Good article by a Pakistani Socialist, which talked about Imran Khan signing with IMF, social conservatism, repression of trade union and farmer groups and military backing to stay in power.
Baffling why people are dismissing this article. Lot of what’s being said is backed up by what other leftists in Pakistan have been saying for years about IK, from what I’ve read on the subject.
The biggest issue is where does Pakistan go from here? The army remains second to none, and that isn’t set to change anytime soon. IK was not good, but Pakistan has had much worse leaders.
Without a concrete agenda for challenging neoliberalism and for redistribution of wealth, talk of foreign conspiracies can lead to delusional thinking manufactured by socially regressive forces in order to avoid discussions on internal contradictions.
This is a salient point in a vacuum, but it would seem to me that foreign conspiracies are pretty much part and parcel of what has largely been a unipolar US hegemony since the USSR fell. I think those would also be part of the internal contradictions of any country, especially one that is of strategic interest to the US. Maybe three letter agencies didn’t get involved in this instance, but the US has clearly been unhappy with IK for some time now. Maybe I’m mistaken, but this seems idealistic to me.
