The world is littered with wreckage of
many countries that fell prey to colonialism’s and imperialism’s ruthless
march. All superpowers have hegemonic goals.
One can only hope that such goals are
achieved with minimum damage to vulnerable targeted countries and with minimum
blowback that may make such policies and actions a spectacular failure.
The U.S. way of colonizing other nations
of interest is different from British and European colonialism that involved
occupation of the targeted countries. The U.S. practices what may be called
indirect colonialism (a variant of neocolonialism).
It installs local, for-sale leaders, and
keeps them in power with financial and military support. In exchange, the
U.S.-installed politicians do what U.S. wants, even when it means sacrificing
their national interest.
Such politicians’ sole motive is to stay
in power as long as possible and offer to the U.S. their countries’ strategic
location and resources.
I write
this article in the spirit of the eminent American author James Baldwin, who
said, “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for
this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
The U.S. imperialist agenda, strangely
not very different from its current policy, was articulated on January 9, 1900,
on the Senate floor by Albert Beveridge during the brutal U.S. invasion and
destruction of the Philippines.
In his book, A People’s History of the
United States, America’s famous historian Howard Zinn, cites Beveridge’s
articulation of the following blatantly racist policy proclamation:
“The Philippines are ours forever.…And
just beyond the Philippines are China’s illimitable markets. We will not
retreat from either.…
We will not renounce our part in the
mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world.…The
Philippines give us a base at the door of all of the East.…
“It has
been charged that our conduct of the war has been cruel.…Senators must remember
that we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with
Orientals.” (Cited in Zinn 313-314)
With that
very brief background information, it will be instructive to analyze some of
the latest regime-change actions by the U.S. in Muslim-majority countries that
tried to exercise their right to have independent foreign policies and who have
been critical of U.S.-supported atrocities on Palestinians committed by Israel.
Did the
U.S. government play a role in creating Pakistan’s current political crisis?
Pakistan’s National Security Council has
confirmed what the former PM Imran Khan has been saying that the U.S.
government has 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.
Even more significant is what Donald Lu,
Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, said to Asad
Majeed, Pakistan’s ambassador in the United States. Lu told the ambassador that
if the no-confidence motion against Imran Khan succeeds and he is removed from
power, then the U.S. government would forgive Pakistan. Otherwise, if Khan
stays in power, there would be dire consequences for Pakistan.
The ambassador communicated Lu’s words
to Pakistan’s Foreign Office in Islamabad. He recommended in his message that
Pakistan’s government should file a formal complaint with U.S. on the use of
undiplomatic language used by Lu in his threat. Strangely, thickening the plot,
Majeed’s message was reported neither to the Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood
Qureshi, nor to the then PM Imran Khan.
It was only when Majeed inquired if
Pakistan had filed a complaint with the U.S. government that his message was
made known to Pakistan’s Foreign Minister and the then PM Khan.
Who suppressed that extremely vital
information is still unclear. The ambassdador’s communication to Pakistan and
his reconfirmation of that information in Pakistan’s National Security
Council’s meeting in Islamabad are clear evidence of U.S. meddling in Pakistan’s
internal affairs.
Was it
Simply U.S. Interference or a Conspiracy?
After the above-noted information was
leaked, the politicians opposed to Imran kept denying that it was a conspiracy.
In view of the clear evidence, they had to accept the fact of the U.S. meddling
in Pakistan’s internal affairs.
When a foreign country meddles in a
sovereign country’s internal matters, the affected country condemns that action
and files a formal complaint. The imported U.S.-installed government of
Pakistan, instead of condemning U.S. interference, started singing praises of
U.S.-Pakistan close ties and accepting U.S. aid.
That leaves no doubt whatsoever that it
was a conspiracy. As was the case of all countries victimized by U.S.
regime-change actions, Pakistan’s progress has now been stalled and will soon
be reversed because those put in power are convicted criminals on bail and
Pakistan’s people are not going to accept such governments.
