Analyzing The Significance Of Imran Khan’s Record-Shattering Twitter Spaces Session

21 APRIL 2022

Source

By Andrew Korybko

From the perspective of a well-intended outsider who’s closely studied Pakistan’s specific national security challenges, it is indeed the case that the greatest casualty of recent events is the partial loss of trust in the official national security narrative since the country’s officials didn’t present a unified front related to the latest such threat that the former Prime Minister claimed was in motion. These developments are unique in Pakistan’s history and further exacerbate the divide between the population’s respective interpretations of recent events and their relation to national security.

The greatest casualty of recent events in Pakistan, irrespective of whether one regards them as a US-orchestrated regime change or a proud display of constitutional integrity, is the partial loss of trust in the official national security narrative. Leaders come and go, some heroically and others shamefully, but national security is supposed to be enduring, especially in a country that’s as seriously afflicted by such threats as Pakistan is. Its leadership and military-intelligence structures, collectively described as The Establishment in Pakistani parlance, used to have the complete trust of their people whenever they’d inform them of a threat to national security, but that’s regrettably no longer the case right now.

Those who interpret recent events as a US-orchestrated regime change are extremely concerned that The Establishment didn’t intervene to thwart this process by potentially postponing the opposition’s no-confidence motion until a comprehensive investigation could be completed to reassure the public about everything. Meanwhile, those who interpret these same events as a proud display of constitutional integrity are aghast what they believe was the previous Prime Minister’s exploitation of national security narratives for self-serving political reasons in order to cling to power against all odds. There is no middle ground: someone either believes one or the other, and both interpretations appear to be irreconcilable.

This poses a truly unprecedented dilemma for The Establishment since never before has the population been so polarized about the official national security narrative. After all, the country’s prior leader made very dramatic accusations that were backed up by members of his government such as his Foreign Minister. He even held a meeting of the National Security Council to discuss the alleged regime change threat that he later revealed was orchestrated by the US as punishment for his independent foreign policy. Pakistanis had hitherto been taught to always take their leaders’ warnings about national security for granted and to never doubt them due to the severity of such threats to their country.

Everyone of course has the right to personally be skeptical about whatever it is that they’re being told, but those who believed the former Prime Minister were reacting exactly as The Establishment had taught them to over the years. Society was already well aware of Hybrid War threats due to their military-intelligence structures’ public awareness campaigns to inform them about the multidimensional forms that they could take. Considering Pakistan’s troubled history of ties with the US and the latter’s documented history of carrying out regime changes across the world through very creative means, it was certainly believable that their former leader was telling the truth. They had no reason to doubt him.

The former Deputy Speaker’s decision to dismiss the opposition’s no-confidence motion on that basis therefore made complete sense to them, who assumed that The Establishment tacitly approved of that happening since they thought that it shared the former Prime Minister’s national security concerns about this scandal. The Supreme Court’s ruling that this was unconstitutional, however, surprised those who were taught to take their leaders’ national security warnings for granted and to never question them since everyone was previously informed that sometimes the average person doesn’t have all the information needed to accurately assess such threats, especially if this information remains classified.

It was therefore with complete shock that these same people then witnessed the sequence of events that followed whereby the former Prime Minister was ultimately removed through the same no-confidence motion that his own government described as playing into the hands of the US’ regime change plot against Pakistan. Similarly shocking to them was that The Establishment didn’t intervene to stop this from happening, which suggested one of two mutually exclusive conclusions: high-ranking members within it associated with this institution’s pro-US school of thought were part of this plot or their former Prime Minister exploited their trust and lied to them for self-serving political reasons.

From the opposite side, those who were always against the former Prime Minister never personally trusted him but for whatever reason went against what The Establishment had hitherto taught them about taking their leaders’ national security warnings for granted. They publicly expressed not just skepticism, but even condemned it as a lie. According to the social standards that were widely assumed to have been in place prior to last weekend’s events, these individuals could have been described as defying The Establishment and potentially even endangering national security, but their narrative now seems credible to some since that same institution didn’t intervene to stop that scandalous process.  

