U.S. Regime Threatens to “Hang” Pakistan’s Deposed Leader if He Holds Anti-Coup March

Imran Khan had been the extremely popular progressive populist secular (non-sectarian) democratically elected Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan during 18 August 2018 to 10 April 2022, when he then became overthrown by a U.S. coup and replaced by Shebaz Sharif, the younger brother of Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif, who was Pakistan’s 5th-wealthiest billionaire and who had been Imran Khan’s immediate predecessor as the PM. On October 14th, Geo TV in Islamabad Pakistan headlined “Imran Khan to be hung upside down if he launches long march: Rana Sanaullah,” and reported that Imran Khan was being threatened now with execution if he would actually hold his promised march protesting the coup that had forced him out. Nawaz Sharif had championed and built upon the Islamist General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s military government’s policy of empowering the fundamentalist-Sunni (Saudi-Wahhabist-trained pro-jihadist) clerics in uniting Islamic law with Pakistan’s laws, so as to unite the aristocracy with the theocracy in Pakistan, with the aim being to benefit both the billionaires and the clergy, at the Pakistani public’s expense. Imran Khan is now organizing this protest march to call for a restoration of democracy to Pakistan, and to oust the Government’s control by the appointees of the aristocrats and the clergy.

That headline’s phrase “long march” refers to Imran Khan’s promise to lead a million-plus-person “long march” to the capital city, which is Islamabad, to bring the downfall of the U.S.-led recently-installed coup-regime, which had installed Shebaz Sharif. “Rana Sanaullah,” in that headline, refers to the coup-imposed Federal Minister of the Interior, under Shebaz Sharif. Sanaullah was in a position to be able — with the rest of Shebaz Sharif’s Government (backed by the U.S.) — to carry out that threat.

Also on October 14th, Geo TV bannered “Rana Sanaullah will be arrested if he enters Punjab: Cheema,” and reported that, “Advisor to Chief Minister Punjab on Interior Omar Sarfraz Cheema said that Federal Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan will be arrested if he enters Punjab.” Both the dictators (the aristocrats and theocrats), and the democrats (Imran Khan’s group), are “gunning” against each other; and, right now, the dictators — with the crucial help of America — have the upper hand. For this reason, Imran Khan has not yet announced a date on which his proposed march will take place. He is instead travelling the country to campaign for it.

Imran Khan refers to himself as being a “party of one,” because he is up against the entire existing corrupt Government of Pakistan, and so he founded and leads his own Party, PTI. A joint web-search for “Imran Khan” “PTI” and “wikipedia” brings up no “PTI” but instead shows just “Imran Khan,” and that article says “He is the founder and chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), one of the largest political parties in the country.” However, though PTI is “one of the largest,” all of the others are opposed to it, because PTI is opposed to both the aristocracy and the theocracy. They are, and have been, united with the U.S. Government, in order to oust Imran Khan from power. (Today’s U.S. Government always supports aristocrats and theocrats against democrats, in order to be able to extract its cut, for the benefit of America’s billionaires, via the IMF etc. — various money-laundering institutions of this global-gangland operation, America’s “rules-based international order.”) The way they did this was by Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruling for a no-confidence vote against Imran Khan in the parliament to oust him as the Prime Minister; and the parliament then appointed Nawaz Sharif’s brother to replace Imran Khan. They would have liked to appoint Nawaz, except that, as Reuters had headlined on 24 December 2018, “Ousted Pakistani PM Sharif gets seven years’ jail for graft,” and, like any other pretend-‘democracy’, the aristocrats and theocrats who controlled Pakistan’s Government needed a public-electoral fig-leaf in order to give any permanency to their joint dictatorship over the country; so, they chose Nawaz’s younger brother instead.

Omar Sarfraz Cheema, in that headline “Rana Sanaullah will be arrested if he enters Punjab: Cheema,” is a member of Imran Khan’s PTI Party, which is the dominant Party in the Punjab region of Pakistan. When Rana Sanaulah threatened to get Imran Khan “hung upside down,” that was a threat which came not only from Pakistan’s aristocracy, and not only from Pakistan’s clergy, but also from the U.S. White House and Congress, which constitute the imperial center that has been enabling Pakistan’s aristocrats and clergy to control Pakistan. In the 15 October 2021 video “Imran Khan: The extended interview with MEE” (MEE being Middle East Eye, a news-source that isn’t under the U.S. regime’s thumb), at 5:40 in the interview, Khan, when he was asked what U.S. President Biden had said to him about Pakistan’s situation, Khan reluctantly admitted that Biden had refused to be in contact with him. (That interview is archived here, in case it might become removed from the internet.)  At that time, a year back, Khan was still hoping that the U.S. regime wouldn’t overthrow him (as it did).

Another, and even more telling, interview with Imran Khan had occurred on the night of 19 June 2012, when Julian Assange interviewed him by remote from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and its youtube version started being copied over six hundred times to the main Web archive, web dot archive dot org, but then all of those hundreds became mysteriously destroyed so that even at that archive, which is headquartered in the U.S., none of those copies any longer functions. However, the show can still be seen at RT, https://assange.rt.com/khan-episode-nine.html, from which it has been archived twice, such as here, and copies elsewhere also remain online, such as here and here and here and here and here, and the transcript of it is here; so, the U.S.-and-allied regimes might not be able to eliminate all copies of it from online. Anyway, this interview shows not only why Assange is being destroyed by the U.S./UK regime, but that they also are doing all they can to destroy Imran Khan.

19 June 2012 happened to be Assange’s first night being protected from the UK/U.S. regime inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which was when the democrat, Rafael Correa, was leading that country. Correa himself became replaced by the secret U.S. agent Lenin Moreno as Correa’s successor, who on 2 April 2019 allowed UK to drag Assange out to supermax solitary confinement in London’s Belmarsh Prison awaiting ultimate extradition to the U.S. (Assange isn’t a citizen of either country, but of Australia, which has done nothing to protect him or his rights as an Australian citizen, and is therefore obviously a slave-regime to the UK/U.S. regime — and yet Australians aren’t revolting against that slavery by their Government.) Ever since, Assange has been effectively blocked to communicate to or with the public, so that he presumably will die either in that prison or else in one in the United States, basically a dead man, ever since 2 April 2019, who has never been tried in any court on any criminal charge (other than jumping bail on a cooked-up rape charge that was then dropped). It’s interesting that in the 19 June 2012 — the 9th — installment of “The Julian Assange Show,” interview with Imran Khan, both men were stoic about their likely becoming ultimately crushed by the global U.S./UK regime. Religions have their martyrs, but, so, too, do democrats. Aristocrats have only their greed, and their pretenses; but that is backed up by their enormous power — against which to revolt is the extreme form of courage and heroism.

Eric Zuesse is an investigative historian. His new book, America's Empire of Evil: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. Read other articles by Eric.