pakistan prime minister visit to russia

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Russia rolls out red carpet to welcome Imran

This is the first official visit of any Pakistani prime minister to Russia in two decades

Prime Minister Imran Khan was accorded a red carpet welcome upon his arrival in Moscow on Wednesday on a two-day official visit at the invitation of President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin.

Upon arrival at the airport, the prime minister and his delegation was warmly received by Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov and the high officials of Pakistan Embassy. The prime minister was also given a guard of honour.

Read more: Moscow-Islamabad set to write new chapter in bilateral ties

The prime minister is accompanied by a high-level delegation, including federal ministers Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Fawad Chaudhry, Asad Umar, Hammad Azhar, Commerce Adviser Razzak Dawood, National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf and National Assembly Member Amir Mahmood Kiani.

This is the first visit by a Pakistani prime minister in more than two decades. The visit will contribute to the further deepening the multifaceted Pakistan-Russia relationship and enhancement of mutual cooperation in diverse fields.

During the visit, the prime minister will hold talks with President Putin on the entire gamut of the bilateral relations, including energy cooperation.

They will also have a wide-ranging exchange of views on major regional and international issues, including Islamophobia and the situation in Afghanistan. 

Also read: PM Imran's visit to Moscow will strengthen relations: Fawad

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Pakistan PM Imran Khan arrives in Russia on maiden two-day visit; aims to reset bilateral ties

Khan’s visit to Moscow will take place hours after US President Joe Biden and other Western governments imposed tough economic sanctions on Russia for sending its military into parts of eastern Ukraine.

Moscow/Islamabad: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday arrived in Russia on a two-day visit - the first by a Pakistani premier in over two decades during which he will hold talks with President Vladimir Putin to reset the bilateral ties and expand cooperation in the energy sector.

Khan is accompanied by a high-level delegation comprising Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry, Planning and Development Minister Asad Umar, Commerce Adviser Abdul Razak Dawood and National Security Adviser Dr Moeed Yusuf.

According to Foreign Office, the bilateral summit between Prime Minister Khan and President Putin will be the highlight of the visit.

Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Igor Morgulov received Prime Minister Khan at the airport, according to the official APP news agency.

“During the Summit meeting, the two leaders will review the entire array of bilateral relations including energy cooperation. They will also have a wide-ranging exchange of views on major regional and international issues, including Islamophobia and the situation in Afghanistan, the FO said.

It said the visit of the Prime Minister will contribute to further deepening of the multifaceted Pakistan-Russia bilateral relationship and enhancement of mutual cooperation in diverse fields.

In a tweet, the Russian Foreign Office said that President Putin and Prime Minister Khan will hold talks in Moscow on Thursday.

Khan’s visit to Russia, which comes amid heightened Russia-Ukraine tensions, is believed to be a clear signal to the West, especially after he said no to Washington on giving military bases in Pakistan following American withdrawal from Afghanistan and not receiving a phone call from US President Joe Biden since he assumed his office in the White House.

Prime Minister Khan has expressed hope for a “peaceful solution” to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine as he emphasised that military conflicts could never solve problems.

“I am not a believer in military conflicts. I believe the civilised societies resolve the difference through dialogues and countries that rely on military conflicts have not studied history properly,” Khan said during an interview with Russia’s state-run television network RT on the eve of his visit.

Khan said he was sure that people in Ukraine and Russia were aware of the consequences of an impending conflict.

President Putin on Monday signed decrees to recognise Ukraine’s regions of Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as independent , escalating the tension in the region and increasing fears of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. He also ordered Russian troops into eastern Ukraine in what the Kremlin called a “peacekeeping” mission in the Moscow-backed regions.

The US-led West has warned Russia that it would face severe consequences for its actions in Ukraine.

Khan’s visit to Moscow comes weeks after he visited China where he attended the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics and held talks with top Chinese leadership including President Xi Jinping despite a diplomatic boycott by the US, European Union and several western countries of the mega event. President Putin also attended the event.

Before leaving for Moscow, the Prime Minister chaired a meeting of the Central Executive Committee of his Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf in Islamabad, where the Prime Minister took the meeting into confidence about his Russia visit.