From the perspective of a well-intended outsider who’s closely studied Pakistan’s specific national security challenges, it is indeed the case that the greatest casualty of recent events is the partial loss of trust in the official national security narrative since the country’s officials didn’t present a unified front related to the latest such threat that the former Prime Minister claimed was in motion. This observation is indisputable no matter how much some might want to suppress it. It must be acknowledged and responded to in the interests of restoring this partially lost trust in order to sustainably ensure national security the next time that such threats present themselves so that people don’t dismiss it as fake news.

This challenge will be immensely difficult to resolve considering the unprecedented polarization within society in response to the latest events. The former ruling party already proved that their interpretation of patriotism, sovereignty, and national security appeals to a wide segment of the population despite differing from The Establishment’s after inspiring the largest rallies that the country has seen in decades. The former Prime Minister also continues to describe those who replaced him as an imported government and declared the beginning of a peaceful and legal freedom struggle to politically liberate Pakistan from this foreign yoke.

These developments are unique in Pakistan’s history and further exacerbate the divide between the population’s respective interpretations of recent events and their relation to national security. There’s no doubt that the country’s enemies will inevitably attempt to exploit this dynamic, which is why it’s of the highest importance that society returns to unquestionably trusting their leaders and The Establishment whenever they warn about national security threats. This must be the top priority right now for all Pakistanis, both those within The Establishment (including its rank and file) and outside of it. Trust must urgently be restored, but for that to happen, a national dialogue might first be needed.

It’s Fifth Generation Warfare To Falsely Describe Imran Khan As Fascist

23 APRIL 2022

Source

By Andrew Korybko

Many Pakistanis feel that something is very wrong with incumbent Prime Minister Sharif’s description of his predecessor’s government as a “fascist regime” but can’t quite put their finger on it or feel uncomfortable calling it what it is: 5GW waged against them by their own leader for purely partisan purposes.

Fifth Generation Warfare (5GW), which can also be described as Hybrid Warfare, generally refers to the non-kinetic/non-military means that are employed by a foreign state to destabilize a targeted one. These importantly include information warfare and the increasingly creative narratives that are associated with such campaigns. Pakistan has long been targeted by 5GW due to its geostrategic position, which is why The Establishment – which refers to that country’s powerful military-intelligence structures – invested heavily in informing the masses about this over the years so that they can defend their homeland from such threats. Nowadays, however, the 5GW attacks against it are coming from within and being launched to advance a purely partisan aim. The worst part is that those participating in this campaign don’t realize how counterproductive it is to their country’s national security interests.

Everything began in the run-up to former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s ouster from office through the opposition’s ultimately successful no-confidence motion against him. He described that sequence of events as a US-orchestrated regime change against him as punishment for his independent foreign policy, especially its Russian dimension, while the new authorities insisted that it was a purely constitutional process and therefore entirely legal. The weeks since have seen the former premier inspire some of the largest rallies in his country’s history. He also shattered the world record for the most popular Twitter Spaces session. Pakistan is now in the throes of a major political crisis that can objectively be described as a revolution after former Prime Minister Khan declared the formation of a new freedom movement whose followers will soon descend from all across the country onto the capital.

The grassroots appeal of his patriotic, pro-sovereignty, and national security narratives broke The Establishment’s prior monopoly on them and thus heralded a new socio-political (soft security) era for the country. Instead of pragmatically going with the flow and trying to regain partial control of these dynamic by extending credence to some of his interpretations, the new authorities fiercely pushed back against all of this in increasingly wild ways that included dehumanizing the former premier’s supporters as so-called “bots” and even describing him as a so-called “fascist”. Not only has this proven to be completely counterproductive to their cause of delegitimizing his narratives since all that it did was further embolden his supporters by convincing them that there’s indeed an actual conspiracy at play against them personally, but it also crucially eroded Pakistan’s national security at home and abroad.

