The West Already Tacitly Accepts Pakistan’s De Facto Imposition Of Martial Law
The West and especially its leading Anglo-American Axis stands in full solidarity with their Establishment proxies in Pakistan. They entirely support their efforts to snuff out the only multipolar force in the country through whatever means are necessary, which will likely be sold to the foreign audience as being done on “national security” pretexts upon the impending banning of PTI. This makes the Pakistani Crisis the latest example of the West’s hypocritical “rules-based order”.
Whatever hopes some among the opposition might have had of foreign powers pressuring Pakistan’s post-modern coup regime into complying with their request to release former Prime Minister Imran Khan (IK) and hold truly free early elections were crushed by the West’s reaction to recent events. The abduction of this ousted leader on trumped-up “lawfare” pretexts was already bad enough, but then it was followed by “arresting” his former communications, development, and foreign ministers too.
Fawad Chaudry, Asad Umar, and Shah Mehmood Qureshi respectively are also senior members of IK’s PTI, which is the most popular political force in Pakistan nowadays by far, which thus makes this a double crackdown since it’s intended to crush the former government and the opposition at once. Moreover, several people have died over the past few days’ events and dozens more have been injured, yet Western leaders only put forth predictable platitudes about defending democracy and the rule of law.
They already tacitly accept Pakistan’s de facto imposition of martial law that was practically declared Wednesday night after IK’s replacement Shehbaz Sharif announced that the military has been deployed across the country to quell the unrest provoked by the former premier’s abduction. This followed the Inter Services Public Relations’ (ISPR) threat on behalf of the country’s powerful military-intelligence structures (“The Establishment”) that they’ll no longer supposedly show so-called “restraint”.
They also accused PTI of plotting to plunge Pakistan into civil war, though it’s they who’ve pushed the country towards that worst-case scenario exactly as IK warned in mid-March would happen if they crossed the opposition’s red line by abducting or killing him. It’s a matter of debate whether this was due to incompetence connected to The Establishment’s inability to understand those socio-political (“soft security”) dynamics that are driving the nationwide protests or part of a plan to “Balkanize” Pakistan.
Whatever the real reason may be, it’s indisputable that an unofficial form of martial law has just been put into effect as a result of the armed forces’ deployment across the country. This decision wouldn’t have been made without first ensuring the West’s tacit support regardless of whatever rhetoric that de facto New Cold War bloc’s representatives might spew for the sake of optics. There’s no way that The Establishment would have unilaterally defied their patrons’ superficial commitment to democracy.
After all, their elite members colluded with the US to carry out last April’s post-modern coup as punishment for IK’s multipolar foreign policy, so they wouldn’t dare make major moves like the informal imposition of martial law, abducting him and his officials, and shooting protesters without its permission. This was entirely predictable despite the disinformation-driven preconditioning operation that was attempted in late March by one of the US’ Pakistani proxies.
Azeem Ibrahim is a research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute at the US Army War College and a director at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy in DC, which means that everything he does is deeply connected to the US’ permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies. He therefore can’t be seen as a neutral and objective expert, which is why his opinion piece from almost two months ago should be regarded with the utmost suspicion.
He claimed that China would support a military takeover in Pakistan while the entire West and especially the US would supposedly be against it. In hindsight, he was attempting to precondition the public into regarding any allegation of American approval of such events as supposedly being “fake news”, thus making his article a very manipulative form of gaslighting disguised as “pre-bunking”. This is an extremely sophisticated information warfare tactic and shows how far ahead the US planned everything.
The most that can therefore be expected from the West even if IK, his former government’s officials, and/or countless protesters are killed is mild condemnation for the sake of misleading their people into thinking that their authorities are truly committed to “democracy”, “human rights”, and the “rule of law”. Whatever seemingly pro-PTI pieces might pop up in the Mainstream Media should therefore also be seen as part of this domestically directed perception management operation.
On the foreign front, the West and especially its leading Anglo-American Axis stands in full solidarity with their Establishment proxies in Pakistan. They entirely support their efforts to snuff out the only multipolar force in the country through whatever means are necessary, which will likely be sold to the foreign audience as being done on “national security” pretexts upon the impending banning of PTI. This makes the Pakistani Crisis the latest example of the West’s hypocritical “rules-based order”.