Radio Pakistan reported that the meeting appreciated the independent foreign policy being pursued by the government.

Later briefing the media persons, Minister for Information Fawad Chaudhry said Prime Minister Khan, in an interview with a Russian television, made it clear that Pakistan will not become part of any bloc.

Chaudhry said the Prime Minister’s Moscow visit has gained great significance in view of the current international scenario. All eyes are now on the meeting between Prime Minister Imran Khan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said.

Khan is the first Pakistani premier to visit Russia in 23 years after former premier Nawaz Sharif travelled to Moscow in 1999.

Though former presidents General Pervez Musharraf, Asif Ali Zardari and former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi visited Russia, none of them was an official trip.

Pakistan’s ties with Russia have moved past the bitter Cold War hostilities in recent years and the chill in the relations between Pakistan and the US has further pushed the country towards Russia and China.

In April last year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Islamabad after a gap of almost nine years. During the visit, he conveyed a message to Pakistani leadership on behalf of President Putin that Moscow was willing to extend all possible help to Islamabad.

The two countries are not just exploring options to deepen economic ties, but Russia is also keen to sell arms to Pakistan, something it avoided in the past because of India’s opposition.

The two countries have already been holding regular joint military exercises since 2016 in another sign of deepening ties between Moscow and Islamabad. Besides, the two countries also share the same view on key regional and international issues including Afghanistan.

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Pakistan PM Imran Khan to embark on two-day visit to Russia this week

Asia pakistan.

Trip to Moscow will be first visit by a Pakistani premier in over two decades

Islamabad: Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to Russia would prove to be a “game-changer” and “open new avenues of cooperation,” according to officials in Islamabad. This will be the first such high-level visit by a Pakistani premier to Russia in over two decades.

Khan will visit Moscow on February 23-24 at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Pakistan foreign office confirmed on Monday. PM Khan will be accompanied by a high-level delegation and the bilateral summit will be the highlight of the visit, according to the ministry of foreign affairs.

During the summit meeting, the two leaders will review the entire array of bilateral relations including energy cooperation. They will also have a wide-ranging exchange of views on major regional and international issues, including Islamophobia and the Afghanistan situation.

Pakistani premier’s visit comes amid spiralling Russia-Ukraine conflict and diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions. However, Pakistani officials are optimistic that PM Khan’s visit would help build a new partnership with Russia. “The visit will open new avenues of cooperation” for both countries as “our relations with Russia have gradually improved,” Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said. Russia visit comes after Imran Khan’s “successful visit” to Beijing, strengthening Pakistan’s ties with regional powers, analysts said.

Economic partnership

Pakistan and Russia have recently announced initiatives to enhance trade cooperation as Moscow aspires to expand its economic footprint in Asia and Islamabad is looking for energy suppliers to meet its economic goals. Bilateral trade between Pakistan and Russia witnessed an increase hitting an all-time high of $790 million in 2020.

The two countries recently agreed to develop cooperation in economic, energy, defence, industrial modernisation, railways and aviation, science and technology. Islamabad and Moscow have also signed a strategic venture called the Pakistan Stream Gas Pipeline project. The 1,100-km-long gas pipeline will secure the delivery of 16 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from LNG terminals in Karachi and Gwadar with those in Lahore. The $2.5 billion project is expected to be completed by 2023.

Business community optimistic

The business community is hopeful that Pakistani premier’s visit to Moscow would open up new opportunities and benefit both sides. “Pakistan provides an open route to Russia and access to markets in the Middle East and Southeast Asia through the Arabian Sea,” Gohar Zia, director of Maxtelz Logistics, told Gulf News.

“With free trade zones at key locations and modern infrastructure for bonded storage in Karachi and Gwadar ports, Pakistan is on its way to becoming a hub for logistics and supply chain, which offers huge benefits to its trading partners.”

Railway link would be crucial to boost connectivity and economic development, he said, citing the Islamabad-Tehran-Istanbul (ITI) which recently resumed operations after a decade. Zia urged the officials in Islamabad and Moscow to consider the “launch of a rail freight service connecting Russia with Pakistan through Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Iran, under a multimodal transportation approach, which will cut transit time to 10 days instead of 45 days via sea.”