To explain, newly inaugurated Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s description of his predecessor’s government as a so-called “fascist regime” amounted to the blowing of a dog whistle intended to signal to his allied media that they should maximally amplify this false narrative in a desperate attempt to delegitimize the former premier and his supporters. In other words, it represented the onset of an information warfare campaign, which thus makes it an example of 5GW, albeit one that’s being waged for purely partisan reasons and by none other than the new Prime Minister himself. The incumbent leader’s 5GW against his own people is unprecedented and took many by surprise since it was unexpected that someone in his position would ever do such a thing, especially after The Establishment spent years informing everyone of how dangerous such infowars can be.

Without realizing it, Prime Minister Sharif just discredited millions of his own people but also nearly the last four years of Pakistani policy. His emotional description, which he probably didn’t put any thought into before expressing otherwise he likely wouldn’t have shared it, made it impossible for there to be any civilized discourse between the feuding political sides since he implied that they’re genocidal racists. Even worse, his careless description discredited everything that former Prime Minister Khan ever did on the world stage, including his famous description of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a fascist while speaking at the UN General Assembly in September 2019. No Pakistani leader has ever done more for the Kashmiri cause than former Prime Minister Khan, yet incumbent Prime Minister Sharif regards all of that and more as nothing but the illegitimate actions of a so-called “fascist regime”.

By innuendo, it’s implied that his team plans to reverse everything that their “fascist” predecessor did, which raises questions about the new authorities’ stance towards Kashmir as well as the speculative scenario of hosting US bases after former Prime Minister Khan famously said “absolutely not” in response to a question about that last summer. After all, if the former premier presided over a so-called “fascist regime” that’s therefore presumed to have been “illegitimate” due to that extremely specific description of it, then it naturally follows that his supposedly “anti-fascist” replacement will dismantle everything that his predecessor did. This has enormous national security implications since the Kashmir Conflict is inextricably connected to Pakistan’s security. It also makes one wonder whether incumbent Prime Minister Sharif will revise his predecessor’s newly promulgated National Security Policy too.

That document eschewed geopolitics in favor of geo-economics, explicitly stating that “Pakistan’s geo-economic pivot is focused on enhancing trade and economic ties through connectivity that links Central Asia to our warm waters.” This means that relations with Russia are also of extremely high importance for Pakistan since that part of the world is traditionally regarded as being within that country’s so-called “sphere of influence”. For that reason, it’s all the more uncomfortable that the new authorities haven’t clarified anything about the deal that former Prime Minister Khan claimed that he was negotiating with Russia to receiver a 30% discount on agricultural and energy imports. This raises suspicions that that they might be seeking to reverse that dimension of the former premier’s “fascist” foreign policy, which in turn fuels speculation that they’re operating under US influence at the expense of national interests.

That’s because the deal that former Prime Minister Khan spoke about would objectively be in Pakistan’s national interests since this massive country desperately needs more food and fuel, especially at discounted prices, in order to weather the global agricultural and energy crises. Potentially doing away with that deal without having a better one to clinch with someone else instead would therefore be against Pakistan’s objective national interests, but it might be “justified” on a false “anti-fascist” pretext considering the ridiculous description that incumbent Prime Minister Sharif shared about his predecessor. In terms of 5GW, this “anti-fascist” infowar against former Prime Minister Khan fulfills the purpose of distracting the public from potential foreign policy decisions that might arguably be against the national interest, whether abandoning the deal with Russia or discrediting criticism of Indian policy.

This campaign is also actually fascist itself since it aims to dehumanize his supporters as nothing but so-called “bots” exactly as all fascist infowars throughout history have sought to do to their opponents. Once someone and their movement are described as “fascist”, those who labelled them as such feel morally superior and that they have the right to do whatever is needed – including that which would be regarded as immoral if done to anyone other than a so-called “fascist” – to fight against this so-called “evil”. It’s already dangerous enough that the incumbent Prime Minister discredited millions of his own people as “fascists” but it’s even worse that he also unwittingly discredited everything that Pakistan did on the world stage over nearly the past four years under the previous Prime Minister. This includes describing Indian Prime Minister Modi as fascist, the reported Russia deal, and declining US bases.

