Given the large population in the UK of Pakistani origin, the lack of serious media coverage of the overthrow and incarceration of Imran Khan, and the mass imprisonment of his supporters, is truly extraordinary.
Imran Khan was last week sentenced to three years in prison – and a five year ban from politics – for alleged embezzlement of official gifts. This follows his removal as Prime Minister in a CIA engineered coup, and a vicious campaign of violence and imprisonment against Khan and his supporters.
It is currently illegal in Pakistan to publish or broadcast about Khan or the thousands of new political prisoners incarcerated in appalling conditions. There have been no protests from the UK or US governments.
Imran Khan is almost certainly the least corrupt senior politician in Pakistan’s history – I admit that is not a high bar. Pakistan’s politics are, to an extent not sufficiently understood in the west, literally feudal. Two dynasties, the Sharifs and the Bhuttos, have alternated in power, in a sometimes deadly rivalry, punctuated by periods of more open military rule.
There is no genuine ideological or policy gap between the Sharifs and Bhuttos, though the latter have more intellectual pretension. It is purely about control of state resource. The arbiter of power has in reality been the military, not the electorate. They have now put the Sharifs back in power.
Imran Khan’s incredible breakthrough in the 2018 National Assembly elections shattered normal political life in Pakistan. Winning a plurality of the popular vote and the most seats, Khan’s PTI party had risen from under 1% of the vote in 2002 to 32% in 2018.
The dates are important. It was not Khan’s cricketing heroics which made him politically popular. In 2002, when his cricket genius was much fresher in the mind than it is now, he was viewed as a joke candidate.
In fact it was Khan’s outspoken opposition to the United States using Pakistan as a base, and particularly his demand to stop the hundreds of dreadful US drone strikes within Pakistan, that caused the surge in his support.
The Pakistani military went along with him. The reason is not hard to find. Given the level of hatred the USA had engendered through its drone killings, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the hideous torture excesses of the “War on terror”, it was temporarily not in the interests of the Pakistan military to foreground their deep relationship with the CIA and US military.
The Pakistan security service, ISI, had betrayed Osama Bin Laden to the USA, which hardly improved the popularity of the military and security services. Imran Khan was seen by them as a useful safety valve. It was believed he could channel the insurgent anti-Americanism and Islamic enthusiasm which was sweeping Pakistan, into a government acceptable to the West.
In power, Imran proved much more radical than the CIA, the British Tories and the Pakistani military had hoped. The belief that he was only a playboy dilettante at heart was soon shattered. A stream of Imran’s decisions upset the USA and threatened the income streams of the corrupt senior military.
Khan did not only talk about stopping the US drone programme, he actually stopped it.
Khan refused offers of large amounts of money, also linked in to US support for an IMF loan, for Pakistan to send ground forces to support the Saudi air campaign against Yemen. I was told this by one of Imran’s ministers when I visited in 2019, on condition of a confidentiality which need no longer apply.
Khan openly criticised military corruption and, in the action most guaranteed to precipitate a CIA coup, he supported the developing country movement to move trading away from the petrodollar. He accordingly sought to switch Pakistan’s oil suppliers from the Gulf states to Russia.
The Guardian, the chief neo-con mouthpiece in the UK, two days ago published an article about Khan so tendentious it took my breath away. How about this for a bit of dishonest reporting:
in November a gunman opened fire on his convoy at a rally, injuring his leg in what aides say was an assassination attempt.
“Aides say”: what is this implying?
Khan had himself shot in the legs as some kind of stunt? It was all a joke? He wasn’t actually shot but fell over and grazed a knee? It is truly disgraceful journalism.
It is hard to know whether the article’s astonishing assertion that Khan’s tenure as Prime Minister led to an increase in corruption in Pakistan, is a deliberate lie or extraordinary ignorance.
I am not sure whether Ms Graham-Harrison has ever been to Pakistan. I suspect the closest she has been to Pakistan is meeting Jemima Goldsmith at a party.
