Maybe I’ve lived outside the country too long, but Pakistan seems to be increasingly governed by WhatsApp uncle, with a distinctive mixture of victimization, prejudice and victim-blaming, conspiracy theorising, self-congratulatory realpolitik based on ignorance, naivete and imagined sophistication, and a drawing room mob mentality.
The current government exemplifies this. Imran Khan’s visit to Russia on the very day of the invasion exemplifies this. While I can see that Pakistan would prefer to stay out of the whole Russia Ukraine business, the moral side of it seems as clear to me as the Iraq invasion. And particularly for Pakistan, where every one of Putin’s arguments could be applied, with equal or greater justification, to an Indian invasion of Pakistan.