Did Refusal to Support Biden's War Lead to Imran Khan's Ouster?
Did Refusal to Support Biden's War Lead to Imran Khan's Ouster?
Khan said long before his incarceration that there is no doubt that he would be arrested before the election
Pakistan, which President Joe Biden once identified as one of the world’s most dangerous nations because of its nuclear weapons stockpile and political instability, has been in a state of turmoil since Imran Khan, the former prime minister, was convicted on corruption charges and given a sentence of three years in prison, which was suspended.
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Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar, who has been called the choice of the country’s establishment who has close ties with the military, has been named caretaker prime minister. There is a general feeling that the elections will likely not be held until next summer.
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Khan was convicted on corruption charges and given a sentence of three years in prison. The Wall Street Journal reported that Khan will not be allowed to run for office again for five years. The paper said “the treatment of Khan and his party [ the Tehreek-e-Insaf party] has raised questions over how fair any election will be.”
Khan said long before his incarceration that there is no doubt that he would be arrested before the election.
Khan was seen in the country as something of a Trumpian figure and represented the everyman who has been taken advantage of by a corrupt system. He was elected in 2018 but was ousted in a no-confidence vote before he could complete his five-year term. The New York Times said Khan has accused the military of being behind his undoing.
MSNBC ran an op-ed last month titled, “The U.S. Reportedly Meddled With Pakistan’s Democracy Over Russia.”
The article, written by Zeeshan Aleem, an editor at the outlet, cited an Intercept report that claimed the Biden administration was willing to “meddle in Pakistan’s democratic process in its efforts to rally a global coalition to isolate Russia.”
The news outlet obtained a classified Pakistani government document that said the U.S. was upset that Khan would not condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Khan addressed a crowd after Russia's invasion and criticized Europe for trying to influence Pakistan’s position on the war.
“Are we your slaves?” Khan told the crowd. “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask of us? 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.”
That was reportedly enough to reportedly get one State Department official to accuse Pakistan of taking an “aggressively neutral position.”
It was then the State Department encouraged the Pakistani government to oust Khan with a no-confidence vote, which it did days later.
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. -MSNBC
The State Department told The Intercept that “nothing in these purported comments shows the United States taking a position on who the leader of Pakistan should be.”
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Trends Journal.
“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 be better if he is removed from power,” Arif Rafiq, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute and specialist on Pakistan, told The Intercept.
Sadanand Dhume, wrote in the WSJ that the case against Washington “has no substance.”
For starters, the purported cable is Pakistani, not American. A Pakistani smoking gun can’t establish American culpability. The idea that the U.S. was busy plotting regime change in distant Pakistan in the midst of a major war in Europe is far-fetched. And who would try to oust the leader of another country by telegraphing it in advance through a diplomat? As for Pakistan’s modest contributions to the Ukrainian war effort, these were always in the army’s domain and would have happened regardless of who was prime minister.