“Playboy”, “dilettante”, “misogynist”, the Guardian hit piece is relentless. It is an encapsulation of the “liberal” arguments for military intervention in Muslim states, for overthrowing Islamic governments and conquering Islamic countries, in order to install Western norms, in particular the tenets of Western feminism.
I think we have seen how that playbook has ended in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, amongst others. The use of the word “claim” to engender distrust of Khan in the Guardian article is studied. He “claimed” that his years living in the UK had inspired him to wish to create a welfare state in Pakistan.
Why is that a dubious comment from a man who spent the majority of his personal fortune on setting up and running a free cancer hospital in Pakistan?
Khan’s efforts to remove or sideline the most corrupt Generals, and those most openly in the pay of the CIA, are described by the Guardian as “he tried to take control of senior military appointments and began railing against the armed forces’ influence in politics.” How entirely unreasonable of him!
Literally thousands of members of Khan’s political party are currently in jail for the crime of having joined a new political party. The condemnation by the Western establishment has been non-existent.
It is difficult to think of a country, besides Pakistan, where thousands of largely middle class people could suddenly become political prisoners, while drawing almost no condemnation. It is of course because the UK supports the coup against Khan.
But I feel confident it also reflects in part the racism and contempt shown by the British political class towards the Pakistani immigrant community, which contrasts starkly with British ministerial enthusiasm for Modi’s India.
We should not forget New Labour have also never been a friend to democracy in Pakistan, and the Blair government was extremely comfortable with Pakistan’s last open military dictatorship under General Musharraf.
On my last visit to Pakistan I went to Karachi, Abbottabad and the Afghan border. I hope to return in the spring, should the new government let me in.
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Pakistan’s enigmatic Prime Minister Imran Khan, charismatic and outspoken, has, it seems, tasked himself with rewriting the rule book on relations inside the Islamic world.
His trips to Saudi Arabia and now Iran confuse watchers and pundits. With $20 billion in Saudi financial backing on the table for Pakistan, money needed since Trump cut off military aid, Khan’s subsequent visit to Iran is seemingly inexplicable.
This is unless Khan has a broader agenda, a balancing act between India, China, Russia and America, while remaining on needed good terms with both Iran and Saudi Arabia. To accomplish this, a number of Pakistan’s vulnerabilities will have to be minimized. A relationship with Russia, meaning a face-to-face between Khan and Putin will be key.
Behind the scenes, Russia’s need to reenlist India in the SU57 5th generation fighter program, which Turkey may also be joining, puts Russia into a balancing act as well. The real issue, however, may well hinge on Baluchistan.
Baluchistan, Pakistan’s most remote governate, is a key staging ground for destabilization efforts against, not just Iran but Pakistan as well. Broad accusations have been floated that the US, along with India and Israel, are arming, funding and even advising separatists groups such as Jundallah and its various offshoots, inside both Pakistan and Iran.
In 2005, the Bush administration asked the FBI to investigate charges that the CIA has involved itself in a “private enterprise” there, aided by Israel’s Mossad and India’s RAW. A report was written, “no collusion.” The truth, however, as is almost always the case, was utterly different. By 2008, our sources, including private military contractors working illegally in Baluchistan, told us that an airfield north of Gwadar was a major distribution center for, originally opium and by that time processed heroin.
In general, we were able to discern that the region was awash with mischief, a meeting ground for the CIA/USAID, MI 6 and two proxy wars, one against Iran, the other against Pakistan.
Similar operations against Pakistan were being staged from within Afghanistan where training centers near the Pakistan border, run by RAW personnel existed openly with the tacit approval of both Kabul and Washington. As late as 2016, Pakistan asked for US help in stemming attacks that have thus far killed over 50,000 in Pakistan. From Dawn:
“Pakistan on Wednesday conveyed to the United States that India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) are patronising terrorists groups to attack soft targets in the country.
