Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan is fond of using sporting clichés to explain complicated political dilemmas. “Bowling out the opposition” and forcing the “Umpire’s finger” are both regulars from his public speaking playbook. But as problems mount for Pakistan’s civilian leader, it’s getting harder to explain away reality with handy cricket metaphors. Cricket, after all, cannot be played in the rain—and Khan’s ship of state is about to run into some pretty bad weather.
Ten months into his innings as Prime Minister, things are bad—much worse than anyone expected. The economy is in free fall, a balance of payments crisis has become critical, inflation is at record levels, the cost of living has become stratospheric, unemployment is rising, the stock market has witnessed multiple bloodbaths, and the rupee has lost 30 percent of its value against the dollar overnight, becoming one of the world’s worst performing currencies. The government has been forced to join an IMF bailout program which is likely to make all these things worse before they get better, if it all they do. People are feeling the pain.
So dire was all this that Khan had to sack his entire economic team—individuals he had long promised would save the country—in one fell swoop. Naturally, he had a ready cricket metaphor to explain the ousters: “A captain must shuffle his batting order when necessary.”
In the midst of this economic turmoil, the Prime Minister finds himself on a collision course with the opposition. Despite allegations of systemic backing from the military establishment, Khan has cobbled together only a wafer-thin majority in parliament. Bolstered by support from the country’s ultimate power broker, he is unwilling to parley with his rivals, and hence unable to pass even one piece of significant legislation. Parliament is at an impasse. The opposition sees Khan as a Manchurian candidate launched by “higher powers” and claim he wants to engineer a one-party state at the behest of his benefactors in uniform. This has not been helped by relentless talk from his supporters of a presidential system in place of the current parliamentary one, which would give Khan unprecedented power. Verbal abuse, physical altercations, sulks and walkouts are regular fixtures in the sessions of the National Assembly, which has developed a Jerry Springer-esque feel to it. Khan’s inauguration speech on the floor of the house was shouted down with such intensity that he doubled down and promised to go after his opponents for corruption. “I will not let any of these thieves go,” Khan roared, “I swear it here before God.” Not even Trump made such a virulent maiden speech, went the scuttlebut in Islamabad—where uncanny parallels between Khan and the U.S. President are regularly noted with a mixture of amusement and horror.
The opposition, now run chiefly by the young scions of the Bhutto and Sharif political dynasties, have their backs against the wall, as the deep state continues an unprecedented—and highly successful—campaign to drive them from public life. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is still in jail on corruption charges, disqualified from political office, and virtually the entire senior leadership of his party has been decapitated in similar fashion. Former President Asif Zardari (Benazir Bhutto’s widower) faces a plethora of corruption cases and was arrested on Monday for money laundering. The opposition, which has thus far avoided an all-out confrontation with the government and the military in hopes of leniency, has found none forthcoming and now sees no option but to fight. House Bhutto and House Sharif, once bitter rivals, have found common ground. Energized by a younger leadership, they have come together and announced they will take to the streets against Khan in what is being dubbed the “final battle.” A combined opposition movement planned after the Eid holidays in early June has serious potential to paralyze the country over the summer months.
Not given pause by this, Khan has bewilderingly gone and opened up another battlefront, this time with the judiciary. His government has recently filed a constitutional reference seeking to remove one of the most respected and fiercely independent minded judges on the Supreme Court. Justice Qazi Faez Isa, who has long earned the ire of the security and intelligence establishment for his unequivocal judgments against them, is next in line to be Chief Justice. The reference against Isa is seen as further proof of who’s pulling Khan’s strings.
The move has been met with predictable outrage from the legal community and the opposition. The Additional Attorney General of Pakistan resigned immediately in protest, accusing the government of attempting to “browbeat the judiciary.” The Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) and bar councils across the country have threatened to lock down the courts and called for street resistance.
The last time a similar reference was filed against a Supreme Court judge in 2007, it triggered a nationwide lawyers movement that led to the downfall of then-military ruler General Pervez Musharaff. The unprecedented struggle to restore judges sacked by Musharaff left an indelible impact on the consciousness of the country that persists today. Ironically, it was Imran Khan who was one of the key leaders of that street movement, and even close aides who manned the barricades alongside him then cannot fathom the wisdom of the present decision. “This time they should arrange for ambulances and not tear gas, as we will not court arrest but fight to the end,” said Amanullah Kanrani, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA).
If Khan is unable to defuse this impending judicial crisis it could spell catastrophe. However, this would require a huge climbdown, which he does not appear in the mood for. “No one is above the law” is the solitary statement attributed to Khan on the matter, relayed by an increasingly befuddled clutch of official spokespeople.
Just as things are coming to a boil with the economic crisis, the opposition parties, and the judiciary, an ethnic rebellion is brewing in the north. Disaffected Pashtuns are rising up against the government and the military for alleged human rights abuses in their home districts in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Since 9/11 this region has been ground zero in the fight between the Pakistan army, the Taliban and a melange of global militant groups—not to mention the number one target for American predator drones. Crushed in between, the local people have suffered the worst consequences of war, with over 1 million displaced. Many of them have now found their voice in the rights group calling itself the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), which has demanded the formation of a truth and reconciliation commission to address extrajudicial killings by the military, an end to enforced disappearances, and the removal of landmines from the tribal areas.
