ISLAMABAD: Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan claims his government was ousted from power through a US-led conspiracy for a regime change. Khan referred to the conspiracy with a cypher sent by Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington as the revealing truth, exposed a day before submission of the no-confidence motion by the joint opposition parties in the Pakistani parliament. However, Khan’s claims have been negated Noam Chomsky, a leading voice against imperialism and a fierce critic of US foreign policy, who said that there is no meaningful evidence of a coup by the US against Imran Khan.

“There is a tendency to attribute everything that happens in the world to the CIA or some diabolical Western plan. There is plenty to condemn, sharply. And the US is indeed powerful. But it’s nothing like what is often believed,” said Chomsky. “I do not consider the cable of Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US, Asad Majeed, as substantial evidence of American intervention for a regime change in Pakistan,” he added. Chomski said that connecting the dots with the alleged threat letter as claimed by Imran Khan was meaningless. Chomski’s statement is not a first that rejects Imran Khan’s claims. The US has also repeatedly stated that it had no involvement in ousting the Imran Khan-led government. But Imran Khan seems to be using the same narrative and is gathering widespread support from his fans and followers both domestically and internationally. Imran Khan has staged massive public gatherings in major cities, calling his ouster as part of a US-led conspiracy, done through the facilitation of Khan’s opposition parties and the no-confidence vote done through the parliament.

Imran Khan claims that his narrative has been re-assured and re-confirmed by the country’s National Security Council (NSC), which even though clarified that there was no evidence found of a foreign conspiracy, but added that the language used was “undiplomatic and can be attributed to blatant intervention in Pakistan’s internal matters”. But Imran Khan is persistent on his claim that his ouster was in fact part of a foreign conspiracy. Khan claims that he was ousted because he wanted an independent foreign policy for Pakistan, under which he refused to provide the US with bases after the NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan.

—Hamza Ameer