Pakistan is on a knife edge as two opposing ideologies square up to battle it out to fill the political vacuum left behind by the military’s retreat from politics. At stake is the soul of Pakistan.
By Ahmer Kureishi
The battle lines had already been drawn before Thursday’s alleged attempt on the life of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, with both sides squaring up for the final showdown. On one side is the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), the veritable political consensus of the country, wishing the military to stay out of politics for good – in line with the law and the Constitution.
On the other side is a lone figure of Khan who insists the military must remove his adversaries from the field, and install and retain him in power – the law and Constitution be damned.
The assassination attempt
The news broke Thursday evening that Imran Khan, the chairman of his own Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), had been injured after his long march came under small arms fire near Gujranwala.
A short video clip shared by the police soon afterward showed a man confessing to the attack, and insisting he was alone in his nefarious enterprise.
Khan was driven from the site of the incident to Shaukat Khanam Memorial Hospital in Lahore instead of being rushed to a nearby hospital for medical help, in an indication that his injury was trivial. His personal physician later confirmed as much, saying a bullet had torn through flesh to graze Khan’s tibia and leave behind fragments in his leg.
However, in spite of this timely revelation off the alleged shooter’s identity and motivation by the provincial police, Khan’s top lieutenants promptly took to the media laying the blame for the attack on the federal government and the military. Some of them were seen openly inciting their party cohorts to violence.
This position is also untenable because law and order is a provincial subject and Khan has a virtual stranglehold of the Punjab government, nominally headed by his ally Chaudhry Pervez Elahi. If there has been a security lapse, the responsibility for it rests squarely with Khan’s allied Punjab government.
Nevertheless, Fawad Chaudhry’s rabid baying for blood and Asad Umar’s inflammatory comments soon led to public disturbances in several parts of the country. PTI workers went on the rampage outside the Faisalabad residence of Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah in Punjab and in front of the Peshawar residence of the Corps Commander in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
This has all been in line with Imran Khan’s dangerous playbook: Spin everything to incite hatred against those he sees as his foes without the slightest regard to the wider implications of the action. Only days ago, he promised bloodshed in public remarks if his demands were not met.
How did we get here?
The conflict has its origins in the country’s powerful military’s decision to pull out of politics, and a public avowal to stay that way, a decision that led to Khan’s government to fold like a house of cards in a constitutionally sacrosanct parliamentary vote of no-confidence this April.
The former cricketer and heartthrob responded by crying foul. He accused his opponents to be minions of a foreign conspiracy to oust him from power and branded the military brass as traitors who refused to stand with him against the alleged conspiracy.
The evidence for the alleged conspiracy has been non-existent. However, this did not stop the ousted prime minister from repeating his allegations again and again and again to a loyal audience of diehard fans who hang on his every word.
The prime target of his smear campaign has been Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, who is approaching the end of his career as the chief of Pakistan’s army. The most courageous (and therefore the most controversial) army chief of the country’s history, he has held the baton of command for almost six years now, and it is time for him to walk into the sunset.
Khan has singled out Bajwa as a bullseye partly because he is in the twilight of his career. Another reason is that it is Gen Bajwa who holds the command, and is therefore shoulders the responsibility for the military’s decision and resolve to stay apolitical.
A third reason may be that Imran Khan is probably the only Pakistani politician who knows for a fact that the military is determined to not touch politics, meaning a politician’s attacks will not draw a response from the institution.
In any case, the general has stood like a rock in the face of Khan’s sustained offensive, and his institution has closed ranks behind him.
The Pindi presser
Last month, two of his top lieutenants took to the airwaves from Rawalpindi to thoroughly rubbish Khan’s various conspiracy theories. It was an unprecedented move and a reflection of how the military is rallying behind the chief and embracing his pivot away from politics.
This was the first media appearance of Lt-Gen Nadeem Ahmed Anjum, the chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (IS), since he took the agency’s reins. He accompanied Lt-Gen Babar Iftikhar, who heads up the military’s Public Relations wing, at the Rawalpindi presser.
The duo took journalists’ questions after the opening statement. The spook-general had a blast with the media corps but made it amply clear he intended to fall off their radar for good as before.
The message was clear: The way Khan has made a habit of slandering the military, its top brass, and above all, the martyrs, has hurt feelings all around. But the mission is non-negotiable: The military will stay out of politics – and the decision is backed by a broad consensus of senior and mid-level military officers.
Most of the facts revealed by the two generals were already well-known among knowledgeable circles including the former prime minister. In fact, Khan may be among the first to know of the military’s decision to return to its constitutional remit, but he disagreed.
