...a political party in Pakistan. PTI was founded by former Pakistani cricket captain and philanthropist Imran Khan. The party's slogan is
Justice, Humanity and Self Esteem, each of which is open to widely divergent interpretations....
chairman Imran Khan
... aka
Taliban Khan, who is the lightweight's lightweight...
has said that had there been protests against the army operation and atrocities in what was then East Pakistain, the country could have been spared the tragedy that befell it in 1971.
He claimed that he was on the last flight out of Dhaka before the Pakistain Army launched the operation and he overheard someone saying 'Kill Bengalis: we will teach them a lesson.'
"While our own people left us, we are repeating similar mistakes in the tribal areas and Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
now," said Mr Khan while speaking at the launch of a book 'Escape from Oblivion: The Story of a Pak Prisoner of War in India' authored by an ex-army officer and defence analyst, Ikram Sehgal, at a hotel on Wednesday evening.
The book is based on the notes of Mr Sehgal's one-month-long debriefing on his return to the country after successfully fleeing the Panagarh war camp in India.
Other speakers at the programme, which started almost an hour behind the schedule and event organisers had to rearrange the agenda by requesting the guests to proceed for a tea break first, were Mr Sehgal himself, retired brigadier A.R. Siddiqui, retired brigadier Mohammad Taj, retired lieutenant general Ali Kuli Khan and former federal minister Javed Jabbar.
The PTI chief said that in 1971 when he was returning from Dhaka after playing an under-19 cricket match he decided that he would never back a military operation against the country's civilians.
Then in the 1990s when his team of young first class cricketers beat the Indian team in a Dhaka stadium, it reverberated with the slogan 'Pakistain Zindabad' that lent strength to his views that Bengalis turned against West Pakistain due to our own mistakes, he added.
He told the gathering that drones attacks or use of gunship helicopters against beturbanned goons in the tribal areas or Balochistan was creating extremism in the country as innocent lives, too, were being lost in the strikes. A delegation from Fata told him that in a recent drone attack in a tribal area, five people were killed and as villagers gathered to see the casualties they were hit by another strike. The government withheld this information and the security agencies did not allow locals to share these facts with journalists, he said.
Mr Khan said he was against military actions in civilian areas because they dehumanised the general public and turned locals into barbarians.
About the book, he said it reminded him of his eight days in jail where it was sheer boredom that he had to fight with, but the 99 days that the author spent in captivity must have been quite challenging. He said: "The book is absorbing and a real life thriller."
On a lighter note, he wished the author best of luck for the business empire he had built over the years and asked him to make as much money as he could in the shortest possible time, because the PTI would fix the police department first when voted to power.