Via the above:
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/pakistan ... imran-khan
In July 2021, without the prime minister’s knowledge, the military quietly retained a former CIA Islamabad station chief as a lobbyist in Washington, an early sign that Pakistan’s generals were beginning to move independently of their own elected government.
On February 24, the day Russian forces crossed into Ukraine, Imran Khan was in Moscow for a long-scheduled meeting with President Putin. Days before that fateful meeting, Jake Sullivan, national security advisor to Biden, had called his Pakistani counterpart, Moeed Yusuf, urging him to persuade Khan to cancel the trip. The details of that call, later leaked to Drop Site, show Sullivan warning against the visit and pressing Islamabad to side clearly with the U.S. in the Ukraine war. Khan ignored the warning.
On March 7, 2022, Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington, Asad Majeed Khan, met with Donald Lu, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs. That conversation, documented in a classified diplomatic cable that would later be leaked, became the inflection point of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. According to the cable, Lu told the ambassador that Washington’s grievances with Khan’s government could be set aside, “all will be forgiven,” in the phrase the Pakistani ambassador would later cite, if Khan were removed from office through a no-confidence vote.
Khan was removed on April 9, 2022, in a no-confidence vote backed by Pakistan’s military. His party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, was subsequently outlawed, stripped of its electoral symbol ahead of the 2024 general election, and barred from fielding candidates under its own banner. Members who won seats as independents were denied certification.
Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were jailed on a series of corruption, contempt, and national security charges. Both remain in prison to this day, Khan under solitary confinement since last year.
Under the new government, installed with the military’s backing, Islamabad began delivering to Washington what it had refused to deliver under Khan.
