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New Delhi: Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer John Kiriakou has just shown Pakistan a glimpse of reality, saying that they cannot win a conventional war against India because they will lose it adding nothing good will come out of it.
Speaking to ANI, John Kiriakou, who served for 15 years in the CIA, first as an analyst and later in the counter-terrorism department, said that nothing good will come out of an actual war between India and Pakistan because the latter will lose it. He clarified that he was not talking about a nuclear war, but a conventional one.
“They will lose it. It’s as simple as that,” Kiriakou said.
The former CIA officer John Kiriakou recounted his years leading counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after 9/11, highlighting Washington’s uneasy alliance with Islamabad, the rise of cross-border terror networks, and India-Pakistan tensions that nearly escalated into war during Operation Parakram in 2002.
We Believed Ind-Pak Will Go To War After 2001 Parliament Attack, Recalls Ex-CIA Officer
Recalling the situation in Pakistan after December 2001 Indian Parliament terror attack, Kiriakou said that family members had been evacuated from Islamabad as they believed India and Pakistan would go to war.
Kiriakou claimed that the then Deputy US Secretary of State came in and negotiated a settlement between India and Pakistan when both sides backed off.
However, he added that the Indian government would have been perfectly within its rights to respond by striking Pakistan. “We expected the Indians to strike back and they didn’t…”
In another statement, he said that they (US) were so busy and focused on Al Qaeda and Afghanistan and never gave two thoughts to India.
Pak Was Committing Terrorism in India, Nobody Did Anything, Says Kiriakou
Mentioning the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, former CIA officer John Kiriakou said he didn’t believe Al-Qaeda was behind it, but rather a Pakistani-supported Kashmiri terror group.
“I don’t think this is Al-Qaeda. I think this is the Pakistani-supported Kashmiri groups. That turned out to be exactly the case. The bigger story was that Pakistan was committing terrorism in India and nobody did anything about it.”
Kiriakou also highlighted India’s measured response over the years, saying, “India showed restraint after the Parliament attacks and the Mumbai attacks. At the CIA, we called the Indian policy strategic patience. But India has gotten to the point where they can’t risk strategic patience being misunderstood as weakness.”
With inputs from ANI