Pakistan gives kudos to China for building top infrastructure while US wages ‘futile war’ in Afghanistan
- Imran Khan offers praise for Chinese focus on first-world facilities
A key partner in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative has applauded China for building world-class infrastructure while accusing the United States of squandering billions on the war in Afghanistan.
In New York for the United Nations General Assembly, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan made the assessment during an interview with US broadcaster MSNBC.
“While the USA was pouring money in Afghanistan in this futile war, the Chinese were developing first-world infrastructure and you just have to go to China to see where the infrastructure is,” Khan said when asked what advice he would give US President Donald Trump about the conflict in Afghanistan.
Earlier this month, Trump cancelled planned secret talks with the Taliban and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
“You knew this was going to be a war that would not achieve any results,” he said. “If I was an American I would ask, US$1.5 trillion at least has been spent on Afghanistan, what have we achieved in this? That money was wasted.”
Pakistan is home to the flagship project under the belt and road banner – the US$62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. The corridor consists of a number of ports, airports, and power plants, as well as road, railways and pipelines to connect China’s far western region of Xinjiang to Pakistan’s Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea, right outside the exit of the Persian Gulf and the world’s most important oil route.