lieutenant takes about thirty eight to forty years to become a four star general. So that's why you are needed there to give that cushion to the Afghan army to develop that officer's carder that can think big. You've been there.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What really happened here was that after nine eleven the United States, I mean, you must remember Pakistan was under American sanctions before 9-11 over its nuclear program over May. The Bush administration thought that they could turn Pakistan on a dime, that if they promised aid, and this is a mistake many American administrations have made and probably might They will change what they want. Well, they didn't. What they did was they created a two tier policy, helping you in certain things and undermining you in others. Thereby increasing the cost in lives and money to you that was occurring in Afghanistan.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The way they think is that Afghanistan needs to be under full Pakistani control so that in case there is a conventional war within India, then Pakistan can have what they call strategic depth. And so since all the elements in Afghanistan that are Afghan nationalist, they didn't fight the Soviets to be dominated by Pakistan. So therefore most of them do not want Pakistani domination and the only group the Pakistanis have been able to have a working relationship with is the Taliban except that the Taliban represent like the seventh or eighth century they don't represent the twenty first century so Pakistan is in a way as a Pakistani I feel Pakistan has worked itself into a corner but”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basically it is this whole idea that if Afghanistan, look, Afghanistan and India have had long historic relations. As I keep reminding everybody, Pakistan is the new kid on the block, it's the newly created country. And so Pakistan feels insecure. I can understand feeling insecure, but now Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and I'm a Pakistani, and I can see it that our crisis now is not that India is going to invade Pakistan because they can't. We have nuclear weapons now, and they have to be careful about it. Pakistan's priority, Pakistan may want to solve the Kashmir issue with India. We feel that it should have been part of our country and it was taken by India. But again, in the presence of nuclear weapons, we can talk about it. We can't force their hand, they can't force our. It's time to educate our children. It's time to build our capacity. It's time to get on with other elements of life. But the military and the intelligence service don't think like that.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The ill named Hakani network, you know, also does Musharraf has admitted to it, by the way now. He says that when I was president, yes, we were doing this double game.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They wanted to do it with deniability. So what better than having all these Mujahidin as they were called, Islamic warriors, stay on wherever they came from, fight India, and if in return they want to fight their own battles in Sudan or some other country, let them. Without realizing that some of these guys wanted to actually take the battle even farther and make it bigger and come to America. And so therefore, in a way, it wasn't intentional on the part of the Pakistani military nor was it intentional on the part of the Americans who started it. But basically the technology for what hit America, the primary idea came actually from your side.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, those guys then, at least the Arabs amongst them, like bin Laden, turned it on America. Pakistan, I must say, the Pakistani military didn't want to turn it on America, I don't think at that time. What they wanted to do was to turn it on India.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has funded the creation of this huge militancy operation and this ability people who know how to make bombs now, people know how to put something under the Soviets.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So for that reason, Pakistan from the nineteenth late nineteen seventies early eighties thought that the way to do it is subconventional warfare. Subconventional warfare is basically militancy and terrorism. And when the Americans use the same methodology against the Soviets with Pakistani assistance in Afghanistan, that was the time when the ISI got built up because Americans don't care when they are giving money. I mean, they don't do at one level, but at another level, you know, you're just subcontracting the war against the Soviets to Pakistan. That's what the Reagan administration did. Remember Charlie Wilson's war. They're just giving money. And the Pakistanis are running the whole operation. But because their interest is India, so once the Soviets leave, the Pakistanis still want to retain control of the United States.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I would say that for that you have to understand what the Pakistani military's mind has been. The Pakistani military doesn't want to just defend Pakistan against India. It actually wants to project Pakistan's power as being equal to India's. How do you do that when a country six times larger than UN population, twelve times larger than you in the size of economy, twenty times larger than you in its academic and research base, etc., etc.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Against Bin Laden and bin Laden's own people in their accounts that they have subsequently written in their various journals, magazines that they publish, they've said by the grace of God we got a warning just a few minutes and the Sheikh left just a few minutes earlier, where did they get the warning from? If you remember, an American general had been sent to Pakistan because Stroped Albert was the Deputy Secretary of State was very worried that the Pakistanis might mistake the incoming cruise missiles as Indian and therefore might launch a nuclear attack on India so Pakistan has to be informed. And so a general was sent well timed so that he could tell the Pakistanis only two one or two hours before the cruise missiles entered Pakistani airspace. But that was enough.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this was you, and this was from the American point of view, a very good example of how when they shared the information only at the highest level with the Army chief, he obviously passed it on to somebody down and etc. It was easy to check where it might have leaked from, but it did leak. So Osama bin Laden, finding Osama bin Laden, was just too big a deal. If something similar had happened then, you know, you remember in 1998 President Bill Clinton launched these cruise missile attacks? Yes. Well, guess what? Against.