Ammar Ali Jan is a historian and a member of the Haqooq-e-Khalq Movement in Pakistan. He is a cabinet member of the Progressive International.
Monsoon rains and melting glaciers have driven tens of millions of Pakistanis from their homes. The disaster shows that the poor Global South populations who do least to cause climate change are the people who pay most for its consequences.
After being defeated in a no-confidence vote, Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan is now claiming he has been replaced by an “imported government.” But for all the bombastic nationalism, Khan’s rule was marked by deference to the IMF and handouts to the rich.
Despite its claims to be building democracy in Afghanistan, the US’s War on Terror pushed the country deeper into chaos. The United States should be held fully responsible for this failure by the rest of the world.
Imran Khan’s government came to power in 2018 promising to reorient Pakistan’s economy toward the needs of the population. But faced with a debt crisis it soon dropped its reformist agenda — and now, the International Monetary Fund is pressuring it to place its State Bank permanently beyond democratic control.
Pakistani authorities made a bad start to the coronavirus response, using the crisis to push through an IMF agenda of hospital privatization. Faced with protests by health professionals, the government immediately opted for repression — showing that it considers health care for the masses mere unnecessary spending.