Preface: before jumping on me, I’m from global south, not from pakistan, but an ethnic minority that endured the aftereffects of red scare, I’d ask you to calm down first. I’m not American either.

So, from what I read is:

• Ryan Grim’s reportings have been, questionable, he’s one of the first people to report about Tara Reade, who went on and defect to Russia. Some have accused him of pro Kremlin, normally i’d be skeptical, but Intercept did produce Glenn Greenwald.
• There are conflicting information about who leaked the thing, with journalist of The Intercept tweeting that journalist of NYT lying about the source.

I’d assume countries like Russia who wanted Pakistan to support or at least stay neutral when they are invading Ukraine, have done similar thing. I’d assume China who’s been using Pakistan as a buffer against India, also have been doing the same thing. Of course US does exert immense pressure, even when it’s unintentional, due to power dynamics.

Speaking about power dynamics, don’t jump directly to defend Imran Khan, just because the US is bad, it doesn’t mean that the other side is good. I’ve read disheartening comments that people straight up defending imperial Japan when the video about how US didn’t need to nuke Japan was uploaded.

So, hear me out, Khan said some shitty things

• on 24 Sept 2021, Khan remarked that many Pakistani Pashtuns “had strong sympathies with the Afghan Taliban, not because of their religious ideology, but because of Pashtun nationalism.”
• During his keynote address at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s Extraordinary Session of Foreign Ministers on 19 Dec 2021, Khan said not allowing girls to study was part of Afghan culture, and that the world should respect that.

Does that mean the opposition is good, of course not, nothing is black and white. There are a lot of corrupt politicians who’s gonna take advantage of the condition. Am I doing both sides are bad shtick? Imran Khan is a politician, he doesn’t represent all Pakistanis, and from his remarks I don’t think he represents the Pakistani Pashtuns either, or women for that matter. Focus on the people, they are not perfect, but they just wanna survive.

So what can we do as outsiders, besides making social media content, monetizing it, and forgetting about them later on?

Well, if the military situation worsen, there will be a lot of Pakistani expats / students who’d want to get their parents or family to a stabler country, if you know some immigration lawyers, people who have experienced with bringing their families over, and translators who know Urdu, maybe it’s not a bad idea to write down their emails.