Pakistan Imran Khan Arrested.

[Nilgiri]

@Saiyan0321 when you are here next, please consider reading this thread so far if you would like and possibly giving your views when time permits etc.

I already know a lot of your views so its more for benefit of members here.

If you feel its warranted I can also move the thread to the Pakistan section....it is in global affairs right now as its started by merzifonlu....as we have strict policy that only folks from the country itself can start negative/contentious news threads in the country sections.

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Imran Khan’s political games leave him isolated as Pakistan army destroys party

Allies desert former prime minister amid disappearances and torture as powerful military reasserts control

www.theguardian.com

In recent days, Imran Khan has cut an increasingly isolated figure. Since Pakistan’s former prime minister was released from jail, after a brief but explosive attempt to arrest him last month, his return has been marked by a mass exodus of the top leadership of his party, on a scale that has surprised even his critics.

Late on Thursday night, Pervez Khattak, the former chief minister and defence minister, became the latest high-profile resignation from Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. He followed in the path of Khan’s former finance minister, his former human rights minister, his former information minister and his former shipping minister, who all stepped down from senior posts or left PTI altogether in recent weeks. Dozens of other federal and state ministers have followed suit.



Most of those who have not defected are now behind bars. On Thursday night, the president of PTI, Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi – who recently said he would stand behind Khan during these “difficult times” – was arrested by anti-terrorism police at his home in Lahore. Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Khan’s former foreign minister, still remains in prison after his arrest in May, along with several other key ministers and thousands of rank and file PTI members.

There is little question among analysts who is orchestrating the arrests and resignations. Since Khan’s relationship with the all-powerful military establishment fell apart and led to his fall from power, he has been on a crusade against the army leadership. He has accused them of attempting to assassinate him and of being behind his arrest in May, before he was released when the courts declared his detention illegal.

In response, say analysts and PTI members, the army chief is now trying to systematically break up Khan’s party, before arresting him and putting him on trial in a military court. The likelihood of Khan being allowed to contest Pakistan’s next election, due by October, is considered by most to be very slim.

“This dramatic crackdown is a clear strategy by the military to break down all the support structures that Khan has,” said Avinash Paliwal, an associate professor in international relations at Soas University of London. “Once those structures are gone, Khan is next in line.”

Yet despite Khan’s claims that this is a “crackdown never seen before in Pakistan’s history”, Paliwal said this was instead a continuation of a pattern by the military that has marred the country’s pathway to democracy since 1958, when the first military coup took place.


Since then, the military has routinely asserted itself as the most powerful political player in Pakistan, either through direct rule or by controlling and masterminding things behind the scenes. All of the country’s most powerful political parties have fallen foul of military crackdowns and arrests. Before Khan, it was the prime minister Nawaz Sharif, and his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, who in 2017, after falling out with the military, was toppled from power and jailed for corruption, as were several others before him.

“This is no anomaly, it is something that the military does occasionally whenever it feels that it needs to tame a civilian political outlet which is getting too big for its boots,” said Paliwal. “The military is the only party that is ruling the country.”

Khan would not be the first prime minister to be put on trial by the military. In 1977, the prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was deposed in a military coup, put on trial under martial law and then executed.



Can Imran Khan really take on the Pakistani army and win?
Read more

The pressures imposed on senior figures, and even those lower down the ranks of PTI, have been stark. One senior party leader who was arrested in May and has since resigned from PTI described being handed over by police to the notorious military agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

“For me they used multiple methods to pressure me to leave the party, but one of the worst was torture,” he said, requesting anonymity over fear of the military. “They tied my feet and hung me upside down and I was like a punching bag for them. They were beating with sticks and punches and kicking me.


“They called my family and threatened them and told me that they would pick up my children and entire family if I don’t leave the party. The offer I was given was that if I left PTI, I would get relief. I knew there was no other way.”

Even those lower down in the party described the pressure they were receiving from the military, with many accused of taking part in violent riots and protests that erupted on 9 May after Khan’s arrest. Homes and headquarters of the military were among the buildings attacked in the violence.

Since then, the military and government have described it as a “black day” for Pakistan and vowed to bring the full force of the state down on those who took part, while accusing Khan of being the mastermind. Those who participated, and even those who were just affiliated with the party, have been rounded up in their thousands and charged with terrorism offences, with some due to face trial in military courts.

The brother of a PTI youth wing leader said his whole family had been in hiding since 9 May, after experiencing raids on their homes and constant harassment by police. He said he had been separated from his wife and newborn baby for almost a month as a result.

“Why are they harassing me or my parents just because my brother is part of the PTI leadership?” he said. “We have received indirect messages to ‘quit PTI if you don’t want to be in this situation’. This is the worst political situation I’ve seen in my life.”

Human rights groups have expressed concern that the military are turning to their other notorious strategy of intimidation for those aligned with PTI or opposed to the military: disappearances.


The pro-PTI journalist Imran Riaz Khan has been missing since 11 May. On Sunday, Murad Akbar, the brother of a former adviser to Imran Khan, Mirza Shahzad Akbar, was picked up from the family home and has not been seen since, with the police denying any knowledge of his whereabouts.

“We all know who is responsible,” said Mirza Shahzad Akbar, who is in the UK and no longer an office bearer in PTI but is named as an accused in one of the prominent corruption cases against Khan. “My brother has no involvement in politics. Going after my brother and abducting him is to pressurise me.”

On Thursday night, the prominent lawyer and rights activist Jibran Nasir, who was an outspoken critic of the military, was picked up by unidentified men in Karachi, according to his wife.

Yet for all the pressure being exerted, the scale of the defections and speed of the collapse of PTI has exceeded that of any other party that has faced a similar crackdown. Analysts say it is a reflection of the ideological weakness of PTI under Khan, who failed to build any institutions within the party and relied solely on his own populist appeal to keep it together.

There had been mounting frustration at Khan’s political games. Though his public crusade has been to demand general elections as soon as possible, according to those in PTI’s former top leadership, and confirmed by the law minister Azam Nazeer Tarar, behind the scenes Khan twice torpedoed offers by the ruling coalition to hold elections.

The first offer came in May last year and the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, had even written his resignation speech, but after the government approached Khan with the election proposal, he announced his “long march” protest. Not wanting to look like they were bowing to pressure, the government called off the plan.

Then, during supreme court-mandated negotiations between PTI and the government in early May, the government proposed dissolving the parliament by July and holding elections at the end of September. PTI senior leaders in the meeting were enthusiastic, but after a phone-call with Khan, were told to reject the plan and looked visibly dejected according to those in the negotiations.

As trust in Khan’s loyalty to his party members has diminished, few at the upper levels of PTI have proved willing to stand up to the military and face the likely draconian consequences, instead choosing to leave him. A former senior party leader confirmed that several of those who resigned were now in discussion for a plan to rebuild PTI “minus Khan” as a way to “save the party”.

“It is the bitter truth [that] Khan does not care about his workers and close aides and what they go through or face,” he said. “Anyone who has known him closely, knows he just thinks about himself. Khan is a big narcissist.”

 

[Saiyan0321]

Ok. It took me a while to write this but i have been very busy so hopefully i made enough sense of the situation and explained as much as i could in brevity.l I could not go into deeper details but it should suffice. If questions exist then i can answer.





First of all sorry for my late reply as I have been very busy. The issue to explain the current political happenings within Pakistan to our Turkish brothers is no easy task and perhaps the best way to undertake this task is to first explain how the political setup within Pakistan works and then how the system itself works and by system I don’t mean the constitutional setup but how the societal system works and how it impacts the political landscape. Then we can see from this understanding the rise and downfall of Imran khan and perhaps determine whether this is the end for Imran khan or is there any way to comeback from this.



THE POLITICS

Pakistan has a complex political setup and the complexity is not just due to its constitutional setup but how much it deviates from the actual setup in place and how the constitutional setup does not even begin to touch the societal political setup within Pakistan. A political existence that predates Pakistan, the British and even the Mughals. Even the Delhi Sultanate and the local states that functioned in conjunction with the sultanate cannot take credit for its creation. It predates them all. So first thing is first. Pakistan was formed in 1947 and unlike many other nations, it was formed absent any proper revolution. The movement for Pakistan was never one that captured the minds of the populace for an extended period of time to formulate debate on what should be Pakistan or how it should function. Ignoring Pakistan Studies Book, historically a separate muslim state was not discussed within the muslim leadership and individuals till late 1930s early 1940s. Iqbal’s address of 1930 outlined a separate union of northwestern provinces majority muslim provinces within the union of the british empire which wasn’t an outlandish idea at all as british india witnessed addition and removal of states and provinces. Burma is an example of this. The term Pakistan was quite late in to the discussion and even then the muslim polity was so divided that in the eyes of detractors and supporters, Pakistan meant something different. Infact considering the events of the Cabinet Mission, even the leaders of Pakistan did not have an entire vision regarding what was Pakistan. A state within India, A commonwealth state like Australia or Canada or a separate state and what kind of separate state? A continuation of the british system or a formation of an entirely new system. Jinnah’s speech regarding Pakistan being a laboratory to show the world a new system was basically him acknowledging that Pakistan does not have that revolutionary history due to the nascent nature of the idea itself which was an edge that India had since India drew its revolutionary history from its half a decade fight against the british which predated the founding fathers of India and the freedom fighters were drenched in that revolutionary idea of an independent India and each one had formed that revolutionary charisma that they constitutionalized within the Indian constitution and if anybody has any doubts about this then all they have to do is read the constitutional debates and the actions of the founding fathers of India. Pakistan did not have that luxury. An idea that was never discussed, never argued upon, never considered and never constitutionally morphed. An idea that did not have that revolutionary history, the euphoria of the people is not the revolutionary history that the idea needed. It was just the beginning. Only one individual was working on that idea and he was fighting the case for the idea and not constitutionalizing that idea. It was not his job but unfortunately the idea had not existed for such a long time that it could create the argument, the discussion and the sacrifices that would create the individuals with the charisma of that revolutionary idea who in turn would constitutionalize that charisma and idea. This is why when Pakistan was formed Jinnah called it a laboratory to the people and the rest of the “Founding Fathers” and that is not a bad thing. When the United States took birth, it was a laboratory and the founding fathers of USA were excited and brimming with a euphoria that yes, we will experiment and bring forth new ideas and Hamilton, adams, Jefferson and Washington all clashed with their ideas in a civil manner and all their debates and works created some of the most exciting works regarding law, politics, society that would form the founding basis for modern political and constitutional theories and I am sure if those so many founding fathers were brought to Pakistan then they would be just as excited and forming new ideas. Unfortunately Pakistan did not have them. The most politically active area of Pakistan was East Pakistan, an area 1000 square miles away. While on paper we may talk about constitutions but it was inconceivable for the complicated nature of West Pakistan to be governed through Dhaka and it was incomprehensible for a democratic Pakistan to govern a massively ethnic province like East Pakistan through Karachi save for dictatorial measures employed by the British Empire. However it would be wrong to say that there were not buds that could have grown into proper flowers of revolution. From Sardar Ibrahim to GM Syed there were individuals that could have shaped Pakistan but that was not to be. The only leader that could have constitutionalized his charisma at any level was slowly being sidelined by other individuals until his passing in 1948. So suddenly a massively complicated state of Pakistan with barely any revolutionary history behind the idea of Pakistan came under the control of individuals that had done less work for the formation of Pakistan than those that had opposed the creation of Pakistan. These individuals were politically based in the areas that went to India and had migrated into Pakistan and suddenly found themselves inheriting the reigns of the state absent any ground political constituency or support and themselves unsure on what was Pakistan to be. To make sure their own power remained, they decided to function the state in a draconian manner. When India and Pakistan were formed, the British handed the reigns to constituent assemblies whose job was to form the constitution of the two countries and until them the British Indian Constitution of 1935 with the Independence of India Act of 1947 were to function as constitutions for smooth transfer. Each constituent assembly was empowered to form whatever constitution they desired. Absolute freedom to do whatever they wanted. While India looked at its vast landmass, cultural and religious complexity and sweated from head to toe at the nightmare that was to be the formulation of the constitution for this complex mess, the founding fathers of Pakistan decided to take a more relaxed approach and decided to have the constituent assembly function as a national assembly until they could figure out how they could safeguard their power. Partition had caused chaos, massive chaos and the only institution that had any semblance of control was the army and in 1949 ceasefire and in the 1950 riots, the army had realized that the politicians running the state could not be trusted to handle the affairs of the state and they could do a much better job. The indian government never gave their army a chance to think like this since while Nehru had dictatorial tendencies, the bureaucracy and the army could see that the politicians were doing their job and were working towards a constitution and were trying to implement said constitution which was infused with the revolutionary charisma of the indian leadership. For Pakistan was a mess and this is where the army felt that they were more organized, more better and superior and could control the country in a more effective way. They say that the idea of Pakistan died in 1971 with the independence of Bengal. That is wrong. It neither killed the idea of Pakistan nor impacted the two nation theory. The idea of Pakistan died in 1948 when everybody stopped discussing and working on the revolutionary idea for what Pakistan was to be and is to be and the lab that was to churn new political, religious and social ideas was effectively closed a day after its opening. They say Jinnah wanted Islamic Pakistan or a secular Pakistan. Both are wrong. Jinnah wanted a Pakistan that was not afraid of breaking the boundary to form out of box ideals to truly change the way the political and societal spectrum was functioning even if it meant changing religious and political ideals.

The reason why the aforementioned is written is for the reader to understand the chaos that is Pakistan and how empty it became and this void was filled by the social construct that functions within Pakistan. The army slowly started to take over the functions of the state as the constituent assembly, in a bid to secure their unelected power, realized that they must function with the army. By 1952, the army was taking over many functions of the state especially foreign policy. If you want to know how dysfunctional the state had become then you only need to read up on the Rawalpindi coup which was a planned military coup against the liaqat government and many later writers state that it was composed of individuals who felt that the growing union between the constituent assembly and the army was going to give birth to something unholy. The army found out and the coup was crushed before it began and by 1954, Ayub and Iskander Mirza were effectively in control of the state and were about to lock horns with each other. This introduction was important for the reader to understand exactly the condition in which Pakistan was made and what was the political void that it found itself in?

 

[Saiyan0321]

The electoral system

Now most Turkish brethren are used to a political system wherein the populace votes for individual candidates representing parties. Pakistan is different and a lot more complicated. Pakistan, rather than bothering to invent a different kind of wheel, decided to continue the british system which dependent on constituent individuals representing their select areas and these individuals could make any decision within the a union of representatives called a parliament. Now Pakistan did not copy the exact british system but adopted a system which would go from semi-presidential system to supra-presidential system depending on how the establishment of the state would require. The establishment of the country is not the military but a union of institutions that work both against and for each other to control what they feel is a broken state home to a broken nation with each institution believing that they hold the solution and whilst the army is the biggest institution within the establishment, it is not the sole institution and functions in conjunction with other institution to run the reigns of the state. Now the establishment has historically favoured a power puppet individual that could make sure that the politicians within the country remain reigned and the interests of the establishment remain well looked after. For the establishment, the chaos of politics is simply not desirable for a country they feel cannot survive any form of chaos. The establishment has the least amount of belief in the people of the country and most look down upon them as brainless individuals unworthy of democracy. The constant looking down upon individuals who vote for dynastic parties or ethnic parties is evidence of this thought process and I will expand on this when I go further.
Let me continue explaining the political system. So Pakistan has representatives. These representatives are elected from a constituency area. Now electing an individual is not just merely voting upon a party symbol. The people of the constituency depend on the representative to solve their issues, which can range from gas connections to freeing relative or sibling or child from the clutches of the police. Many times these individuals act as mediators resolving issues and I am not talking about villages here. In most cities, even in Lahore these representatives have such a power. Save for Posh areas, this is the case for all of Pakistan. Now due to these efforts, these individuals garner a select vote bank and they have a symbiotic relationship with this vote bank. It is height of ignorance and elitist behavior to think that these individuals only beg for vote near election day and then ignore their constituents for the remaining 5 years. They cant or else they will lose the vote bank which can have devastating impact on their political career. Now this representative enters into the community, whether through tribal legacy or caste/biradari or through works, they enter and gain a bank and when they gain said bank, they can now sell themselves to a political party. Political parties, atleast when they have the resources and backing run massive programs to gouge how much support an individual has. The individual himself can display such a support and if he has an election history then he can display this history as a means of being an electable. On a single constituency, you can have multiple individuals running elections, many independent of parties and they do this not because its fun but because they need to show major political parties that they have a support section. Now this is one support section for an individual. To get him elected, he needs more support which is what the political party provides and this is the vote bank of the party. Individuals who vote for the party as a community because the said party makes policies supportive of these communities and these communities can number from large to small like the biharis in sheikhupura, or the muhajir, pathan, sindhi votebanks in Karachi or the tajir/trader community in Central and Northern Punjab especially Lahore and Faisalabad and gujranwala. Industrialists are another groups and these groups each have their own element factor of support like some can bring in election vote whereas others can bring in election funds. Like the transport community, huge supporter of N league, can provide vehicles that are needed to bring in voters. All of these are important elements to get one individual elected to the national and provincial seat. Then add to this the very poor voter who has nothing and is reliant on the election handouts. These are mostly very poor people and their votes are bought by the electable and this is where the aforementioned support comes in handy. The more funds he has, the more votes he can buy and the more vehicles he can prepare for them to go in and vote. These people are the destitute poor and will go to anybody that will help them and the electable does help them like I know more than a few who got zakat commission support due to the electables of the area. So with this you can understand that the election of one individual requires all these resources and the more resources he has, the better chance of him reaching the office of the assembly. In some areas, the electable is so strong that the party support is only icing on the cake and they can win without party support because their own network is so strong like the feudal lords of South Punjab and Northern Sindh and while many cry the feudal lords are evil, the mazaris love them and draw benefit from them. You can cry the communist book all you want but this is the reality of the country. The people of the area wont vote for any tom dick and harry absent their own interest just because that tom dick and harry is given party support. He has to be an electable but there is a way the party can make a difference and that is by having the party look after the constituents interests and that is where we get the ethnic and religious parties and these parties made it their duty to look after their constituents interest even if they had to resort to criminal activities. MQM looked after the muhajir interests in such a manner that they drew massive support. Jamat e Islami does great social work and actually draws their support absent dynastic individuals or electables. The Baloch and Pashtun parties are similar and they function in this way that if you visit their office and are part of their community then they will help you if they have the resources. They formed student groups that look after student interests and create serious base support. All of these factors play an important role when an election takes place and then election day comes in and f that electable wins then the constituents are really happy and to make sure the party is able to win future elections. They release funds. These funds are development funds allotted to these electables to do development projects in their constituencies so that the party support increases even more. Now in most countries these funds are given to the bureaucracy of the city for it to undertake development but not in Pakistan because if DCO Akhtar made the road and Mian Azeez, the local MPA didn’t then the local MPA wont last long in that constituency and DCO Akhtar will display banners stating how he is doing all the work and will try to run an election. The people expect their representative to take care of the sewerage to their gas connection and that is what he will do and the party provides him funds for this purpose. IF the party doesn’t then he really struggles and may even jump ship. Now within this complicated mixture, lets add the establishment. The army, the biggest benefactor within the establishment has the largest resources and largest man power everywhere so lets say that they suddenly decided to support Party A. Representative of Party A now finds massive resources, man power and bureaucratic support to contest an election as opposed to representative of Party B who is now struggling with limited resources, a recalcitrant bureaucracy and sudden opening of cases where rather than campaigning, he is trying to save himself with a recalcitrant judiciary and in many areas, he finds himself and his team being attacked by insurgents and terrorists whereas his opponent is free to build his election network. So what will happen when this support is thrown in the spanner? Clearly representative A has the highest chance of winning. Now lets take another scenario, Party A is receiving the support of the establishment but their Representative A is very weak and Party B’s Representative B is strong and powerful. Fighting him would use too many resources and even then defeat is a huge possibility. So better tactic is to get in touch with Representative B and tell him that his future and chances would be better if he moves to Party A. The Representative B is promised support and given gifts and mediators visit and assure him that he will be taken care of and massive resources will be allotted to him and his corruption will be hidden since everybody has skeletons in their closet and if he doesn’t compromise then the establishment will make sure even his victory is bloody and even if they cant beat him in their election, they will destroy his network and weaken him enough to beat him next time. Representative B can only compromise. You see how the establishment changes things in an already complex system.

