Washington’s reassured partners and their fates

America’s approach toward Imran Khan’s government and towards Pakistan is neither principled nor pragmatic. Washington’s alleged role in bringing about a regime change in Pakistan is despicable, to say the least, and is an interference in the internal matters of Pakistan. Washington has a habit of ‘recreating partnerships’ and giving renewed assurances to the new partners. It pretty much stabbed us in the back after using us for their four decades of conflict in Afghanistan and ditched us as their Cold War partners for a renewed partnership with none other than our arch-rival India. But trying to execute a regime change in Pakistan is attempting to go too far. They did the same in Egypt when they sought to normalise their relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood’s government that replaced their longtime friend and partner, President Hosni Mubarak. In the past few decades whenever Washington has intervened both overtly and covertly in the internal affairs of sovereign countries it has tried to give an impression to the world that it is ‘fixing a problem’ and some of the problems that it has fixed are there for the entire world to see – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and even Yemen.

War in Yemen clearly explains how a country and its people suffer when Washington creates a partnership or alliance to wage a war. What happened to Pakistan when Gen Pervez Musharraf, President Asif Zardari and PM Nawaz Sharif ruled the country as valuable partners of Washington is exactly what is happening in Yemen now. These leaders that take American assurances in return for offering their services and their country’s partnership undermine their country’s sovereignty and expose their people to undue external harm. There are two similarities between what Washington did in Pakistan and what it is doing in Yemen.

The former field marshal of the Yemeni Armed Forces and President of Yemen since 2012 Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi is a Washington favourite because he is seen as a reliable counterterrorism partner much like our leaders who had been Washington’s reliable partners in the past. President Hadi has been assisting the US in its operations against al-Qaeda but not without consequences for the people of his country. When an airstrike in Oct 2016 hit a funeral hall in Sanaa killing 155 people, President Obama suspended the delivery of arms to Saudi Arabia but he was soon replaced by his successor President Trump who unlocked the delivery of arms to Saudi Arabia that President Obama had suspended. Twenty-three months later, in Sep 2018, again a Saudi strike targeted a school bus and killed 40 children this time. These were the victims of collateral damage and were among over 100,000 people who have already been killed in the war. This is exactly what PM Imran Khan has been telling his nation because of the manner in which Pakistan suffered (and Yemen is suffering now) that we should have an independent foreign policy and thus partner with the US or any other power only in peace and not in war.

The ‘maximum pressure’ campaign that Washington executed against al-Qaeda and ISIS primarily through counterterrorism also exposed Pakistan to these organisations’ blowback because we were considered Washington’s ally. What is happening to Saudi Arabia now? Whatever drone attacks Riyadh is experiencing on its oil facilities by Iran-supported Houthis in Yemen is again a consequence of Washington’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran. This Washington strategy has only emboldened and motivated Iran to flex its muscle and why not? As a country that retains independent foreign policy, Iran will like to send a message to all Gulf countries that if they harm Iran’s interests in partnership with Washington then their own interests will also not remain out of harm’s way. The consequences that Pakistan suffered or Yemen and Saudi Arabia are now suffering are a reward for Washington’s great strategic failures. And now something about the likely fate of PM Imran Khan.

Like so many Pakistanis it is hard for me to accept that PM Imran Khan has to go before the completion of his government’s tenure. His departure I guess is a price that the nation must pay for the opposition’s victory. I have always believed that it is not wealth, affluence, property, rank, position or one’s position in society that makes one happy – what makes a person happy is being reasonable. Unreasonable people are the most unhappy people in the world regardless of their position or status in society and their big problem is that they proliferate this unhappiness all around them because of their actions which are based on blind and illogical reasoning. No logic justifies the removal of PM Imran Khan’s government just a year prior to elections – the only logic is the self-satisfying ego of political parties and politicians who were made to run in helter-skelter from the NAB offices to the courtrooms and finally to their short confinements in the country’s jails.

The opposition is being unreasonable because it is taking up the responsibility of running this country, not at an appropriate time. It is not the pain they feel about how the country has been misled and mismanaged by PM Imran Khan and his team – which in fact is just a political façade for public consumption. The real motive is driven by political impatience, the lust for political glamour and power. Most people in Pakistan are getting goosebumps imagining that they will once again be ruled by the same old ‘Pakistani Oligarchy’ which has been running a failed political show in this country for last so many decades – a show that hardly benefits the people but offers unlimited rewards to these oligarchs and their children.

As a proud citizen of this country, I am satisfied with even this much-criticised accountability effort of Imran Khan which never got culminated. Never before this small privileged class belonging to aristocratic families were challenged like this. When your own federal minister for law and justice deserts you and proves to be a turncoat what rule of law and what dispensation of justice you could have planned to implement? This has been an amazing political journey for PM Imran Khan and it is not yet over. The results of the local body’s elections in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa are already suggesting the surging popularity of PTI and Imran Khan. Rest assured even if disposed of he will be back. This time with greater commitment to serve his country.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 3^rd, 2022.

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