{"id":1182042,"date":"2023-08-16T17:44:53","date_gmt":"2023-08-16T17:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=441545"},"modified":"2023-08-16T17:44:53","modified_gmt":"2023-08-16T17:44:53","slug":"pakistan-confirms-secret-diplomatic-cable-showing-u-s-pressure-to-remove-imran-khan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/08\/16\/pakistan-confirms-secret-diplomatic-cable-showing-u-s-pressure-to-remove-imran-khan\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan Confirms Secret Diplomatic Cable Showing U.S. Pressure to Remove Imran Khan"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a year<\/u> and a half, Pakistani politics has been gripped by word of a diplomatic cable said to describe U.S. State Department officials encouraging the removal of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan from power. Last week, The Intercept published<\/a> the contents of the cable, known internally as a cypher, which revealed U.S. diplomats pressing for the removal of Khan over his neutral stance on the conflict in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Since it was published, the response to the story from Pakistani and U.S. officials has been both defensive and contradictory.<\/p>\n

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Pakistan\u2019s leadership quickly began to question the authenticity of the document. Former Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari \u2014 who is part of the political opposition to Khan \u2014 had gone public suggesting<\/a> that the published cable was \u201cinauthentic,\u201d arguing that \u201canything can be typed up on a piece of paper.\u201d Even so, he blamed Khan and said the former prime minister should be tried under Pakistan\u2019s Official Secrets Act for potentially leaking classified documents.<\/p>\n

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in the days after the cable was reported, told local media that the leak represented a \u201cmassive crime,\u201d while hedging about whether its contents were true. Just days later, though, Sharif confirmed the document in an interview<\/a> with The Guardian. \u201cKhan said he had the [cable] but he had lost it,\u201d Sharif, who handed over the government to a caretaker prime minister on Monday, said. \u201cNow it has been published on a website.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither Sharif nor Bhutto Zardari have provided evidence of Khan\u2019s involvement in the leak of the document, which was provided to The Intercept by a source inside the Pakistani military. On Wednesday, a month after it announced an investigation, the Pakistani government filed charges against Khan for mishandling and misusing the cable.<\/p>\n

Despite confirming the document\u2019s authenticity, Sharif said that the cable \u2014 which quoted U.S. diplomats, furious with Khan for his alleged \u201caggressive neutrality\u201d toward Russia, threatening Pakistan with \u201cisolation\u201d should he stay in power \u2014 did not represent a conspiracy against the former prime minister.<\/p>\n

The self-contradictory three-step move \u2014 to simultaneously question the document\u2019s authenticity, blame Khan for leaking it in what amounts to a treasonous act, and then add that the substance of the cable is unremarkable \u2014 has characterized the Pakistani and State Department response over the past week.<\/p>\n

On the U.S. side, the State Department had previously dismissed claims by Khan that the U.S. had pressured him to be removed from power. After the disclosure of the leaked cable, State Department officials told The Intercept that they could not comment on the accuracy of a foreign government document but argued that the comments did not show the U.S. taking sides in Pakistani politics. \u201cNothing in these purported comments shows the United States taking a position on who the leader of Pakistan should be,\u201d State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said in a statement to The Intercept.<\/p>\n

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When pressed further on the document at a press briefing, Miller told a reporter, who asked whether the substance of the reported conversation in the cable was accurate, that<\/a> the report was \u201cclose-ish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khan himself has<\/u> reportedly been placed under escalating pressure<\/a> while in prison; he is currently serving a three-year sentence for corruption charges that his supporters say are politically motivated. The campaign against Khan culminated in this week\u2019s terror investigation for the cable leak.<\/p>\n

A widespread crackdown<\/a> against his supporters continues, with thousands still languishing in detention over allegations of involvement in his political party and a series of anti-military demonstrations that took place in the country in May.<\/p>\n

The U.S. government, meanwhile, deemed the crackdown an \u201cinternal matter\u201d for the Pakistani government, while continuing to engage the Pakistani military that is believed to have orchestrated Khan\u2019s removal.<\/p>\n

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The disclosure of the cable \u2014 and the revelation that Khan had been largely truthful in his depiction of its contents, including an accurate quote of a State Department official saying that \u201call would be forgiven\u201d if Khan were removed from power \u2014 could reshape the course of Pakistan\u2019s political crisis. The cable\u2019s publication has already become a major topic of conversation in Pakistani media.<\/p>\n

Khan\u2019s own political fate now largely depends on how far the present military-led government decides to pursue its vendetta against him and his supporters. The revelation of the cable\u2019s contents and the divisions that the violent repression of Khan\u2019s party have evidently opened inside the military establishment only further heightens a crisis that has gripped Pakistan since Khan was removed from power last year.<\/p>\n

The post Pakistan Confirms Secret Diplomatic Cable Showing U.S. Pressure to Remove Imran Khan<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After initially suggesting the cable published by The Intercept was inauthentic, Pakistani officials now claim it doesn\u2019t reveal a conspiracy.<\/p>\n

The post Pakistan Confirms Secret Diplomatic Cable Showing U.S. Pressure to Remove Imran Khan<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182042"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1182042"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1190103,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182042\/revisions\/1190103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1182042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1182042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1182042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}