Pakistanis are very informed people who paid close attention when their respected Establishment informed them about 5GW threats to their country. Many feel that something is very wrong with incumbent Prime Minister Sharif’s description of his predecessor’s government as a “fascist regime” but can’t quite put their finger on it or feel uncomfortable calling it what it is: 5GW waged against them by their own leader for purely partisan purposes. This is unprecedented and also very dangerous since it threatens the country’s national security at home and abroad if this description is exploited as a pretext to crack down on the former premier’s supporters and/or to reverse his foreign policy over the past four years, especially towards India, Russia, and the US. Hopefully incumbent Prime Minister Sharif will realize how counterproductive his description was and will ask allied media to stop amplifying it.

Ben Norton on the US-Backed Coup in Pakistan, Neverending War in Ukraine, and a Multipolar World

April 21st, 2022

By Lowkey

Source

“Anyone who knows the basic history of the U.S. knows that it has organized coups and impeachments and color revolutions around the world for many decades, but [Khan’s ouster] was pretty much done in broad daylight!” – Ben Norton

Lowkey is joined by journalist Ben Norton to discuss the recent U.S.-backed coup in Pakistan, the West’s plan to turn Ukraine into a neverending war, and the new multipolar global order taking shape before our eyes.

Ben Norton is a Nicaragua-based journalist whose work is focused on U.S. foreign policy and international politics. He recently launched his new journalism platform, Multipolarista. His video content can also be found at Rokfin and on YouTube.

Today, he sat down to speak to Lowkey about the recent U.S.-backed coup against Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. Earlier this month, Khan was removed from his position following a vote of no confidence in his leadership, after several small parties from his coalition changed their allegiance.

Khan fought back, claiming that the United States had threatened him and that U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu had effectively organized his ouster. There are several pictures of U.S. officials meeting senior Pakistani politicians shortly before the ouster.

The final straw, for the United States, appears to have been Khan’s refusal to join with the U.S. in condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Khan’s political enemies have essentially confirmed his story, noting that Lu promised that “all would be forgiven” if they moved against him. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” said opposition leader Shahbaz Sharif, explaining that Pakistan was not in a position to defy U.S. orders.

Norton told Lowkey:

This is an incredible, blatant act of meddling by the U.S. government. Of course, anyone who knows the basic history of the U.S. knows that it has organized coups and impeachments and color revolutions around the world for many decades, but [Khan’s ouster] was pretty much done in broad daylight!”

Norton also discussed his new article, “NATO admits it wants ‘Ukrainians to keep dying’ to bleed Russia, not peace,” which details how Western nations are flooding the country with arms, not to stop the violence, but to keep it going indefinitely. The arming of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the 1980s appears to be the model they are following. These weapons do not come free, however, and are being sold with strings attached. Thus, Ukrainians will pay both in cash and in blood. As Norton warned:

Ukraine is going to be trapped in all this debt that it will have to pay back to the U.S. How is it going to pay it back? It is going to have to privatize state-owned assets, sell off natural resources, and cut wages for Ukrainians. And this is after years of [Western-model] neoliberal shock therapy imposed on Ukraine.”

The pair also discussed the changing global order, with a rising China leading a bloc of countries intent on being independent from the Washington-led system. This, Norton contended, is in part down to the punitive sanctions regime that the U.S. imposes on anyone who angers it, pushing other states closer together in common interests. Today, more than one-third of the world lives under American sanctions. “What this has done is that it has forced countries around the world to find alternatives,” Norton told Lowkey, adding:

By imposing more and more sanctions on countries, it has incentivized them to look for alternatives. They don’t want to hold their wealth in dollars because we have seen the U.S. government seizing the foreign currency reserves of Iran, Venezuela and Afghanistan. And now they just did the same thing to Russia!”

Join Lowkey today for a critically important discussion about current events and the future of the world, and do not forget to subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform.