The arrest of Imran Khan, a former Prime Minister and leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, ought not to have come as a surprise to anyone remotely following events in our immediate neighbourhood. The only surprise lay in its belatedness. After all, the PTI leader had come to openly challenge the army. In Pakistan, you don’t mess with the Rawalpindi GHQ. Particularly in the case of the former cricketer-turned-politician it was all the more troubling for the army, given that without its open support he could not have become prime minister in the first place. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you, do you? Convinced of his street power and keen to exploit the alleged rift in the higher echelons of the army he imagined he could play one general off against the other and come to regain power yet again. He was wrong. The army is so deeply entrenched in the life of Pakistan that anyone who confronts it comes to grief. Ask Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister cooling heels in a well-appointed mansion in London, while younger brother Shehbaz occupies the prime ministerial gaddi. And this power-sharing arrangement with the PPP too was blessed by the army after it decided to dump Imran. He was committing the cardinal sin of interfering in the succession at the Rawalpindi GHQ, pushing his close ally and then ISI head to be appointed the successor to then Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa. This tinkering with the internal hierarchy in the army was unacceptable, he promptly transferred out Khan’s nominee, adhering to seniority and naming General Asim Munir as the new army chief.
What encouraged Khan to challenge the long-established tradition in Pakistan politics of not taking on the army was the vertical split on political lines in the top judiciary, with the Chief Justice siding with the PTI and a majority of judges going with the army-civilian government. No prime minister in Pakistan has completed his full five-year term. In April last year Khan too paid the price for his audaciousness in challenging the deep State and found himself voted out in a trust vote. Since then he has been marshalling his followers, exploiting the very economic mess he had left behind, and calling for immediate national and provincial polls. The Muslim League (Sharif) and PPP abhor the idea of election at this moment, given that inflation is ruling at above 40%, the rupee is reeling against the dollar, touching a new low of Rs. 290.22 against the US dollar on Wednesday, and there is every possibility of Pakistan defaulting on repayment of foreign debt as scheduled. With anarchy and riots erupting in the wake of Khan’s arrest, any chance of the IMF extending a helping hand can be written off. Worse, the $4.5 billion in the forex kitty is enough to pay a month’s import bill. In short, Pakistan is staring at a prolonged period of uncertainty and chaos.
Of course, the only sensible course for India is to adopt a wait-and-watch, hands-off policy. Let its always inimical western neighbour sort out its own mess, while hoping that some sort of stability can be returned to the nuclear-armed nation. As for its ‘all-weather friend’ China, the latter is unwelcome on the Pakistani street though the generals and the politicians kowtow to it. Even China is niggardly in extending financial assistance, insisting on extracting its pound of flesh in kind and cash. Truly, Pakistan has become a basket case. Even the Americans after exiting in a huff from Afghanistan do not have much use propping up a rickety regime in Islamabad.
In short, the crossroads at which Pakistan finds itself yet again will be hard to traverse for those formally charged with maintaining law and order. Immediately following his arrest, angry PTI supporters raided the house of a top army general in Lahore while they tried to break open the gates of the GHQ in Rawalpindi. Of course, there is no denying that some of the corruption charges against Khan are legitimate, especially the kickbacks received from a big real estate developer and the sale of items from Toshakhana received from foreign dignitaries and failing to deposit the proceeds in government treasury. He has been sent to eight-day police custody by a court. The army can claim it has no role to play except to help civil administration restore law and order, but it is a public secret that without its support the former protégé-turned-rebel could not have become the mass leader which he is now. Pakistan may be looking at a long period of instability before a modicum of democratic legitimacy can return to the hapless Islamic State.
