Despite the Ukrainian war, or besides
Ukrainian war, I have been following other international crisis with great
interest and concern, as the world is vast and the USA's claws are sharp and . For brevity and clarity, I am itemizing my impressions on
the Pakistani political crisis as follows:
1. From the reports available so far, it
seems likely that the U.S. government colluded with anti-Imran Khan Pakistani
politicians to have him removed from power. According to Khan, members of the
U.S. Consular staff met several times with the opposition leaders and with only
the dissident members of Khan’s party. That choice of meeting only with
anti-Khan people points an accusing finger at the U.S. There are many other
details that support the likelihood of possible U.S. interference in Pakistan’s
internal matters. On becoming the U.S. President, Joe Biden called almost every
world leader, but he did not call Imran Khan. In a Congressional hearing, the
Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, accused Pakistan of ties with the Taliban
in Afghanistan. Most people do not know that of the total number of the Pashtun
people (most Taliban are Pashtun), nearly 40 percent are Pakistani citizens;
the rest live in Afghanistan. Like a good leader, he has to look after the
interests of the citizens of his country who have close ties with their
brethren in Afghanistan. At the same time, for regional solidarity and
security, a good Pakistani leader would certainly want to have cordial ties
with a neighboring country that has been the victim of the world’s two super
powers’ brutal invasions since 1979. Khan believes in diplomatic solutions to
political problems and warned the U.S. that there was no military solution to
their war in Afghanistan. He was right. It took the U.S. government an expense
of trillions of dollars and sacrifice of innumerable lives to replace the
Taliban with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
2. This is called by some scholars “indirect
colonialism”, a regime-change strategy that the USA employs consistently.
In this kind of colonialism, like they did in South America’s coup d’états, the
colonizing power uses local “brown-skinned” self-seeking, nation-betraying
leaders or military US/Israeli trained generals, to sacrifice national interest
for the sake of self-advancement. The colonizer does not have to spend its
resources on launching a formal invasion to occupy a country. Local corrupt
politicians prostitute national interest to do the colonizer’s bidding.
3. Concerning Asia in particular, just a
few examples of indirect colonialism will suffice. In 1953, the U.S. government
colluded with the British government to overthrow the democratically elected
Iranian Prime Minister, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh, and replace him with the
dictator, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, who did whatever he was
asked to do by the United States. Like Imran Khan, Dr. Mosaddegh was putting
his national interest above the greed of foreign, imperial powers that tried to
force him to accept an insultingly low royalty from its own oil. In Imran
Khan’s case, he refused U.S. military bases in Pakistan and refused to let his
country be used as a “hired gun” to fight for the U.S. the so-called “war on
terror.” A more accurate phrasing will be to call it the “war OF terror.”
4. On July 5, 1977, the U.S. government
used the then Pakistan’s army chief Gen. Zia-ul-Haq to overthrow the democratic
government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, whom he arranged to be hanged on murky,
unconvincing charges. This blatant intrusion into Pakistan’s internal affairs
was hatched inside the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan on July 4, 1977. In that case,
U.S. just carried out Henry Kissinger’s threat to Bhutto: “We will make an
example of you” if you do not stop pursuing the bomb. After India detonated its
nuclear device, Bhutto was trying to assemble a similar bomb to maintain the
balance of power.
5. It should be noted that the same fate
befell the democratically elected Egyptian President, Dr. Mohamed Morsi. He was
allowed to stay in power for just one year. Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi removed
him in a coup d’etat in 2013. Morsi died in jail under mysterious circumstances.
Representing the will of the Egyptian people and acting on their mandate, Morsi
was demanding that Israel end its brutal occupation of Palestine. At one point,
the Israeli ambassador had to be rescued from Egypt. Egyptians asked their
President to close down the Israeli embassy and consulates in Egypt until the
Zionist country complies with the United Nations Security Council Resolution
242 and other Resolutions. It is the same demand that Pakistan’s Imran Khan
made in his speech at the United Nations when he unequivocally declared that
Pakistan would not recognize Israel until the Palestinian rights were met. Both
Morsi and Khan stood for justice and rule of law, which was too much for Israel
and its patron U.S. to allow. Hence their removal from power.
6. Yet another example of U.S.
interference is the 9-11-73 U.S.-engineered coup in which the democratically
elected Chilean President, Dr. Salvador Allende, was overthrown and replaced
with the dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. All of the above regime changes
resulted in massive violence, unrest, and loss of lives. Since the Second World
War, the U.S. has interfered negatively and disastrously in the internal
affairs of more than 70 countries in its regime-change misadventures.
7. The people who brought the
no-confidence motion against Imran Khan have been proven to be ill-educated,
incompetent, corrupt, and always putting personal interest above the national
interest. The Panama Papers revealed that the Nawaz Sharif family has laundered
billions of dollars out of Pakistan and put it in foreign banks. As for the
other clan, the Zardaris, their leader was known as Mr. 10 percent because for
every government contract during his Presidency, his share was automatic 10
percent. He is suspected of having Benazir Bhutto’s brother Murtaza Bhutto
assassinated when he ran against Zardari’s wife Benazir to become Pakistan’s
PM. Murtaza’s daughter, the famous journalist and author Fatima Bhutto, has
spoken out about her father’s assassination.
