How the USA removed Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Imran Khan, from power

Insights from Jeffrey Sachs

(12 July 2024) In a five-minute video,¹ Jeffrey Sachs describes how the USA ‘removed the democratically elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, from power’. “This is the way America conducts foreign policy” – says Jeffrey Sachs.

Susanne Hofmann introduces the topic:

What Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush said after 11 September 2001 still seems to apply to the USA and Europe today: “You are either with us or against us.” Former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, experienced what this means in spring 2022.

He claimed the right for himself and his country to take a neutral stance on the war in Ukraine. As head of government, he is responsible for 220 million Pakistanis, he said in an interview with Deutsche Welle.² And his country is dependent on Russia: It obtains oil, gas and wheat from Russia. At a rally, Khan made it clear: “We are friends of Russia, and we are also friends of the United States. We are friends of China and Europe. We are not part of any alliance.”

For Khan, this is obviously a lesson learnt from the Cold War. Back then, Pakistan had sided with the West and relations with Russia had suffered accordingly. Khan wanted to improve these in the interests of his voters, around 100 million of whom live in poverty.

However, the West, especially the USA, did not want to concede a neutral stance to Pakistan. This is suggested by an internal document published by “The Intercept”.³ It shows that the US had a hand in Khan’s removal as prime minister in April 2022. In a short interview,¹ US economist Jeffrey Sachs (see also here⁴) comments on the process.

Jeffrey Sachs, US economist and advisor to governments, UN Secretaries-General and international institutions, is not only an in-depth expert of US foreign policy but he also knows Imran Khan personally.

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Jeffrey Sachs’ insights in the video:

“Imran Khan is an extremely fine individual and an excellent leader of Pakistan. The US helped to get him thrown from power. The story is a very unpleasant one. It was exposed by ‘The Intercept’. When Imran Khan did not immediately fall into the US Camp vis-à-vis Russia and China, the way that the American security state works is ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’. Imran Khan said: No, I’m not against anybody. I want good relations with the US, with China, with Russia. But that doesn’t work with the United States. You’re with us or you’re against us.

And so, the US senior state department official called in the Pakistani ambassador and said: You know, we don’t like the way that Imran Khan – who was then prime minister – is talking; maybe it’s not good for our relations, maybe something should be done about it. This was part of a standard US regime change ploy.

The note by the Pakistani diplomat was sent back home and Imran Khan was voted out of office in a vote of no confidence the following month. This is a standard US intervention.

Imran Khan said to me, and publicly, you know the United States got me thrown out of power. He was of course ridiculed by the US and the Pakistani military for making that claim. Then he got a copy of the memo released by the ‘The Intercept’. And when he waved it, he was charged with espionage. So, on the one hand it didn’t exist and on the other hand he was charged with espionage, and he ended in prison.

Before the elections which were recently held, his party was outlawed as a party. Despite that the backers of Imran Khan won an overwhelming landslide victory in the election. And then the votes were falsely counted. They couldn’t deny all the votes, but they denied enough of the votes to take away the majority. In other words, even despite imprisonment, even despite these charges, even despite the US ploy, Imran Khan prevailed in the elections. Of course, the ballots were falsely counted, and he was deprived of power.

The US state department shrugged its shoulders as usual because it does not tell the truth to the world. It does not tell the truth to the American people. The American people would not know anything about this, but for the brave words of ‘The Intercept’. So, this is part of what people should understand more generally about American foreign policy.

American foreign policy is deposing governments that the US does not like: Don’t deal with them, don’t negotiate with them, try to overthrow them. This can be done by open war, or it can be done covertly. This is the way that America operates its foreign policy. It is a disaster; it is a disaster for the United States which has spent trillions of dollars in useless wars on false premises. It is a disaster for the targeted countries which often are dragged into decades of instability such as Afghanistan. The collapse of Afghanistan came after the CIA was charged with overthrowing an Afghan government in 1979. And this is a story that has happened all over the world.

We need a new foreign policy. One that is cooperative, one that is honest, one that protects America through peace and cooperation, not through meddling and regime change operations and wars of choice abroad.”

* Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor at Columbia University, is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as adviser to three UN Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres.

Source: https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=117444, 1 July 2024

(Transcript by “Swiss Standpoint”)

1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpGZFtguGLc

2 https://www.dw.com/en/imran-khan-pakistans-future-is-tied-up-with-russia/video-62333847

3 https://theintercept.com/2023/08/09/imran-khan-pakistan-cypher-ukraine-russia/

4 https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-ouster-of-imran-khan