Now when we are discussing complex systems, let me highlight the social system of Pakistan and it will help you understand the complications within Pakistan even more so. It is something I wrote elsewhere

“The thing to understand is that Pakistan is not under some foreign rule or under the rule of a singular individual that one could say that after deposing of such rule, Pakistan will become prosperous. Pakistan is not even a country that is under occupation or in chains. These are misleading notions that make for an emotional speech.

It is important to understand the social Pakistan. Every individual that sits from the Judges of Courts to the DCO of the district to the police chief to the general is an individual that is born, bred and raised in Pakistan. He is as much a Pakistani as the rest of the country and thus inherits the social failing of the society he is raised in. Pakistan is home to system which is not a foreign construct but a social construct. This complex system is difficult to describe in words but if I am to describe it then it is a system that demands self-interest within the combined goal of preservation of the said system whilst aggressive, even violent opposition to the contrary. If you don’t become part of it, then you will not survive at all and it is rooted within the individual from our homes to our schools. This is why Pakistan is so brain dead and anti-intellectual that the very concept of contrary thinking is seen as an affront that must be rooted out immediately and with great prejudice. They say PTI is a cult. No Pakistan itself is a Cult. Each individual is member of some cult, worshipping an individual who in turn is a member of another Cult. It is this cult that has made this system and are actually working hard towards its growth and preservation. Breaking a few gates and attacking core commander house will do nothing to the system. The system is functioning in the most proper of ways and it is thriving because the Army, whilst being the largest party of the system and the one that gave it the proper shape, it stands upon the people and functions with the people. The Army is a part of it. Changing the COAS or even killing all 660K soldiers and officers wont change the way the system functions since after the massacre, another 660K will take their place who will act exactly the same and that cult of 660K will eventually realize they have guns and tanks and the others cults have nothing and will take power. Why? Because society breeds them that way.

Secondly where are the chains? Is the parliament not formed from them? Are the judges not from Pakistan or composed of Pakistanis? Are generals not from Pakistan? They are not some different race but Pakistanis who act like Pakistanis after they get any sort of power. Grab any Pakistani from anywhere and have him sit at these prestigious institutions and you will see extreme abuse of power, nepotism and corruption and when I say any, I mean any. They say there is blind hatred for the army and people are attacking the army. Oh brother these detached fools. Most people that I have met boast that they have contacts within the army and ISI. How deep those contacts are is a different story but if a friend of a friend of a friend has an acquaintance in ISI then his furthest circle is claiming they have contacts in ISI and will then boast. Why? Because it’s a power symbol, a status symbol and they will not see this contact or status fall? Those people that were worried that posting COAS private details will endanger his family. Nobody is going to touch them as that family would have an army of cultists ready to die for any benefit.



I mean look at Khadija Shah. She is your pure Elite girl and that is the problem with being worshipped by cultists ready to die for you simply for you remember their name. You start thinking that you are invincible and let me also highlight that she didn’t make those posts thinking, “Yeh Russian Revolution.” Or “Give me free Pakistan or give me death.” She would cry and weep if she was in a different Pakistan as her and her families wealth would have been confiscated under the guise of illegal accumulation and corruption. She did it only to expand her and her and her family’s political career like so many others were doing at that time and are no realizing their mistakes that in their aura of invincibility and desire for power, they didn’t realize that the one they were fighting will teach a lesson and now her lawyers and contacts are frantically and hectically work for a deal and she will get it. It’s a self-interest driven country for the combined purpose of keeping the system in place.

The army is seething right now and there is burning anger that even the courts don’t want to touch with a ten foot pole. You just have to listen to the review hearings for the election date to understand how careful the courts are being. The thing is that PTI supporters did attack and they were PTI supporters and the leadership enjoyed or atleast supported the attack and while they might have believed it to be some form of bargaining chip, it got too out of hand and COAS Munir is using this opportunity to clear things out. You say he is not thinking far ahead? You may be right but he doesn’t need to think further than tomorrow. It is not in his current interest to think further than tomorrow as he will act upon his current self-interest and he knows that nobody can break the system. The system is stable and strong and as long as that can remain, most can only curse on twitter or in their hearts as they bow their heads in respect and run to their errands or wait 5 hours for a 2 minute meeting only to be told come tomorrow, (Happened to a journalist contact who really wanted to get some acquaintance in the army) all to have them simply remember your name. Munir knows that he can send hundreds to military court. He is not interested in convictions. He is interested in Punishments and he will punish and he knows nobody will do anything apart from twitter rage. Why? Because Pakistanis are happy the way they are. They love the system? The system they abuse is a euphemism they use for Nawaza, Zardari, Imran, Generals or judges or constitution. They don’t hate the system they are born in. They love it, they will die for it and they will kill you for it. Especially if it makes the cult leaders happy. This is now how revolutions happen. Infact the environment in Pakistan is not conducive for revolution. You cant have a revolution when everybody is content and i am willing to bet my house that those that are abusing munir, if munir today calls them to GHQ for an amazing job, they will run like the monkey who notices that that the Ark is about to sail and the female is on the Ark whereas he is outside with other Male Monkeys.

The 9th May “revolution” ended when they brought the police and water tanks. It didn’t even last 24 hours and by morning of 10th, they were mopping up and arresting the scattered and beaten protestors and those protestors are about to learn a very fine lesson. Don’t get involved in cultist battles of your cult leaders for you are their fodder and they will not even look at you much less remember you. A cheap statistic. That is their fate and they would be lucky if they were to become just that. The boy that saw his father get shot in the head would be wishing that it was him after they are done with him. You see grab a pliers and pull a nail, that’s blinding pain but it will go away. Years of legal proceedings, harassments, financial losses due to bribes and litigation and the detention torture, jails, bails, jails again and then finally you hear that some XYZ pm has announced some cash reward for the 9th may detainees only for the soul crushing disappointment to be felt when it doesn’t reach you because of corruption or that you finally hear some XYZ judge order the DMG to bring a list of detainees only for the case to be vanished and the judge to be given some perk and all that hope crushed slowly, not instantaneously, as you watch nothing is happening all you can do is hope that maybe just maybe you may get 7 years so that you can atleast meet your grandkids. This isn’t some concocted tale. This is exactly what happens, has happened and will happen. But nothing and I mean nothing will hurt this said protestor and party supporter when he is suffering all this hears his leader say that he was not a PTI supporter but a PMLN tout or an Army Agent. Now that is what I would call absolute soul crusher.

Imran cannot bring in revolution. Revolutionaries never betrayed their rioters. They condemned the destruction at most but always stood by them but Imran declared all those individuals as touts or agents. That’s the hero and leader you want to die for. One that betrays you if he feels his power is slipping but why hate him? He is just like us? Self-interest driven for his goals working within the system and played a critical role in the preservation of the system as shown in his tenure.

As for the loud shouting revolutionary guy screaming in video. Yeah and then you guys decided to strip the place and steal everything within it. How do I know? Because stuff is coming to market including the book collection of the core commander which contains some pretty good and rare books. Yep the army took awaams paisa to buy this stuff and then you guys stole the stuff bought from awaam paisa and sold it for personal gain selling it and then thanked God for the system. System Zindabad and you will continue to defend the actual system even when you are leeched for years to come by what they will do to you.

So all in all, business as usual and i feel sorry for anybody that has any hope from the country. If you can leave then leave and if you cant then you need to learn how to survive within the system and the most important lesson is that you must learn how to eat the flesh of the other. That is a good way to survive and worship a cult leader that can protect you.”



Now lets come to Imran Khan. Imran khan started his political struggle in the 90s but was highly irrelevant since he neither had the base support nor the resources to win an election. Infact he could barely field proper candidates apart from himself and the army did not need him at all since in the 90s Pakistan was largely Supra-Presidential. A system which is a combination of parliament and president is referred to as semi-presidential however in most cases the president has so much power to interfere in the affairs of the parliament that the said power creates a centralization which is in opposition to the trichotomy of power thus making him supra. Bruce Ackerman, a constitutionalist and legal theorist especially concerning revolutionary constitutionalism also defined it in similar lines. In the 90s the President had vast powers to interfere and break the parliament by dissolving it and declaring elections. Every single president, chosen by winning political parties and prime ministers found their president rebelling and the decade ended Musharraf taking complete power. During this time, the politicians realized that not only did they backstab each other but the army never allowed anybody to settle into power as their parties were broken, groupings were formed and candidates were stripped. PMLN aka Nawaz Sharif had 2/3rd majority in 1997 election which in terms of political power is the peak. A parliamentary power cant get any more powerful and two years later his party had many groupings and rumors were that a new party was being formed. Mian Azhar a rich industrialist and a very close friend of Nawaz sharif, the father of Hammad Azhar a PTI leader and Shujaat Hussain, brother of Pervez Elahi, literally formed this group that would go on to become PMLQ and they broke the back of PMLN by late 1998, early 1999. With the coup, these characters would go on to form PMLQ, the party that ran the country under Musharraf by winning the 2002 elections and stayed in power till 2002-2008. During this time, every politician realized that this is not right at all and by 2004, there were meetings being held on foreign soil which culminated in the famous signing of the Charter of Democracy between Benazir and Nawaz and this was basically meant to create a united front by politicians that they wont seek military support against each other and will not support groupings between parties and will look to amend the constitution to make such acts illegal. The charter of democracy grew into something even the signatories could not have imagined as it seriously bound the political parties and Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of Zulfiqar was the brains behind it. Every single political party, even PMLQ liked the document and the army seriously hated it because it united the politicians against the army and when the massive political entity is standing against you, it is troublesome and that is where General Kiyani comes in. General Kiyani was the COAS when Musharraf finally retired as COAS during his martial law in 2007 as Musharraf was forced to relinquish his power as COAS when political front grew way too strong and the military also started to feel the heat. General Kiyani is loved by the officers of that time because they genuinely feel that he saved the army not just from the politicians but from the people as well since by 2007 terrorism was at peak. There was a concept that the US had started a Christian crusade against the Muslim powers and it wants to wipe out muslim countries and occupy them and the Taliban need to be supported. This online hatred against the army is rubbish and had about as much value as cyber trolling. Back then was when the army faced real hatred and real on the ground threat. Mosques in major cities were declaring jihad against Pakistan Army and were calling on the people to attack the army anywhere they could be found and majority believed that the attacks against the army were justified since they had sold their own for a few dollars and the people of Afghanistan and FATA deserve retribution. This was the situation that kiyani had inherited and with a recalcitrant political class, that was the time when the army truly found their limitations. Now first of in such an environment, a character like Benazir, who was capable and a strong politician under whom every single politician was rallying. Everyone. Her return to Pakistan was electrifying. She could not be allowed to exist and after multiple bomb blasts at her vicinity when she was trying to campaign, they got her. While the political class was now more compliant, it was still quite united and by 2010, the economic incompetence of the 90s and Musharraf caught on and Pakistan faced massive economic and energy hurdles however during this time, staying true to their charter they did pass the 18th amendment which saw the single office of the president lose all power. The army didn’t interfere since in 2010ish they were busy trying to recreate their image and were forming a strong media circle which reached its zenith under ISPR head Asim Bajwa. For them losing out on the president having vast powers was a tactical retreat to regain political ground. However they did continue to poison the people. First of all, through their network in media, they spread this thought that the charter of democracy was a nefarious deal between two parties to take turns and rule Pakistan forever. This was spread like wildfire and by 2011, everyone was screaming turns and turns and turns. Secondly they displayed how they were the only organization helping the people by highlighting the failures of the civilian government and showing themselves as the go to institution. It didn’t help that PPP was actually incompetent as well. Benazir was a competent leader but Asif Zardari and his team sidelined the better individuals of PPP to take over as they were more establishment pliant but they were not competent by any measure. Divided government of that time helped the army take great ground and by 2012, post memogate, ( a letter by the ambassador hussian haqqani to the US asking for aid against military influence). Kiyani jumped on it and by 2011, army regained much ground in politics. This was doubled as Imran suddenly found himself with resources at a massive scale to expand his party. By 2009ish Imran’s political party was undergoing a serious change and they were becoming more mainstream and were opening more offices and were reaching out to the youth. Since 2007ish there was a discussion that an apolitical class was available and could be a serious vote bank. PPP and PMLN complete ignored them as they felt their votebanks were enough. Imran started to use his new found resources to reach them out and by 2012, Imran was suddenly propelled into the political circle with massive resources and beginner political base. Media time was allotted, his statements were published on the front page and Imran who was nowhere in 2009, suddenly found himself in the middle of the spotlight in 2011. He promised an answer to corruption and terrorism and spoke of terrorists as brothers gone awry due to legitimate concerns, something which most of the nation felt at that time. He spoke against US and attacked the civilian government, giving the army the much needed breather and suddenly in late 2011, his party started to receive electables. One after the other, many of them your establishment guys and by early 2012, Imran declared 2/3rd majority or a majority in the parliament at the minimum. Imran used street pressure and the thing is that despite his street pressure not having the level of pressure that other parties could sustain, the media limelight was insane. While Imran was declaring as such, the role for Imran was to be a pressure party to weaken civilian control and give the military breathing space and break the unity of the politicians and he was doing it fine. Nobody in the army believed he could win the election nor were they interested. The 2013 election happened and everybody including international observers and the courts declared it reasonably fair. If you asked me, the process was pretty streamline and we didn’t need 10 army guys guarding each booth in 2013 which is opposed to the 2018 model and the 2023 model being given. The result was that Imran barely got 30 seats and PMLN got 2/3rd majority and PTI got KPK province whereas N got every other province save for Sindh which went to PPP. Nawaz now had great power to do what he wanted and the establishment was not happy. As I explained the establishment is not a singular entity. It is a self sustaining set of individuals and institutions who may disagree or even be at odds with each other but will not fight against the system of the establishment and the army is the biggest entity in the establishment that can really flex when it has to. Immediately Imran declared the election fraud and attacked everybody but largely Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary whom they used disgusting terminology for and by then the retired general Kiyani. Now it is important to note that KPK was functioning under the ANP from 2008-2013, an ethnic party and it was also the most critical of the military party as they criticized military courts and abductions and highlighted some brutal tactics used by the army. The Actions in Aid to Civil Power and the Anti terror Act were criticized and ANP suffered the most attacks during election time. Their leaders could barely campaign, many received threats from TTP branches and many were assassinated whereas PTI was barely touched in KPK. Result was that PTI received a fertile ground and with many resources they claimed KPK as their own. ANP really struggled with security and police reforms but they faced their own difficulties which is not the topic at hand. However Imran realized that rather than function like a normal political party where he got a province on a platter and a good opposition position, Imran decided to throw in his lot with the army and the army was too pleased to help him and that’s where the 2014 Dharna comes in. Imran went to Islamabad and declared victory and everyday he would state, with absolute confidence that tomorrow this government will fall and an Umpire ( A decision maker in the game of cricket) would raise his finger (Index finger is raised in the game of cricket to declare a player is out after which he must leave the field and a new player comes to take his empty position). I remember Saad Rafique, a politician from N, pleading with Imran to not destabilize the parliament, to not break the unity of the charter of democracy otherwise we will all be taken by them. Imran didn’t care. Personality wise, Imran has massive flaws. If he wants something, he is going to get it by hook or crook and he will find a way and he feels that he is right in his decision as he can think above others as others cannot understand his genius. This was great as a cricketing captain and for many of his projects where the natural flow of power is with him but this is very ill-suited for politics. Nevertheless he was out there claiming his victory and Nawaz did two things. First he got his connections to find out who is supporting him and second he got negotiation teams to get Imran on the table. They offered him many things including an electoral audit, more resources for province and a special office to be created called vice-prime minister for him. That’s a lot and by his 90th sit in day, he looked to be the winner until Nawaz called General Raheel sharif and there, this is what most sources confirm, showed him evidence of military support for the sit in. General Islam was the main culprit and everybody there, from different sources state that Nawaz was looking smug as hell and Raheel was shocked. Raheel knew and was working through General Islam but he did not consider the fact that Nawaz could reach his institution. Nawaz told Raheel to fix this issue and Raheel declared himself the mediator of the situation and by 107th day, suddenly all support gone, Imran was perplexed and flustered and the government just ignored Imran. With APS happening Imran went back but by day 124th, he was lost. Raheel would take action against a few military officers and Nawaz truly thought that he was now invincible at the level which even Zulfiqar would salivate. Maryam Nawaz, the daughter of Nawaz Sharif would take stage from this point onwards but what Nawaz didn’t know that by 2014, Army had repaired their image, re-established themselves within the political ground of the establishment and this vulgar evidence humiliation was going to be answered by an institution that cannot take any form of humiliation be it constructive or excessive. Imran was about to get massive support and a smarting raheel was about to make sure that the army would get their days back. It was at this time that Imran started speaking against the charter of democracy, against the 18th amendment, provincial autonomy and many more. Raheel started to take more and more power as suddenly posters were creeping up for him to take over or for him to take extension and enter Mr. Saqib Nisar the chief Justice of Pakistan from 2016. This guy took power and suddenly declared that the Court had jurisdiction over all. Suddenly all limelight on him as he declared judicial activism the norm and Suo Moto, ( an act of court where the court needs no petitioner and can take action itself) and he was calling ministers and bureaucracy and everybody and declaring them incompetent. He was visiting institutions and yelling at the broken system and how the parliament was incompetent and even criticized the 18th amendment in the Karachi institute case. The sitting government was shocked and right then and there the establishment was against the sitting government. During this time, the daughter of Nawaz started attacking the army and the army brought evidence to Nawaz to shut her up and yeah she played a massive role with her stupidity at a very complicated juncture. Perfect timing is synonymous with Maryam. Imran attacked everybody and called them dynastic and by early 2016 Imran was receiving support and funds and this time, his party was not running like 2013. You see in 2013 whilst Imran did receive support, he did not receive guidance and his party was largely under the control of his early peers who built the party with him and many of them contested election and lost because against an electable, they had no power. By 2016ish Imran was now receiving guidance by the army and he received some big names and a new party but there was an issue. PTI was pretty democratic as they had internal elections and everything was fair until a party election where there was massive corruption since the army was now guiding the party, it needed its individuals to be at the center of power, not idealists and for that party election had to be rigged. Justice Waheedudin was one of his old party workers who believed in the vision of Imran and he investigated and declared the election as rigged and he was vilified and attacked by PTI social media team which was built by the resources of the army. This team would harass anybody that was against Imran and it worked great as Waheeduddin was discredited and thrown away and the party was hijacked under the watchful eye and consent of Imran because all that mattered was PMship. Raheel wanted an extension but here is where it gets funnier. He was building something grand and 3 more years and army would have been a beast but his core commanders disagreed and his support within the army waned as Bajwa rose to power and by 2016, Qamar bajwa was the power house. He continued the work of Raheel and ISPR grew everywhere and Saqib Nisar became more recalcitrant and then TLP, an organization born and bred by the ISI came to power. The Electables of N had to lose in the most populous and seat consuming province of Punjab. He who wins Punjab has to really struggle not to win center. Whats the best way to do that is to divide the vote bank. TLP declared sanctity of Islam and protested and they locked the government up and the sitting government knew who was behind it and so the sitting government asked them to remove these protestors and the army denied and everywhere it was held that government wants army to shoot at its own civilians. They said arrest them not shoot them. This other monster was supported by Imran as well who did not denounce this protest. Government decided to strike down itself and they shut off cameras and struck and the army interfered and the result was that the government was neutered. By 2017 mid, a 2/3rd government was completely powerless and army everywhere and during this time, Panama leaks happened and rather than across the board accountability, the establishment found a great way to teach this high flying Nawaz his place. They declared him disqualified not because he had assets abroad but because he lied on the parliament floor. Another hearing was happening at this time and that was regarding the TLP protest and Justice Faez Isa was hearing it and he repeatedly called the army out and he was hated by the army. Nawaz decided to also take into pressure politics and took to streets and got a lot of large numbers. Like he hit the political ground but it was a lost battle. As I mentioned the Pakistanis were not interested in revolution, the army was not interested in his return and the media and social media teams simply did not give him the coverage for it to grow. On Social media, the domain of PTI and Army, he was ripped apart. 2018 elections happened and the result was the most favourable result for the army. Nobody had a majority. The engineering by the army had successfully broken the hold of PMLN and with Hafiz Saeed party running election in Central Punjab and TLP taking in thousands thanks to resources provided to field candidates, they broke the PMLN vote enough for PTI candidates to take the lead. Some leads were ridiculously close. Like a few hundred to a few thousand but now both parties had a minority and there were many independents. So the Industrialist Jahangir Tarin and the army rounded the independents in a horse trading show that would make you sick to the stomach but it was justified by Imran social media team and Imran as well since anybody joining his party cannot be corrupt at all. This was what he would constantly say and would give examples of changed men, founding fathers, the companions, anything and everything to justify this mess. N had nothing. No resources, no power, barely any presence in a province. They lost Punjab, they lost AJK and Gb since that was always Army terrain, they Baluchistan as well in 2017 when the sardars of Baluchistan all left N and formed Baluchistan Awami Party which removed PMLN from Baluchistan. BAP is the power there and it is the establishment party. PPP could do nothing as they were always cozy with the establishment and stayed away from Nawaz and maryams suicidal rampage. Zardari did try to stop him but Nawaz wouldn’t listen at all. Imran came to power. Imran immediately cracked down against his opponents but he also realized that he needed to run the country and what team he had was composed of failures from the political spectrum since experienced leaders had remained with their parties and his own team was inexperienced and the country’s economic issues were on the boiling point. The establishment had hopes from Imran since he talked a massive game and the army as well.