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Keani can find who he trusts to execute the operation, it was a test run to find out how intelligence gets leaked or how these things go out. And an operation was conducted. But it's very interesting. The cameras from predator drones or whatever the satellites were watching the site. Just two hours before the arrival of the Pakistani army there to dismantle the facility, somebody arrived on a motorcycle, and you can see him. This film was shown to me as ambassador. This person arrives, talks to somebody, then everybody starts packing everything up and And so they have already left about twenty minutes before the Pakistani military arrives.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not certain where he would have been there or not, but past experience showed that whenever intelligence was shared, people did move around. There are many instances. And by the way, there was one instance even afterwards, because even after the bin Laden reign, there was an effort made, the CIA at that time decided that they are going to, or the administration decided that we are going to try and make an attempt to see if the Pakistani intelligence and military will act on American intelligence about something happening in Pakistan. And they gave us exact details of a factory that was making improvised explosive devices. The location, precise location, and everything was provided. And it was provided only to the Army Chief, General Kiani.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very interesting. But from the American point of view, no intelligence was being shared by the Pakistani side that was actionable. So therefore as far as the Pakistani civilian leadership is concerned, all of them agreed that if the Americans wanted to seek that intelligence and that information themselves they had a right to do so. They were our allies, bin Laden was our enemy as much as theirs, so the Americans had the right to do that. So when this happened, you might remember that the very next morning Pakistan's president wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he actually welcomed. American decision to do it. He said it would have been nice if we had been informed and it had been joint. Do”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Garrison Town, right near our military academy. Let's not even go into whether they knew they didn't know who knew. That's not even worth it. The point is from the American point”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Pakistani intelligence service had in the past not shared intelligence leading to discovery of bin Laden. No one has to completely believe that they were in league with Bin Laden or whatever, they just want doing it. That was the fact”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yet Admiral Mullen, who was the chairman, joint chiefs, engaged regularly with the Pakistani military chief, and the whole plan was we get what we can from Pakistan. But we do what we have to do. And as ambassador I was accused in Pakistan of being, and you notice that I'm choosing my words very carefully, that I was accused in Pakistan of actually helping the Americans bypass the Pakistani intelligence service in facilitating the movement of American officials specially operatives looking for bin Laden and letting them operate freely in Pakistan. How an ambassador does that, the argument was that I was issuing visas to Americans who needed to be there for trying to find Bin Laden. This was a major breakthrough from the point of view of the United States. Why? Because”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know that I came in as ambassador soon after there was a civilian government after Musharraf, and so they appointed me. I was the civilian government's chosen ambassador. And so I saw my function primarily as representing the civilians in Pakistan to the United States and building a relationship that will empower the civilians over the long term to make foreign policy decisions. And the Obama administration, just as the Bush administration towards its last few months, wanted that to happen. Now, at one point the administration here decided that the civilians weren't strong enough to make all the final decisions on foreign policy and national security, so they had to deal with the military, but they were very skeptical of the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, and the military. So relations were already tense between the CIA and the ISI, and the US military and the”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, absolutely. They've never won an election, by the way. They've never won an election, yet they are a huge influence, and their influence is primarily from rallies, from being able to put people in the street, from, and then they've become increasingly violent, they shoot people, people must remember that more Muslims die from violence by extremist Islamists than non-Muslims. So they've killed Pakistani Muslims, liberal Pakistani Muslims, intellectuals, people who argue against their domination. And then they have always benefited under dictatorship. So, for example, we had the Zayul Hag dictatorship from 1977 to 1988. And during that period, the Islamists actually were in government. And they were given official positions, and that enabled them to implement what they called was Islamic law, which to many of us would be barbarism in this age.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They have turbans, and I don't think they have found a good manufacturer who emblazoned those turbans with, let's make it great again”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just tell people that you know what all we have to do is bring the others down and then under these dynamic leaders like Suma bin Laden and Ayad al Bagdadi we will somehow all of us Abu Bakr al Baghdadi we will somehow be able to recreate Islam's old glory so it does have to do with Islam but it is not the mainstream of Islam”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because after all, this ideology does come out of the bowels of 14 centuries of Islamic history. These are people who think, you know, Muslims should have been the anointed leaders of the world. We were for several centuries, and then the West toppled us from that. It's a wrong narration of history. The truth is, Muslims became weak through certain internal decisions. For example, you might know or might not know, that for 273 years after the invention of the printing press, the Muslim leaders did not allow printing presses to be set up in the Muslim world. That's when Muslims fell behind in education, in learning, etc. It happens with nations. They rise, they fall. And very frankly, and I am about to say something very controversial, what I call Islamism or political Islamism is essentially the equivalent of making Islam great again, kind of campaign.