“New chapter” in Pakistan-Russia ties

Pakistan and Russia renewed efforts to deepen ties and began a “new chapter” after the visit of Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov to Islamabad in April 2021 - the first by a Russian foreign minister in nearly a decade. Islamabad-Moscow security partnership is growing since 2014 when the two signed a defence cooperation agreement. The two countries have gradually expanded military cooperation with military exercises and exchanges. Pakistan and Russia also share an identical approach on Afghanistan to curb the threat of terrorism.

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Imran Khan: Former Pakistan PM defends Kremlin visit on same day that Russia invaded Ukraine

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Khan called for a general election in Pakistan after he was ousted by opposition parties. He also defended his relationship with China and Russia, stating he was looking out for his people.

News reporter @Amarjournalist_

Monday 30 May 2022 21:05, UK

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Pakistan's former prime minister, Imran Khan, has insisted he wasn't aware that Russia was going to invade Ukraine on the same day he met Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

Speaking to Sky's Mark Austin, Mr Khan, who was ousted by opposition parties in April, has been heavily criticised for having face-to-face talks with Russia's president and shaking hands with him just hours after the war in Ukraine began on 24 February.

On a video link from Peshawar, Mr Khan, who arrived in Russia on 23 February for a two-day visit, said: "How the hell was I supposed to know that the day I landed in Moscow that Putin was going into Ukraine.

"I have never believed in military solutions, ours was a bilateral meeting, it was planned long before.

"We didn't realise that when I would reach there Putin would go into Ukraine. How was I supposed to know and how can you be punished for that?"

He added he is against military solutions in Ukraine and the purpose of his visit to the Kremlin was to discuss bilateral agreements.

The former PM was also questioned about his government's close ties with China and Russia, with Mr Khan stating that he was elected to serve the people of Pakistan.

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"There are 50 million people in Pakistan below the poverty line, I was not elected for them to correct all the wrongs that are going on in the world."

"My responsibility was to my country and so all my relationships, whether it was with China, with the United States, with Russia, were for the benefits of our own people," he said.

Mr Khan also accused India of violating United Nations resolutions in Kashmir, saying Pakistan's neighbour has "illegally taken away the right of the Kashmiri people".

"Did anyone speak against it? There are atrocities going on in Kashmir, 100,000 people in Kashmir have died. Has anyone condemned India for that?

"No because India is an ally, allow us to be neutral too so we can look after our people."

Pakistan shares a large border with Afghanistan and Mr Khan was asked about the Taliban takeover of the country last year. He stated "there was never going to be a military solution" in Afghanistan.

"I am not responsible or a spokesman for the Taliban, if there was any other solution after 20 years of war, you should have found some solution," he said, adding that Pakistan has never supported the Taliban.

"Pakistan is the collateral damage of Afghanistan."

Read more: Shahbaz Sharif replaces ousted Imran Khan as prime minister Pakistan PM breaks silence after being ousted for losing no-confidence vote

In April, Mr Khan lost a no-confidence vote after opposition parties brought a motion against him, blaming the former cricketer for failing to revive the economy and tackle corruption.

Today, he has called for a general election and said the Pakistani people don't want a "foreign-imposed government where members of our party were bought".

"We feel that rather than someone else imposing a government on the country, let the people decide," he said.

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Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in Moscow. Photo Credit: Twitter

Pakistan’s Pivot To Russia And Ouster Of Imran Khan – OpEd

By Nauman Sadiq

Days before Imran Khan’s ouster on April 10 as prime minister in a no-trust motion in the parliament orchestrated by foreign powers, two impersonators were arrested in Washington for posing as US federal security officials and cultivating access to the Secret Service, which protects President Joe Biden, one of whom claimed ties to Pakistani intelligence.

Justice department assistant attorney Joshua Rothstein asked a judge not to release Arian Taherzadeh and Haider Ali, the men arrested on April 6 for posing as Department of Homeland Security investigators for two years before the arrest, the  Guardian reported  on April 8.