 

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Imran blundered after blundered and the establishment watched. In 2019 the TLP started to protest again due to blasphemy in France and the army said nothing since a weakened civilian government is no problem for them until the TLP said the magic words. They asked soldiers to rebel against their generals. TLP got too big for its shoes. Army cracked down and 5000 were arrested in 2 days. Protests were vanished. Imran declared victory and the army took a sigh of relief until Qazi Faez Isa passed his protest 2017 judgment where he named ISI as the leading culprit and called on the army to no longer interfere. The Army was not going to have this and Imran started corruption proceedings against Faez Isa. Now establishment institutions telling each other to stay in line isn’t new. One does it, the institution being attacked gives warning shots and if the attacker abstains great and if he doesn’t then he is removed. No harm done but the game was changed now. Imran’s social media attacked the judiciary and it was such a disgusting and vilified attack that the entire legal branch of the country was shocked. What was supposed to be a warning shot was looking to be an attack by one institution over the other and the court pointed their guns at the parliament. Imran wanted nothing less than absolute punishment for Justice Isa and the government lawyers couldn’t prove anything. There was barely any evidence and it was political witch hunt which resulted in the Supreme Court getting against Imran and Justice Isa becoming really against Imran to such an extent that the bench feels that his hostility to Imran will seep into judgments. He claims he is not hostile but his peers know better. Also Imran will get ammunition to criticize any such judgment by his inclusion. Now as I highlighted that establishment is not a singular entity with one brain. It is that union of individuals who feel they are superior to others because they feel the Pakistani people to be naïve fools and the politicians to be predatory. Their union is based on their bureaucratic discipline which they feel is necessary for the stability of the country against the chaos of politics which they blame as the reason behind the 1971 dismemberment. Loyalty to anything other than the bureaucratic symbol that is what they present as the true nature of Pakistan is considered as treacherous. This is why when we read about the life of our great founding father, his rigid everyday routine is one of the first things to be highlighted. This belief leads them to interfere in politics as they believe that they are bringing some order to the chaos of politics and if they just fine tune it enough then they can come up with a system where there can be enough order within the political landscape for it to function as an institution of the state. They do not believe them to be superior and feel that their role as kingmaker is necessary for stability so they bring forth a new king and tell him that he needs to work with them and work in an effective manner but the parliament is not a bureaucracy. It will never be a bureaucracy and its chaos is its feature that chaos is due to representation all across and balancing of ideas across the board but the bureaucratic establishment looks at the chaos and tells the king to interfere and bring stability but he cant and when he fails then the establishment interferes by bringing him in line as they feel he is incompetent and rebellious but the king simply doesn’t have enough power and eventually when he tries to take more power, the establishment removes him with the help of another king. The deposed king can either protest and show that he has some power and raise the stakes or he can surrender and wait his turn. Imran was actually loved by the establishment because he was anti-chaos due to his own dictatorial tendencies. He said the right things as he was against the 18th amendment which brought more political chaos due to provincial autonomy so now provinces had a say as well and he was also against the AJK 13th Amendment which brought more voice to AJK. Imran screamed and yelled and declared his fascination with dictators and order and quite frankly treated the constitution as much like a piece of paper as he could. The establishment allowed him to get away with a lot. I think after Zulfiqar from 1972-1975, Imran had the most power from 2018-2021. Power and support as the courts backed his hunting of politicians, they backed his stifling of press and freedom of speech, the army even agreed to reducing their share and the courts backed his actions like presidential ordinances which trampled the parliament and made us a legal joke but the establishment backed him and this was them backing him in their books however it was not enough. Imran changed the executive bureaucracy and installed individuals that they could not work with. His party was so out of control that the Punjab bureaucracy screamed that they receive orders from four corners. From CM office, from Special Secretary, from governor and it was chaos. Punjab was a mess and then he waged war against the Orange line train which saw the establishment and the Lahore bureaucracy turn against him as most of the work for the train was done but he wouldn’t listen until the Chinese put their foot down and Imran had to play ball. Imran made it his mission to run the country as draconian as possible as he did everything he could to sidestep the constitution and try to interpret the law in a manner that was outright absurd and allowed him to just circumvent everybody and get things done through party and himself. This not only alienated the political class but the courts also declared enough is enough and with the Faez isa witch hunt, by 2021, the courts were turning against him. Imran also decided to piss off the army by declaring that he as prime minister is superior to the army and can elect anybody he wants to be COAS. He wanted general Faez Hameed, the guy who went to Afghanistan when Kabul fell. He was ISI chief and was considered as Pro Imran and he felt a pro Imran COAS was just what he needed to run the country, pressure the establishment and win the 2023 election. Bajwa was looking for an extension and had the majority support in core commander and he saw General faez actions as against army order and banished him from ISI Chief. General Asim Munir, the current COAS was the ISI Chief before Faez and Faez was delegated to Bahawalpur Core and after a few months of appointment when the scandal between him and Imran was coming to light and becoming news, ‘Decided’ to take early retirement. His chapter was closed. Imran also screwed up the extension of bajwa which I find it hard to believe was an incompetent mistake. You see the extension notification goes from president office as he is the commander in chief but this notification was sent from PM office. Either Imran and his legal team is so incompetent that they don’t even know this fact or that he was maliciously creating a legal loophole to exploit and with November coming up, it became a huge scandal. With only days to work, the Advocate Generals, the legal team of the army, composed of some of the best minds of the country worked to frame an amendment to the Army Act to legalize this notification whereas a Public Interest Litigation was filed wherein the Courts extended the tenure of Bajwa for six months till the ending of the controversy. I would post source everything but this is Eid and I am on holiday so you guys can search all this. This was open news like literal open news. So Bajwa repaired his messed up extension but whether it was incompetence or malicious, Bajwa started to doubt Imran. During this time, another incident happen. So Imran got ISI to do corruption accountability and General Munir, who was the ISI Chief before Faez Hameed, gave a report regarding the corruption by Imran’s third Wife, her es-husband and Farah Gogi. Imran went across the board to defend them and declared it malicious and the social media team attacked Munir and Imran actually succeeded in pressurizing Bajwa to remove Asim Munir. This was a win for Imran but Imran made enemies and one of them was Asim Munir, who among others in establishment saw Imran as corrupt and chaotic as his predecessors. By mid 2021, Imran was facing opposition as media was turning against him. He still had support and resources but his actions were being questioned and the massive resources were no longer present and autumn of 2021, opposition parties started to meet and Imran faced a united opposition front. He called unity of corrupt but Imran was facing something serious. The opposition, which was very silent and had faced a massive hunt, was suddenly being reinvigorated. Now before I go further, let me highlight a bit more about PMLN. By early 2019 PMLN was defeated and was facing a serious issue. Maryam was recalcitrant and had built a small social media team and grouping in PMLN and both Maryam and Nawaz were in jail. Now Imran, in his delusions truly believed that Nawaz had 100 billion dollars hidden away and if he could extort it out of him, he would be set. He tried contacting foreign countries, Swedish banks and so much more but all said NO. During this time, Shehbaz and other pro-establishment politicians were trying to build the destroyed bridges between PMLN and Establishment which Nawaz to an extent and Maryam to a great extent had destroyed. This group knew that a political party cannot survive at odds with the establishment because today they may have won like 82 seats in the center but tomorrow they will have nothing. Now Shehbaz sharif is known pro-army and is actually well liked by the establishment. He was able to convince them to politically exile Nawaz and give bail to Maryam and they will sideline Maryam and work with the establishment and that is exactly what happened. Imran tried to fight it out as he wanted some form of monetary assurance but he lost it out and Nawaz went away and Maryam was released on bail. It became quite a joke back then. PMLN was from 2019-2020 was divided internally as Maryam was told to shut up and be sidelined and she tried to undercut Shehbaz but eventually she lost power and Shehbaz took over. From 2020, PMLN, was establishment’s party and they didn’t say a word against Imran and by late 2020 formed the Pakistan Democratic Movement. Imran was still strong but this was the beginning of the hand that was being played and shows us how in 2020, Imran was no longer acceptable as the sole political charge and under the behest of the establishment they started to construct the downfall of Imran in 2021 as meetings were held and by 2022, a no confidence motion was passed. Now in 2021, there were growing rifts in Imran’s party as they disliked the Punjab government under the woefully incompetent Buzdar. Like absolute rubbish level CM. The idealist were pissed that the corrupt were being allowed to do corruption, those independents who had come at the behest of tarin were pissed at the treatment of tarin and by this time, Imran’s party was divided. By late 2021, it was clear there was a crack and this was widened by the establishment. Imran was proving himself as an incompetent leader and politician as he couldn’t reconcile anybody and kept being dictatorial and told off anybody that criticized him often badly. This negative treatment demoralized the party and created a depressed atmosphere within the party which was simply too easy to exploit. Imran decided to double down and rather than answer grievances, he threatened his party members with litigation and disqualification. By early 2021, the South Punjab movement group, about 40 elected Provincial ministers that they should stop harping about South Punjab and that he cant be blackmailed. He said it to everybody. In such a negative environment, loyalty did not exist and the confidence motion began. PDM and establishment met with a bunch of national elected members and destroyed the majority of Imran and Imran threatened with litigation and threatened with defamation to get them in line but no ball since their protectors were the establishment and Imran decided, in his genius mind that he would dissolve the assemblies and he tried to make this illegal act legal through public opinion but what he forgot was that his previous unconstitutional acts were legitimized by the establishment but now there was no establishment and his unconstitutional act was called out. You see what they did was that Imran declared it a foreign conspiracy and the motion was tabled and had to be voted upon. The speaker has the authority to pass judgment on a motion as passed or failed but he passed a judicial order stating that it was treasonous and at behest of foreign backing due to the memo scandal, this was dismissed and on the same day, Imran asked Alvi to dissolve the assembly. Imran and his team thought quite big of themselves but unfortunately their illegal act was not legal nor constitutional and without establishment it was called out as speaker, being an authority, could not pass an arbitrary order nor dismiss a no confidence motion and since you cant dissolve the assembly when there is a no confidence motion tabled, the court held that the entire structure was illegal and brought to the position back to the start. Opening courts at night was dramatic but it shows just how rubbish this action was and how pissed off the establishment was. No confidence was passed and Imran was removed. The army could not be more happier. They taught Imran a severe lesson and now had a hung parliament as all allies had abandoned PTI like BAP and MQM ( a Karachi party), you had PMLN in center and PTI in Punjab and KPK. Hung parliament and hung country. Establishment can run things as they want with no opposition. Establishment was pissed that PTI had sabotaged their new king by announcing massive subsidies in opposition to IMF deal two months before he was removed thus to blindside the new king as well as sabotage any future deal. A petty tactic but effective and now Imran was free to run his campaign. He was going to become a political martyr. This has happened before as disposed kings protested but Imran had three things Nawaz didn’t. An established social media base, a middle class that agreed with his draconian ideas and felt that only Imran should rule and lastly elements within the establishment that were sympathetic because as I said establishment is a union of individuals and institution and not a single entity. They have disagreements. Imran was one of them and Imran knew these powerful objects were the key. If he could prove to the establishment that their hope was with Imran alone otherwise the country would destroy them, make it about the survival of the establishment, then he could negotiate his return. He showed his support and actually did a few impressive things to show that he is the only national leader that the new and young Pakistan would accept. Look nobody knows what the majority of Pakistan wants. Nobody has that information because Pakistan is too complex and too big for that. The army has the highest information and next are the national parties and Imran was showing them that he has that information. People want Imran and this last year before 9th May, Imran actually clawed back a lot. He was able to pressurize the judiciary to balance the judgments. His team was able to find the middle ground with the establishment on removing Hamza Shehbaz from Punjab, (You see they passed a no confidence motion in Punjab as well a couple of months after the National No confidence motion and won that motion. Buzdar resigned and seat was empty which with some horse trading by removing allies and PTI members, Hamza Shahbad, the son of Shehbaz Sharif won but his election was declared defunct because PMLN thought that the establishment would now support them and their unconstitutional acts but nope and they were shocked as Pervez Elahi, an establishment man was elected.), and electing elahi. PMLN was shocked and painfully hurt called out the establishment on favoring their previous king and not supporting the government. They said they were neutral in this N really felt used and abandoned. Nawaz was giving statements that he was against being used by the establishment and as economic pressure mounted, Imran grew but he wasn’t in power. He was hitting the sitting government but he needed to hit the establishment. He was calling out US and the Army and courts and while some were pissed others tolerated but what they didn’t see in their sight was that Imran’s supporters were becoming radicalized. There was an active support group within his party that favoured on ground revolution and they felt time was now to create a new establishment.

