Claim: Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan has taken a U-turn from his claim that the United States is to blame for his ouster.
Fact: Imran Khan did say that for him, this narrative is ‘over’ and ‘behind him’ but he did not back off from his allegations that Washington conspired to remove him from power in April. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief and his party have reiterated that his words have been taken out of context.
Fact or Fiction?
Following an interview with the former prime minister and PTI Chairman Imran Khan, Financial Times published a story on 12 November 2022 with the headline, “Imran Khan signals desire to build bridges with Washington.” The article is written by FT’s South Asia correspondent Benjamin Parkin.
Imran Khan talks to the @FT about his allegations against Pakistan's military after his assassination attempt, warns the country is approaching default and says he wants to mend ties with the US despite it having treated Pakistan like a "slave"https://t.co/WsbsQdSLT7
— Benjamin Parkin (@b_parkyn) November 12, 2022
After this interview, many misleading posts misconstruing Khan’s statement have been circulating on social media.
The next day on 13 November, Express Tribune published a story based on the interview with the following headline, “‘It’s behind me’: Imran Khan takes a U-turn on ‘US conspiracy’ narrative.”
Soch Fact Check found the claim to be misleading after coming across the audio recording of the interview shared by PTI on their official Twitter account.
The transcript of the audio recording has been reproduced below:
“Well, I mean you know we as far as I am concerned, it’s over you know it’s behind me. But whatever the US desired could not have happened without the people here who actively, you know, took part in the conspiracy to get rid of me so US is not to be blamed in the sense that US might have had a desire. They thought I was— I don’t know what upset them. Frankly, I don’t know whether were they not used to a prime minister who just wanted to have an independent foreign policy— a dignified foreign policy. Whether that upset them, I don’t know what. But it could never have happened until the local guys just played their part in getting rid of me. So, answer is that’s behind me. As I said I mean every country wants to have good relationship with the US. I can just add to the good relationship— a dignified relationship which has you know respect and dignity in it like like India.”
Khan’s statement about the US conspiracy was misconstrued and taken out of context, particularly by publications which used the word “U-turn” in their headlines such as The Business Standard, Indian Express, The Independent and Al Jazeera. A U-turn implies a change of plan, especially a reversal of political policy.
In his FT interview, Khan reiterated that the United States took part in a plan to oust him, but it would have been impossible without the help of local players in Pakistan. He also did say that the conspiracy was “ over” and “behind” him, but he never backed off the claim that Washington conspired to remove him from power. The PTI chief also signalled his readiness to mend ties with the US.
Following the reporting and social media backlash on Khan’s interview with FT, PTI leadership, including Khan, said that his words were misconstrued.
Khan was ousted through a no-confidence motion on 9 April 2022. Since then, he has been blaming the US for conspiring to overthrow his government with the help of local players over his pursuit of an independent foreign policy. The US and the incumbent government have, however, refuted his allegations. Soch Fact Check has not investigated potential US involvement in Imran Khan’s removal as prime minister.
When asked to comment on Khan’s latest statement at a press briefing on 17 November, the US State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said, “As we’ve previously said, there has — there is not and there has never been a truth to these allegations, but I don’t have anything additional to offer.”
Virality:
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the seven-day period leading up to 17 November 2022 using the following search terms:
- Imran Khan takes a U-turn on US conspiracy
- عمران خان نے امریکی سازش پر یو ٹرن لے لیا
- Imran Khan no longer blames US for his ouster
The analysis revealed that the first search term turned up 2,167 interactions across nine posts. Express Tribune’s post is performing 7.94x better than other similar posts on Facebook, with 1,100 likes and 272 shares.
The claim was shared here, here and here on Facebook. It was also shared by verified news outlets, including The Times of India and Devidiscourse.
On Twitter, the claim can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Some verified accounts also picked up the claim, such as The Times of India, TOI World News and Ralph Alex Arakal.
The second search term turned up 3,470 interactions across 28 posts. The claim was shared here on Facebook. It was also carried by multiple Urdu news outlets and websites, including Geo News Urdu, Jang, Ummat.net, The Munsif Daily, Urdunews.net and Concept TV.
The third search term turned up 2,346 interactions across 21 posts. The claim can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. It was carried by Dawn and The Business Standard as well.
Conclusion: Khan has not backed off from his allegations that the United States conspired to remove him from power. He only said that the ‘US conspiracy’ narrative is ‘over’ and ‘behind him’. The PTI chief and his party have reiterated that his words have been taken out of context.