The men also stand accused of providing lucrative favors to members of the Secret Service, including one agent on the security detail of the first lady, Jill Biden. Prosecutors said in court filings they seized a cache of weapons from multiple DC apartments tied to the defendants.

Federal prosecutor Rothstein alleged one of the suspects, Haider Ali, “made claims to witnesses that he had connections to the ISI, Pakistan’s military intelligence service.” The Department of Justice (DoJ) is treating the case as a criminal matter and not a national security issue. But the Secret Service suspended four agents over their involvement with the suspects.

“All personnel involved in this matter are on administrative leave and are restricted from accessing Secret Service facilities, equipment, and systems,” the Secret Service said in a statement.

Clearly, planning and preparations were underway to declare Pakistan a rogue actor sponsoring acts of subversion against the United States. Soon after the US-led “regime change” in Pakistan and the formation of government by imperialist stooges, however, the tone of the judge and prosecutors changed. The defendants were released on bail and placed in home detention, though they will not be allowed to go to airports or foreign embassies or to talk to any of the federal agents they allegedly duped.

During his hourlong ruling, Magistrate Judge Michael Harvey lambasted the Justice Department’s claims that the men were dangerous, were trying to compromise agents and were tied to a foreign government, the  CNN reported  on April 13.

Before his ouster as prime minister in a no-trust motion in the parliament on April 10, Imran Khan claimed that Pakistan’s Ambassador to US, Asad Majeed, was warned by Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu that Khan’s continuation in office would have repercussions for bilateral ties between the two nations.

Shireen Mazari, a Pakistani politician who served as the Federal Minister for Human Rights under the Imran Khan government, quoted Donald Lu as saying: “If Prime Minister Imran Khan remained in office, then Pakistan will be isolated from the United States and we will take the issue head on; but if the vote of no-confidence succeeds, all will be forgiven.”

During Imran Khan’s historic two-day official visit to Moscow on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, besides signing several bilateral contracts in agricultural and energy sectors, President Putin reportedly offered Imran Khan S-300 air defense system, Sukhoi aircraft as replacement for the Pakistan Air Force’s dependence on American F-16s and an array of advanced Russian military equipment on the condition that Pakistan abandons its traditional alliance with Washington and forge defense ties with Russia, according to two government officials who accompanied Imran Khan on the Moscow visit.

Alongside China, India and Iran, Pakistan under the leadership of Imran Khan was one of the few countries that adopted a non-aligned stance and refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite diplomatic pressure from Washington.

After the United States “nation-building project” failed in Afghanistan during its two-decade occupation of the embattled country from Oct. 2001 to August 2021, it accused regional powers of lending covert support to Afghan insurgents battling the occupation forces.

The occupation and Washington’s customary blame game accusing “malign regional forces” of insidiously destabilizing Afghanistan and undermining US-led “benevolent imperialism” instead of accepting responsibility for its botched invasion and occupation of Afghanistan brought Pakistan and Russia closer against a common adversary in their backyard, and the two countries even managed to forge defense ties, particularly during the four years of the Imran Khan government from July 2018 to April 2022.

Since the announcement of a peace deal with the Taliban by the Trump administration in Feb. 2020, regional powers, China and Russia in particular, hosted international conferences and invited the representatives of the US-backed Afghanistan government and the Taliban for peace negotiations.

After the departure of US forces from “the graveyard of the empires,” although Washington is trying to starve the hapless Afghan masses to death in retribution for inflicting a humiliating defeat on the global hegemon by imposing economic sanctions on the Taliban government and browbeating international community to desist from lending formal diplomatic recognition or having trade relations with Afghanistan, China and Russia have provided generous humanitarian and developmental assistance to Afghanistan.

Imran Khan fell from the grace of the Biden administration, whose record-breaking popularity ratings plummeted after the precipitous fall of Kabul last August, reminiscent of the Fall of Saigon in April 1975, with Chinook helicopters hovering over US embassy evacuating diplomatic staff to the airport, and Washington accused Pakistan for the debacle.

Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley squeamishly described the Kabul takeover in his historic Congressional testimony that several hundred Pashtun cowboys riding on motorbikes and brandishing Kalashnikovs overran Kabul without a shot being fired, and the world’s most lethal military force fled with tail neatly folded between legs, hastily evacuating diplomatic staff from sprawling 36-acre US embassy in Chinook helicopters to airport secured by the insurgents.

Apart from indiscriminate B-52 bombing raids mounted by Americans, Afghan security forces didn’t put up serious resistance anywhere in Afghanistan and simply surrendered territory to the Taliban. The fate of Afghanistan was sealed as soon as the US forces evacuated Bagram airbase in the dead of the night on July 1, six weeks before the inevitable fall of Kabul on August 15.

The sprawling Bagram airbase was the nerve center from where all the operations across Afghanistan were directed, specifically the vital air support to the US-backed Afghan security forces without which they were simply irregular militias waiting to be devoured by the wolves.

In southern Afghanistan, the traditional stronghold of the Pashtun ethnic group from which the Taliban draws most of its support, the Taliban military offensive was spearheaded by Mullah Yaqoob, the illustrious son of the Taliban’s late founder Mullah Omar and the newly appointed defense minister of the Taliban government, as district after district in southwest Afghanistan, including the birthplace of the Taliban movement Kandahar and Helmand, fell in quick succession.

What has stunned military strategists and longtime observers of the Afghan war, though, was the Taliban’s northern blitz, occupying almost the whole of northern Afghanistan in a matter of weeks, as northern Afghanistan was the bastion of the Northern Alliance comprising the Tajik and Uzbek ethnic groups. In recent years, however, the Taliban has made inroads into the heartland of the Northern Alliance, too.

The ignominious fall of Kabul clearly demonstrates the days of American hegemony over the world are numbered. If ragtag Taliban militants could liberate their homeland from imperialist clutches without a fight, imagine what would happen if the United States confronted equal military powers such as Russia and China. The much-touted myth of American military supremacy is clearly more psychological than real.

Imran Khan is an educated and charismatic leader. Being an Oxford graduate, he is much better informed than most Pakistani politicians. And he is a liberal at heart. Most readers might disagree with the assertion due to his fierce anti-imperialism and West-bashing demagoguery, but allow me to explain.

It’s not just Imran Khan’s celebrity lifestyle that makes him a progressive. He also derives his intellectual inspiration from the Western tradition. The ideal role model in his mind is the Scandinavian social democratic model which he has mentioned on numerous occasions, especially in his speech at Karachi before a massive rally of singing and cheering crowd in December 2012.

His relentless anti-imperialism as a political stance should be viewed in the backdrop of Western military interventions in the Islamic countries. The conflagration that neocolonial powers have caused in the Middle East evokes strong feelings of resentment among Muslims all over the world. Moreover, Imran Khan also uses anti-America rhetoric as an electoral strategy to attract conservative masses, particularly the impressionable youth.

It’s also noteworthy that Imran Khan’s political party draws most of its electoral support from women, youth voters and Pakistani expats residing in the Gulf and Western countries. All these segments of society, especially the women, are drawn more toward egalitarian liberalism than patriarchal conservatism, because liberalism promotes women’s rights and its biggest plus point is its emphasis on equality, emancipation and empowerment of women who constitute over half of population in every society.

Imran Khan’s ouster from power for daring to stand up to the United States harks back to the toppling and subsequent assassination of Pakistan’s first elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in April 1979 by the martial law regime of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq.

The United States not only turned a blind eye but tacitly approved the elimination of Bhutto from Pakistan’s political scene because, being a socialist, Bhutto not only nurtured cordial ties with communist China but was also courting Washington’s arch-rival, the former Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union played the role of a mediator at the signing of the Tashkent Agreement for the cessation of hostilities following the 1965 India-Pakistan War over the disputed Kashmir region, in which Bhutto represented Pakistan as the foreign minister of the Gen. Ayub Khan-led government.

Like Imran Khan, the United States “deep state” regarded Bhutto as a political liability and an obstacle in the way of mounting the Operation Cyclone to provoke the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan and the subsequent waging of a decade-long war of attrition, using Afghan jihadists as cannon fodder who were generously funded, trained and armed by the CIA and Pakistan’s security agencies in the Af-Pak border regions, in order to “bleed the Soviet forces” and destabilize and weaken the rival global power.

