Turmoil in Pakistan: Revolution or revulsion?

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Das

(dasudhirk@gmail.com)

The May 9th arrest of former Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan by the rangers from the Islamabad High Court premises sparked widespread unrest in Pakistan. The official version was that he was arrested in the Al-Qadir Trust corruption case by the NAB (National Accountability Bureau). He is accused of causing huge losses to the exchequer through his and his wife’s criminal complicity with a real estate tycoon. The irate mob attacked the army’s General Head Quarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi, so far the inviolably sacrosanct centre of power in Pakistan; burnt down the house of a core commander, Lt. General Salman Fayyaz, in Lahore, unimaginable in the context of Pakistan’s history; set on fire a dummy Shenyang F-6 fighter jet at Mianwali; burnt down the Radio Pakistan building in Peshawar; anti-army slogans were raised; and military installations were attacked in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. All this happened at a time when the nation of 22 crore people is grappling with an acute economic crisis. The violent protests singed the whole nation in an unprecedented manner.

Pakistan has been internationally perceived as a nation run by three “A’s”: Allah (the religious fundamentalists), the Army (the security agencies), and America (the biggest aid-giver and backer of the country). However, after the wise withdrawal of America from Afghanistan in August 2021, aid and support from that country dried up, leaving behind only two forces—the Army and the fundamentalists—that are central to the polity of Pakistan. In its 76 years of history, the army has played a pivotal role in deciding who would rule the country—a pliable, spineless politician or a military dictator. This trend has been accepted as fait accompli in Pakistan since 1958, the year of the first military coup. When not exercising direct power, as in the post-Musharraf era, the military played the role of a kingmaker by remaining prominently behind the scenes. Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, the former chief of the Army, decided to prop up Imran Khan and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) to counter the two politicians with stature—the Muslim League’s Nawaz Shariff and Asif Ali Zardari of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party. On July 25, 2018, in the general elections, Imran Khan was openly supported by the ‘establishment’, an all-pervasive term encompassing all the security agencies of Pakistan. He became the Prime Minister of Pakistan in 2018 despite a slim majority, courtesy of the covert and overt support of the establishment. The establishment hardly bargained for such a deal that their leader would challenge them as he is doing now. After Imran Khan was anointed Prime Minister, he acted like a pliant man to the then army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa. As a compliant and subservient Prime Minister, he dutifully extended the service of Bajwa by three years from November 2019 to November 2022, despite being challenged by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. It was a quid pro quo for the support rendered to him by Gen. Bajwa in the general elections. The first skirmish between Imran Khan and the army chief surfaced when Imran wanted the then ISI chief Faiz Hameed to be the next army chief, succeeding Gen. Bajwa. Here, he chewed more than he could bite. This meddling in the affairs of the establishment, especially in the appointment of the army chief, proved too costly for him. Imran’s audacity immediately met with brutal retribution; the empire struck back. Gen. Bajwa instantly plotted his ouster. The opportunity to oust Imran Khan came in the form of the economic crisis Pakistan was in at that point in time. On the plea of mishandling the economy, the establishment paved the way for his ouster. Imran’s popularity too had plummeted at that time, and the economy went into a free fall with forex reserves touching an all-time low. By April 2022, Imran was forced to vacate his gifted Prime Minister’s seat. A political lightweight, Shahbaz Shariff, was brought in from nowhere and anointed Prime Minister, with de facto power remaining in the hands of the establishment. This time the establishment acted once bitten twice shy by avoiding a strong leader with a mass base like Imran and selecting a compromise candidate in Shahbaz Shariff.

Imran Khan’s premature ouster left him with a hurt ego, and he started attacking his erstwhile mentor, Gen. Bajwa, the new army chief, Gen. Asim Munir, and the establishment. Since his ouster, he has been speaking like the French king Louis XIV: ‘I am the state.’ Imran Khan has so far projected himself as the only leader in the history of Pakistan who, for the first time, has dared to take on the might of the establishment. A distant second to this claim comes Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who wrested power from Gen. Yahya Khan in 1971. But that was a different time, as the Pakistani army was soundly drubbed by the arch-enemy India, and 93 thousand service personnel were in Indian custody. But for this audacity, Bhutto had to lay down his life just six years later, in 1977, when he was hanged by another army general, Zia-ul-Haq. In one of his innumerable speeches after his release from NAB custody by the intervention of the Supreme Court, Imran Khan referred to the rarely discussed 1971 episode of the balkanization of the country by the wrong decisions of the then military rulers. By referring to the events of 1971, Imran Khan consciously likened himself to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the towering leader of the Bangladesh liberation struggle. His comparison is significant because Z. A. Bhutto opposed the appointment of Mujibur Rahman as Prime Minister despite his winning the majority of seats. That led to widespread discontent in erstwhile East Pakistan, and Operation Searchlight followed. The subsequent events led to the inhuman atrocities against the Bengali population in East Pakistan that culminated in the creation of Bangladesh. Imran Khan’s analogy is significant in that he urges the establishment that if popular will, that is, bringing him back as Prime Minister, is suppressed by military might, the consequences would be like those of 1971. But the question is: is Imran Khan as tall a leader as Mujibur Rahman in 1971 in East Pakistan? Definitely not. The numerous audio and video clips that are making the rounds on social media, his reputation as a Casanova, and the innumerable corruption allegations not denied by him dwarf him before a towering figure like Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Secondly, is he leading a mass movement that would bring about a change in the socioeconomic condition of the ordinary citizens of the country? The answer again is negative. Because his agitation is not aimed at ushering in any systematic change in the polity of Pakistan, he simply wants to come back to power riding on his present popularity. He does not have the patience to wait until the present government completes its constitutional tenure, which shows that he does not have faith in the constitution of the country. With the judiciary on his side, he seems to have been a power greater than the state. The establishment in 2018 created a Frankenstein gone berserk. A megalomaniac leader, power-hungry, anti-West, rabidly anti-India, and above all, an Islamic revivalist, will definitely prove disastrous not only for Pakistan but for the region. The present outpouring of support for Imran Khan manifested as a mass uprising is no revolution but a temporary outburst of revulsion at the long and unaccounted dominance of the military in the polity of Pakistan.