Pakistani Senator Aimal Wali Khan has harshly criticized Field Marshal Asim Munir, the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), for supposedly giving rare earth materials to US President Donald Trump during Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s recent trip to Washington.
Senator Khan of the Awami National Party (ANP) made fun of the photo-op in which Munir was seen giving Trump a wooden box of minerals in the White House. He did this while speaking in Pakistan’s Parliament.
Khan called the Army Chief a “salesman” and said he acted like a business. He also asked why the divisions between military and civilian rule were getting blurry.
“Our chief of army staff is walking around with a briefcase full of rare earth minerals.” What a joke! It was total ridicule. People who viewed that picture must have thought, “Which chief of the army staff would carry a briefcase full of rare earth minerals?”
He made fun of the picture even more by comparing it to a high-end store, where Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was also present:
“To me, it looked like a big, branded store. A manager happily watched as a shopkeeper told a customer to buy a big, shiny thing from him.”
Earlier, Khan had compared the moment to a “elite designer shop.”
Doubting the Rule of Law and Democracy
The senator asked important questions about the military chief’s power to deal with the country’s vital resources:
“In what way? What law? This is a dictatorship. I’m sorry to say, but this isn’t democracy. Isn’t this disrespecting Parliament?
Pakistan is trying to get US investment and possibly move supply chains away from China by pitching rare earth resources. Sharif and Munir went to the White House not long after a US company and Pakistan’s military-affiliated Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) sealed a deal for $500 million for a poly-metallic refinery project.
Trump says he is a “Peacemaker”
Munir had already been to Washington twice since the crisis between Pakistan and India in May. During the visit, President Donald Trump kept saying that he was the one who helped the two nuclear-armed neighbors reach a ceasefire, stopping the conflict from getting worse.
Trump hailed Munir, saying that the Field Marshal had told him he “saved millions of lives” by halting the “very big” war. Pakistan has even put Trump up for the Nobel Peace Prize since they say he helped make the ceasefire happen. India has strongly denied this, saying that the talks were only between the two countries.