 

[Saiyan0321]

You see dharnas and protests are one thing but he repeatedly over-estimated his own support. He taught that bringing his supporters from all over Pakistan to one city meant that all 250 million were with him. Even half that number but that was not true and it’s a mistake he has made repeatedly like he called the 2013 election as rigged because his 2011 jalsa had half a million people so how could he lose all over Pakistan in an election where the registered vote bank was 76 million. Absurd but that is Imran bhai. So he protested and called for marches that pressed on but it was all a display and it was working to an extent. By 2023, he felt he had a good amount of support but here is where conjecture comes in. Imran wanted to dissolve the provincial assemblies in KPK where he had no opposition and Punjab which as I said runs the country. This was meant to create chaos which would lead to elections but PDM said that they would hold provincial elections but not general. Imran’s inner circle was composed of individuals who were establishment people like fawad Chaudhary to whom he really listened and his brother, who representated Imran as a lawyer. Now Imran’s lawyers, Faisal Chaudhary and Hamid Khan and Latif Khosa are all establishment guys and I don’t know if its conspiracy or malicious but the way represented Imran’s cases was either gross incompetence which does not suit these guys like they are Supreme Court senior lawyers or it was malicious. Now by mid 2022, Imran wanted to dissolve the Provincial assemblies but many of his party members including elahi told him against it and he had to relent. Now during this time, Pervez Elahi was head of PMLQ and his son Moonis Elahi felt that the party had no future and they could expand within PTI so he pressured his father to join PTI. Now on news it was declared that both brothers are now fighting as one merged with PTI whereas Chaudhary Shujaat was with PMLQ and PDM which is bullshit because we know these brothers and I really don’t think they fought. It was the usual tactic of hedging bets as most political families do here like one brother is in PTI and the other is in N and the other in PPP and so on and so on. So Pervez Elahi merged and Imran doubled down on call to break assemblies and everybody and their grandma, apart from Fawad Chauhdhary told him no. Don’t. We will lose all power and we will be hunted down. He didn’t listen and at one time, it looked like Pervez Elahi was going to rebel but he relented and in early 2023, Imran gave up the biggest card that he had and PDM could not believe that he just did that. They literally walked into the parliament and as opposition leaders decided to work on holding a caretaker setup. Imran once again quite pleased with himself and called for immediate election only to find deafening silence. The central government ignored him and formed caretaker setups of individuals which they had to agree on. They removed the PTI postings in the provinces and as Imran screamed foul, they said that they don’t care. You see if Imran had waited then there would have been caretaker setups all around and PDM wouldn’t have had the luxury of time to make all the changes they wanted since the caretaker setup is busy planning elections and barely has time for posting. Infact they cant even do that and a few writs were filed but with the backing of central government stating its for governance, those illegal postings found legality. Imran cried foreign conspiracy and attacked General Asim Munir and his support base became even more rabid and he was underestimating how rabid they were becoming and overestimating his support base. He was made by establishment and they could destroy him if they wanted but in march 2023, he was still the favoured boy. Imran reached courts and the Umar Bandial, the chief justice, who by now was quite pro Imran, decided to go one step further and held that elections must happen in 90 days despite there being a constitutional provision to condone delay. Government announced they are not going to do that and doubled down to test how much the establishment will support them by taking the courts on and they passed several bills that shocked the courts but the courts were limited as well since by this time, the benches were divided. Some favoured Imran but others felt that the Supreme Court was bending the law to favour Imran and they should stop that and make impartial benches. PDM saw an opportunity to avenge the 2016 era and doubled down. Supreme Court doubled down by asking the State Bank to reveal how much money the state has in their coffers and they gave a list of which the Court said that they will procure a set amount for election so that the government can no longer claim that they don’t have funds. This was the most absurd judgment I had ever read. Let me highlight how draconian the middle class and expats supporters of PTI are. Their mentality. So one institution just forced another institution to give up information regarding the third institution and declared that they could imminent domain that money for their perceived purpose without it going through the house of representatives as the constitution declares all money bills to be. It is so ridiculous and no saying its “Awaam ka Paisa” (money of the people) does not make it right. The elected morons get to decide what they do with this money as our representatives and not the unelected courts. This precedent was so absurd that it could be used to lets say fund liberation of Kashmir because Kashmiri are Pakistani and one chief justice could say that since this is money of the people and people of Kashmir are Pakistani and they are brothers of the people whose money it is thus it is justified to take 10 trillion and throw it all on liberation. Like it was so illegal, unconstitutional but hey bandial went the distance that not even saqib nisar could dream of. The government ignored the order and PTI screamed and the courts suddenly found out that they are limited especially if they are divided. In this mess Imran increased the attacks against army and courts because the higher the stakes the greater the deal and this was working but Imran was too arrogant. The government was pressured and on behest of Supreme Court telling both parties to sit down and talk this out as they also felt that this was now reaching limits, the government formed negotiation team but Imran was flying high and told him team, like in 2014 sit in, to not take it seriously. They met and the government actually gave a lot of ground. They stated that election can be held in july since they need to pass budget to satisfy the IMF and without it we could crash. PTI stated that they would accept the general elections of national and provincial assembly should be held on the same date however on 14th May, they should dissolve everything. They agreed on some constitutional amendments but after the first round where most progress was made, Imran declared that PDM was delaying and if they don’t hold immediate elections then no negotiation is possible. The furthest can be 14th May. Second round failed because the PTI team was now even more rigid and the final talk fell apart. Both sides blamed each other and Imran spoke even more vehemently. Establishment was beating Imran to compliance or atleast trying. By losing the provinces, Imran was in a state of flux and cases were being opened left and right and each hearing was a pain and eventually 9th May happened. Imran was arrested at the behest of Anti Terror Court on court premises which was illegal and I highlighted this but his legal team didn’t until Justice Athar Minallah, another judge PTi hates, highlighted that this arrest was illegal and there was a precedent for it which was passed by him. Imran’s party announced protest and first of all this was semi-spontaneous protest and it was supported by Pti leadership and it was composed of Pti members because videos and everything shows that it was Pti members as they were declaring revolution and whether it was the constant army blaming or the political leaders of PTI had taught it smart to protest infront of military installations, they went there and started destroying everything and stealing everything in case of Core commander house and Pti was saying look at what you have forced us to do and look at the anger and look at the support. If the establishment wants to survive then they should come to the table. It was all about stakes but what these fools didn’t know was that the game, the table, the damn door and the plumbing was made by the establishment and the army was seething as they watched this and as chaos erupted more, PTI leadership knew this was bad. Some started to call for patience and others condemned but it was too late. Army cracked down and in one day they arrested 6 thousand plus protestors and this revolution was fizzled out. There were no longer any stakes. There was nothing. Army now saw PTI as enemy the likes of which PPP did not see in 1977 and MQM saw in 2014ish. The army threw the table apart and showed why they were the biggest members in the establishment. Imran does not have military support and those that did are now removed. Even they know that they cant do anything now and they themselves have lost support in the core commander ranks. The army cracked down and the establishment followed suit. In a manner of days the party that was built by the army was torn apart. Electable after electable left. Imran tried to play it cool at first and spoke foul but saw that this was something different. He immediately constituted a team to negotiate with the government but they shut it down and PDM basically became the army favorite. They became complicit in what could be the most vulgar display of authoritarian power not seen since the days of Zia and Bhutto. Member after member left, some very powerful and while the Social Media made jokes and lamented, it was a serious moment of introspection as to how they made and unmade a messiah and he couldn’t do anything about it. Imran looked to courts and the courts just became silent. They passed an order here and there but largely have remained silent as the army declared full might of military courts against protestors. Bandial had sleepless nights and held that while military courts are in bad taste, we are not going to stay them and just stated that he hoped that the army wont prosecute them and the ISPR held a press conference saying they will. President Alvi has also rebelled and is now working with the establishment and making things easier for the government and here we are today. Imran is abandoned and his party is either defecting or is in jail. He is removed from media and slowly but surely from our minds as well. He is so weakened that the one thing he could always do was hold giant protests and he cant even do that now. He can only hold meetings at bani gala and his party structure is in chaos and he doesn’t know who is loyal and who isn’t. from 9th May to first june, they wiped out one of the most powerful politicians in the country who looked invincible in November 2022 and even in april 2023, he could make the government sweat. This is what happens when you sell your soul for one object. He lamented that he wronged Justice Isa with that witch hunt, he lamented that he treated his idealists wrongly and he lamented that he spoke way too harshly against the Army and called on junior soldiers to rebel. So what could he do now? What is the game that he could launch that could change the very essence of the platform and that is only one? He is playing his last card and that is overseas Pakistanis. He immediately stated that he was wrong about he memo and the great devil the US was confused and misguided by the evil Qamar Bajwa to remove him and he requested would be the most polite word, for them to intervene in this new witch hunt. He accused the government of raping female members of party and supporters but the government countered that they have installed cameras all across the jails and if a single instance has happened then Imran can go to the courts and file a writ. Anything to bring it to light and they will give all recordings to the courts. The female members released on bail on camera abused the police but stated that nothing had happened to them and detention itself was humiliation and now all we have for evidence are social media posts of heresay. I don’t know what to say about this. Infact I cant say anything about this but I will say that Imran is focusing this angle towards human rights abuse and he wants overseas Pakistanis to take the stage. If he could get even a resolution passed against the Pakistan Army and PDM then he has something to bargain with and scare them into the negotiation table. Sanctions would be amazing but the US is not interested and the Army doesn’t care. Imran doesn’t have much time and everyday counts as his party is becoming weaker and weaker. How can he win any majority in any election if he cant field a decent candidate. Lets take example if Karachi mayor election. PPP won seats and JI won most seats with PTI winning a decent number and PTI declared support for JI but there was grouping. You need like 180 seats to become mayor of Karachi, the biggest city of Pakistan and 30 members of PTI declared that they don’t want to support JI candidate who is a good guy. Long story short, PPP won a mayor election in Karachi. This had never happened. Like from 1970 to 2023. PPP never won in Karachi but MQM boycotted the election which gave PPP space and PTI was just too broken. The thing is, unlike parties like JI, MQM and other parties, PTI has no ground work. Like you establish yourself as a political party by opening offices and having your workers there solve issues of the community and you could visit these offices and get your issues resolved. PPP made their entire political base by working during Zia era. Their lawyers went tooth to nail but not PTI. Insaf lawyers are no where to be found and have either refused to take cases or are charging fees. There is no PTI legal team to protect workers and arrested and most are too busy protecting the richer clients. PTI did no work on the ground before being propelled to power and their earlier candidates were so elitist that they would barely talk with anybody beneath them. They were upper middle class and they resonated the thinking of the middle class that you don’t talk to people lower than yourself. These guys avoid non-muslims because they feel drinking from their cutlery is disgusting and they have separate cutlery for lower class muslims. I know these class. The electables think of this stuff as part of their profession. They have to visit them, talk to them, solve their problems and yes drink from their glasses which all of them that I have met, told me was the toughest thing to do for them but they had to do it because they need to get elected. So absent any ground work or resolving of people issues, the party that was nowhere in 2010 was suddenly everywhere in 2012. How is that possible? Electable migration. Same migration and resource pull brought them down.

In Conclusion, this entire episode from 2011 till 2023 leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It has made a nation hopeless. There is no messiah and no salvation because this is the system as I explained before and we love the system. We will die for the system. The rest are just pieces of paper and faces, the system is what we love. This cultist system. I believe that Imran will not be abandoned. He will beaten and bruised but not abandoned as abandoning the guy that makes sure that the politician are never united is a bad move. He will remain but in a role he is meant to play for the establishment and that is what I believe they want for him. On the side, his party is run by establishment man, he is just the face and he wins a province here and there like KPK and some 40-60 seats to make sure no 2/3rd majority exists.



So that is the tale and my answer to nilgiri. You can disagree with it. I am fine with it but this is what it is. The future is only known to God but for now, the future is exactly what the past was.

 

[Saiyan0321]

@Nilgiri @Saithan @TR_123456 @Isa Khan

 

[Afif]

Excellent work, almost like a chapter from a relevant book.
I will probably read it few more times to fully grasp depth of the content here.

 

[Merzifonlu]

So sorry, i know irrelevant but what happening internet site defence.pk? Their server is shut down now.

 

[Afif]

Hacked.

 

[Nilgiri]

@Nilgiri @Saithan @TR_123456 @Isa Khan

It was very detailed read, I had to read it all measuredly and patiently, word for word in some parts.... and it was worth it.

Many parts reminded me of our earlier convos we have had elsewhere with Joe et al....so I much appreciate you bringing it here in the way you have elected to. It will be useful backdrop for many others (interested in the deep undercurrents) and maybe reference for future course of events.

Of course your overall take is astute and detailed yet a sobering one.

You after all understand well much of what is upstream to politics and how this relates to Pakistan specifically. This is why you are very consistent in your approach of critique and analysis in the political realm, as you get the bigger picture of things upstream in the forging intensity and quenching now treated as the norm, default and even baked in reality to simply be inherited with little recourse.

The more I study and try make sense of the human species, the more I realise the variations of this (upstream) theme everywhere more broadly. Pakistan has its particular distillation and concentration it has wrought to be more brittle than malleable in various ways.

In short I have found that there are folks that tend to try absorb physics into metaphysics (their default that must prevail), and those that tend to the reverse (having physics as the default that must prevail)....and both not understanding the delineation and balance of both these important realms in the deepest human psyche that is upstream to theology, ontology, anthropology, epistemology and finally applied morality in about that order (is what I have found)....to then deploy it properly and effectively w.r.t the physical rational objective side of things.

The issue with Pakistan is this is skewed (in the first way of too much unmoving metaphysical) more than the world norm given the nature of direct ideological "shortcut" in this realm the powers that be at the time picked so hastily and jarringly as you have described....without deference or course for adaptation over time to what the reality balance actually is like. Hence much of what you describe that I cannot describe any better.

Then it inevitably always became a too convenient coverall and deflection away from things society ought to focus upon and grapple with as hard and early as possible to build strong collective trust to propel and sustain it cohesively....and importantly what level and resolution of power/authority these are best done as may be found in the overall debate here between say Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau....though their premise was all the same.

A sad predicament, because I know the potential that is squandered several times over in Pakistan's case, in an intense way particular to it.

Excellent work, almost like a chapter from a relevant book.
I will probably read it few more times to fully grasp depth of the content here.

I am certain @Jackdaws will also be interested to read this page saiyan has provided so kindly for us. It may take a few visits depending on short or long stretches of free time at hand.

Hope all of you understand saiyan has been one that has been quite influential in shaping my own views of Pakistan especially in a deep understandable way. Though I tend to express it in just a few lines here and there like in this thread earlier.

 

[Saiyan0321]

With nearly a month gone, we are starting to see how isolated imran is finding himself. Post the events of 9th May, Imran implemented three strategies which were and still are, garner the overseas pakistani to create foreign pressure on the government of Pakistan, create local backlash to pressurise the army and the judiciary and destabilized the alliance of PDM after all if PMLN, a major component of PDM faces repeated protests and local population backlash then parties may start separating themselves from N which will make the life of PMLN alot more difficult and lastly to utilize and maximize this perception of mass support and power position to not only regain electables of regions but also to bring the establishment to the table to negotiate a better deal.

Till now these strategies have hit roadblocks and quite frankly Imran and his party has been complete sidelined especially concerning the caretaker setup and the recent amendments that have been passed. Their party looks dumbstruck and it shows that they just dont know what to do, where to begin.

Coming first to Overseas Pressure.

Now Imran has always relied on Overseas Pakistanis and i am pretty sure 99% of them support Imran at a cult level. He has always considered them to be a major player for Pakistan's external policy however like all things, he has overestimated their political and economical reach externally and internally. Imran had hoped that the overseas pakistanis would lead a campaign of sanction and foreign threats from UK, EU, Us and the GCC, regions where most overseas Pakistanis hail from but that hit two major snags. First of all, whilst Pakistan does have a significant population overseas, most are neither politically grouped nor are they in such influential positions where they could enforce or even influence state policy. Far from it. Their ability to pressurise their political representatives in the western countries is largely limited. They started petitions and held meetings with their constituent representatives but all of them largely yielded no result as there was no western pressure on Pakistan regarding actions against PTI and the May 9 protestors. This is also inline with western lack of interest in Pakistan's history of political repression. The western nations have always dealt with the army and for them their stakeholder has not changed nor are they interested in changing their stakeholder or antagonizing said stakeholder for the the interest of the ex-puppet of said stakeholder who was a handful to handle. The GCC overseas sector is one that has not influence on the political specturm of the country since those nations are not democratic and the influence is on state to state basis, not population based. Secondly Imran hoped that the overseas Pakistanis would immediately cut off all remittances causing a massive economic issue and with lack of dollar reserves and guarantee, IMF would not be convinced and the subsequent lack of deal would lead to an economic emergency which he could use against the government. That did not happen. Most overseas Pakistani's have families to feed and no matter how much Hunda is promoted by PTI, they cant handle that much volume. Imran has struggled here and frankly it has been largely variant and you can check the State bank website regarding this or if you dont want to look at complicated charts, you can read this. Either way remittance strategy not only didnt work, Pakistan was able to secure financing and guarantees from China and GCC to secure the IMF loan. Now i wont blame to think what is the politics of IMF loan? How desperate could Pakistan get? The issue was never the loan but the politicization of the loan which began in 2022. Pakistan was working with IMF for years back. Imran went to them and Nawaz went to them as well and everything was going forward. The no confidence motion threw the wrench in the plan. The opposition rallied and Imran, breaking all IMF promises decided to grant massive subsidy on petroleum and petroleum products which from IMF point of view was breaking the deal and he did this to sabotage the upcoming government and it was effective as hell. IMF is only interested in seriousness of the program and loan repayment. They dont care if megalomaniac sabotages the other megalomaniac to screw the establishment. They were pissed and doubled down on following the program. With reserves down and economy stuck, the new government had to remove subsidies to secure financing and they politicized it as well. Imran declared how he is against IMF and Shehbaz government decided to blame all wrongs on IMF program. Bills are high, its IMF, meat is high IMF, you cant afford a bike, IMF, you cant afford healthcare, IMF. To this extent that IMF had to clarify that they are not against pro-poor policies and are not against subsidizing the poor. Shehbaz visited each country to secure some finances so that they wont have to remove subsidies but Imran had already done that 3 years prior and those countries were not happy and they were not willing to rollback loans or provide financing to help get IMF off their back and they struggled big time but whilst Imrans strategy was effective, it galvanized an opposition against him. So with that explained, Imran has been counting on the overseas Pakistanis but has found that they are severely limited. It is also not helping that many have started patreon and gofundme accounts and have taken thousands as scams. For example as i predicted in 9th May that many would start gofundme with the title that they are helping protestors get legal aid and their families get financial aid but that has not happened on the ground. These accounts have only led to personal accounts of these fund starters to get increased. Take Adil Raja, the retired military man who escaped overseas when army crackdown began. He spoke with such spite and anger for views that an army officer actually filed a case against him for libel and he started fund for legal fees and got thousands in response but it turns out that the fund stated that the legal fee was in tens of thousands but in reality it was much much less. These guys saw an opportunity to make money and they took it and cant blame them. They are simply riding the wave for views and this is all they can do. What else could these guys do overseas? Now on top of it all, Pakistan has declared no I-vote which means that an overseas Pakistani will have to visit Pakistan for vote. They are not going to do that. When Pakistan introduced I-Vote, barely 10 percent of them voted despite the fact that it was easy and online so they are not going to buy tickets and come to pakistan for voting. So one strategy of Imran is struggling and failing so far. Who knows what the future holds but it is quite doubtful that they will be able to make an impact..

Now for the next strategy which is the local backlash.

