Pakistan Election: Imran Khan Will Be Pro-Peace — If Army Says So

Imran’s views on foreign policy largely mirror the Pakistan Army’s; both oppose US presence in Afghanistan.

It’s been quite a story for the charismatic sportsman, playboy and politician.

(Photo Courtesy: Arnica Kala/The Quint)

In 1992, after 22 months on the margins of cricket, including a brief spell of retirement, Imran Khan led Pakistan to an unlikely World Cup victory. In 2018, after 22 years on the political margins, Imran Khan has captained his Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI) to an equally spectacular election victory.

It’s been quite a story for the charismatic sportsman, playboy and politician.

The widespread perception that he was the ‘favourite son’ of the Pakistani military, and had been carefully promoted to replace the military’s bête noire, Nawaz Sharif, did not dim the lustre of his convincing victory — with 109 of 269 contested seats in the National Assembly against 63 seats for his nearest rivals, ie, the Sharif clan's Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N).

The Bhutto family’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) won only 39 seats — 38 have gone to independents and smaller parties, and results are still awaited — as of the time of writing — for 20.

This makes it clear that, although Pakistan's Election Commission — after two days of frustratingly slow vote-counting because of a breakdown in the electronic tabulation system — on Friday officially declared Imran Khan's party the winner, thus capping Pakistan's historic third consecutive election of a civilian government — he did not (and cannot) win an outright majority in the National Assembly and must form a coalition.

Potential Coalition Partners

Obviously this cannot be with the now-Shahbaz Sharif-led Muslim League, which Imran targeted almost viciously in the last two elections, raising the charges of financial malfeasance, that led to former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s ouster by the Supreme Court in 2017. With Sharif and his daughter Maryam in prison, his party is unlikely to have any truck with the man who tormented him.

Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan with the world cup trophy in 1992. (Photo Courtesy: Sidhant Sibal‏/Twitter)

An alliance with the PPP will push Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party over the top in the National Assembly, but it seems unlikely that the Bhuttos will consent to play junior partner to the former cricket star. Nor will Imran — having run as the anti-establishment candidate who decried both the Bhuttos and Nawaz as corrupt — be inclined to reach out to them if he has a choice.

If PTI and PPP cannot come to a meeting of the minds, over the next several days Khan will need to find allies among the smaller parties, and the handful of independents who have won seats. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA – an acronym once derided as standing for “Mullah-Military Alliance”) are more likely allies, since they also share Imran’s combination of Islamist fervour and military support. (Mercifully, the extremist parties fighting under the banner of the Allah-o-Akbar Tehreek, including terrorist don Hafeez Sayeed’s son, all lost.)

My Trysts With Imran Khan

Such an alliance would also suit the Army, since the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) would pull their support from the government any time the military asked them to — the alliance would help them keep Imran firmly in check should he be unwise enough to develop any delusions of independence.

Imran Khan still faces the challenge of finding partners among some of the parties that are now complaining vociferously of widespread fraud and ballot-rigging, including massive manipulation at the counting stage. 

This is par for the course in Pakistan. However, Imran himself made the same allegations against Sharif last time around. He must feel confident that he can weather the storm.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that, like hundreds of Indians, I do know Imran. I first met him nearly three decades ago in New York, at the home of his sister Rubina, a UN colleague. I have since encountered him a few more times in India, and duelled with him on television. When I led an Indian parliamentary delegation to Islamabad last year, he sought a meeting with me. When told that security restrictions would not permit me to leave the hotel, Imran came over and spent an hour with me and my colleagues. He wanted to talk mainly about my book An Era of Darkness, which he had read and could cite extensively.

“This is our shared history. You must come and speak about colonialism in Pakistan,” Imran urged me, “at a big event under my auspices”. No doubt for differing reasons, neither of us pursued this idea.

The ‘Two Imrans’

So Imran Khan is a man Indians can talk to. But what should we expect from a Pakistan led by him?

The problem is that he has two faces — a liberal, cosmopolitan and urbane one, which is seen in London and Mumbai — and an uncompromisingly hawkish Islamist one, an image he reserves for his Pakistani audiences. This is the man who, after all, has had Hafiz Sayeed address his early rallies, consorted with extremist parties and movements like the Tehreek e-Labbaik Pakistan and the virulently anti-Shia Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, opposed repealing the blasphemy law, supports the de-recognition of Ahmaddiyas as Muslims — and called Nawaz Sharif a coward for not responding militarily to India’s 2016 “surgical strikes”. 

Imran Khan’s loudly-expressed sympathy for the Taliban even earned him the nickname ‘Taliban Khan’. 

But after his victory, he reached out to India, decrying each country’s habit of blaming the other for its misfortunes. “Take one step toward us and we will take two steps toward you,” Imran Khan said to New Delhi.

What Can We Expect From an Imran-Led Pakistan?

It is clear that the military, having encouraged and perhaps sponsored Imran Khan’s rise, sees him as the most plausible and useful instrument for whichever policy they decide to adopt towards us — and the ‘India policy’ has always been the prerogative of the military, as every PM who was inclined to cross the military’s red lines found out.

This means that — if, as some recent statements of General Bajwa suggest, Pakistan feels the policy of hostility has stopped paying dividends and must be changed —Imran Khan will turn on the charm and lean towards India. But if the Army’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi decides it prefers to turn the screws on India again, encouraging the Lashkar-e-Taiba to conduct another 26/11, Imran will be the mediagenic face of a belligerent approach.

Indeed, there is no shortage of evidence for the proposition that Imran’s views on foreign policy largely mirror the Army’s. Both oppose the US presence in Afghanistan, and have condemned US-Pakistan military operations and drone strikes in the area. Imran dismissed US President Donald Trump as “ignorant and ungrateful” for his criticisms of Pakistan’s double-dealing (accepting American aid against terror while financing terrorists itself). And Imran has rarely parted from the military’s position on India.

But this election wasn’t really about foreign policy. India was barely mentioned by the candidates, other than the ritual references to Kashmir. 

It was about the Pakistani public’s widespread disillusionment with a corrupt and ineffective establishment in power for too long (all civilian governments since 1971 have featured either the Bhuttos or the Sharifs).

Imran Khan built his victory on a promise of “clean, transparent and accountable government”, fealty to ‘true’ Islamic principles, overt religious devotion (epitomised in his marrying a spiritualist ‘pirni’), and a fierce social conservatism that many find hypocritical, given his colourful personal life and the sensational personal revelations of his former wife, Reham Khan.

His first wife Jemima tweeted pointedly, “... The challenge now is to remember why he entered politics in the 1st place.”

Millions of hopes are riding on Imran Khan today. The dust is yet to settle as these words are written, but the most significant aspect of Imran’s win must lie in the excuse it provides for those who really control Pakistan to promote a change.

When Nawaz sought to reach out to India, the Army stopped him. If now the Army wants peace with India, it knows that a change of Prime Minister will justify turning the page — New Delhi would always want to give a new government a chance. We will need to wait a while to see if the page can be turned.

(Former UN Under-Secretary-General, Shashi Tharoor is a Congress MP and an author. He can be reached @ShashiTharoor. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)