Tag: pakistan

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.

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Cool “Afghanistan Withdrawal”, Bro

The US government is reportedly close to securing a deal with Pakistan that will ensure its ability to continue military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan, the nation where the Biden administration proudly “ended” a decades-long war.

“The Biden administration has told lawmakers that the US is nearing a formalized agreement with Pakistan for use of its airspace to conduct military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan, according to three sources familiar with the details of a classified briefing with members of Congress that took place on Friday morning,” reads a new report from CNN.

“The briefing comes as the White House is still trying to ensure that it can carry out counterterrorism operations against ISIS-K and other adversaries in Afghanistan now that there is no longer a US presence on the ground for the first time in two decades after the NATO withdrawal from the country,” the report reads.

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Pakistan province to block the SIM cards of unvaccinated citizens

In an unprecedented move to punish the vaccine-hesitant, the provincial government of Pakistan’s Punjab province has decided to block the SIM cards of every citizen who refuses to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

The wildly authoritarian decision was reportedly made at a meeting led by provincial health minister Dr. Yasmin Rashid in Lahore on August 5.  The action was largely in response to the Punjab Primary Health Department’s report that the province has failed to achieve its set target for COVID-19 vaccination.

Reports indicate that since the start of the vaccination drive on Feb. 2, approximately 300,000 people have failed to return to receive their second vaccine dose after receiving their first one.  (An official with the Pakistan Ministry of National Health Services [NHS] said the second dose of the majority of the Wuhan Flu coronavirus vaccines is administered after an interval of three weeks, except in the case of the AstraZeneca vaccine, where the second dose is given after a period of 12 weeks.)

This immediately caused me to think: “Maybe they died or got very ill after their first dose and couldn’t — or did not wish to — return for an encore.”  But perhaps I am too cynical.

And then I read that the official added, “We are categorizing such people; there is a possibility that some of them might have died before getting their second dose.  Another group which has been identified consists of those who contracted COVID-19 after receiving their first dose and then decided not to get the second one.  Others might have fallen to the negative propaganda and skipped the vaccination.”

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