As i mentioned above that to create any backlash Imran needs to have local network but most of his network was made by the establishment and funded by the industrialists and without money, he cant do anything. Let me highlight the difference. Back in 2016ish, Imran had so much party fund that a mere party office worker located at their constituency office was earning 25K at starting. Thats more than what most job seekers get and as the party position, you get more money. This funding kept this going until 2018 election and after that, they were not needed. 100s of millions were being spent by Imran to run ads and jalsas and there was so much money at that time. This is the difference. A party like PPP or JI have ground structures which they had established for decades. They have influence within the community so they dont necessarily because they are the electable. Like you cant touch PPP in sindh. The only political party that comes anywhere close is the alliance of all active parties in interior Sindh the GDA and they could only secure 14 seats in Sindh Assembly whereas PPP since 2008 has been consistently getting 90+ seats out of 168 seats. thats a pretty serious majority and their votebank has only increased. In South Sindh, the only party that gave them a hard time was MQM as they made Karachi and parts of hyderabad their stronghold. It took dictators and central emergency being declared to remove PPP from Sindh. This is hoe established they are. JI is the only party that has networks all over the country. They are groundlevel everywhere and at one time were a significant presence in west Pakistan when it was one unit and even before then during the time of Madudi. He was a pretty big thing and their founder and JI actually suffered alot under Military Rule because they were used by the army, abandoned by the army and then their votebank, the religious votebank was divided by the army. They brought alot of street power but struggled politically as they just couldnt get the power circles to support them however they had spread their network and by 1977, were pretty strong. They gave bhutto a nightmare time from 1973-77 and it took alot of political repression to keep them at bay. The point i am making is that these parties survived strong political repression and dismantling because they had the ground work. they had the network. PTI doesnt have any of them. Their entire structure was falsely created through establishment funds. I explained the power center of Sindh but how did Imran tackle Sindh. Imran focused his entire campaign on Karachi as the establishment wanted to dismantle the hold of MQM, an establishment party that was becoming anti-establishment. They launched PTI in Karachi and whilst Imran talked about how sindh is ensalved to PPP, he did nothing over there because firstly it would have required creating political bases, establish network, offer protection to workers there and spend alot of money without immediate returns. For PTI Interior sindh was an afterthought in 2012 and ignored by 2015 with token Karachi as the mark which became zero interest by 2018ish. PTI couldnt care less about all of Sindh by 2017.
Next is Baluchistan. Land of tribes and sardars, PTI didnt even bother to create any presence there and relied on sardars and tribal chieftains which is exactly how the establishment wants to run baluchistan. PTI couldnt care less about Baluchistan and its political dyanmics. With barely a handful seats in the national assembly due to their less population, baluchistan was not on PTI radar and PTI relied on the establishment party BAP (Baluchistan Awami Party) formed of sardars. TBF nobody cares about Baluchistan. The PMLN chapter was formed by an alliance of Sardars in Baluchistan rather than any PMLN ground work and just like that the sardars left PMLN in 2016ish to form BAP.
The Point is that Imran never created political offices or political groundwork so creating awami pressure is just not possible when your entire party is dependent on the establishment for finances and ground support. You need money and effort to galvanize the people and without proper effortm there is now way you can bring the pressure required to destabilize the government and weaken the establishment. PTI is making videos and stating look how people hate the generals, people have always hated the generals. People dont hate the army, they hate the generals and this goose was cooked to crisp when Musharraf fought TTP. The Generals are considered as the face of the elite so yeah nobody is going to say, i love Pakistani generals but that doesnt mean that they will march on election day with red flags and bring revolution. They didnt in 2008, they didnt in 2013 and they arent going to do it now. They will vote for the guy they have interest with and by guy i dont mean nawaz or imran but the local politician who will help them when they are in trouble. So imran is struggling with creating local support. He joined Tiktok to show that he has support but it didnt faze anybody. The country continued to function, May 9 protestors continued to be in jail and cases continued to be filed against Imran. Nothing changed and the sitting government didnt even blink an eye.
This strategy is hanging by the thread and right now he doesnt even know how to approach this issue.

Lastly display support to bring establishment to the table. He tried everything.. Overseas, protests but all of that has fell away and right now it is which is making the establishment happy. One crackdown and the Party has disappeared. They jailed a few thousand and PTI suddenly lost all street power. They cut the fund and politicians and suddenly Imran has vanished. If anything it has made the army even more confident that they can make or break him. Compare this to say PPP or JI o TLP and how they stuck around or MQM and how they survived to crackdowns but remained in the political sphere. Imran isnt just bruised but grievously wounded. Afterall if he could truly muster street power then what has stopped him now? Ok 9th May protesters are bad and 10,000 got jailed, which is a much larger figure than in reality but lets take it, so what stops him now? If he is the central power and has the network and the love of the people then why doesnt he come out and declare a mass protest against military trials or against crackdown. What will the government do? What could they do if he announced nationwide protests. The protest will happen and Imran would show strength. The army took care of protesters due to their attack on military installations, they wouldnt attack the protesters because they were saying no crackdown. Call protests all over if its that spontaneous. The reason he cant is because he doesnt have the network ever since his party was stripped and he doesnt have the funds because he doesnt have spontaneous support but controlled support meaning that if he has the network or the resources, he could bring in a number along with passionate individuals whereas spontaneous would be people coming out in groups and just protesting. Protest here and there and sudddenly all over the country. TLP has a better and established network than this. Thousands were arrested in 2019 but they could still bring in support. The Lack of ground work is shocking for PTI and because of this their support among the public is largely left to opinions and the army now thinks that he is nothing. His lack of network establishment has made himself look alot weaker than he he is and no its not some master move. Its a grievous consequence of his own foolishness and laziness thinking he will be in power forever. Out of all the foolish things he had done, this one was the peak. The establishment and PDM arent even looking at them. After 9th May fizzle, and by mid june, Imran had no response and PDM is now so confident that they have pressured the judiciary and dont even look at PTI. They just passed a bunch of amendments to change caretaker powers and electoral laws and PTI couldnt say anything, They didnt ask them and they had no voice to scream. They are naming their caretakers and PTI, is being completely ignored. Shah Mehmood qureshi complained that they shouldnt be ignored and rather than answering them, as PDM would do before 9th May, they just ignored him and didnt ask PTI anything. Maybe they might make some hue and cry when caretaker comes in but i doubt it. Caretaker is now very powerful due to amendments and here is the real nightmare for Imran. NAwaz is coming back.
Nawaz is that one guy that could lead PMLN in this election and bring some order and gain all those politicians back. Shehbaz is not a politician and he cannot woo these electables or create their loyalty. Nawaz could. If he is in Pakistan then PMLN is going to be very strong and right now that is the last thing Imran wants. PMLN wants Nawaz to kickstart their campaign and Nawaz is willing. He also knows that this is a great opportunity but he has a problem. You see all politicians in Pakistan started with some military support or establishment support. They came to power through establishment support and then they lost favour because they crossed the line that they didnt even knew existed because the establishment does not want to run things but wants to tell the guy running things to run it like thatand then they were removed and then they returned stronger because the establishment needed them and due to their confidence, did things thinking they were strong and that removed them. Now lets stop here. After this removal only two politicians made it this far and they were Nawaz and Benazir. Benazir in 2007 returning was exactly at this stage. She had been brought to power twice ad removed twice and was coming back strong but this returning politician is a threat because by this time, this politician is fully anti-establishment and Benazir was killed. Nawaz is kinda like her, not in fame but in the fact that he rose and then removed and then rose and was then removed and now he is to return. Nawaz doesnt know if he is killed and his brother is made PM again and PMLN is telling him that its not happening but he wants assurance and he is not happy being back to their puppet especially with Maryam having no role in politics but establishment needs Nawaz. He is their best option which is why they have happily allowed the parliament to pass pro-nawaz legislation that will basically make sure he is PM again. Right now against a uniting Nawaz, Imran is not strong enough especially the way Nawaz can get loyalty of electable. With funds and establishment thumbs up, Nawaz can be deadly in a way shehbaz cant be.
Imran is right now lost. Its not that he doesnt want to do anything, he cant do anything. He is trying to get as many lawyers in perhaps he is hoping that he can start some lawyer movement but its not possible. Lawyers unite only for themselves and not for politicians and the lawyer movement had establishment support plus imran has not used those lawyers to establish any legal support for the populace since those lawyers are also looking for their interests. For many many law is the starter ground for political ambitions. They become lawyers and they dont practice. They are mostly landlords or sons of landlords and they use those funds to run bar elections and then make that a platform for their politics. I know many lawyers who did the same. So this isnt the best of the bunch to rely on but he cant do anything. He can only leave his premises for court hearings and then go back and tweet that and do some announcement where he tells that we are entering a dark era but right now he is really bruised and badly and the country is running without him. Imran needs to get it together and immediately tell all workers and lawyers of his to defend all protesters and not just protesters but the people as well. Solve their problems and establish some control. Right now things are bleak. PMLN is preparing ground for a very questionable election, Asim Munir is happily talking about economy and agri revolution and new promotions are happening so everybody is happy and for the Chief Justice. He is kicking the difficult case can like military trial case till the next CJ.The legal fraternity is seriously divided on what he is doing with some saying he is kicking the can just close enough to give massive orders against the army and then run whereas many are saying that after 9th May, he is just calling it quits.

But what about Pakistan in all of this. Well Pakistan has been running like this since 1949 and will continue to run like this. The establishment will continue to place their drivers on the seat and then tell the driver how to drive which will continue to make a mess of things. One thing is for certain. The System in Pakistan is running perfectly as it was always intended to run.

 

[Saiyan0321]

@Nilgiri @Saithan @TR_123456 if you guys want to know more about Imran Khan and the Den of Political Disasters.

 

[Saithan]

@Nilgiri @Saithan @TR_123456 if you guys want to know more about Imran Khan and the Den of Political Disasters.

Seems Imran failed to follow AKP footsteps. You see AKP did just that which IK failed to do. Extend reach, visibility to the common people in their provinces to ensure more loyalty, change distrikts to ensure majority. Replace politicians every term(power sharing) only RTE was the constant.

but the constitution in Turkey does dictate any prty going to parliament must be present in all provinces. Aka established.

 

[Nilgiri]

With nearly a month gone, we are starting to see how isolated imran is finding himself. Post the events of 9th May, Imran implemented three strategies which were and still are, garner the overseas pakistani to create foreign pressure on the government of Pakistan, create local backlash to pressurise the army and the judiciary and destabilized the alliance of PDM after all if PMLN, a major component of PDM faces repeated protests and local population backlash then parties may start separating themselves from N which will make the life of PMLN alot more difficult and lastly to utilize and maximize this perception of mass support and power position to not only regain electables of regions but also to bring the establishment to the table to negotiate a better deal.

Till now these strategies have hit roadblocks and quite frankly Imran and his party has been complete sidelined especially concerning the caretaker setup and the recent amendments that have been passed. Their party looks dumbstruck and it shows that they just dont know what to do, where to begin.

Coming first to Overseas Pressure.

Now Imran has always relied on Overseas Pakistanis and i am pretty sure 99% of them support Imran at a cult level. He has always considered them to be a major player for Pakistan's external policy however like all things, he has overestimated their political and economical reach externally and internally. Imran had hoped that the overseas pakistanis would lead a campaign of sanction and foreign threats from UK, EU, Us and the GCC, regions where most overseas Pakistanis hail from but that hit two major snags. First of all, whilst Pakistan does have a significant population overseas, most are neither politically grouped nor are they in such influential positions where they could enforce or even influence state policy. Far from it. Their ability to pressurise their political representatives in the western countries is largely limited. They started petitions and held meetings with their constituent representatives but all of them largely yielded no result as there was no western pressure on Pakistan regarding actions against PTI and the May 9 protestors. This is also inline with western lack of interest in Pakistan's history of political repression. The western nations have always dealt with the army and for them their stakeholder has not changed nor are they interested in changing their stakeholder or antagonizing said stakeholder for the the interest of the ex-puppet of said stakeholder who was a handful to handle. The GCC overseas sector is one that has not influence on the political specturm of the country since those nations are not democratic and the influence is on state to state basis, not population based. Secondly Imran hoped that the overseas Pakistanis would immediately cut off all remittances causing a massive economic issue and with lack of dollar reserves and guarantee, IMF would not be convinced and the subsequent lack of deal would lead to an economic emergency which he could use against the government. That did not happen. Most overseas Pakistani's have families to feed and no matter how much Hunda is promoted by PTI, they cant handle that much volume. Imran has struggled here and frankly it has been largely variant and you can check the State bank website regarding this or if you dont want to look at complicated charts, you can read this. Either way remittance strategy not only didnt work, Pakistan was able to secure financing and guarantees from China and GCC to secure the IMF loan. Now i wont blame to think what is the politics of IMF loan? How desperate could Pakistan get? The issue was never the loan but the politicization of the loan which began in 2022. Pakistan was working with IMF for years back. Imran went to them and Nawaz went to them as well and everything was going forward. The no confidence motion threw the wrench in the plan. The opposition rallied and Imran, breaking all IMF promises decided to grant massive subsidy on petroleum and petroleum products which from IMF point of view was breaking the deal and he did this to sabotage the upcoming government and it was effective as hell. IMF is only interested in seriousness of the program and loan repayment. They dont care if megalomaniac sabotages the other megalomaniac to screw the establishment. They were pissed and doubled down on following the program. With reserves down and economy stuck, the new government had to remove subsidies to secure financing and they politicized it as well. Imran declared how he is against IMF and Shehbaz government decided to blame all wrongs on IMF program. Bills are high, its IMF, meat is high IMF, you cant afford a bike, IMF, you cant afford healthcare, IMF. To this extent that IMF had to clarify that they are not against pro-poor policies and are not against subsidizing the poor. Shehbaz visited each country to secure some finances so that they wont have to remove subsidies but Imran had already done that 3 years prior and those countries were not happy and they were not willing to rollback loans or provide financing to help get IMF off their back and they struggled big time but whilst Imrans strategy was effective, it galvanized an opposition against him. So with that explained, Imran has been counting on the overseas Pakistanis but has found that they are severely limited. It is also not helping that many have started patreon and gofundme accounts and have taken thousands as scams. For example as i predicted in 9th May that many would start gofundme with the title that they are helping protestors get legal aid and their families get financial aid but that has not happened on the ground. These accounts have only led to personal accounts of these fund starters to get increased. Take Adil Raja, the retired military man who escaped overseas when army crackdown began. He spoke with such spite and anger for views that an army officer actually filed a case against him for libel and he started fund for legal fees and got thousands in response but it turns out that the fund stated that the legal fee was in tens of thousands but in reality it was much much less. These guys saw an opportunity to make money and they took it and cant blame them. They are simply riding the wave for views and this is all they can do. What else could these guys do overseas? Now on top of it all, Pakistan has declared no I-vote which means that an overseas Pakistani will have to visit Pakistan for vote. They are not going to do that. When Pakistan introduced I-Vote, barely 10 percent of them voted despite the fact that it was easy and online so they are not going to buy tickets and come to pakistan for voting. So one strategy of Imran is struggling and failing so far. Who knows what the future holds but it is quite doubtful that they will be able to make an impact..

Now for the next strategy which is the local backlash.

As i mentioned above that to create any backlash Imran needs to have local network but most of his network was made by the establishment and funded by the industrialists and without money, he cant do anything. Let me highlight the difference. Back in 2016ish, Imran had so much party fund that a mere party office worker located at their constituency office was earning 25K at starting. Thats more than what most job seekers get and as the party position, you get more money. This funding kept this going until 2018 election and after that, they were not needed. 100s of millions were being spent by Imran to run ads and jalsas and there was so much money at that time. This is the difference. A party like PPP or JI have ground structures which they had established for decades. They have influence within the community so they dont necessarily because they are the electable. Like you cant touch PPP in sindh. The only political party that comes anywhere close is the alliance of all active parties in interior Sindh the GDA and they could only secure 14 seats in Sindh Assembly whereas PPP since 2008 has been consistently getting 90+ seats out of 168 seats. thats a pretty serious majority and their votebank has only increased. In South Sindh, the only party that gave them a hard time was MQM as they made Karachi and parts of hyderabad their stronghold. It took dictators and central emergency being declared to remove PPP from Sindh. This is hoe established they are. JI is the only party that has networks all over the country. They are groundlevel everywhere and at one time were a significant presence in west Pakistan when it was one unit and even before then during the time of Madudi. He was a pretty big thing and their founder and JI actually suffered alot under Military Rule because they were used by the army, abandoned by the army and then their votebank, the religious votebank was divided by the army. They brought alot of street power but struggled politically as they just couldnt get the power circles to support them however they had spread their network and by 1977, were pretty strong. They gave bhutto a nightmare time from 1973-77 and it took alot of political repression to keep them at bay. The point i am making is that these parties survived strong political repression and dismantling because they had the ground work. they had the network. PTI doesnt have any of them. Their entire structure was falsely created through establishment funds. I explained the power center of Sindh but how did Imran tackle Sindh. Imran focused his entire campaign on Karachi as the establishment wanted to dismantle the hold of MQM, an establishment party that was becoming anti-establishment. They launched PTI in Karachi and whilst Imran talked about how sindh is ensalved to PPP, he did nothing over there because firstly it would have required creating political bases, establish network, offer protection to workers there and spend alot of money without immediate returns. For PTI Interior sindh was an afterthought in 2012 and ignored by 2015 with token Karachi as the mark which became zero interest by 2018ish. PTI couldnt care less about all of Sindh by 2017.
Next is Baluchistan. Land of tribes and sardars, PTI didnt even bother to create any presence there and relied on sardars and tribal chieftains which is exactly how the establishment wants to run baluchistan. PTI couldnt care less about Baluchistan and its political dyanmics. With barely a handful seats in the national assembly due to their less population, baluchistan was not on PTI radar and PTI relied on the establishment party BAP (Baluchistan Awami Party) formed of sardars. TBF nobody cares about Baluchistan. The PMLN chapter was formed by an alliance of Sardars in Baluchistan rather than any PMLN ground work and just like that the sardars left PMLN in 2016ish to form BAP.
The Point is that Imran never created political offices or political groundwork so creating awami pressure is just not possible when your entire party is dependent on the establishment for finances and ground support. You need money and effort to galvanize the people and without proper effortm there is now way you can bring the pressure required to destabilize the government and weaken the establishment. PTI is making videos and stating look how people hate the generals, people have always hated the generals. People dont hate the army, they hate the generals and this goose was cooked to crisp when Musharraf fought TTP. The Generals are considered as the face of the elite so yeah nobody is going to say, i love Pakistani generals but that doesnt mean that they will march on election day with red flags and bring revolution. They didnt in 2008, they didnt in 2013 and they arent going to do it now. They will vote for the guy they have interest with and by guy i dont mean nawaz or imran but the local politician who will help them when they are in trouble. So imran is struggling with creating local support. He joined Tiktok to show that he has support but it didnt faze anybody. The country continued to function, May 9 protestors continued to be in jail and cases continued to be filed against Imran. Nothing changed and the sitting government didnt even blink an eye.
This strategy is hanging by the thread and right now he doesnt even know how to approach this issue.

