Pakistan Did Its Part: Zardari - 2

Pakistan, perhaps the world's greatest victim of terrorism, joins the other targets of al Qaeda — the people of the United States, Britain, Spain, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Yemen, Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Algeria — in our satisfaction  that  the  source  of  the  greatest  evil  of the  new  millennium  has been silenced, and his victims given justice. He was not anywhere we had anticipated he would be, but now he is gone.

Although  the  events  of  Sunday  were  not  a  joint  operation,  a  decade  of
cooperation and partnership between the United States and Pakistan led up to the elimination of Osama bin Laden as a continuing threat to the civilized world. And we in Pakistan take some satisfaction that our early assistance in identifying an al Qaeda courier ultimately led to this day.
Let us be frank. Pakistan has paid an enormous price for its stand against terrorism. More of our soldiers have died than all of NATO's casualties combined.

Two thousand police officers, as many as 30,000 innocent civilians and a generation of social progress for our people have been lost. And for me, justice against bin Laden was not just political; it was also personal, as the terrorists murdered our greatest leader, the mother of my children. Twice he tried to assassinate my wife. In 1989 he poured $50 million into a no-confidence vote to topple her first government. She said that she was bin Laden's worst nightmare — a democratically elected, progressive, moderate, pluralistic female leader. She was right, and she paid for it with her life.

Some in the US press have suggested that Pakistan lacked vitality in its pursuit
of terrorism, or worse yet that we were disingenuous and actually protected the terrorists we claimed to be pursuing. Such baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn't reflect fact. Pakistan had as much reason to despise al Qaeda as any nation. The war on terrorism is as much Pakistan's war as as it is America's. And though it may have started with bin Laden, the forces of modernity and moderation remain under serious threat.

My government endorses the words of President Obama and appreciates the
credit he gave us Sunday night for the successful operation in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa. We also applaud and endorse the words of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that we must  "press  forward,  bolstering  our  partnerships,  strengthening  our  networks, investing in a positive vision of peace and progress, and relentlessly pursuing the murderers who target innocent people." We have not yet won this war, but we now clearly can see the beginning of the end, and the kind of South and Central Asia that lies in our future.

Only  hours  after  bin  Laden's  death,  the  Taliban  reacted  by  blaming  the government of Pakistan and calling for retribution against its leaders, and specifically against me as the nation's president. We will not be intimidated. Pakistan has never been and never will be the hotbed of fanaticism that is often described by the media.

Radical religious parties have never received more than 11 percent of the vote.

Recent polls showed that 85 percent of our people are strongly opposed to al Qaeda. In 2009, when the Taliban briefly took over the Swat Valley, it demonstrated to the people  of  Pakistan  what  our future  would  look  like  under  its  rule  — repressive politics,  religious  fanaticism,  bigotry  and  discrimination  against  girls  and  women, closing of schools and burning of books. Those few months did more to unite the people  of  Pakistan  around  our  moderate  vision  of  the  future  than  anything  else possibly could.

A freely elected democratic government, with the support and mandate of the
people, working with democracies all over the world, is determined to build a viable, economic prosperous Pakistan that is a model to the entire Islamic world on what can be accomplished in giving hope to our people and opportunity to our children. We can become everything that al Qaeda and the Taliban most fear — a vision of a modern Islamic future. Our people, our government, our military, our intelligence agencies are very much united. Some abroad insist that this is not the case, but they are wrong. Pakistanis are united.

Together, our nations have suffered and sacrificed. We have fought bravely and
with passion and commitment. Ultimately we will prevail. For, in the words of my martyred wife Benazir Bhutto, "truth, justice and the forces of history are on our side."