In April last year, towards the end of his nearly four-year term, Imran Khan faced a vote of no confidence in Parliament. This would have been embarrassing for any prime minister and Imran Khan was no exception. In his characteristic style, however, he blamed his ouster on the United States, suggesting that it was due to US pressure, and not his falling out with the Pakistani establishment or arrogant attitude with other politicians, that he had been ousted.
The controversial cipher that he claimed proved the US toppled his government has now allegedly been leaked and made public on August 9, by a US website called The Intercept. I will discuss the contents of the cipher and The Intercept story below. But first, let's talk about how the cipher was used by Imran Khan to build a political narrative.
For months, he waved a piece of paper at his rallies (supposedly the cipher), riling up his base with the idea that a foreign power had conspired against him and removed his government, even though he had been removed by a democratic vote. This fed well into his narrative of "haqiqi azadi" (true freedom). Yet, ironically, on the one hand, as he continued to rant against the United States, and particularly Donald Lu, the US diplomat who had met with the Pakistani envoy in Washington, to allegedly convey the message to get rid of Imran Khan or else, on the other hand, PTI's USA chapter was tasked to lobby for Imran Khan in America.
Playing politics on the cipher while reaching out to US lawmakers
While the State Department publicly stated, for the first time, that an ex-prime minister from Pakistan wasn't telling the truth, PTI's US operatives lobbied their congressmen and women to speak on behalf of Imran Khan, pressing the case that his fundamental rights were at stake.
Not only does Imran Khan directly ask for intervention from a US Congresswoman in that call, but Maxine, for her part, seems completely unaware of the cipher conspiracy
In one particular Zoom call that his party workers had set up between Imran Khan and Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the contents of which were later leaked, Imran Khan conveniently changes his story to say that it was the Pakistan Army Chief, and not the US, that kicked him out of power. He appeals to Maxine to speak out against this "crackdown on democracy," and goes so far as to say, "when someone like you speaks out, Maxine, it makes a lot of waves in our country."
Not only does Imran Khan directly ask for intervention from a US Congresswoman in that call, but Maxine, for her part, seems completely unaware of the cipher conspiracy peddled by Imran Khan earlier and the State Department's rebuttal. Congressman Brad Sherman, who also wrote that he had spoken to Imran Khan, petitioned Secretary Antony Blinken on his behalf, but did not address the matter of the cipher either. Nor curiously, did the journalists at The Intercept approach either Maxine Waters or Brad Sherman for comment on the subject.
In a recent interview with Wajahat S Khan, Murtaza Hussain, (co-author with Ryan Grim), when speaking about his piece in The Intercept, remarked that since Pakistan is not as democratic or transparent as the US, information gathering is more difficult. But as a US-based reporter, why didn't he ask Brad Sherman or Maxine Waters if Imran Khan mentioned the cable to either of them when he asked them to intervene on his behalf?
The Intercept story versus the contents of the cipher
Instead of trying to research independently the claims made by PTI, The Intercept piece echoes many of Imran Khan's talking points and draws far-fetched conclusions. The intro, for example, states, "The US 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."
That is not what the cable, as published in The Intercept, said and nor could Imran Khan's Russia visit on the eve of the Ukraine invasion be called "neutrality". In fact, in the text of the leaked cable, which is allegedly penned by Pakistan's envoy to Washington, Asad Majeed, Donald Lu purportedly states, "It does not seem such a neutral stand to us."
Pakistan has historically had much closer ties to the US than to Russia, and the US would naturally want to protest a stark policy change
Asad Majeed allegedly further writes, "I asked Don if the reason for a strong US reaction was Pakistan's abstention in the voting in the UNGA. He categorically replied in the negative and said that it was due to the Prime Minister's visit to Moscow."
This would seem like a perfectly reasonable position for a US diplomat to take. He is not objecting to Pakistan's neutral vote at the UN but is objecting to then Prime Minister Imran Khan's untimely visit to Russia.
What the cable does not say but what several foreign news outlets had reported on at the time was Imran Khan, caught on video, saying, "What an exciting time to be here!" His later claims that he had no idea Russia was going to invade were also baseless as the CIA had called the invasion "imminent" and the US mission had begun evacuating from Kyiv two weeks prior to the Russian invasion.
Pakistan has historically had much closer ties to the US than to Russia, and the US would naturally want to protest a stark policy change, particularly at a time when Russia is going to war against another US ally.
Pak-US relations had soured well before the cipher controversy
Moreover, the diplomatic isolation The Intercept piece claims Pakistan was threatened with if Imran Khan was not removed, had already transpired under Imran Khan's leadership. President Biden had refused to engage with Imran Khan since he assumed office. A Financial Times headline back in August 2021stated, "Pakistan's security adviser complains Joe Biden has not called Imran Khan."
The cold shoulder came as the Taliban captured territory in Afghanistan in the face of a hasty US withdrawal. Imran's favourite general drinking coffee in Kabul's Serena Hotel, and smirking, "Don't worry. All will be ok," didn't win Pakistan any friends in Washington.
Moeed Yusuf, the security adviser the FT was referencing was sent to Washington, tasked with a mission to get Biden to change his mind, but it didn't happen. Instead, he ended up telling the FT that "Pakistan had other options," most likely hinting at China.
To be fair to Imran Khan, some of the cold shoulder he got from America was because, at the time, he was seen as the military's puppet, and the US and Pakistan military did not end well in Afghanistan. However, for someone who never lost an opportunity to blame America, Imran Khan wasn't able to cultivate many friends in China either.
The generals were late to learn. Many of us had been saying from the outset that Imran Khan was too non-serious a personality for the office of prime minister
The generals start to blame Imran Khan
With no boost from Biden, Imran spent the rest of his time in office reminiscing about how well he had gotten along with Donald Trump. While the military lost no time in dumping the fallout from the soured US-Pak relations on to him alone. On January 23, 2023, the New York Times ran a guest essay by Arif Rafiq, titled "Why Pakistan's army wants the US back in the region." Rafiq wrote that Imran Khan had "an anti-American streak," while the army was far more realistic, didn't hold grudges and was willing to work with the US.
Imran Khan has since been explaining to Maxine Waters and Brad Sherman that he isn't anti-American either and that it's the army that has conspired against him.
The generals were late to learn. Many of us had been saying from the outset that Imran Khan was too non-serious a personality for the office of prime minister. Just as the US image had suffered internationally under Donald Trump's presidency, so too had Pakistan become isolated under Imran Khan's stewardship.
Souring of relations not just with the US and Europe, but also China and the Gulf Arab states, is partially what caused the army to rethink the Imran Khan project.
The Intercept's insistence that its source is a military man "disillusioned by the country's military leadership," as a result of Imran Khan's ouster is suspicious because that is exactly the narrative one hears in PTI circles. Pakistan's finest journalists have commented on this in their vlogs and discussed that the premise of the story and the alleged motive of the source to come forward is just too reflective of the PTI stance.
If however we assume the source is a military man, then his fate cannot be better than Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning's, who had disclosed classified diplomatic documents to Wikileaks, and was subsequently court-martialled by the US army and then charged under the Espionage Act. Given that Imran Khan had flippantly admitted in an October 2022 TV show with Maria Memon on ARY News that he does not know where his copy of the cipher is and that it has disappeared, The Intercept story could result in legal challenges for him too.