Lastly display support to bring establishment to the table. He tried everything.. Overseas, protests but all of that has fell away and right now it is which is making the establishment happy. One crackdown and the Party has disappeared. They jailed a few thousand and PTI suddenly lost all street power. They cut the fund and politicians and suddenly Imran has vanished. If anything it has made the army even more confident that they can make or break him. Compare this to say PPP or JI o TLP and how they stuck around or MQM and how they survived to crackdowns but remained in the political sphere. Imran isnt just bruised but grievously wounded. Afterall if he could truly muster street power then what has stopped him now? Ok 9th May protesters are bad and 10,000 got jailed, which is a much larger figure than in reality but lets take it, so what stops him now? If he is the central power and has the network and the love of the people then why doesnt he come out and declare a mass protest against military trials or against crackdown. What will the government do? What could they do if he announced nationwide protests. The protest will happen and Imran would show strength. The army took care of protesters due to their attack on military installations, they wouldnt attack the protesters because they were saying no crackdown. Call protests all over if its that spontaneous. The reason he cant is because he doesnt have the network ever since his party was stripped and he doesnt have the funds because he doesnt have spontaneous support but controlled support meaning that if he has the network or the resources, he could bring in a number along with passionate individuals whereas spontaneous would be people coming out in groups and just protesting. Protest here and there and sudddenly all over the country. TLP has a better and established network than this. Thousands were arrested in 2019 but they could still bring in support. The Lack of ground work is shocking for PTI and because of this their support among the public is largely left to opinions and the army now thinks that he is nothing. His lack of network establishment has made himself look alot weaker than he he is and no its not some master move. Its a grievous consequence of his own foolishness and laziness thinking he will be in power forever. Out of all the foolish things he had done, this one was the peak. The establishment and PDM arent even looking at them. After 9th May fizzle, and by mid june, Imran had no response and PDM is now so confident that they have pressured the judiciary and dont even look at PTI. They just passed a bunch of amendments to change caretaker powers and electoral laws and PTI couldnt say anything, They didnt ask them and they had no voice to scream. They are naming their caretakers and PTI, is being completely ignored. Shah Mehmood qureshi complained that they shouldnt be ignored and rather than answering them, as PDM would do before 9th May, they just ignored him and didnt ask PTI anything. Maybe they might make some hue and cry when caretaker comes in but i doubt it. Caretaker is now very powerful due to amendments and here is the real nightmare for Imran. NAwaz is coming back.
Nawaz is that one guy that could lead PMLN in this election and bring some order and gain all those politicians back. Shehbaz is not a politician and he cannot woo these electables or create their loyalty. Nawaz could. If he is in Pakistan then PMLN is going to be very strong and right now that is the last thing Imran wants. PMLN wants Nawaz to kickstart their campaign and Nawaz is willing. He also knows that this is a great opportunity but he has a problem. You see all politicians in Pakistan started with some military support or establishment support. They came to power through establishment support and then they lost favour because they crossed the line that they didnt even knew existed because the establishment does not want to run things but wants to tell the guy running things to run it like thatand then they were removed and then they returned stronger because the establishment needed them and due to their confidence, did things thinking they were strong and that removed them. Now lets stop here. After this removal only two politicians made it this far and they were Nawaz and Benazir. Benazir in 2007 returning was exactly at this stage. She had been brought to power twice ad removed twice and was coming back strong but this returning politician is a threat because by this time, this politician is fully anti-establishment and Benazir was killed. Nawaz is kinda like her, not in fame but in the fact that he rose and then removed and then rose and was then removed and now he is to return. Nawaz doesnt know if he is killed and his brother is made PM again and PMLN is telling him that its not happening but he wants assurance and he is not happy being back to their puppet especially with Maryam having no role in politics but establishment needs Nawaz. He is their best option which is why they have happily allowed the parliament to pass pro-nawaz legislation that will basically make sure he is PM again. Right now against a uniting Nawaz, Imran is not strong enough especially the way Nawaz can get loyalty of electable. With funds and establishment thumbs up, Nawaz can be deadly in a way shehbaz cant be.
Imran is right now lost. Its not that he doesnt want to do anything, he cant do anything. He is trying to get as many lawyers in perhaps he is hoping that he can start some lawyer movement but its not possible. Lawyers unite only for themselves and not for politicians and the lawyer movement had establishment support plus imran has not used those lawyers to establish any legal support for the populace since those lawyers are also looking for their interests. For many many law is the starter ground for political ambitions. They become lawyers and they dont practice. They are mostly landlords or sons of landlords and they use those funds to run bar elections and then make that a platform for their politics. I know many lawyers who did the same. So this isnt the best of the bunch to rely on but he cant do anything. He can only leave his premises for court hearings and then go back and tweet that and do some announcement where he tells that we are entering a dark era but right now he is really bruised and badly and the country is running without him. Imran needs to get it together and immediately tell all workers and lawyers of his to defend all protesters and not just protesters but the people as well. Solve their problems and establish some control. Right now things are bleak. PMLN is preparing ground for a very questionable election, Asim Munir is happily talking about economy and agri revolution and new promotions are happening so everybody is happy and for the Chief Justice. He is kicking the difficult case can like military trial case till the next CJ.The legal fraternity is seriously divided on what he is doing with some saying he is kicking the can just close enough to give massive orders against the army and then run whereas many are saying that after 9th May, he is just calling it quits.

But what about Pakistan in all of this. Well Pakistan has been running like this since 1949 and will continue to run like this. The establishment will continue to place their drivers on the seat and then tell the driver how to drive which will continue to make a mess of things. One thing is for certain. The System in Pakistan is running perfectly as it was always intended to run.

Yes its unfortunate the arrogance in political realm, expressed to level of throwing the baby away with the bathwater (now overnight found to be deficient).

You know what I think about Indian political scene as well. Its a conundrum we share, the intensities vary (and I can show the numbers I feel illustrate that w.r.t relative political and societal trust etc)....but the phenomenon is quite omnipresent as the archetype at play in human society.....and manifested more intensely in general where human development and political development generally is lower and/or rawer.

How to address things with deference to the timeframe required given the timeframe duration that has impacted to form the misshapen power pyramid today.....does not come easy to any politician to begin with (generally the few exceptions can be seen with plenty of hindsight after their impact).....and the pyramid in Pakistan here is particularly crooked than the world average relative to the inheritance....and was built on compromised soil as well given what happened with the constituent assembly and the psyche of expedient overnight partition that did not look at things fairly commensurate to what the regular person deserved for full identity-politics free merit based equal opportunity based on classical liberal republic etc.

(Ishtiaq Ahmed though I feel he is biased, does have some hard hitting details on this).

Been meaning to ask if you have any comments on these deepest layers he gets into from time to time:

@Jackdaws @Paro might find it of interest when here next.

 

[Bogeyman]

SECRET PAKISTAN CABLE DOCUMENTS U.S. PRESSURE TO REMOVE IMRAN KHAN​

THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT encouraged the Pakistani government in a March 7, 2022, meeting to remove Imran Khan as prime minister over his neutrality on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to a classified Pakistani government document obtained by The Intercept.

The meeting, between the Pakistani ambassador to the United States and two State Department officials, has been the subject of intense scrutiny, controversy, and speculation in Pakistan over the past year and a half, as supporters of Khan and his military and civilian opponents jockeyed for power. The political struggle escalated on August 5 when Khan was sentenced to three years in prison on corruption charges and taken into custody for the second time since his ouster. Khan’s defenders dismiss the charges as baseless. The sentence also blocks Khan, Pakistan’s most popular politician, from contesting elections expected in Pakistan later this year.

One month after the meeting with U.S. officials documented in the leaked Pakistani government document, a no-confidence vote was held in Parliament, leading to Khan’s removal from power. The vote is believed to have been organized with the backing of Pakistan’s powerful military. Since that time, Khan and his supporters have been engaged in a struggle with the military and its civilian allies, whom Khan claims engineered his removal from power at the request of the U.S.

The text of the Pakistani cable, produced from the meeting by the ambassador and transmitted to Pakistan, has not previously been published. The cable, known internally as a “cypher,” reveals both the carrots and the sticks that the State Department deployed in its push against Khan, promising warmer relations if Khan was removed, and isolation if he was not.

The document, labeled “Secret,” includes an account of the meeting between State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, and Asad Majeed Khan, who at the time was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S.

The document was provided to The Intercept by an anonymous source in the Pakistani military who said that they had no ties to Imran Khan or Khan’s party. The Intercept is publishing the body of the cable below, correcting minor typos in the text because such details can be used to watermark documents and track their dissemination.

The contents of the document obtained by The Intercept are consistent with reporting in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn and elsewhere describing the circumstances of the meeting and details in the cable itself, including in the classification markings omitted from The Intercept’s presentation. The dynamics of the relationship between Pakistan and the U.S. described in the cable were subsequently borne out by events. In the cable, the U.S. objects to Khan’s foreign policy on the Ukraine war. Those positions were quickly reversed after his removal, which was followed, as promised in the meeting, by a warming between the U.S. and Pakistan.

The diplomatic meeting came two weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which launched as Khan was en route to Moscow, a visit that infuriated Washington.

On March 2, just days before the meeting, Lu had been questioned at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing over the neutrality of India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan in the Ukraine conflict. In response to a question from Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., about a recent decision by Pakistan to abstain from a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s role in the conflict, Lu said, “Prime Minister Khan has recently visited Moscow, and so I think we are trying to figure out how to engage specifically with the Prime Minister following that decision.” Van Hollen appeared to be indignant that officials from the State Department were not in communication with Khan about the issue.

The day before the meeting, Khan addressed a rally and responded directly to European calls that Pakistan rally behind Ukraine. “Are we your slaves?” Khan thundered to the crowd. “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask of us?” he asked. “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.”


In the meeting, according to the document, Lu spoke in forthright terms about Washington’s displeasure with Pakistan’s stance in the conflict. The document quotes Lu 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. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.” Lu added that he had held internal discussions with the U.S. National Security Council and that “it seems quite clear that this is the Prime Minister’s policy.”

Lu then bluntly raises the issue of a no-confidence vote: “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister,” Lu said, according to the document. “Otherwise,” he continued, “I think it will be tough going ahead.”

Lu warned that if the situation wasn’t resolved, Pakistan would be marginalized by its Western allies. “I cannot tell how this will be seen by Europe but I suspect their reaction will be similar,” Lu said, adding that Khan could face “isolation” by Europe and the U.S. should he remain in office.

Asked about quotes from Lu in the Pakistani cable, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, “Nothing in these purported comments shows the United States taking a position on who the leader of Pakistan should be.” Miller said he would not comment on private diplomatic discussions.

The Pakistani ambassador responded by expressing frustration with the lack of engagement from U.S. leadership: “This reluctance had created a perception in Pakistan that we were being ignored or even taken for granted. There was also a feeling that while the U.S. expected Pakistan’s support on all issues that were important to the U.S., it did not reciprocate.”

The discussion concluded, according to the document, with the Pakistani ambassador expressing his hope that the issue of the Russia-Ukraine war would not “impact our bilateral ties.” Lu told him that the damage was real but not fatal, and with Khan gone, the relationship could go back to normal. “I would argue that it has already created a dent in the relationship from our perspective,” Lu said, again raising the “political situation” in Pakistan. “Let us wait for a few days to see whether the political situation changes, which would mean that we would not have a big disagreement about this issue and the dent would go away very quickly. Otherwise, we will have to confront this issue head on and decide how to manage it.”

The day after the meeting, on March 8, Khan’s opponents in Parliament moved forward with a key procedural step toward the no-confidence vote.

“Khan’s fate wasn’t sealed at the time that this meeting took place, but it was tenuous,” said Arif Rafiq, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute and specialist on Pakistan. “What you have here is the Biden administration sending a message to the people that they saw as Pakistan’s real rulers, signaling to them that things will better if he is removed from power.”

The Intercept has made extensive efforts to authenticate the document. Given the security climate in Pakistan, independent confirmation from sources in the Pakistani government was not possible. The Pakistan Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to a request for comment.

Miller, the State Department spokesperson, said, “We had expressed concern about the visit of then-PM Khan to Moscow on the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and have communicated that opposition both publicly and privately.” He added that “allegations that the United States interfered in internal decisions about the leadership of Pakistan are false. They have always been false, and they continue to be.”

American Denials​

The State Department has previously and on repeated occasions denied that Lu urged the Pakistani government to oust the prime minister. On April 8, 2022, after Khan alleged there was a cable proving his claim of U.S. interference, State Department spokesperson Jalina Porter was asked about its veracity. “Let me just say very bluntly there is absolutely no truth to these allegations,” Porter said.

In early June 2023, Khan sat for an interview with The Intercept and again repeated the allegation. The State Department at the time referred to previous denials in response to a request for comment.

Khan has not backed off, and the State Department again denied the charge throughout June and July, at least three times in press conferences and again in a speech by a deputy assistant secretary of state for Pakistan, who referred to the claims as “propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation.” On the latest occasion, Miller, the State Department spokesperson, ridiculed the question. “I feel like I need to bring just a sign that I can hold up in response to this question and say that that allegation is not true,” Miller said, laughing and drawing cackles from the press. “I don’t know how many times I can say it. … The United States does not have a position on one political candidate or party versus another in Pakistan or any other country.”

While the drama over the cable has played out in public and in the press, the Pakistani military has launched an unprecedented assault on Pakistani civil society to silence whatever dissent and free expression had previously existed in the country.

In recent months, the military-led government cracked down not just on dissidents but also on suspected leakers inside its own institutions, passing a law last week that authorizes warrantless searches and lengthy jail terms for whistleblowers. Shaken by the public display of support for Khan — expressed in a series of mass protests and riots this May — the military has also enshrined authoritarian powers for itself that drastically reduce civil liberties, criminalize criticism of the military, expand the institution’s already expansive role in the country’s economy, and give military leaders a permanent veto over political and civil affairs.

These sweeping attacks on democracy passed largely unremarked upon by U.S. officials. In late July, the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Michael Kurilla, visited Pakistan, then issued a statement saying his visit had been focused on “strengthening the military-to-military relations,” while making no mention of the political situation in the country. This summer, Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, attempted to add a measure to the National Defense Authorization Act directing the State Department to examine democratic backsliding in Pakistan, but it was denied a vote on the House floor.

In a press briefing on Monday, in response to a question about whether Khan received a fair trial, Miller, the State Department spokesperson, said, “We believe that is an internal matter for Pakistan.”

Political Chaos​

Khan’s removal from power after falling out with the Pakistani military, the same institution believed to have engineered his political rise, has thrown the nation of 230 million into political and economic turmoil. Protests against Khan’s dismissal and suppression of his party have swept the country and paralyzed its institutions, while Pakistan’s current leaders struggle to confront an economic crisis triggered in part by the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on global energy prices. The present chaos has resulted in staggering rates of inflation and capital flight from the country.

In addition to the worsening situation for ordinary citizens, a regime of extreme censorship has also been put in place at the direction of the Pakistani military, with news outlets effectively barred from even mentioning Khan’s name, as The Intercept previously reported. Thousands of members of civil society, mostly supporters of Khan, have been detained by the military, a crackdown that intensified after Khan was arrested earlier this year and held in custody for four days, sparking nationwide protests. Credible reports have emerged of torture by security forces, with reports of several deaths in custody.

The crackdown on Pakistan’s once-rambunctious press has taken a particularly dark turn. Arshad Sharif, a prominent Pakistani journalist who fled the country, was shot to death in Nairobi last October under circumstances that remain disputed. Another well-known journalist, Imran Riaz Khan, was detained by security forces at an airport this May and has not been seen since. Both had been reporting on the secret cable, which has taken on nearly mythical status in Pakistan, and had been among a handful of journalists briefed on its contents before Khan’s ouster. These attacks on the press have created a climate of fear that has made reporting on the document by reporters and institutions inside Pakistan effectively impossible.

Last November, Khan himself was subject to an attempted assassination when he was shot at a political rally, in an attack that wounded him and killed one of his supporters. His imprisonment has been widely viewed within Pakistan, including among many critics of his government, as an attempt by the military to stop his party from contesting upcoming elections. Polls show that were he allowed to participate in the vote, Khan would likely win.

“Khan was convicted on flimsy charges following a trial where his defense was not even allowed to produce witnesses. He had previously survived an assassination attempt, had a journalist aligned with him murdered, and has seen thousands of his supporters imprisoned. While the Biden administration has said that human rights will be at the forefront of their foreign policy, they are now looking away as Pakistan moves toward becoming a full-fledged military dictatorship,” said Rafiq, the Middle East Institute scholar. “This is ultimately about the Pakistani military using outside forces as a means to preserve their hegemony over the country. Every time there is a grand geopolitical rivalry, whether it is the Cold War, or the war on terror, they know how to manipulate the U.S. in their favor.”

Khan’s repeated references to the cable itself have contributed to his legal troubles, with prosecutors launching a separate investigation into whether he violated state secrets laws by discussing it.

Democracy and the Military​

For years, the U.S. government’s patronage relationship with the Pakistani military, which has long acted as the real powerbroker in the country’s politics, has been seen by many Pakistanis as an impenetrable obstacle to the country’s ability to grow its economy, combat endemic corruption, and pursue a constructive foreign policy. The sense that Pakistan has lacked meaningful independence because of this relationship — which, despite trappings of democracy, has made the military an untouchable force in domestic politics — makes the charge of U.S. involvement in the removal of a popular prime minister even more incendiary.

The Intercept’s source, who had access to the document as a member of the military, spoke of their growing disillusionment with the country’s military leadership, the impact on the military’s morale following its involvement in the political fight against Khan, the exploitation of the memory of dead service members for political purposes in recent military propaganda, and widespread public disenchantment with the armed forces amid the crackdown. They believe the military is pushing Pakistan toward a crisis similar to the one in 1971 that led to the secession of Bangladesh.

The source added that they hoped the leaked document would finally confirm what ordinary people, as well as the rank and file of the armed forces, had long suspected about the Pakistani military and force a reckoning within the institution.

This June, amid the crackdown by the military on Khan’s political party, Khan’s former top bureaucrat, Principal Secretary Azam Khan, was arrested and detained for a month. While in detention, Azam Khan reportedly issued a statement recorded in front of a member of the judiciary saying that the cable was indeed real, but that the former prime minister had exaggerated its contents for political gain.

A month after the meeting described in the cable, and just days before Khan was removed from office, then-Pakistan army chief Qamar Bajwa publicly broke with Khan’s neutrality and gave a speech calling the Russian invasion a “huge tragedy” and criticizing Russia. The remarks aligned the public picture with Lu’s private observation, recorded in the cable, that Pakistan’s neutrality was the policy of Khan, but not of the military.

Pakistan’s foreign policy has changed significantly since Khan’s removal, with Pakistan tilting more clearly toward the U.S. and European side in the Ukraine conflict. Abandoning its posture of neutrality, Pakistan has now emerged as a supplier of arms to the Ukrainian military; images of Pakistan-produced shells and ammunition regularly turn up on battlefield footage. In an interview earlier this year, a European Union official confirmed Pakistani military backing to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s foreign minister traveled to Pakistan this July in a visit widely presumed to be about military cooperation, but publicly described as focusing on trade, education, and environmental issues.

This realignment toward the U.S. has appeared to provide dividends to the Pakistani military. On August 3, a Pakistani newspaper reported that Parliament had approved the signing of a defense pact with the U.S. covering “joint exercises, operations, training, basing and equipment.” The agreement was intended to replace a previous 15-year deal between the two countries that expired in 2020.

Pakistani “Assessment”​

Lu’s blunt comments on Pakistan’s internal domestic politics raised alarms on the Pakistani side. In a brief “assessment” section at the bottom of the report, the document states: “Don could not have conveyed such a strong demarche without the express approval of the White House, to which he referred repeatedly. Clearly, Don spoke out of turn on Pakistan’s internal political process.” The cable concludes with a recommendation “to seriously reflect on this and consider making an appropriate demarche to the U.S. Cd’ A a.i in Islamabad” — a reference to the chargé d’affaires ad interim, effectively the acting head of a diplomatic mission when its accredited head is absent. A diplomatic protest was later issued by Khan’s government.

On March 27, 2022, the same month as the Lu meeting, Khan spoke publicly about the cable, waving a folded copy of it in the air at a rally. He also reportedly briefed a national security meeting with the heads of Pakistan’s various security agencies on its contents.

It is not clear what happened in Pakistan-U.S. communications during the weeks that followed the meeting reported in the cable. By the following month, however, the political winds had shifted. On April 10, Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote.

The new prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, eventually confirmed the existence of the cable and acknowledged that some of the message conveyed by Lu was inappropriate. He has said that Pakistan had formally complained but cautioned that the cable did not confirm Khan’s broader claims.
Khan has suggested repeatedly in public that the top-secret cable showed that the U.S. had directed his removal from power, but subsequently revised his assessment as he urged the U.S. to condemn human rights abuses against his supporters. The U.S., he told The Intercept in a June interview, may have urged his ouster, but only did so because it was manipulated by the military.
The disclosure of the full body of the cable, over a year after Khan was deposed and following his arrest, will finally allow the competing claims to be evaluated. On balance, the text of the cypher strongly suggests that the U.S. encouraged Khan’s removal. According to the cable, while Lu did not directly order Khan to be taken out of office, he said that Pakistan would suffer severe consequences, including international isolation, if Khan were to stay on as prime minister, while simultaneously hinting at rewards for his removal. The remarks appear to have been taken as a signal for the Pakistani military to act.
In addition to his other legal problems, Khan himself has continued to be targeted over the handling of the secret cable by the new government. Late last month, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said that Khan would be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act in connection with the cable. “Khan has hatched a conspiracy against the state’s interests and a case will be initiated against him on behalf of the state for the violation of the Official Secrets Act by exposing a confidential cipher communication from a diplomatic mission,” Sanaullah said.
Khan has now joined a long list of Pakistani politicians who failed to finish their term in office after running afoul of the military. As quoted in the cypher, Khan was being personally blamed by the U.S., according to Lu, for Pakistan’s policy of nonalignment during the Ukraine conflict. The vote of no confidence and its implications for the future of U.S.-Pakistan ties loomed large throughout the conversation.
“Honestly,” Lu is quoted as saying in the document, referring to the prospect of Khan staying in office, “I think isolation of the Prime Minister will become very strong from Europe and the United States.”

March 7, 2022 Pakistani Diplomatic Cypher (Transcription)​

The Intercept is publishing the body of the cable below, correcting minor typos in the text because such details can be used to watermark documents and track their dissemination. The Intercept has removed classification markings and numerical elements that could be used for tracking purposes. Labeled “Secret,” the cable includes an account of the meeting between State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, and Asad Majeed Khan, who at the time was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S.
I had a luncheon meeting today with Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Donald Lu. He was accompanied by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Les Viguerie. DCM, DA and Counsellor Qasim joined me.
At the outset, Don referred to Pakistan’s position on the Ukraine crisis and said 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. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.” He shared that in his discussions with the NSC, “it seems quite clear that this is the Prime Minister’s policy.” He continued that he was of the view that this was “tied to the current political dramas in Islamabad that he (Prime Minister) needs and is trying to show a public face.” I replied that this was not a correct reading of the situation as Pakistan’s position on Ukraine was a result of intense interagency consultations. Pakistan had never resorted to conducting diplomacy in public sphere. The Prime Minister’s remarks during a political rally were in reaction to the public letter by European Ambassadors in Islamabad which was against diplomatic etiquette and protocol. Any political leader, whether in Pakistan or the U.S., would be constrained to give a public reply in such a situation.
I asked Don if the reason for a strong U.S. reaction was Pakistan’s abstention in the voting in the UNGA. He categorically replied in the negative and said that it was due to the Prime Minister’s visit to Moscow. He said that “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.” He paused and then said “I cannot tell how this will be seen by Europe but I suspect their reaction will be similar.” He then said that “honestly I think isolation of the Prime Minister will become very strong from Europe and the United States.” Don further commented that it seemed that the Prime Minister’s visit to Moscow was planned during the Beijing Olympics and there was an attempt by the Prime Minister to meet Putin which was not successful and then this idea was hatched that he would go to Moscow.
I told Don that this was a completely misinformed and wrong perception. The visit to Moscow had been in the works for at least few years and was the result of a deliberative institutional process. I stressed that when the Prime Minister was flying to Moscow, Russian invasion of Ukraine had not started and there was still hope for a peaceful resolution. I also pointed out that leaders of European countries were also traveling to Moscow around the same time. Don interjected that “those visits were specifically for seeking resolution of the Ukraine standoff while the Prime Minister’s visit was for bilateral economic reasons.” I drew his attention to the fact that the Prime Minister clearly regretted the situation while being in Moscow and had hoped for diplomacy to work. The Prime Minister’s visit, I stressed, was purely in the bilateral context and should not be seen either as a condonation or endorsement of Russia’s action against Ukraine. I said that our position is dictated by our desire to keep the channels of communication with all sides open. Our subsequent statements at the UN and by our Spokesperson spelled that out clearly, while reaffirming our commitment to the principle of UN Charter, non-use or threat of use of force, sovereignty and territorial integrity of States, and pacific settlement of disputes.
I also told Don that Pakistan was worried of how the Ukraine crisis would play out in the context of Afghanistan. We had paid a very high price due to the long-term impact of this conflict. Our priority was to have peace and stability in Afghanistan, for which it was imperative to have cooperation and coordination with all major powers, including Russia. From this perspective as well, keeping the channels of communication open was essential. This factor was also dictating our position on the Ukraine crisis. On my reference to the upcoming Extended Troika meeting in Beijing, Don replied that there were still ongoing discussions in Washington on whether the U.S. should attend the Extended Troika meeting or the upcoming Antalya meeting on Afghanistan with Russian representatives in attendance, as the U.S. focus right now was to discuss only Ukraine with Russia. I replied that this was exactly what we were afraid of. We did not want the Ukraine crisis to divert focus away from Afghanistan. Don did not comment.
I told Don that just like him, I would also convey our perspective in a forthright manner. I said that over the past one year, we had been consistently sensing reluctance on the part of the U.S. leadership to engage with our leadership. This reluctance had created a perception in Pakistan that we were being ignored and even taken for granted. There was also a feeling that while the U.S. expected Pakistan’s support on all issues that were important to the U.S., it did not reciprocate and we do not see much U.S. support on issues of concern for Pakistan, particularly on Kashmir. I said that it was extremely important to have functioning channels of communication at the highest level to remove such perception. I also said that we were surprised that if our position on the Ukraine crisis was so important for the U.S., why the U.S. had not engaged with us at the top leadership level prior to the Moscow visit and even when the UN was scheduled to vote. (The State Department had raised it at the DCM level.) Pakistan valued continued high-level engagement and for this reason the Foreign Minister sought to speak with Secretary Blinken to personally explain Pakistan’s position and perspective on the Ukraine crisis. The call has not materialized yet. Don replied that the thinking in Washington was that given the current political turmoil in Pakistan, this was not the right time for such engagement and it could wait till the political situation in Pakistan settled down.
I reiterated our position that countries should not be made to choose sides in a complex situation like the Ukraine crisis and stressed the need for having active bilateral communications at the political leadership level. Don replied that “you have conveyed your position clearly and I will take it back to my leadership.”
I also told Don that we had seen his defence of the Indian position on the Ukraine crisis during the recently held Senate Sub-Committee hearing on U.S.-India relations. It seemed that the U.S. was applying different criteria for India and Pakistan. Don responded that the U.S. lawmakers’ strong feelings about India’s abstentions in the UNSC and UNGA came out clearly during the hearing. I said that from the hearing, it appeared that the U.S. expected more from India than Pakistan, yet it appeared to be more concerned about Pakistan’s position. Don was evasive and responded that Washington looked at the U.S.-India relationship very much through the lens of what was happening in China. He added that while India had a close relationship with Moscow, “I think we will actually see a change in India’s policy once all Indian students are out of Ukraine.”
I expressed the hope that the issue of the Prime Minister’s visit to Russia will not impact our bilateral ties. Don replied that “I would argue that it has already created a dent in the relationship from our perspective. Let us wait for a few days to see whether the political situation changes, which would mean that we would not have a big disagreement about this issue and the dent would go away very quickly. Otherwise, we will have to confront this issue head on and decide how to manage it.”
We also discussed Afghanistan and other issues pertaining to bilateral ties. A separate communication follows on that part of our conversation.

Assessment

Don could not have conveyed such a strong demarche without the express approval of the White House, to which he referred repeatedly. Clearly, Don spoke out of turn on Pakistan’s internal political process. We need to seriously reflect on this and consider making an appropriate demarche to the U.S. Cd’ A a.i in Islamabad.

Secret Pakistan Cable Documents U.S. Pressure to Remove Imran Khan

“All will be forgiven,” said a U.S. diplomat, if the no-confidence vote against Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan succeeds.

theintercept.com

 

[Marlii]

SECRET PAKISTAN CABLE DOCUMENTS U.S. PRESSURE TO REMOVE IMRAN KHAN​

THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT encouraged the Pakistani government in a March 7, 2022, meeting to remove Imran Khan as prime minister over his neutrality on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to a classified Pakistani government document obtained by The Intercept.

The meeting, between the Pakistani ambassador to the United States and two State Department officials, has been the subject of intense scrutiny, controversy, and speculation in Pakistan over the past year and a half, as supporters of Khan and his military and civilian opponents jockeyed for power. The political struggle escalated on August 5 when Khan was sentenced to three years in prison on corruption charges and taken into custody for the second time since his ouster. Khan’s defenders dismiss the charges as baseless. The sentence also blocks Khan, Pakistan’s most popular politician, from contesting elections expected in Pakistan later this year.

One month after the meeting with U.S. officials documented in the leaked Pakistani government document, a no-confidence vote was held in Parliament, leading to Khan’s removal from power. The vote is believed to have been organized with the backing of Pakistan’s powerful military. Since that time, Khan and his supporters have been engaged in a struggle with the military and its civilian allies, whom Khan claims engineered his removal from power at the request of the U.S.

The text of the Pakistani cable, produced from the meeting by the ambassador and transmitted to Pakistan, has not previously been published. The cable, known internally as a “cypher,” reveals both the carrots and the sticks that the State Department deployed in its push against Khan, promising warmer relations if Khan was removed, and isolation if he was not.

The document, labeled “Secret,” includes an account of the meeting between State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, and Asad Majeed Khan, who at the time was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S.

The document was provided to The Intercept by an anonymous source in the Pakistani military who said that they had no ties to Imran Khan or Khan’s party. The Intercept is publishing the body of the cable below, correcting minor typos in the text because such details can be used to watermark documents and track their dissemination.

The contents of the document obtained by The Intercept are consistent with reporting in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn and elsewhere describing the circumstances of the meeting and details in the cable itself, including in the classification markings omitted from The Intercept’s presentation. The dynamics of the relationship between Pakistan and the U.S. described in the cable were subsequently borne out by events. In the cable, the U.S. objects to Khan’s foreign policy on the Ukraine war. Those positions were quickly reversed after his removal, which was followed, as promised in the meeting, by a warming between the U.S. and Pakistan.

The diplomatic meeting came two weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which launched as Khan was en route to Moscow, a visit that infuriated Washington.

On March 2, just days before the meeting, Lu had been questioned at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing over the neutrality of India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan in the Ukraine conflict. In response to a question from Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., about a recent decision by Pakistan to abstain from a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s role in the conflict, Lu said, “Prime Minister Khan has recently visited Moscow, and so I think we are trying to figure out how to engage specifically with the Prime Minister following that decision.” Van Hollen appeared to be indignant that officials from the State Department were not in communication with Khan about the issue.

The day before the meeting, Khan addressed a rally and responded directly to European calls that Pakistan rally behind Ukraine. “Are we your slaves?” Khan thundered to the crowd. “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask of us?” he asked. “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.”


In the meeting, according to the document, Lu spoke in forthright terms about Washington’s displeasure with Pakistan’s stance in the conflict. The document quotes Lu 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. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.” Lu added that he had held internal discussions with the U.S. National Security Council and that “it seems quite clear that this is the Prime Minister’s policy.”

Lu then bluntly raises the issue of a no-confidence vote: “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister,” Lu said, according to the document. “Otherwise,” he continued, “I think it will be tough going ahead.”

Lu warned that if the situation wasn’t resolved, Pakistan would be marginalized by its Western allies. “I cannot tell how this will be seen by Europe but I suspect their reaction will be similar,” Lu said, adding that Khan could face “isolation” by Europe and the U.S. should he remain in office.

Asked about quotes from Lu in the Pakistani cable, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, “Nothing in these purported comments shows the United States taking a position on who the leader of Pakistan should be.” Miller said he would not comment on private diplomatic discussions.

The Pakistani ambassador responded by expressing frustration with the lack of engagement from U.S. leadership: “This reluctance had created a perception in Pakistan that we were being ignored or even taken for granted. There was also a feeling that while the U.S. expected Pakistan’s support on all issues that were important to the U.S., it did not reciprocate.”

The discussion concluded, according to the document, with the Pakistani ambassador expressing his hope that the issue of the Russia-Ukraine war would not “impact our bilateral ties.” Lu told him that the damage was real but not fatal, and with Khan gone, the relationship could go back to normal. “I would argue that it has already created a dent in the relationship from our perspective,” Lu said, again raising the “political situation” in Pakistan. “Let us wait for a few days to see whether the political situation changes, which would mean that we would not have a big disagreement about this issue and the dent would go away very quickly. Otherwise, we will have to confront this issue head on and decide how to manage it.”

The day after the meeting, on March 8, Khan’s opponents in Parliament moved forward with a key procedural step toward the no-confidence vote.

“Khan’s fate wasn’t sealed at the time that this meeting took place, but it was tenuous,” said Arif Rafiq, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute and specialist on Pakistan. “What you have here is the Biden administration sending a message to the people that they saw as Pakistan’s real rulers, signaling to them that things will better if he is removed from power.”

The Intercept has made extensive efforts to authenticate the document. Given the security climate in Pakistan, independent confirmation from sources in the Pakistani government was not possible. The Pakistan Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to a request for comment.

Miller, the State Department spokesperson, said, “We had expressed concern about the visit of then-PM Khan to Moscow on the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and have communicated that opposition both publicly and privately.” He added that “allegations that the United States interfered in internal decisions about the leadership of Pakistan are false. They have always been false, and they continue to be.”

American Denials​

The State Department has previously and on repeated occasions denied that Lu urged the Pakistani government to oust the prime minister. On April 8, 2022, after Khan alleged there was a cable proving his claim of U.S. interference, State Department spokesperson Jalina Porter was asked about its veracity. “Let me just say very bluntly there is absolutely no truth to these allegations,” Porter said.

In early June 2023, Khan sat for an interview with The Intercept and again repeated the allegation. The State Department at the time referred to previous denials in response to a request for comment.

Khan has not backed off, and the State Department again denied the charge throughout June and July, at least three times in press conferences and again in a speech by a deputy assistant secretary of state for Pakistan, who referred to the claims as “propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation.” On the latest occasion, Miller, the State Department spokesperson, ridiculed the question. “I feel like I need to bring just a sign that I can hold up in response to this question and say that that allegation is not true,” Miller said, laughing and drawing cackles from the press. “I don’t know how many times I can say it. … The United States does not have a position on one political candidate or party versus another in Pakistan or any other country.”

While the drama over the cable has played out in public and in the press, the Pakistani military has launched an unprecedented assault on Pakistani civil society to silence whatever dissent and free expression had previously existed in the country.

In recent months, the military-led government cracked down not just on dissidents but also on suspected leakers inside its own institutions, passing a law last week that authorizes warrantless searches and lengthy jail terms for whistleblowers. Shaken by the public display of support for Khan — expressed in a series of mass protests and riots this May — the military has also enshrined authoritarian powers for itself that drastically reduce civil liberties, criminalize criticism of the military, expand the institution’s already expansive role in the country’s economy, and give military leaders a permanent veto over political and civil affairs.

These sweeping attacks on democracy passed largely unremarked upon by U.S. officials. In late July, the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Michael Kurilla, visited Pakistan, then issued a statement saying his visit had been focused on “strengthening the military-to-military relations,” while making no mention of the political situation in the country. This summer, Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, attempted to add a measure to the National Defense Authorization Act directing the State Department to examine democratic backsliding in Pakistan, but it was denied a vote on the House floor.

In a press briefing on Monday, in response to a question about whether Khan received a fair trial, Miller, the State Department spokesperson, said, “We believe that is an internal matter for Pakistan.”

Political Chaos​

Khan’s removal from power after falling out with the Pakistani military, the same institution believed to have engineered his political rise, has thrown the nation of 230 million into political and economic turmoil. Protests against Khan’s dismissal and suppression of his party have swept the country and paralyzed its institutions, while Pakistan’s current leaders struggle to confront an economic crisis triggered in part by the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on global energy prices. The present chaos has resulted in staggering rates of inflation and capital flight from the country.

In addition to the worsening situation for ordinary citizens, a regime of extreme censorship has also been put in place at the direction of the Pakistani military, with news outlets effectively barred from even mentioning Khan’s name, as The Intercept previously reported. Thousands of members of civil society, mostly supporters of Khan, have been detained by the military, a crackdown that intensified after Khan was arrested earlier this year and held in custody for four days, sparking nationwide protests. Credible reports have emerged of torture by security forces, with reports of several deaths in custody.

The crackdown on Pakistan’s once-rambunctious press has taken a particularly dark turn. Arshad Sharif, a prominent Pakistani journalist who fled the country, was shot to death in Nairobi last October under circumstances that remain disputed. Another well-known journalist, Imran Riaz Khan, was detained by security forces at an airport this May and has not been seen since. Both had been reporting on the secret cable, which has taken on nearly mythical status in Pakistan, and had been among a handful of journalists briefed on its contents before Khan’s ouster. These attacks on the press have created a climate of fear that has made reporting on the document by reporters and institutions inside Pakistan effectively impossible.

Last November, Khan himself was subject to an attempted assassination when he was shot at a political rally, in an attack that wounded him and killed one of his supporters. His imprisonment has been widely viewed within Pakistan, including among many critics of his government, as an attempt by the military to stop his party from contesting upcoming elections. Polls show that were he allowed to participate in the vote, Khan would likely win.