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That the man who reported on the Times Square bomber was himself a Muslim, the guy who actually noticed this truck and said, what is this truck doing here? He was a Muslim. So Muslim is a very wide, broad community, 1.4 billion, with 57 countries where they are in a majority. And many countries like India and Russia where they have large minorities. Distinctive phrase needs to be discovered that does not Make Americans think that they are fighting all Muslims, and that does not make all Muslims think that they are fighting America. But I am not one of those who says that we should go to the extent of saying this has nothing to do with Islam, because it does.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think one of your Supreme Court justices said this in a case on pornography that I can't define pornography, but I know when I see it. It's a case like that. I think most sensible people, people who are not trying to rile Americans up and cause them to see this all as a war of civilizations and make them angry about Muslims in general. Most such people understand that there is a phenomenon that is politically motivated and it's an ideology of hate which emanates from the Muslim world but it is not all pervasive in the Muslim world. If there were 1.4 can you imagine what the world would be like if 1.4 billion people were either terrorists or terrorist sympathizers the world would be very different. What we have is a very different world. I mean people hear about a Muslim who engages in an act of terrorism but do they know that there are people in the US military who are Muslim?”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I make a distinction, David. I use the term Muslim for people like myself. Somebody who goes to mosque once a year or twice a year or on high holidays or on Fridays even, or even prays five times a day at home, we are all Muslim. There's one point four billion Muslims in the world. Then there are Islamists, people who think that Islam should define their politics. But in doing so they are actually defining Islam themselves very differently. So the Islam of Osama bin Laden is not the Islam of millions of people who go to mosque every day and the Islam of Ayad al Bagdadi is not even the Islam of Sama bin Laden because after all for them Islam is a political ideology. So I am one of those who thinks that it might be more convenient if we use two different terms. Muslims and Islamists as two different ideas, two different concepts.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a huge employer, it's a huge investor, by the way, because what they do is they do these huge pension funds that they have invested into industry, etc. But then because they are so powerful, any sector in which the army has a business interest is close to others. So if you want to eat conflicts in Pakistan, you can't find key logs or Hussein's. You have to buy army conflicts known as Fogi conflicts, which in Urdu means army. And so it's interesting. The army's overwhelming role affects everything. And for many, many years the army actually had common cause with the Islamists because the Islamists also hate India. They hate India, they hate Israel, they hate America, they hate Russia, they hate everything that's not Islamic from their point of view. And that was leveraged by the army for generating popular support amongst the people.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Bush administration chose Pakistan as the place where they wanted to operate into Afghanistan from. So to leverage your geographic location rather than paying attention to your people or to building a local economy. So economically, Pakistan still has many problems just under half of Pakistan's school age growing population, children between the age of 5 and 15 don't go to school. Pakistan has the sixth largest army in the world, but only the 44th largest economy. and Pakistan sees itself as”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the reason for volunteering for that was not that Pakistan wanted to fight communism, they wanted American resources to be able to fight India. And since then there has been this very complex sort of politics in Pakistan where the military has seized power for a few years. Then it lets politicians come in, but then it still exercises power, which doesn't let the politicians make the big decisions they want to make, including decisions like making peace with India, which is essential for Pakistan's future. And then they keep the economy afloat by getting American assistance, by leveraging their geographic location for whatever America needs at the moment. So during the 60s it was U2 basis, basis from which U2 flights took place into the Soviet Union and the Americans felt compelled to give aid for that. Then during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Pakistan was the base for that for the Reagan administration.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that threat at the beginning they chose was India. But then they found that it was very difficult for them to pay for that army with only seventeen percent of the revenue sources of British India and a pretty large population. So that's when Pakistan's leaders came to the Americans with the notion that look at Pakistan's geographic location. Our northernmost reaches enable you to actually fly into the Soviet Union if you need to, or into China which was turning communist and by nineteen forty nine had become communist. And there was this feeling in America at that time about America was getting ready for containment and for global sort of effort to fight communism. And so Pakistan volunteered for that.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As the British are leaving, they see that there's ethnic and religious conflict going on. So they say, okay, the easy way is divide it up, and the Muslim part becomes Pakistan and the Hindu majority past remains India. But in the partition, three very interesting facts, you must remember. Pakistan got 19% of the population. Seventeen percent of the revenue of British India, but 33% of the army. So when you have that large an army, here's your problem. Most countries raise an army proportionate to the threat they face. Pakistan already had an army the day it was born, so it had to create a threat that was proportionate to the size of the army. And that's why the army has been so overmass.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Important first of all to understand, and by the way, this is something I say about diplomacy in general, diplomacy is always trying to understand the other country and then understanding what you want and then finding the intersection. Sometimes Americans generally make this mistake about others. So people assume that Pakistan is a country like any other, meaning it has a long history, it's been there, Pakistanis feel there, Pakistanis because they've been Pakistanis for centuries. That's not the case. Pakistan is a country that was created out of British India.”
2015-12-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 18 - Husain Haqqani · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source