The Intercept reported that the “secret Pakistani arms sales to US helped to facilitate a controversial bailout from the International Monetary Fund earlier this year, according to two sources with knowledge of the arrangement, with confirmation from internal Pakistani and American government documents.”

The arms sales, The Intercept said, “were made for the purpose of supplying the Ukrainian military — marking Pakistani involvement in a conflict it had faced US pressure to take sides on."

The report said that in April 2022, the Pakistani military, with the encouragement of the US, helped organize a no-confidence vote to remove Prime Minister Imran Khan.

According to the Intercept, ahead of the ouster, “State Department diplomats privately expressed anger to their Pakistani counterparts over what they called Pakistan’s aggressively neutral stance on the Ukraine war under Khan." “They warned of dire consequences if Khan remained in power and promised all would be forgiven if he was removed,” the report reads.

The Intercept says that since Khan’s ouster, “Pakistan has emerged as a useful supporter of the US and its allies in the war, assistance that has now been repaid with an IMF loan.”

“The emergency loan allowed the new Pakistani government to put off a looming economic catastrophe and indefinitely postpone elections — time it used to launch a nationwide crackdown on civil society and jail Khan,” the report reads.

The Intercept said that a spokesperson at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington declined to comment and referred the question to the US Department of State.

“Negotiations over the IMF review were a matter for discussion between Pakistan and IMF officials,” the spokesperson said as quoted by The Intercept. “The United States was not party to those discussions, though we continue to encourage Pakistan to engage constructively with the IMF on its reform program.”

“An IMF spokesperson denied the institution was pressured but did not comment on whether it was taken into confidence about the weapons program,” The Intercept said. 

The Intercept said that as it had previously reported that Donald Lu, “the senior State Department official, said in a meeting with then-Pakistani Ambassador Asad Majeed Khan two weeks after the invasion of Ukraine that it was the belief of the US that Pakistan had taken a neutral position solely at Imran Khan’s direction, adding that all would be forgiven if Khan was removed in the no-confidence vote. Since his ouster, Pakistan has firmly taken the side of the US and Ukraine in the war.”