What is going on in Pakistan? And why has the US been dragged into it?
Still Pakistan’s poster boy? Farooq Naeem/AFP via Getty Images
Ayesha Jalal, Tufts University
Pakistan, a nuclear nation that is home to some 220 million people, is in a political mess.
On April 3, 2022, Prime Minister – and former national sporting hero – Imran Khan dissolved Parliament to get ahead of a no-confidence vote. That vote would have seen parliamentarians decide whether or not to support Khan’s premiership and would have likely seen him ousted from power.
What happens next is in the hands of the country’s Supreme Court and, after that, the nation’s voters. The Conversation asked Pakistani American scholar Ayesha Jalal, professor of history at Tufts University, to help explain what is going on – and what could happen next.
What just happened in Pakistan?
A no-...