Karl Marx famously said: “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy and then as a farce.” In addition to a longstanding  CIA program  aimed at cultivating an anti-Russian insurgency in Ukraine by training, arming and international legitimizing neo-Nazi militias in Donbas, Canada’s Department of National Defense  revealed on January 26 , two days following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that the Canadian Armed Forces had trained “nearly 33,000 Ukrainian military and security personnel in a range of tactical and advanced military skills.” While The United Kingdom, via  Operation Orbital , had trained 22,000 Ukrainian fighters.

A “prophetic” RAND Corporation report titled “ Overextending and Unbalancing Russia ” published in 2019 declares the stated goal of American policymakers is “to undermine Russia just as the US subversively destabilized the former Soviet Union during the Cold War,” and predicts to the letter the crisis unfolding in Ukraine as a consequence of the eight-year proxy war mounted by NATO in Russian-majority Donbas region in east Ukraine on Russia’s vulnerable western flank since the 2014 Maidan coup, toppling Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and consequent annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia.

Nonetheless, regarding the objectives of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, then American envoy to Kabul, Adolph “Spike” Dubs, was assassinated on the Valentine’s Day, on 14 Feb 1979, the same day that Iranian revolutionaries stormed the American embassy in Tehran.

The former Soviet Union was wary that its forty-million Muslims were susceptible to radicalism, because Islamic radicalism was infiltrating across the border into the Central Asian States from Afghanistan. Therefore, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 in support of the Afghan communists to forestall the likelihood of Islamist insurgencies spreading to the Central Asian States bordering Afghanistan.

According to documents declassified by the White House, CIA and State Department in January 2019,  as reported  by Tim Weiner for The Washington Post, the CIA was aiding Afghan jihadists before the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. President Jimmy Carter signed the CIA directive to arm the Afghan jihadists in July 1979, whereas the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December the same year.

The revelation doesn’t come as a surprise, though, because more than two decades before the declassification of the State Department documents, in the  1998 interview  to The Counter Punch Magazine, former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, confessed that the president signed the directive to provide secret aid to the Afghan jihadists in July 1979, whereas the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan six months later in December 1979.

Here is a poignant excerpt from the interview. The interviewer puts the question: “And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic jihadists, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?” Brzezinski replies: “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet Empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

Despite the crass insensitivity, one must give credit to Zbigniew Brzezinski that at least he had the courage to speak the unembellished truth. It’s worth noting, however, that the aforementioned interview was recorded in 1998. After the 9/11 terror attack, no Western policymaker can now dare to be as blunt and forthright as Brzezinski.

Regardless, that the CIA was arming the Afghan jihadists six months before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan has been proven by the State Department’s declassified documents; fact of the matter, however, is that the nexus between the CIA, Pakistan’s security agencies and the Gulf states to train and arm the Afghan jihadists against the former Soviet Union was forged years before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Pakistan joined the American-led, anticommunist SEATO and CENTO regional alliances in the 1950s and played the role of Washington’s client state since its inception in 1947. So much so that when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defense Forces while performing photographic aerial reconnaissance deep into Soviet territory, Pakistan’s then President Ayub Khan openly acknowledged the reconnaissance aircraft flew from an American airbase in Peshawar, a city in northwest Pakistan.

Then during the 1970s, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government began aiding the Afghan Islamists against Sardar Daud’s government, who had toppled his first cousin King Zahir Shah in a palace coup in 1973 and had proclaimed himself the president of Afghanistan.

Sardar Daud was a Pashtun nationalist and laid claim to Pakistan’s northwestern Pashtun-majority province. Pakistan’s security agencies were alarmed by his irredentist claims and used Islamists to weaken his rule in Afghanistan. He was eventually assassinated in 1978 as a consequence of the Saur Revolution led by the Afghan communists.

