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Zafar Bangash argues that since the founding of Pakistan in 1947 its leadership has blundered from crisis to crisis “like a corner drunk”—and the current catastrophe, brought on by corrupt leaders complicit in the anti-Imran Khan coup, is one of the all-time worst. His article offers an uncommonly blunt synopsis of the history of Pakistan, leading up to the recent coup by external forces (think US-IMF) and their internal collaborators: “When Imran Khan tried to chalk out an independent foreign policy by reclaiming some political space, a motley collection of criminals, murderers and money-launderers was cobbled together and placed in power by the army. Its claims to ‘neutrality’ find few takers.” Wait a minute! Would the CIA and its IMF friends really overthrow a government with the help of local army generals alongside “criminals, murderers and money-launderers”? That, of course, is a rhetorical question.
Zafar Bangash is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, and president of the Islamic Society of York Region, a suburb of Toronto. His articles regularly appear regularly at Crescent-Online.net, the best Muslim current-affairs publication in English.