Julian Assange interviews Imran Khan: Pakistan needs to change client-master relations with US
No country has ever been bombed by its own ally, like Pakistan has been bombed by the US, Pakistani politician Imran Khan tells Julian Assange. He says it is time to put an end to the US-Pakistani client-master relationship.
*In the tenth episode of The World Tomorrow, Julian Assange talks to Imran Khan, whose political party was ignored for years and which US State Department cables called Pakistans one-man party.
But today he is a front-runner in Pakistani politics. Nowadays his party counts far more than one member as electable people come to join him.
But when, Khan, a former captain of Pakistans victorious cricket team, created his party from humble origins no one paid attention, no one supported him.
That was so till Khans party, along with a few others, boycotted the elections in 2008, because they
were manipulated by the Bush administration, and until his predictions turned out to be obvious.
Khan has always warned that elections would be
a disaster for the people of Pakistan and that Pakistani leaders were turncoats telling Americans how great they were, but at the same time giving their own citizens a different opinion.
The War on Terror has been devastating for Pakistan, Khan says, because 40,000 Pakistanis have been killed
fighting Americas war. Basically, our own army was killing our own people.
No country has ever been bombed by its own ally, as we have been bombed in this country. Never has a country's ruling elite, for personal benefits, never have they betrayed their people as much as this elite under Musharraf and the current elite, Khan says.
Imran Khan says that the US operation on Pakistans soil in May 2011 against Osama bin Laden was the
ultimate humiliation for the state, which was
sacrificing for the US.
It turned out that
our ally did not trust us and actually came and killed someone on our own soil. It was that the two factors combined: the sacrifices, and secondly, here is an ally which are we a friend or an enemy?
Khan says the
client-master relationship between the US and Pakistan, when the latter is
a hired gun, being paid to kill Americas enemies should be reviewed.
The only thing that the Americans should be told is that Look, there will be no terrorism from our side, he says.
The relationship with the US should be based on
dignity and self-respect instead of the
client-master model.
Stay tuned and watch the new episode of
The Julian Assange Show on RT, Tuesday, 11:30 GMT.