Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan speaking during a news conference at his home in Lahore in May. — Filepic/AP
A principal instrument of United States’ foreign policy is covert regime change, meaning a secret action by the US government to bring down the government of another country. There are strong reasons to believe that US actions led to the removal from power of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan in April 2022, followed by his arrest on trumped-up charges of corruption and espionage, and sentencing this week to 10 years imprisonment on the espionage charge. The political objective is to block Pakistan’s most popular politician from returning to power in the elections on Feb 8.
The key to covert operations of course is that they are secret and hence deniable by the US government. Even when the evidence comes to light through whistleblowers or leaks, as it very often does, the US government rejects the authenticity of the evidence and the mainstream media generally ignore the story because it contradicts the official narrative. Because editors at these mainstream outlets don’t want to peddle in “conspiracy theories,” or are simply happy to be the mouthpieces for officialdom, they give the US government a very wide berth for actual regime-change conspiracies.
