While most of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s comments at the US-Islamic World Forum in Doha centered around the usual accusations against Iran and pledges of a long-term military presence in Afghanistan, she made a surprising remark about Pakistan.
While declaring America’s “serious” commitment to supporting the Pakistani government, Clinton accused al-Qaeda of having “killed more than 2,000 people in Pakistan” within the past few months.
It is unclear where Secretary Clinton got the number or even the notion to make such a claim, as while the period of ‘a few months’ is somewhat vague, al-Qaeda hasn’t been accused of directly killing any Pakistanis, let alone 2,000 of them, in quite some time.
In fact it is unclear if 2,000 Pakistanis were violently killed at all in the past few months, unless one includes not only the violence by every single militant group, but also everyone killed in Pakistani Army attacks as well as US drone strikes.
