Former prime minister Imran Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), has hired a lobbying firm in Washington DC at a cost of $25,000 per month to support its “goals for good relations with the United States and the Pakistani diaspora in the US”.
According to documents viral on social media, PTI has engaged Fenton/Arlock LLC, which was also hired by the Pakistan Embassy in United States in March 2022 for $30,000 a month.
The documents were unearthed by Uzair Younus, Director of the Pakistan Initiative at the South Asia Center. Younus also shared a link to where the documents are publicly available on a US website.
When he was confronted by PTI supporters that the agreement involves the PTI USA and not the PTI Pakistan, he shared a screenshot of the document to corroborate his claim that the firm would support the goal of the PTI Pakistan for good relations with the United States and the Pakistani diaspora in the US.
In recent years, Pakistan has engaged a dozen lobbying firms in the US to lobby with American politicians on a range of issues from criticising India to seeking aids and grants.
Media outlets have reported how these firms allegedly helped build an anti-India narrative and made attempts to influence the Democrats on issues ranging from Kashmir to minority rights in India.
“Pakistan’s government has hired Stephen Payne and Brian Ettinger of Linden Government Solutions to lobby on its behalf, according to a disclosure filing. The duo previously lobbied for Pakistan during President George W Bush’s administration,” claimed a report published last year in European media outlet Politico.
Apart from this, a former congressional liaison for former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign who later lobbied the administration on behalf of then-Congolese President Joseph Kabila is now representing Pakistani interests in the US, reported news agency PTI.
Adnan Jalil has registered his firm Alpha Strategies as a lobbyist for the Council on Pakistan Relations, a nonprofit started by Michigan-based Pakistani-American healthcare entrepreneurs Mohammad Ashraf Qazi, Adil Jamal Akhtar and Iqbal Abdul Nasir.
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