National Security Adviser Lt Gen (retd) Nasser Khan Janjua conveyed the message to US ambassador David Hale in a meeting today, said the statement released by the office of the NSA. The meeting was held to discuss the terrorist attack on Police Training College Quetta, counter-terrorism operations and cross-border attacks.
Janjua also emphasised on the need to break the nexus between terrorists groups operation under the supervision of NDS and RAW. Pakistan has asked for US assistance to tackle the situation.
The NSA informed the ambassador that the terrorists who attacked the police training college were constantly in contact with their leadership and handlers in Afghanistan.”
Moreover, Iran has been subjected to destabilization by the MEK, an extremist religious cult now under CIA control and through Azerbaijan, where Israeli “advisors” aided by the military arm of Google Corporation under Jared Cohen, have, according to confirmed sources, executed terror attacks and assassinations inside Iran.
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Dennis Bernstein: Welcome Vijay Prashad, Good of you to do this.
Could you tell us about Shujaat Bukhari in the context of his working in that dangerous part of the world?
Vijay Prashad: Shujaat Bukhari was highly respected in Kashmir and well known in other parts of India. Shujaat was for many years the bureau chief of the Hindu newspaper, for which I write. Then he was the head of station for the magazine Frontline. These periodicals highly valued the reports Bukhari submitted from Kashmir. He was a very honest reporter, in an age when many journalists are simply stenographers who amplify the voices of the powerful. Then there are real journalists, who challenge the narrative about how the world operates. Bukhari reported in a heartfelt way on what the conflict in Kashmir meant from the standpoint of the people. Genuine journalists are an endangered species. When you set out to report about the world from the standpoint of the people, you cross the line of somebody powerful. I have seen so many friends–in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Turkey–killed by the state. A friend of mine who was working on the Bin Laden story was picked up by Pakistani intelligence in May of 2011 and his body was found mutilated north of Karachi.
DB: Could you explain exactly how he was murdered? I believe his murder followed his reporting of the killing of an activist, Kaiser Bhat, who was run down on the street at a protest.
Prashad: Why don’t all Kashmiris revolt?
VP: Let me give you some context. From the standpoint of the state and the stenographer/reporter, someone like Kaiser Bhat, who was run over by a jeep, was an aberration, a terrorist. But what Bukhari and others with great sensitivity demonstrated is that Kaiser Bhat is just an ordinary Kashmiri. He reverses the question of the burden of proof: We don’t have to wonder why Kaiser Bhat became a militant. What we should wonder about is why all the other young people don’t become militants. The context of Kashmir almost demands that the population rise up in revolt. The Indian state certainly didn’t appreciate the kind of reporting that Bukhari was doing on Kashmir. It was also reporting that the militants didn’t always appreciate. He was also critical of the way that some militant groups had inflamed the situation, working for their own advantage rather than the will of the people. He was killed by masked gunmen who came on a motorcycle. It is unlikely that they will be caught or that their handlers will be identified. But whether or not we are able to establish forensically who killed Bukhari, we know who killed him. It was people in power who were threatened by the honesty of this very brave journalist.
DB: This was not the first threat to this courageous journalist. He was kidnapped in the past.
VP: Those who have reported from areas of great conflict know the dangers very well. After he was abducted, he made a statement to the effect that he didn’t know who the enemies were. When someone points a gun at you, you don’t know whose gun it is. You’re not out there to have a debate with the person. If some militia group stops you at a checkpoint and puts a gun to your head, you’re not thinking about which side you are on. You’re thinking, this is the end of my life. Remember that this is not just about a checkpoint in the middle of nowhere. It is also the United States, which targeted the Al Jazeera office in the Palestine hotel in Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This is a serious issue, this disregard for the person who is out there to get the story. We know that control of the story is a very important part of warfare. Going after reporters who are trying to tell different stories is very much a part of the agenda of war-making.
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