PM Imran Khan Alleges "Regime Change" Attempt by Biden-Admin in Pakistan

It's Just Not Cricket

1) Pakistani Realignment

Since Pakistan gained independence in 1947, not a single Pakistani prime minister has completed a full five-year term in office. Despite defying odds to beat the two party system, PM Imran Khan has proven no exception. Last week, he was deposed in a motion of no confidence. Imran Khan has publicly and rather alarmingly blamed a Biden-admin “regime change” operation to punish him for visiting Putin and for his refusal to acquiesce to the US State Department’s demands over the Ukraine war. Calling foul play, the former cricket captain and world cup hero has vowed to fight on against what he calls “foreign conspirators”. Here are some match highlights to date.

i) Imran Khan and Putin

Early March, as Putin’s tanks rolled into Ukraine, Pakistani PM Imran Khan was in Moscow for talks. Since the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan in the 80s, the two countries had been on opposite ends of the Cold War. But the failure of the US-led War on Terror and the US defeat in Afghanistan has steadily thawed diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Al-Jazeera reports:

ii) Pakistan at the UN

Such that when time came for Pakistan to vote on a motion critical of Russia at the UN, Pakistan under Imran Khan abstained. Pakistan’s former allies among Western nations were disturbed at this development. They expressed a highly unusual level of criticism at Pakistan’s sovereign foreign policy decisions in this regard. In a rare display of public pressure, the heads of 22 diplomatic missions in Islamabad issued an open letter urging Pakistan to condemn Russia at the UN. Imran Khan lashed out, demanding to know why Pakistanis are expected to act as Western “slaves”.

The Times reports:

iii) Pakistan and Bill Gates:

After both Khan’s visit to Moscow, and his rebuke at pressure to vote a certain way at the UN, Bill Gates decided to visit Pakistan for the first time. One is left to wonder why Gates chose this particularly strained time to visit, when he had never visited before. There he was met by none other than the President of the country.

The Express Tribune reports:

“Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on Tuesday wrote a letter to President Dr Arif Alvi wherein he thanked him for the warm welcome during his first visit to Pakistan in February, saying his foundation is keen to deepen the existing ties on issues of shared interests.”

To be fair, and considering what happened before and after this visit, and particularly due to his now known role in the global Great Reset agenda, Bill Gates’ first visit to Pakistan is rather questioningly timed.

iv) CIA bases rejected in Pakistan

The above diplomatic difficulties come in the context of Pakistan under Khan already having refused point blank to allow the CIA to set up bases in order to launch attacks from that country into Afghanistan.

In 2021 a reporter for Axios asked Imran Khan:

“Will you allow the American government to have CIA here in Pakistan to conduct cross-border, counter-terrorism missions against al-Qaeda, ISIS or the Taliban?”

PM Imran Khan replies: “Absolutely not”

Reporter: “Seriously?”

Imran Khan: “There’s no way we’re going to allow any bases, any sort of action from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan, absolutely not.”

Was it something he said?…

v) Punishing Pakistan

The culmination of the above perceived insults by Pakistan to the United States of America has led to what Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakhrova has deemed as a decision to “punish” Pakistan.

The Times of India reports:

“The further development of the situation leaves no doubt that the United States decided to punish the ‘disobedient’ Imran Khan,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on April 4, citing the PTI members’ “sudden” decision to join the opposition.

"This is another attempt at shameless interference by the U.S. in the internal affairs of an independent state for its own selfish purposes. The above facts eloquently testify to this. The Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan himself has repeatedly stated that the conspiracy against him is inspired and financed from abroad.”

2) The End of Pakistan’s Two-Party Oligopoly

i) State Corruption

In developments that initially led to his ability to break the two-party system, the two main political dynasties in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and the Bhutto family’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) were still reeling from what the Panama Papers had revealed in 2016 about off-shore political corruption.

The New York Times reports:

Cases investigating this corruption were pending, former PM Nawaz Sharif had to resign in disgrace and Imran Khan became Prime Minster off the back of this scandal. Former PM Nawaz Sharif was eventually imprisoned and barred from holding public office.

Pakistan’s Dawn Newspaper reports:

These were followed in 2021 by further damaging leaks in the Pandora papers, which also implicated the Pakistani army leadership and some individual politicians serving under Khan.

Al-Jazeera reports:

Khan’s reputation as an outsider campaigning to clean up the country via his Tehriki Insaf Party (PTI) remained in place, and was in fact enhanced among many due to these startling revelations.

ii) Revenge of the Oligarchs

In an unprecedented move and fearing further justice that their loss of power and reputation would inevitably bring, Pakistan’s opposition parties formed a national umbrella movement to oust PM Khan and end his humiliating anti-corruption drive, while seeking to return Pakistan to their former protectors under the US State Department.

The opportunity to act came after Khan’s aforementioned visit to Russia and the war in Ukraine. A motion of no confidence against Khan was submitted to Parliament. But Khan dissolved his government before the motion could be voted on, instead calling a national election. In the context of such large corruption scandals, any national election could see Khan returned to office with a comfortable majority.

The opposition could not countenance this and took Khan to the Supreme Court to have him reinstated as PM, so that they could depose him themselves and replace him with one of their own for the remaining duration of Parliament. This worked. Khan was deposed and the brother of the disgraced former PM Nawaz Sharif, the former governor of Punjab Shehbaz Sharif was installed as Prime Minister.

The BBC reports:

The same people that for years looted the country were now back in power.

Pakistan’s Dawn Newspaper reports:

This is how a US-friendly but corrupt political dynasty was returned to power, and corruption allegations - including those that implicated the country’s new PM - could be parked.

3) Imran Khan & US-led “Regime Change”

i) Imran Khan Names Those Implicated

Imran Khan immediately took to the airwaves and made some incredibly serious allegations in front of the nation. He claimed that the American Under Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu had summoned the Pakistani ambassador to DC and issued a threat, after Khan’s visit to Moscow.

Twitter user Tengku JPK12 has kindly provided a written translation (I confirm the meaning)

Imran Khan went so far as to even name the US official who threatened regime change:

Pakistan’s Geo News reports:

Khan’s PTI party officials have even claimed that they sent the top secret diplomatic cable to the Pakistani Supreme Court.

Translation: “The secret sealed letter sent by the National Assembly on my instructions, which clearly states that if the no-confidence motion is successful then there will be a pardon - else Pakistan will face serious consequences, has been received by the Chief Justice's Office of the Supreme Court amid hopes of an inquiry by the