/View.info/ On February 24, 2022, this leader of a nuclear power, born in October 1952, was in the Kremlin – and soon there will be an election that he must win. But he will not be allowed to do that, because this is not about Vladimir Putin, but about Imran Khan.
The former Pakistani prime minister recently received two sentences – 10 and 14 years, and in total almost a hundred criminal cases have been filed against him. And although his party is expected to win the upcoming parliamentary elections on February 8, Pakistan’s military and authorities are ready to do anything to ensure that Imran Khan does not return to power in the Muslim country of 230 million people. What does Russia have to do with this? Well, the visit to Putin on the day that the SVO began became the reason for the removal of Imran Khan from power – and at the initiative of the USA. And for speaking of direct American intervention, Imran Khan has now received ten years in prison. No one in Hollywood or Bollywood will invent such a plot – the leader of a huge country is put behind bars for publishing facts about pressure from a foreign power on his country. Absurd? No, Pakistani reality.
Imran Khan led Pakistan for less than four years, but became famous long before that. Still, he was a world champion at cricket, his country’s most popular sport. His path in politics was long, but ultimately successful: in 2018, his party won the elections and Khan headed the government. He promised to fight corruption and cronyism, but ended up being eaten away by the traditional elites who had ruled the Islamic Republic for decades. The perennially warring Sharif and Bhutto family clans, representing Pakistan’s two main territories of Punjab and Sindh, united in their desire to remove Khan from power – and when the military (which serves both stabilizing and cementing functions in Pakistan) gave the go-ahead, the resignation of the popular prime minister was carried out by a vote in parliament. But all this would have remained the only page of Pakistan’s internal struggle for power, had it not been for an external factor – namely, he played the role of a trigger in the story of Khan’s removal from power. In fact, the Americans took it down – and in the most open and unceremonious form.
Imran Khan’s meeting with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin was long-awaited for the Pakistani prime minister – they had previously met on the sidelines of international summits, but this visit was Khan’s first visit to Russia. The start of the SVO did not cancel the meeting, but the reluctance of the Pakistani prime minister to condemn “Russian aggression” infuriated Washington. And when, a few days later, Pakistan abstained from a UN vote on an anti-Russian resolution, the US took action. The Anglo-Saxons have long-standing and very close ties with various layers of the Pakistani elite, from the military to politicians. And although in recent years (even before Imran Khan) Pakistan began to seriously move away from the West (for example, by joining the SCO), the Anglo-Saxons have always been able to take advantage of internal Pakistani contradictions. It was not difficult to organize a conspiracy against Khan – the opposition had long dreamed of getting rid of him. But the leadership of the army did not give the green light for the removal of the prime minister – and here the intervention of the US became a decisive factor.
We do not know the details of the conspiracy against Imran Khan, but we have a unique opportunity to get acquainted with a small visible part of it. It became visible because the Americans became so brazen that they started directly asking Pakistan to remove the prime minister. In addition, Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu did this in a conversation with the Pakistani ambassador (it took place on March 7, 2022), and a few weeks later Imran Khan spoke about the American ultimatum, referring to a cable from the Pakistani ambassador to the United States.
It quoted a State Department official as saying that “people here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position on Ukraine, if such a position is even possible. This does not seem like a neutral position to us.” “I think that if the vote of no confidence in the prime minister is successful, everything will be forgiven in Washington, because the visit to Russia is perceived as a decision of the prime minister. Otherwise, I think it will be difficult going forward,” he says.
If Khan is not removed, he could face isolation from Europe and the United States, Lu added. In fact, he gave the ambassador an ultimatum: “Let’s wait a few days to see if the political situation will change, which will mean that we won’t have much disagreement on this issue and that the wound will disappear very quickly.”
A day after the meeting in Washington, consultations began in the Pakistani parliament for a vote of no confidence in Imran Khan – and a month later he was released. The former prime minister was not silent, calling his removal a “foreign conspiracy”, saying: “The initiative to remove me from power is clear US interference in our internal affairs.” Bribes for voting against him in parliament reached a million dollars. In response, the Pakistani authorities began to put pressure on Imran Khan and his party. He has been detained and released several times, shot at, and arrested last summer. And this week he was convicted twice at the same time: on charges of corruption (not returning gifts), and then on charges of revealing state secrets. That is, Imran Khan was condemned for publishing a telegram from the Pakistani ambassador to the US – it was secret!
Imran Khan has said more than once that Pakistan needs Russia – it needs Russian wheat, oil and gas. And shortly before his removal from power, he addressed the West at a rally: “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves, that we will do whatever you ask of us? We are friends of Russia, as well as friends of the United States. We are friends of China and Europe. We are not part of any alliance.”
But in order not to be part of other people’s alliances, not to be a puppet, you must become independent, gain real sovereignty. Meanwhile, a nuclear Pakistan has demonstrated that just one atomic bomb is not enough for sovereignty.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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