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Comment by game_the0ry | Hacker News Reader

Pakistani, here.

What happened to Imran Khan is similar to what happened to and continues to happen to world leaders in unstable countries where the west financial and/or national security interests - sloppy regime changes.

As far as whether or not this turns out for the people of PK, we will never know bc he was nto in office long enough to do anything meaningful. PK needs like 20 yrs of stability to see any real progress.

I will say this - Imran Khan was very popular among the young, middle class types I know in PK (bc he is a populist), but not liked by western establishment governments. Take that for what it is worth.

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The military have quite a strong political influence in Pakistan I think?

There is some parallel to Turkey, the military there had a lot of influence, until Erdogan out maneuvered them. The military in Turkey were supposedly protecting democracy and keeping the state secular, but threatening coups against democratically elected politicians doesn't scream protecting democracy to me.

European countries had a working relationship with Erdogan in the beginning because of this. Obviously power corrupted in the end.

It feels like a similar situation with Imran Khan (both did time in prison on politically motivated charges), but I don't know enough about Pakistani politics to be sure.

The reason for the strong political influence of the military is two fold:

1. Political institutions in Pakistan are very weak and when things start to truly go bad, people look toward the military to bring law and order and not their elected leaders. This in turn gives the military a seat at the table to impact internal matters and foreign relations.

2. India - using India as a general boogeyman since independence has given the military brass a lot of money and power. They in turn use this to further their political ideology and when things start to go a way they don’t like they can start a coup. In turn the people generally go along with this as they think army control might be better than their leaders to solve their issues.

Like it was mentioned, Pakistan needs a few decades of peaceful democracy to get their shit together. Otherwise it will keep circling the drain of being a failed state.

This was my take as well. Kahn signed an arms deal with Russia just days before the Ukrainian conflict happened. Less than two weeks after the invasion happened he was ousted from office. Pretty unusual, Imran Kahn has been wildly popular in Pakistan for decades, since at least the mid-1980s where he was a Cricket (sport) superstar

Wow I was not expecting to get down voted for that. If you have a differing opinion just say so

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