It’s worth pointing out, however, that although the Bhutto government did provide political and diplomatic support on a limited scale to Islamists in their struggle for power against Pashtun nationalists in Afghanistan, being a secular and progressive politician, he would never have permitted opening the floodgates for flushing the Af-Pak region with weapons, petrodollars and radical jihadist ideology as his successor, Zia-ul-Haq, an Islamist military general, did by becoming a willing tool of religious extremism and militarism in the hands of neocolonial powers.

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Nauman Sadiq

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and MENA regions, neocolonialism and Petroimperialism.

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Iran president to visit Pakistan 'very soon', PM Sharif says

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Israel indicts sister of Hamas leader Haniyeh on terrorism incitement

Israel's State Attorney on Sunday indicted the sister of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on charges of incitement and showing solidarity with a terror group, after she allegedly praised Hamas' Oct. 7 attack that sparked the six-month old war in Gaza.

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Key ally of Pakistan’s prime minister demands end to ban on social media platform X

FILE - Farhatullah Babar, a veteran human rights activist and member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, listens to a reporter during a news conference, in Islamabad, Pakistan, Monday, Jan. 1, 2024. Babar, an important ally of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, demanded the government lift a two-month-old ban on the social media platform X, saying it violates citizens’ right to speech and expression. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed, File)

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ISLAMABAD (AP) — An important ally of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif demanded the government lift a two-month-old ban on the social media platform X , saying on Friday that it violates citizens’ right to speech and expression.

The ban on X has been in place since February, when the party of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan announced a nationwide protest against alleged election rigging ahead of the Feb. 8 vote that allowed Sharif to come to power.

“We demand that the ban on X, which is known as Twitter, should immediately be lifted by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to stop any further violation of human rights,” said Farhatullah Babar, a senior leader of the Pakistan People’s Party. The PPP is an important member of the coalition that allowed Sharif to form a government in March.

Babar is known as a defender of human rights who’s taken stands on civil rights and the protection of minorities during a three-decade career in politics.

Sharif’s government offered conflicting justifications for the ban in public statements before telling an Islamabad court that the decision to impose it had been made “in the interest of upholding national security, maintaining public order and preserving the integrity of the nation.”

Another court in Karachi asked the government to reverse the ban on Wednesday after petitions from human rights defenders.

Millions of people use X in Pakistan, and Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party relies on it especially heavily. The PTI says the restrictions were meant to suppress its voice on social media.

Many people have been using VPN software to bypass the government’s block on X, and access to the platform has been intermittently restored, but human rights activists want a total end to the ban.

Babar made his comments a day after X said that it was in contact with Pakistan to understand its concerns.

Pakistan has said the social media is being used to defame the country’s institutions, a phrase which is often used to refer to the military and judiciary. Both have come under criticism from Khan, who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in April 2022.

Babar said there was a perception that such institutions were behind the ban.

“There are certain powerful forces in Pakistan, and you know there is a perception here that these forces are sitting in the driving seat and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is in the back seat, and we request the prime minister to dispel this impression by lifting the ban on X with whatever power he has now,” Babar told the Associated Press

Washington has also urged Pakistan to lift restrictions on X.

Did US ask for Imran Khan’s removal as Pakistan PM after he visited Russia?

The Intercept report cites an alleged ‘cypher’ that shows a top US official told a Pakistani diplomat ‘all will be forgiven’ if Khan is sacked.

Islamabad, Pakistan – A United States-based news outlet has published what it claims to be the details of a diplomatic “cypher” – or a secret cable – that suggests the US administration wanted to remove former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan from power last year.

Khan was sacked from power in April 2022 after he lost a no-confidence vote in parliament. He alleged he knew of the “cypher” while he was in office which, according to him, proved the US hatched a conspiracy with the help of his political opponents and the Pakistani military to remove him.

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Former pakistan pm imran khan barred from politics for 5 years, imran khan’s u-turn: no longer blaming us for his ouster as pm, pakistan top body says no us plot in ex-pm imran khan’s removal, what led to leader imran khan’s downfall in pakistan.

He later made a U-turn , saying he wants good relations with the US, but continued to blame his successor Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the military for orchestrating his removal.

Khan is currently serving a three-year sentence and has been barred from politics for five years after he was convicted of corruption charges by a court in the capital Islamabad last week. He denies the charges and says the action against him is aimed at stopping him from contesting elections, expected later this year.

