Pakistan’s military establishment is actively working to eliminate the populist leader it once created and supported until he fell out of favour. All kinds of tactics have been used to ensure that former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his party Tehreek-e-Insaaf score a zero in the general elections scheduled for 8 February. From booking Khan in several cases and disqualifying him to taking away his party’s election symbol, the establishment has employed various means to confuse the public. Moreover, the army has reinstated the old leadership and removed most obstacles it had placed in the way of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Nawaz Sharif to remove him from power.
The army is most likely to win its game unless the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) supporters, particularly the youth, come out in droves on voting day. But even a significant turnout may not be enough in the absence of a centralised force. The PTI, which is facing salami slicing, threats and coercion, would need a superior electoral strategy to counteract the current momentum against it. The caretaker governments nationally and in key provinces such as Punjab and Sindh are being managed by a bureaucracy that is meant to facilitate massive pre-poll rigging and manipulation. A journalist acquaintance even suggested that we could very well congratulate Nawaz Sharif because a PML-N victory is more or less ensured. Of course, the specifics regarding the majority, coalition prospects, and control over Punjab and other key regions remain uncertain. The PMLN’s final score will depend a lot on how Sharif manages internal party dynamics, especially the ongoing rivalry between his brother and daughter. Notably, Sharif’s value in the eyes of the army lies in the myth that he would be able to turn the economy around and establish trade relations with India.
Assuming elections turn out to the Army’s liking, it will still have a problem at hand—how to kill Imran Khan’s populism, which is more than just about the person but all those factors that contribute to Khan’s enduring popularity. A friend from Taunsa told me about the huge welcome accorded to Mahrang Baloch, who recently walked to Islamabad spearheading a movement against enforced disappearances. The crowd of mostly young people did not just include ethnic Baloch who were supporting Mahrang because she represented them and their cause. There were Saraki speaking youth as well. The thing that bound them together was the anxiety regarding the deep state, which makes them sympathetic towards Mahrang and her cause. The young crowd in Southwest Punjab had similar feelings towards Khan because of their bigger anxiety towards state establishment.
For the crowd that views Khan and his party as victims at the hands of the powerful army, it doesn’t matter that the PTI leader didn’t achieve much during his almost four years in power, or the fact that PTI isn’t the only party to suffer at the hands of the establishment. Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) supporters have faced much more brutality under the Zia regime. Clearly, who suffered more is not the issue right now. It is becoming increasingly clear the public’s emotional support will rest with the party that the army is punishing at the moment. Pakistan’s 18-35 population came of political age watching Imran Khan the politician being created and then discarded, which made them realise that the real power lies with the GHQ—not with the Election Commission of Pakistan, or with Parliament.
Not surprisingly, the slogan of yeh jo dehshatgardi hai, uske peechey wardi hai (behind this terror lies the uniform) resonated during the gathering in South Punjab. Interestingly, the military is able to suppress PTI leaders but is unable to block attacks on social media or cut down the growing resentment against it. From taunts and memes that ridicule the army, the GHQ is unable to put the social media genie it created as a political tool in the mid-2010s back in the bottle. One wonders if even a friendly Khan would be able to reign in this anger.
Also read: Nawaz Sharif will be the face without power. He returns to Pakistan with limited space to play
Khan the politician is over. But…
Killing Khan’s populism is an uphill task also because the military, being a conservative institution, is unable to think outside the box. Unable to conceptualise that Khan has turned into a political idea that needs to be fought differently, the approach is to target the man. The numerous cases of corruption and breaking state’s secrecy norms are brought against him to convince his support base that his anti-corruption agenda rings hollow, and that he is at best a danger to the state’s integrity. The other tactic being deployed is to bring all the sleaze about Khan’s personal life out in the open. According to sources, a special team in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) headed by a junior officer has dedicated all its efforts to bring out details of Khan’s ‘moral corruption’.
From rewriting and republishing Hajira Khan Panezai’s book detailing cases of Imran Khan’s alleged sexual misconduct to his ‘sleazy’ audio recordings to his third marriage—the message is that the former prime minister lacks character. And it seems that the army chief is completely on board this project. While speaking to the Pakistani-American diaspora in Washington DC at the Pakistan embassy, he spoke about the importance of three Cs: ‘competence, courage and character.’ The punchline was that “he would let competence and courage go but not character”, suggesting that Khan was not a man of character.
The general has a point as far as the PTI leader’s moral turpitude is concerned. Hearing stories about Khan’s personal life, most of which are more real than fiction, I am reminded of a conversation with my father at the age of 13 when I insisted on being taken along to see Hina Rabbani Khar’s uncle Ghulam Mustafa Khar in London. My father was in politics and a member of Punjab assembly from the PPP, which is why he was going to see a party leader from South Punjab. I was refused because, according to my father, he would not take even his 13-year-old daughter to see a man so morally corrupt. Khan is similar. However, the moral turpitude story has left the station, making the stories told by women in Khan’s life—from Reham khan to Hajira Khan to others—collateral damage. Even if people believe them, they will not be moved away from Khan’s symbolism. In fact, these women will be victims of undeserved anger for telling stories that the establishment hid for years.
While army chief General Asim Munir emphasises character, his institution and its politics is responsible for generating this immorality. Who will forget that these very army echelons sat silently over Khan’s lack of character while their institution, starting from General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani to General Qamar Javed Bajwa, built and nurtured the man to power? And don’t forget that the issue here is not Khan’s lack of morality but him breaking ranks with the army since the institution defends moral turpitude only of its men and those on its side. How can one forget Musharraf’s defence of a junior officer, Captain Hammad, who was accused of raping a doctor in Balochistan in 2005?
Countering Khan’s populism is far difficult in the currently unstable environment in the country. Notwithstanding that eliminating a populist is difficult in an environment ridden with hyper-nationalism and a party culture in which he dominates the show, Khan’s populism has taken him beyond the electoral cycle, much further than where Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto once stood. While Bhutto was cruelly treated by judges and generals, Khan still has support among the judiciary and many military families. Since the crisis in 2022, the PTI leader’s popularity has spread beyond the middle class, which resented Bhutto, to the lower classes. Notwithstanding that this may not turn into an election victory, this will pile on the anger. This populism can only be killed by Khan the popular. He could have been politically killed had he completed his tenure and exposed himself. After all, it took years of suffering from Mao Zedong’s ‘long march’ for the Chinese populace to question his popularity. Pakistan is nowhere near that when it comes to Imran Khan.
Ayesha Siddiqa is Senior Fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. She is the author of Military Inc. She tweets @iamthedrifter. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)
Well furnished pice ..
Hatred for Imran can be seen in the article. His personal life is sleazy but rest of our leaders? Bilawal and Shahbaz ? Nawaz and Zardari?😊Imran couldn’t do much in 4 years, Nawaz and Zardari did wonders in 40 yrs?
Not one sentence for other politicians even suggesting that they are the ones who brought Pakistan to this stage