New Delhi: Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari is in critical need of a general knowledge class. In his Independence Day speech in Islamabad, after inaugurating a ‘monument’ to commemorate what Pakistan calls its ‘victory’ against India in the May conflict, Zardari went into history—and landed nowhere close to accuracy.
Discussing the wars fought between India and Pakistan, Zardari said Pakistan won the Durand Line in the 1965 War.
The Durand Line, the official border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, was established in 1893 under an agreement between Henry Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat, and Abdur Rahman Khan, then Emir of Afghanistan, to delineate their respective spheres of influence during the colonial era. It has nothing to do with the 1965 India-Pakistan War.
“My father took part in the Kashmir jihad and, by the grace of Allah, the Durand Line was obtained,” Zardari confidently said in his speech.
The 1965 India-Pakistan War was fought primarily over Kashmir, escalating after Pakistan launched the covert Operation Gibraltar and India responded with military action across the international border.
It ended after 17 days, with a United Nations-backed ceasefire, followed by the Tashkent Declaration in 1966.
‘Embarrassing, disingenuous, gibberish’
Pakistanis on social media were quick to call out Zardari’s lack of knowledge.
“Is this guy mentally fit for the office of the presidency?” asked X user Amjad Khan.
While most responded with humour, some brought up older inaccurate claims by the Pakistan president.
“He thought, since there’s an uproar about rigging in the Kashmir election, I’ll just become a Kashmiri too—but he didn’t memorize his geography lesson properly, so he got caught,” X user Baba Yaga posted. Their bio describes them as a PhD scholar.
Another gave a literary reference: “Asif Zardari had once said in a statement that Beckett was written by Shakespeare… a derwish once said, neither are they educated, nor do they even try.”
Broadcast journalist Zulkarain Iqbal chose to respond with sarcasm. “A line is a line, be it the Durand Line or the Control Line… By the way, it’s some amazing geography; the whole country’s map has been changed,” he wrote.
Diplomats and former politicians had another point of contention—the facts. Zardari’s claims about Pakistan starting the 1965 war did not go down well with them.
“None of this is true. In fact quite embarrassing coming from the President in front of the top military & political leadership,” former Sindh governor Muhammad Zubair wrote on X.
Former Pakistani diplomat Maleeha Lodhi added: “What kind of disingenous narrative is this?”
Former Dawn editor Abbas Nasir summed it up in four words.
“Basically lots of gibberish.”
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
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