The only way to prevent the impending
civil war in Pakistan is to have the elections as soon as possible as demanded
by Imran Khan and his party.
Reasons
for the U.S. Meddling in Pakistan’s Internal Matters
There are many details that reveal
Washington’s displeasure with Imran Khan. On becoming U.S. President, Joe Biden
called almost every world leader, but he did not call Imran Khan. Moreover, 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 Taliban (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 sensible 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
nineteen years of its longest war, an expense of trillions of dollars, and
sacrifice of innumerable lives to replace the Taliban with the Taliban in
Afghanistan.
Other
possible reasons why the U.S. government might have wanted to remove Imran Khan
from power
In addition to Pakistan’s
peace-motivated ties with Afghanistan and disagreement with the U.S.
government’s non-diplomatic, military action to solve a political problem,
Khan’s refusal to allow U.S. military bases in Pakistan seems to have been a
big factor in incurring the wrath of the United States.
To pursue its hegemonic goals, U.S.
wants a pliant Pakistani leader who will give priority to U.S. interests at the
cost of Pakistan’s national interest.
He flatly refused to let his country be
used as a “hired gun” to fight for the U.S. the so-called “war on terror.” For
Pakistanis, a more accurate phrasing would be calling it the “war OF terror.”
Among other reasons why the U.S.
government felt this urgent need to remove Khan from power, one important
reason has been well-articulated by Pakistan’s Justice Nasira Javed Iqbal,
daughter-in-law of Pakistan’s greatest national poet-philosopher Allama
Muhammad Iqbal.
In an article titled “Why Imran Khan Was
Quickly Removed from Power,” she points out that to promote Pakistan’s economy,
Imran took two steps—one China-related and the other Russia-related.
Khan was the first Pakistani leader who,
in 2019, made a deal with China to import exclusively Chinese semiconductors,
transformers, and other electronics.
The U.S. government was not happy with
Khan’s decision because it meant loss to U.S. exports.
Secondly, in 2022, again to improve
Pakistan’s economy, Khan was very close to signing an agreement with Russia to
purchase oil and wheat from Russia in Russian currency at 30% discount.
For Khan, it was a necessity to control
the skyrocketing inflation that has been a global phenomenon. If signed and
implemented, that agreement would have benefited both Russia and
Pakistan.
However, the U.S. found it
unacceptable because it would have reduced the demand for U.S. currency and
exports.
By way of relevant background
information, in 1974, the then U.S. President Richard Nixon and the then Saudi
King Faisal made an agreement that created the term “petro dollar.”
According to that contract, Saudi
government would guarantee that all countries, known as OPEC, would sell oil in
U.S. dollars only and deposit the proceeds in U.S. banks and the Federal
Reserve Bank.
The incentive for the Saudi government
was the U.S. guarantee that the al-Saud dynasty would always remain in power.
Khan’s agreement with Russia would have weakened U.S. sole control over the
purchase of OPEC oil.
“We will
make a horrible example of you” (Kissinger
threatens Bhutto)
As to why the anti-Khan Pakistani
political leaders might have embraced the U.S. plan for regime change in
Pakistan, I use the term “indirect colonialism” that I coined to describe more
precisely than neocolonialism the U.S. regime-change strategy that it employs consistently.
In this kind of colonialism, the
colonizing power uses local self-seeking, nation-betraying leaders 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. Besides the politicians, a few
of Pakistan’s military leaders have also been guilty of subservience to U.S.
indirect colonialism, as the following example will show.
In an earlier Pakistan-related regime
change U.S. action, 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 the dictator arranged to be hanged on murky,
incredible charges.
According to credible reports, 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 a horrible 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.
Other
Regime Changes with U.S. Involvement
Since the United States has interfered
negatively and disastrously in the internal affairs of more than 70 countries
in its regime-change misadventures since the Second World War, it is not
possible to enumerate all those examples. Just a few examples, limited to the
Muslim-majority countries destroyed by the United States, will suffice.