“Khan was convicted on flimsy charges following a trial where his defense was not even allowed to produce witnesses. He had previously survived an assassination attempt, had a journalist aligned with him murdered, and has seen thousands of his supporters imprisoned. While the Biden administration has said that human rights will be at the forefront of their foreign policy, they are now looking away as Pakistan moves toward becoming a full-fledged military dictatorship,” said Rafiq, the Middle East Institute scholar. “This is ultimately about the Pakistani military using outside forces as a means to preserve their hegemony over the country. Every time there is a grand geopolitical rivalry, whether it is the Cold War, or the war on terror, they know how to manipulate the U.S. in their favor.”

Khan’s repeated references to the cable itself have contributed to his legal troubles, with prosecutors launching a separate investigation into whether he violated state secrets laws by discussing it.

Democracy and the Military​

For years, the U.S. government’s patronage relationship with the Pakistani military, which has long acted as the real powerbroker in the country’s politics, has been seen by many Pakistanis as an impenetrable obstacle to the country’s ability to grow its economy, combat endemic corruption, and pursue a constructive foreign policy. The sense that Pakistan has lacked meaningful independence because of this relationship — which, despite trappings of democracy, has made the military an untouchable force in domestic politics — makes the charge of U.S. involvement in the removal of a popular prime minister even more incendiary.

The Intercept’s source, who had access to the document as a member of the military, spoke of their growing disillusionment with the country’s military leadership, the impact on the military’s morale following its involvement in the political fight against Khan, the exploitation of the memory of dead service members for political purposes in recent military propaganda, and widespread public disenchantment with the armed forces amid the crackdown. They believe the military is pushing Pakistan toward a crisis similar to the one in 1971 that led to the secession of Bangladesh.

The source added that they hoped the leaked document would finally confirm what ordinary people, as well as the rank and file of the armed forces, had long suspected about the Pakistani military and force a reckoning within the institution.

This June, amid the crackdown by the military on Khan’s political party, Khan’s former top bureaucrat, Principal Secretary Azam Khan, was arrested and detained for a month. While in detention, Azam Khan reportedly issued a statement recorded in front of a member of the judiciary saying that the cable was indeed real, but that the former prime minister had exaggerated its contents for political gain.

A month after the meeting described in the cable, and just days before Khan was removed from office, then-Pakistan army chief Qamar Bajwa publicly broke with Khan’s neutrality and gave a speech calling the Russian invasion a “huge tragedy” and criticizing Russia. The remarks aligned the public picture with Lu’s private observation, recorded in the cable, that Pakistan’s neutrality was the policy of Khan, but not of the military.

Pakistan’s foreign policy has changed significantly since Khan’s removal, with Pakistan tilting more clearly toward the U.S. and European side in the Ukraine conflict. Abandoning its posture of neutrality, Pakistan has now emerged as a supplier of arms to the Ukrainian military; images of Pakistan-produced shells and ammunition regularly turn up on battlefield footage. In an interview earlier this year, a European Union official confirmed Pakistani military backing to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s foreign minister traveled to Pakistan this July in a visit widely presumed to be about military cooperation, but publicly described as focusing on trade, education, and environmental issues.

This realignment toward the U.S. has appeared to provide dividends to the Pakistani military. On August 3, a Pakistani newspaper reported that Parliament had approved the signing of a defense pact with the U.S. covering “joint exercises, operations, training, basing and equipment.” The agreement was intended to replace a previous 15-year deal between the two countries that expired in 2020.

Pakistani “Assessment”​

Lu’s blunt comments on Pakistan’s internal domestic politics raised alarms on the Pakistani side. In a brief “assessment” section at the bottom of the report, the document states: “Don could not have conveyed such a strong demarche without the express approval of the White House, to which he referred repeatedly. Clearly, Don spoke out of turn on Pakistan’s internal political process.” The cable concludes with a recommendation “to seriously reflect on this and consider making an appropriate demarche to the U.S. Cd’ A a.i in Islamabad” — a reference to the chargé d’affaires ad interim, effectively the acting head of a diplomatic mission when its accredited head is absent. A diplomatic protest was later issued by Khan’s government.

On March 27, 2022, the same month as the Lu meeting, Khan spoke publicly about the cable, waving a folded copy of it in the air at a rally. He also reportedly briefed a national security meeting with the heads of Pakistan’s various security agencies on its contents.

It is not clear what happened in Pakistan-U.S. communications during the weeks that followed the meeting reported in the cable. By the following month, however, the political winds had shifted. On April 10, Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote.

The new prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, eventually confirmed the existence of the cable and acknowledged that some of the message conveyed by Lu was inappropriate. He has said that Pakistan had formally complained but cautioned that the cable did not confirm Khan’s broader claims.
Khan has suggested repeatedly in public that the top-secret cable showed that the U.S. had directed his removal from power, but subsequently revised his assessment as he urged the U.S. to condemn human rights abuses against his supporters. The U.S., he told The Intercept in a June interview, may have urged his ouster, but only did so because it was manipulated by the military.
The disclosure of the full body of the cable, over a year after Khan was deposed and following his arrest, will finally allow the competing claims to be evaluated. On balance, the text of the cypher strongly suggests that the U.S. encouraged Khan’s removal. According to the cable, while Lu did not directly order Khan to be taken out of office, he said that Pakistan would suffer severe consequences, including international isolation, if Khan were to stay on as prime minister, while simultaneously hinting at rewards for his removal. The remarks appear to have been taken as a signal for the Pakistani military to act.
In addition to his other legal problems, Khan himself has continued to be targeted over the handling of the secret cable by the new government. Late last month, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said that Khan would be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act in connection with the cable. “Khan has hatched a conspiracy against the state’s interests and a case will be initiated against him on behalf of the state for the violation of the Official Secrets Act by exposing a confidential cipher communication from a diplomatic mission,” Sanaullah said.
Khan has now joined a long list of Pakistani politicians who failed to finish their term in office after running afoul of the military. As quoted in the cypher, Khan was being personally blamed by the U.S., according to Lu, for Pakistan’s policy of nonalignment during the Ukraine conflict. The vote of no confidence and its implications for the future of U.S.-Pakistan ties loomed large throughout the conversation.
“Honestly,” Lu is quoted as saying in the document, referring to the prospect of Khan staying in office, “I think isolation of the Prime Minister will become very strong from Europe and the United States.”

March 7, 2022 Pakistani Diplomatic Cypher (Transcription)​

The Intercept is publishing the body of the cable below, correcting minor typos in the text because such details can be used to watermark documents and track their dissemination. The Intercept has removed classification markings and numerical elements that could be used for tracking purposes. Labeled “Secret,” the cable includes an account of the meeting between State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, and Asad Majeed Khan, who at the time was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S.
I had a luncheon meeting today with Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Donald Lu. He was accompanied by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Les Viguerie. DCM, DA and Counsellor Qasim joined me.
At the outset, Don referred to Pakistan’s position on the Ukraine crisis and said 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. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.” He shared that in his discussions with the NSC, “it seems quite clear that this is the Prime Minister’s policy.” He continued that he was of the view that this was “tied to the current political dramas in Islamabad that he (Prime Minister) needs and is trying to show a public face.” I replied that this was not a correct reading of the situation as Pakistan’s position on Ukraine was a result of intense interagency consultations. Pakistan had never resorted to conducting diplomacy in public sphere. The Prime Minister’s remarks during a political rally were in reaction to the public letter by European Ambassadors in Islamabad which was against diplomatic etiquette and protocol. Any political leader, whether in Pakistan or the U.S., would be constrained to give a public reply in such a situation.
I asked Don if the reason for a strong U.S. reaction was Pakistan’s abstention in the voting in the UNGA. He categorically replied in the negative and said that it was due to the Prime Minister’s visit to Moscow. He said that “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.” He paused and then said “I cannot tell how this will be seen by Europe but I suspect their reaction will be similar.” He then said that “honestly I think isolation of the Prime Minister will become very strong from Europe and the United States.” Don further commented that it seemed that the Prime Minister’s visit to Moscow was planned during the Beijing Olympics and there was an attempt by the Prime Minister to meet Putin which was not successful and then this idea was hatched that he would go to Moscow.
I told Don that this was a completely misinformed and wrong perception. The visit to Moscow had been in the works for at least few years and was the result of a deliberative institutional process. I stressed that when the Prime Minister was flying to Moscow, Russian invasion of Ukraine had not started and there was still hope for a peaceful resolution. I also pointed out that leaders of European countries were also traveling to Moscow around the same time. Don interjected that “those visits were specifically for seeking resolution of the Ukraine standoff while the Prime Minister’s visit was for bilateral economic reasons.” I drew his attention to the fact that the Prime Minister clearly regretted the situation while being in Moscow and had hoped for diplomacy to work. The Prime Minister’s visit, I stressed, was purely in the bilateral context and should not be seen either as a condonation or endorsement of Russia’s action against Ukraine. I said that our position is dictated by our desire to keep the channels of communication with all sides open. Our subsequent statements at the UN and by our Spokesperson spelled that out clearly, while reaffirming our commitment to the principle of UN Charter, non-use or threat of use of force, sovereignty and territorial integrity of States, and pacific settlement of disputes.
I also told Don that Pakistan was worried of how the Ukraine crisis would play out in the context of Afghanistan. We had paid a very high price due to the long-term impact of this conflict. Our priority was to have peace and stability in Afghanistan, for which it was imperative to have cooperation and coordination with all major powers, including Russia. From this perspective as well, keeping the channels of communication open was essential. This factor was also dictating our position on the Ukraine crisis. On my reference to the upcoming Extended Troika meeting in Beijing, Don replied that there were still ongoing discussions in Washington on whether the U.S. should attend the Extended Troika meeting or the upcoming Antalya meeting on Afghanistan with Russian representatives in attendance, as the U.S. focus right now was to discuss only Ukraine with Russia. I replied that this was exactly what we were afraid of. We did not want the Ukraine crisis to divert focus away from Afghanistan. Don did not comment.
I told Don that just like him, I would also convey our perspective in a forthright manner. I said that over the past one year, we had been consistently sensing reluctance on the part of the U.S. leadership to engage with our leadership. This reluctance had created a perception in Pakistan that we were being ignored and even taken for granted. There was also a feeling that while the U.S. expected Pakistan’s support on all issues that were important to the U.S., it did not reciprocate and we do not see much U.S. support on issues of concern for Pakistan, particularly on Kashmir. I said that it was extremely important to have functioning channels of communication at the highest level to remove such perception. I also said that we were surprised that if our position on the Ukraine crisis was so important for the U.S., why the U.S. had not engaged with us at the top leadership level prior to the Moscow visit and even when the UN was scheduled to vote. (The State Department had raised it at the DCM level.) Pakistan valued continued high-level engagement and for this reason the Foreign Minister sought to speak with Secretary Blinken to personally explain Pakistan’s position and perspective on the Ukraine crisis. The call has not materialized yet. Don replied that the thinking in Washington was that given the current political turmoil in Pakistan, this was not the right time for such engagement and it could wait till the political situation in Pakistan settled down.
I reiterated our position that countries should not be made to choose sides in a complex situation like the Ukraine crisis and stressed the need for having active bilateral communications at the political leadership level. Don replied that “you have conveyed your position clearly and I will take it back to my leadership.”
I also told Don that we had seen his defence of the Indian position on the Ukraine crisis during the recently held Senate Sub-Committee hearing on U.S.-India relations. It seemed that the U.S. was applying different criteria for India and Pakistan. Don responded that the U.S. lawmakers’ strong feelings about India’s abstentions in the UNSC and UNGA came out clearly during the hearing. I said that from the hearing, it appeared that the U.S. expected more from India than Pakistan, yet it appeared to be more concerned about Pakistan’s position. Don was evasive and responded that Washington looked at the U.S.-India relationship very much through the lens of what was happening in China. He added that while India had a close relationship with Moscow, “I think we will actually see a change in India’s policy once all Indian students are out of Ukraine.”
I expressed the hope that the issue of the Prime Minister’s visit to Russia will not impact our bilateral ties. Don replied that “I would argue that it has already created a dent in the relationship from our perspective. Let us wait for a few days to see whether the political situation changes, which would mean that we would not have a big disagreement about this issue and the dent would go away very quickly. Otherwise, we will have to confront this issue head on and decide how to manage it.”
We also discussed Afghanistan and other issues pertaining to bilateral ties. A separate communication follows on that part of our conversation.

Assessment

Don could not have conveyed such a strong demarche without the express approval of the White House, to which he referred repeatedly. Clearly, Don spoke out of turn on Pakistan’s internal political process. We need to seriously reflect on this and consider making an appropriate demarche to the U.S. Cd’ A a.i in Islamabad.

Secret Pakistan Cable Documents U.S. Pressure to Remove Imran Khan

“All will be forgiven,” said a U.S. diplomat, if the no-confidence vote against Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan succeeds.

theintercept.com

Well Americans not liking Imraan Khan and would in all cases wanting to remove him from power is no surprise.Imraan has been foul mouthing the US and even praised the Taliban in many of his speeches.I dont understand why people have this cult like standard towards him He was mediocre at best who did almost nothing to save Pakistan's economy from being where it is today.

 

[Afif]

Well Americans not liking Imraan Khan and would in all cases wanting to remove him from power is no surprise.Imraan has been foul mouthing the US and even praised the Taliban in many of his speeches.I dont understand why people have this cult like standard towards him He was mediocre at best who did almost nothing to save Pakistan's economy from being where it is today.

At least the guy got good speeches.

 

[Marlii]

At least the guy got good speeches.

That's the trait at the end dug his own grave. Going full anti US was never a wise option for Imraan

 

[rif.ahm]

The U.S. reportedly meddled with Pakistan's democracy over Russia

The U.S. looks incredibly hypocritical in its apparent pressure tactics on Pakistan.

President Joe Biden has framed his support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion as part of his “worldwide commitment” to defending countries’ rights to sovereignty. But a report from The Intercept suggests that the Biden administration was willing to meddle in Pakistan's democratic process in its efforts to rally a global coalition to isolate Russia.

The Intercept published a diplomatic cable it said it obtained from an anonymous source in Pakistan’s military documenting a U.S. State Department official encouraging the Pakistani government to oust the country’s then-prime minister Imran Khan from power using a no-confidence vote. (NBC News has not independently corroborated the authenticity of the cable.) A month later, Pakistan’s parliament removed Khan from power in a no-confidence vote, in a move that experts say was partially enabled by the powerful Pakistani military’s rift with Khan.

The U.S. was angling to interfere with the democratic process in Pakistan in order to extract a specific geopolitical goal that serves its own interests.

Regardless of whether the U.S. ended up having an impact on that vote, which opposition parties had been discussing in months prior, the contents of the cable are alarming. They suggest that the U.S. was angling to interfere with the democratic process in Pakistan in order to extract a specific geopolitical goal that serves its own interests. The intention alone crosses the line of respecting the autonomy of democracies. And it underscores the inconsistency of the U.S. when it comes to respect for countries’ sovereignty, and how rhetoric about freedom and democracy only seem to matter when the U.S. believes it has something to gain from a situation.

Reportedly, the cable provided to The Intercept describes the details of a meeting between U.S. State Department officials and Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. on March 7, 2022. According to the cable, in the meeting Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu told then-Ambassador Asad Majeed Khan the U.S. was unhappy Pakistan was taking a neutral position on Ukraine and upset that Imran Khan had visited Russia the day it invaded Ukraine. Lu then repeatedly implied that Washington favored Imran Khan’s ouster from power, according to the cable: “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.” In the months prior to that meeting, Pakistani opposition parties were reportedly building a coalition for a no-confidence motion against the prime minister.

Later on in the cable, the Pakistani ambassador expresses hope that Imran Khan’s visit hadn’t negatively affected the U.S.-Pakistani relationship, and Lu responded that it had: “I would argue that it has already created a dent in the relationship from our perspective. Let us wait for a few days to see whether the political situation changes, which would mean that we would not have a big disagreement about this issue and the dent would go away very quickly. Otherwise, we will have to confront this issue head on and decide how to manage it.” At the end of the cable, the ambassador concludes in his final assessment that Lu had spoken “out of turn on Pakistan’s internal political process.”

In a statement to The Intercept, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, “Nothing in these purported comments shows the United States taking a position on who the leader of Pakistan should be” and declined to comment on diplomatic discussions. In the past, the U.S. has denied claims by Imran Khan that a cable existed showing that the U.S. encouraged a no-confidence vote.

The cable does not provide any examples of the U.S. waving specific carrots or sticks to induce Pakistan to do what the U.S. says. But it didn’t have to. The U.S. has tremendous power when negotiating with any country, but it has a particularly influential hand with a country like Pakistan, a strategically situated developing country and rentier state that relies on great powers for huge amounts of economic aid and security assistance. Maintaining a favorable relationship with the U.S. is also vital to Pakistan’s national security interests, because it sees closeness to Washington as a bulwark against its rival India, and because the U.S. has enormous influence over its neighbor Afghanistan’s stability.

It is beyond the scope of this article to analyze if and how the U.S. made an impact on the no-confidence vote. It is both plausible that the no-confidence vote would have transpired successfully without any U.S. backing, and it’s also plausible that the U.S.’s signaling could’ve played a decisive role in mobilizing Khan’s opposition.

But for now what’s worth scrutinizing is the manner in which the U.S.’s interests were allegedly communicated to Pakistan’s ambassador. They provide a window into understanding the domineering way that America projects its power in the global arena. It is no surprise that the U.S. would express displeasure to Pakistan over its position on Russia, and that it would try to persuade the country to join its alliance. What goes beyond the pale is trying to foment chaos in a country's internal affairs in order to achieve that end. Even if we were to read Lu’s statements in the most constrained way possible, he is informing a government official that it would be desirable for the head of a country to be ousted in order to satisfy the U.S.’s policy goals. Given that the U.S. knows how much power it has, and Khan’s beleaguered status as he was losing the backing of the military, it was a meaningful signal. And that signal did not encourage democracy, but undercut it.

In the West, there was a great deal of unity in forming a coalition to isolate Russia diplomatically and economically after it invaded Ukraine. But the Global South is a different story entirely. Many countries outside the West saw the U.S.’s position on Ukraine as hypocritical given its long foreign policy record of meddling with and invading other countries. And many developing countries have long-standing economic and diplomatic ties to Russia that they were unwilling to forfeit for a war that they didn’t see as affecting their own geopolitical interests.

If the U.S. wanted to try to bring these countries on board by discussing shared interests, that’s fair. But doing that by trying to tamper with the internal democratic process of a country is imperious.

Opinion | The U.S. reportedly meddled with Pakistan's democracy over Russia

The U.S. looks incredibly hypocritical in its apparent pressure tactics on Pakistan.

www.msnbc.com

 

[GoatsMilk]

Its quite telling that erdogan is silent about Imran Khan. He screamed and screamed for years over morsi, but has nothing to say about Khan.