On Wednesday, The Intercept news website published purported details of a conversation between Pakistan’s then-ambassador to the US, Asad Majeed, and Donald Lu, the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, on March 7 last year.

The conversation, according to the report, took place less than two weeks after Khan visited Moscow on February 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine.

In the meeting, Lu reportedly told Majeed the US and Europe were “quite concerned” about Khan visiting Russia and Pakistan taking an “aggressively neutral position” on the Ukraine war.

“I think if a no-confidence vote against the prime minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the prime minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead,” Lu is alleged to have told Majeed, who sent the details of the conversation in the “cypher” to Islamabad.

“One month after the meeting with US officials documented in the leaked Pakistani government document, a no-confidence vote was held in Parliament, leading to Khan’s removal from power,” said The Intercept.

US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on Wednesday said the comments reported in The Intercept do not show the US taking a position on who should be Pakistan’s leader, adding that the US had publicly and privately expressed its concern regarding Khan’s visit to Russia.

“But as the former Pakistani ambassador to the United States himself has stated, the allegations that the United States has interfered in internal decisions about the leadership of Pakistan are false. As we have stated, they are false. They have always been false, and they remain false,” Miller said.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry has not issued any statement on The Intercept’s report.

Rana Sanaullah, Pakistan’s interior minister until the parliament was dissolved late on Wednesday, dismissed the report in an overnight post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Though there is nothing new in this story, the investigation needs to be held to establish the authenticity of the information or source document. Potentially, it is a very sinister, treacherous, and seditious act,” he wrote.

A former Pakistani diplomat told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity the contents of the alleged cypher can be seen as commenting on the country’s internal policies, but “there was nothing beyond that”.

“The tone and tenor of the conversation recorded in the cypher took me by surprise, but I don’t think there was anything more to it, in context of the alleged conspiracy,” he said.

But Raoof Hasan, spokesman for Khan’s Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, said the Intercept report validates the former prime minister’s stance since his removal.

“When the government received the cypher, Khan did the right thing as he took it to the National Security Committee [NSC], in which it was unanimously agreed that it amounted to blatant interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs and was entirely unacceptable,” Hasan told Al Jazeera.

The PTI spokesman said the Sharif government also held an NSC meeting to discuss the cypher matter, where the previous decision of the committee was endorsed.

“The new government, led by Shehbaz Sharif, also conducted their own meeting with the NSC and they approved the decisions taken under the PTI government and accepted that it was a grave interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs.”

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Iran president to visit Pakistan from Monday to Wednesday, Pakistan says

During his visit ebrahim raisi will meet pakistan's president and prime minister, the chairman of the senate and speaker of the national assembly, pakistan's foreign office said in a statement..

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi will make an official visit to Pakistan this week, Islamabad said on Sunday, as the two Muslim neighbours seek to mend ties after tit-for-tat missile strikes in January.

The visit, which Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would take place from Monday to Wednesday, had been in doubt as Middle East tensions rose after Iran launched an unprecedented attack on Israel a week ago and central Iran received what sources said was an Israeli attack on Friday.

Pakistan has signalled since January that Raisi would visit, and the prime minister said last week the visit would take place “very soon”.

Tehran has played down Friday’s apparent Israeli attack and indicated it had no plans for retaliation, a response that appeared gauged towards keeping the Israel-Gaza war from expanding to a regionwide conflict.

During his visit Raisi will meet Pakistan’s president and prime minister, the chairman of the Senate and speaker of the National Assembly, Pakistan’s foreign office said in a statement.

“They will also discuss regional and global developments and bilateral cooperation to combat the common threat of terrorism,” the statement said.

Raisi will visit major cities including Lahore and Karachi and focus on bilateral and trade ties, it said.

Pakistan has called on all parties in the Middle East to “exercise utmost restraint and move towards de-escalation”.

Iran and Pakistan have had a history of rocky relations, but the missile strikes in January were the most serious incidents in years.

Swift efforts to lower the temperature subsequently led to assurances that they respected each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, while vowing to expand security cooperation.

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