And his disagreement was not the academic or intellectual kind. He decided to go after the military and the ISI with everything he had, in a no-hold-barred effort to bend the country’s most muscular institutions to his will – simultaneously doubling down on a backdoor push under the auspices of President Arif Alvi for a reproachment with Gen Bajwa.
From what we know, Gen Bajwa gamed Khan in the hope of convincing him to end his rabble-rousing – but also to prove that he was not nursing any personal grudge against the former prime minister. None of it was of any use though.
The tragic death of Arshad Sharif figured prominently at the presser. In fact, it was very likely prompted by Khan’s attempt to weaponise the tragedy of Sharif, a scion of a storied military family, against the military. The two generals paid rich tributes to the dear departed that rang honest – although they were by no means blind to his less praiseworthy work.
Bajwa the bold
To address any heckles raised by the word “courageous” above, let it be put on the record that Gen Javed Bajwa started off as a thorough democrat nominated to the office by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
But that did not stop him from going over to the dark side shortly after assuming office when the anti-Sharif faction embedded in the latticework of the state and society won him over. And once he gave his ear to that lot, he allowed the institutions under his sway to go after the Sharifs with everything they had, including but not limited to the full might of the state.
But the story doesn’t end there. Gen Bajwa had the temerity to spell out to a group of select journalists what came to be known as Bajwa doctrine: A set of measures including an overhaul of the Constitution that would tilt the system towards a stronger presidency and weaker prime minister; and a stronger center at the cost of provincial autonomy.
At some point along the way, however, he underwent a change of heart – and he changed course once more. It is possible that the motivation for this about-face came from Khan’s inept handling of the government, causing the unprecedented economic decline and multiple foreign policy debacles rather than an altruistic love of democracy. In any case, the upshot was that the army chief decided and publicly declared, that his institution will remain within its constitutional remit and have nothing to do with politics anymore.
The public declaration of this policy likely came to a while after its actual rollout. The government institutions manipulating politicians to hold Khan’s government in one piece started minding their own business – which was enough to send it folding.
The military and its various wings leaving politics to politicians is nothing but a return to constitutionalism and rule of law. Couched in different words, it is the subordination of the services to civilian supremacy.
What could be more courageous than an incumbent army chief championing that kind of policy? This is the legacy Gen Bajwa intends to leave behind – diametrically opposed to his own inheritance in office.
Method to madness
Many observers take Khan’s rants as lunatic ravings of a madman. But there are unmistakable signs of a method to his madness. In August, his chief of staff Shehbaz Gill was arrested after his remarks over a primetime news show were seen as an attempt to incite mutiny in the armed forces.
Khan countered with allegations of awful custodial violence, crowding out the original allegations against Gill and reaping a groundswell of sympathy from the civil society, with many sane voices maintaining the government had overreacted. His party distanced itself from Gill at the time but has since continued to flirt with the subject matter.
Last month, Azam Swati, another stalwart of his party was arrested and the media was quick to report the reason was a tweet he shot at the army chief. Nobody noticed that he had also tweeted a paraphrase of Gill’s August remarks.
This clearly means Khan and his inner coterie are putting pressure on a real or perceived fault line amid the brass – counting on a mutiny that brings the military back into politics and installs them in power.
Such a strategy would be fraught for a banana republic. For a nuclear-armed nation, a mutiny in the armed forces to effect political change can have unthinkable consequences for the nation’s future. But Khan and his lieutenants couldn’t care less.
How does it end?
The generals’ myth-busting presser has already taken some wind out of Khan’s sails, as evidenced by the unimpressive showing of his rallies since. He may be able to spin Thursday’s alleged attempt on his life to his advantage for a brief moment, but that is all.
One of the reasons for his desperation to claw back to power is that he is facing multiple court cases involving criminal charges like money laundering and corruption. Sooner or later, one or more of those cases will catch up with him, consigning his further political ambitions to the dustbin.
The nomination by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of a new army chief to succeed Gen Bajwa is certain to put to rest his hopes of a comeback. Meanwhile, guarding against the hazard of a breakdown of military discipline that the firebrand leader is invoking is best left to the GHQ – backed by the civilian leadership.
All in all, there seems to be no pathway leading from here to Khan’s desired end state. In particular, there is no way he can bend the military to his will and return to politics again.
You have to give one thing to the boys: When they fix on a goal, they stop at nothing to achieve it. Now that they have finally come to the realisation that a fully democratic dispensation is Pakistan’s best shot at prosperity and strength, no amount of arm twisting or blackmail will dissuade them.
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