The U.S. killed close to one million
innocent Iraqis and destroyed a prosperous Muslim-majority country when, using
a completely false and preposterous pretext that Iraq posed a threat to the
U.S., it carried out its regime-change goal in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein
from power.
To carry out regime change in Libya, the
U.S. and its allies killed thousands of Libyans and destroyed another
prosperous Muslim-majority country. Because of Russia’s stiff opposition, the
U.S. regime-change goal in Syria did not materialize, but the civil war has
killed more than a quarter million Syrians and destroyed another stable,
Muslim-majority country.
In another Muslim-majority country, the
democratically elected Egyptian President, Dr. Mohamed Morsi, was removed from
power the way Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was removed and hanged.
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.
Ordinarily, U.S. government stops giving financial aid to countries that
overthrow democratic governments.
However, in Egypt’s case, it continued
the aid because the overthrow of Morsi removed a challenge to U.S.-Israel
hegemonic goal for the sole control of the Middle East.
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 complied with
the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 and other Resolutions.
Morsi died in jail under
mysterious circumstances. It is suspected that he was put to death.
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.
In a blatant regime-change operation in
yet another Muslim-majority country, in 1953, the U.S. government colluded with
the British government to overthrow the democratically elected Iranian Prime
Minister, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh, and replaced 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.
As a result of U.S. aggressive meddling
in Iran’s internal affairs, the relations between the two countries continue to
be strained even today. The U.S.-installed dictatorship on Iran’s people was
eventually overthrown in the 1979 Revolution of Iran.
In the long run, all such puppet
regimes are overthrown by the oppressed masses but not before incalculable
damage has been done to their countries.
Indirectly
colonized countries are not allowed to have an independent foreign policy
In cultivating good relations with China
and Russia, Khan was just doing the right thing for his country’s progress. He
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 and deal-making with Russia. India refused to be
ruled by Washington in its relations with Russia, which were in India’s best
national interests.
No action was taken against India. India
is fortunate in not having for-sale, self-seeking politicians.
The kinds of threat that Donald
Lu, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, 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.
Khan’s
meeting with Putin and the potential of Pakistan-enabled end of hostilities
between U.S. and Russia
Khan’s meeting with Russia’s President
Vladimir Putin seems to have been another reason why the U.S. government wanted
Khan removed from power.
The meeting had been scheduled long
before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Instead of cancelling his long-planned
visit, he went to meet with Putin with the consent of Pakistan’s army chief but
did not make 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 a 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
Sacrifices
that Pakistan made to help U.S. in its war on terror
Before Khan, the preceding governments
sacrificed close to 80,000 Pakistani civilian lives and 6,500 soldiers in
America’s war of terror, incurring also financial loss of close to 90 billion dollars.
Before Khan, the U.S. drone attacks on
Pakistan (400 of them!) with tacit approval of the then Pakistani governments,
killed thousands of innocent Pakistanis.
Those attacks indiscriminately killed
school children (for example, when a school bus was bombed, killing 60
children), wedding parties, funeral processions, and, in one case, an 80-year
old woman who was picking okra.
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. With that important step, Khan
brought terrorism within Pakistan to an end. With the spineless and incompetent
interim government of Pakistan that has replaced Imran Khan, the country is
poised to slip back into U.S. vassalage, to the grave detriment of Pakistan’s
sovereignty and well-being of its citizens.
Terrorism
inside Pakistan
Before Khan, Pakistan’s own citizens had
launched terror campaigns against Pakistani governments for caving in to U.S.
pressure in allowing drone attacks that killed their innocent family members on
a daily basis.
It must be noted that those victimized
Taliban had nothing to do with the terror group Al Qaeda that had attacked the
U.S. on 9-11-2001.
Their ambitions and actions were limited
to their native country. Unlike Al Qaeda, they had no international agenda or
ambition and had never been anti-American.