PTM rallies have attracted thousands of followers in what has thus far been a largely non-violent grassroots movement, but things are changing as the impasse with the army grows. Last week, 13 PTM activists were gunned down as they tried to break through a military checkpoint in North Waziristan. The army says it is willing to address genuine grievances of affected people but that the PTM leadership has been infiltrated by agent provocateurs and secessionists who are trying to exploit the situation. It says, too, that the group is receiving funding from the intelligence agencies of Afghanistan and India. This is not an entirely implausible claim; Pakistan’s inimical neighbors to east and west both share an interest in seeing the problem exacerbated, or at least kept simmering in order to extract concessions elsewhere.
Whatever its causes, the threat of burgeoning Pashtun nationalism is seen as an existential threat in Islamabad, and panic levels are rising. “Their time is up,” said army spokesperson Major General Asif Ghafoor in a recent press conference about PTM. The gloves appear to be coming off as the civilian government seems unable or unwilling to advance a political settlement, even as intellectuals in the salons of Karachi and Lahore scream themselves hoarse, warning of enormous consequences if the crisis is not handled deftly by politicians, and politicians alone. Here again, Imran Khan’s government seems out of ideas.
Further south in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest and most resource-rich province, a less ambiguous separatist insurgency is picking up speed. Ethnic Baloch rebels have stepped up attacks against army installations and increasingly against civilian targets too. Last month a five-star hotel in the port city of Gwadar was stormed by militants. Three hotel employees and two soldiers lost their lives before security forces were able to clear the resort. Just weeks before this, a bus carrying naval officers in the province was ambushed by rebels and 13 Navy personnel were summarily executed. Targeted killings of ethnic Punjabi “settlers” in Balochistan have become routine, as well as attacks on Chinese workers. The deep-water port of Gwadar is the centerpiece of a $60 billion infrastructure project bankrolled by Beijing as part of its One Belt One Road initiative (OBOR). The Pakistan leg, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), provides the first ever land route connecting western China with the warm waters of the Arabian Sea, and is seen as vital to the whole scheme.
Pakistan has accused India of arming the rebels and has consistently provided evidence of this to the United Nations. The arrest of Khulbushan Yadev, an alleged senior-ranking Indian spy from Balochistan in 2017, and the subsequent death sentence handed down to him by a Pakistani military court has been much publicized in Pakistan but not elsewhere. Pakistan says it has arrested “hundreds of junior operatives” based on Yadev’s testimony who were “engaged in waging war against the Pakistani state.” The conviction has been frozen and is pending arbitration in the International Court of Justice, where high-powered legal teams from both countries fight over the alleged secret agent’s fate.
But there are few takers for Islamabad’s narrative, itself accused of harboring cross-border terror groups. Donald Trump last year accused the country’s leadership of “deceit and lies,” saying that Pakistan gives “safe havens to terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan. . . No more!” Pakistan has faced sanctions from the United Nation’s Security Council over its failure to crack down on jihadi groups on its soil. It is also facing an aggressive New Delhi-led campaign to get it internationally blacklisted as a global financier of terror via the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Superpower-presumptive India, under a newly invigorated Narendra Modi fresh off another election win, sees no interest in dialogue with a hamstrung Pakistan. He has vowed to isolate it diplomatically at every forum and dispensed with blueprints for peace talks over Kashmir, painstakingly negotiated in years past.
Having narrowly averted an all-out war with India in March, Islamabad is taking frantic measures to clamp down on jihadi groups and avoid the FATF sanctions, before its upcoming session in Paris next week. There are signs that the pressure from Washington is easing somewhat since Trump’s thunderous tweets about Pakistan’s treachery. As the Afghan peace talks make awkward progress in Moscow, Doha, and Islamabad, Pakistan’s influence is crucial in bringing about an agreement to end the Afghan conflict.
Islamabad’s shopping list of foreign policy objectives is formidable: End the Afghan war, satiate the Americans while still having a stake in the future set-up in Kabul, uproot non-state actors at home, avoid terror-related sanctions, and maintain a détente with an increasingly belligerent India without ceding to its demand for total regional hegemony.
These are difficult odds for any country. Unable to find respite from domestic problems, winning a complex diplomatic war seems an even taller order for Khan’s fledgling government. Still, if he is able to do this deftly and secure the balance of power in the region, perhaps with a little help from Beijing, Khan could still come out on top.
It is understood in Islamabad that America’s levers of influence over Pakistan’s fate, with respect to India, terror sanctions, and IMF bailout conditions, will vary entirely based the outcome of the Afghan dialogue. The good news is that both parties want it to succeed. Policymakers in Washington would be well advised to seek the path of least resistance in dealing with Pakistan, which can still help bring home the bacon for Trump and end the longest war in American history. Pakistan’s support for, and influence over, the Afghan Taliban stems from its fear of encirclement by India via Afghanistan and its need for allies in Kabul to counter this. Understanding Islamabad’s security concerns is and has always been the key to a settlement in Afghanistan. Pushing its civil-military leadership to the wall has not worked in the past, and is not likely to do so under present conditions.
As Ramadan came to an end last week, millions of Pakistanis looked skywards to spot the crescent moon that signals the start of Eid. The holy month of fasting that precedes this is a lethargic period when the pace of politics in the country, much like the gastric metabolisms of its citizens, slows down considerably. People plan holidays and go shopping, sleep late, and skip work early. There is an unspoken pact that all contentious issues shall be dealt with after. As the backlog of problems continues to build, the eerie sensation of a calm before the storm is being felt widely. This year, the new moon brings no glad tidings. It’s going to be a long, hot, fateful summer.