8. By comparison, Imran Khan is highly
educated and the only unselfish Pakistani political leader I have seen in the
past half century. When he became Prime Minister, Pakistan was teetering on the
verge of bankruptcy. Through personal efforts and charisma, he arranged to get close
to $ 6 billion from Saudi Arabia and United Arab Amirates to pay off the IMF so
that the country could be saved from defaulting on the loan. Despite COVID-19,
global skyrocketing inflation, and zero cooperation from the opposition
parties, whose only focus was to make him fail, he was able to reduce the
national deficit from Rs. 22 billion during Nawaz Sharif’s administration in
2018 to Rs. 1 billion in 2022 at the time of his ouster. These figures are from
a broadcast on Pakistan television. In three years, he created close to 6
million jobs. He introduced health cards for the poor to provide them free
healthcare. His “No one will sleep hungry” program in the country’s most
vulnerable populations looked after the very poor. He encouraged exchanges between
students from private and public schools to promote national integration. A
major achievement of Imran Khan is that he rid the country of terrorism.
Pakistanis and foreign visitors could walk the streets without fear of being
kidnapped for ransom. That freedom had never been possible during the Zardari
and Nawaz Sharif eras when terrorism was rampant and no one felt safe. Many
such accomplishments go to his credit. It was not in his power to control the
world-wide phenomenon of inflation.
9. For the first time since Zulfiqar Ali
Bhutto, Pakistan occupied a respectable position in the comity of nations. At
the United Nations, Khan brought to world attention the Israel-perpetrated
ethnic cleansing and other atrocities on Palestinians living under the Zionists’
illegal occupation. The world knows that Israel’s defiance and violations of
numerous UN Security Council Resolutions could never happen without the
patronage and military, financial, and diplomatic support of the United States.
He stated clearly that Pakistan would not recognize Israel until Palestinians
are given their rights. Similarly, he placed on the world stage the
India-perpetrated human rights disaster in Kashmir.
10. Khan cultivated close ties with the
neighboring China (much to the dislike of the U.S.) and adopted a friendly
stance toward another neighboring country, Russia (another of his
peace-motivated moves that the U.S. did not like). The U.S. government has been
following this dangerous Bush doctrine: “You are either with us or against us,”
leaving no room for neutrality. However, the U.S. does not threaten big
countries like India for their neutrality. The kinds of threat that a U.S.
Assistant Secretary of State is reported to have used in the case of Imran Khan
are reserved for those countries like Pakistan that have found that 100 percent
subservience to the United States has not been beneficial to them. It seems
impossible for the U.S. to understand this simple logic: The interests of the
United States are not necessarily those of other countries.
11. Khan’s meeting with Putin had been scheduled long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Instead of cancelling his long-scheduled visit, he went to meet with Putin but never made any statement about Ukraine. His cultivation of close ties with Russia and adopting a neutral position like India was another irritant for the U.S. government that fails to see the positive side of neutrality: Pakistan could play an important role in bringing the U.S. and Russia together, as it did in arranging the first secret meeting between the two estranged powers, U.S. and China. According to the Dawn report, “Former US secretary of state Dr. Henry Kissinger recognised Pakistan’s ‘key’ role in arranging his secret visit from Islamabad to Beijing in 1971 for making breakthrough in China-US relations.” https://www.dawn.com/news/1613819
12. In cultivating good relations with
China and Russia, Khan was just doing the right thing for his country’s
progress. With the spineless and incompetent interim government that has
replaced Imran Khan, the country is poised to slip back into U.S. vassalage, to
the grave detriment of Pakistan’s sovereignty. Before Khan, the preceding
governments sacrificed close to 30,000 Pakistani lives to fight America’s war
of terror, incurring also financial loss of billions of dollars. Before Khan,
the U.S. drone attacks on Pakistan, with tacit approval of the then Pakistani
governments, killed thousands of innocent Pakistanis. The Obama Administration
had adopted this insane policy that anyone over the age of 12 should be treated
as a potential terrorist, subject to elimination. It was atrocities like these
that made Pakistan’s author Mohsin Hamid write in his novel The
Reluctant Fundamentalist: “No other country inflicts death so rapidly upon the
inhabitants of other countries, frightens so many people so far away, as
America.” Acting as a sovereign leader, Khan ordered all those drone attacks to
be stopped.
13. Imran Khan is far from perfect. He made some mistakes. Everyone does. But given the overwhelming odds
against him, he did accomplish a great deal.
In conclusion, I have yet to see the
bias faltered U.S. corporate mainstream media mention the important fact that
Imran Khan served as the Chancellor of University of Bradford in England for
nine years (2005-2014). He left that prestigious and honorable position to
pursue his political career in Pakistan.
And from the massive demonstrations inside and outside Pakistan in support of Imran Khan, he seems certain to return to power in due course of time. Just like Lula in Brasil. Despite USA’s indirect coups d’états.
Another point of View
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