The then U.S. President Obama at first
made that important distinction but, in the Afghan War hysteria, lost that
common sense and started pursuing the insane policy that anyone over the age of
12 should be treated as a potential terrorist, subject to elimination.
Kept under control when Imran Khan was
Prime Minister, terrorism has erupted again in Pakistan under the
U.S.-installed hugely unpopular government.
Comparison
of Imran Khan with those politicians who have replaced him with U.S. help
As for the people who brought the
no-confidence motion against Imran Khan and conspired with the U.S. to remove
him from power, they 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,
they have also illegally moved billions of dollars out of Pakistan.
Their leader was known as Mr. 10 percent
because for every government contract during the time when his wife Benazir
Bhutto was the Prime Minister, his share was automatic 10 percent.
He is suspected of having Benazir
Bhutto’s brother Murtaza Bhutto assassinated when he ran against Benazir to
become Pakistan’s PM.
Murtaza’s daughter, the famous
journalist and author Fatima Bhutto, has spoken out about her father’s
assassination.
Besides robbing the country of its
people’s wealth, other ramifications of such money-laundering are huge for a
developing country like Pakistan.
To take money out of the country, the
thieves have to convert it from Pakistani rupees to dollars, pounds, or other
foreign currencies.
When the amount is billions of
dollars, it creates shortage of foreign currency, reduces the value of the
local currency, leading to inflation and poverty.
By comparison, Imran Khan has a clean
track record of no corruption, investing his own money and doing extensive
fund-raising to open two universities and three cancer hospitals.
He is highly educated and perhaps the
only unselfish Pakistani political leader 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 loan 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 hosted by the anchor Imran Khan. 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.
At the time of his ouster, Pakistan’s
economy was growing by 5.6%, Pakistan had lowest unemployment in Asia, highest
tax collection in the country’s history, highest remission of money into
Pakistan from abroad ($31 billion according to Imran Khan in his speech in
Lahore, Pakistan, on April 20, 2022), highest yield per acre in all major
crops, and largest exports in the country’s history.
A notable step that Imran Khan’s
government took in March 2019 was initiating the program called ehsaas (meaning
compassion). It is a welfare and poverty-alleviation program to uplift the poor
and reduce income inequality. As of 2021, this program has two major
components.
One is Ehsaas Emergency Cash (introduced
during the COVID-19 pandemic) and the other is Ehsaas Kafalat (meaning
sufficiency). Kafalat expanded its coverage from 7 million people to 10 million
people in 2021.
During the Pandemic, monthly stipends
were given to 13.2 million people. Even the anti-Imran Khan Geo News of
Pakistan reported that the World Bank included this program in the top four
“global social protection interventions.”
Another 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, which was made worse in the case of Pakistan because of hoarding and
arbitrary price fixing by the wealthy mafia, whose sole goal from the very
beginning of Khan’s term as Prime Minister has been to remove him from
power.
One way for them to achieve their goal
was to worsen the inflation. They did not care for the suffering of the masses.
Imran Khan is not perfect. No one is. He
made some mistakes. Everyone does. But given the overwhelming odds against him,
he did accomplish a great deal. I have yet to see anyone in U.S. 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.
Imran
Khan’s and Pakistan’s future and the prudent direction for the U.S. to take
From the massive demonstrations inside
and outside Pakistan in support of Imran Khan, he seems certain to return to
power as soon as the next election takes place in a few months.
It would be wise for the U.S. government
to drop its ill-advised anti-Khan stance because he is the undoubted leader of
Pakistan. He has declared many times that he is not anti-America, anti-India,
or anti-anyone. He welcomes friendship of all but slavery of no one.
He is everyone’s partner in peace but no
one’s partner in war. He believes in settling all political problems through
negotiations and diplomacy, never through military action.
Abdul
Jabbar, Ph.D, Emeritus Professor of English
and Interdisciplinary Studies, City College of San Francisco, California, USA
.
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