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Supporters of Pakistan's ousted former PM Imran Khan listen to his Long March speech in Lahore.
On the road to confrontation: Imran Khan’s power trip
On Friday, Pakistan's former PM Imran Khan finally kicked off the "Long March" he’s been threatening for months. Khan’s move is a familiar one in this part of the world, which has a rich history of mobilizing to achieve political goals.
Indeed, less than a century ago, Mohandas K. Gandhi, the father of modern India and progenitor of civil disobedience, kicked out the Brits through non-violence — and his footsteps. In 1930, Gandhi started his famous Salt March, walking 239 miles across his home state of Gujarat to defy colonial rule. His initial few dozen followers eventually turned into thousands, ushering in the beginning of the end for the mighty British Raj.
With that march, Gandhi birthed a long tradition of political protest on the subcontinent: If you want change, walk.
That’s why Rahul Gandhi, no relation to Mohandas but the leader of the same Indian National Congress, has been walking across the world’s largest democracy for over a month in a “Unite India '' march — his attempt to counter ascendant rival, Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Across the border, Khan’s march is well underway in a country that has had a very different experience with democracy. The launchpad is Lahore, Khan’s hometown and Pakistan’s cultural capital; the destination is Islamabad, the federal capital and Khan’s last residence, from where he was removed from power in April. The goal is to trigger snap elections, a prize the political establishment is denying him.
Although general elections are due in October 2023, Khan wants them now, and with reason: The 70-year-old has never been more popular. He accuses Washington of orchestrating regime change against his “independent” foreign policy. However light on evidence, the rhetoric resonates as Khan’s transformation from cricket champion to Islamist savior continues to impress voters. Despite the economic chaos his government left in its wake, he’s been sweeping by-elections, holding mass rallies, and doing what no other Pakistani politician has dared to do without being incarcerated, or worse: taking on the all-powerful military.
The distance Khan is traveling is close to what Gandhi traversed 92 years ago — about 234 miles, which can be covered in about four hours of driving — and the tactics are similar. He is pacing his march over the week, aiming to arrive by Friday. The goal of staggering the journey is to gather a mass following and political momentum.
As he left Lahore on Friday with a crowd of about 10,000 to the tune of nationalist pop music and Islamist anthems, Khan announced that he expects more than a million people to join him on the historic Grand Trunk Road, the country’s political heartland and the path of many movements that preceded his.
But in Pakistan’s violence-ridden history, most of those campaigns have not ended well. In 2007, I followed former PM Benazir Bhutto, whose own march was attacked by a suicide bomber in Karachi hours after she launched it upon her return from self-exile (days later, Bhutto was assassinated on the campaign trail).
In 2016 and 2017, as waves of Islamist protesters marched in support of Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws, the violence not only injured many colleagues but also paralyzed the capital, including the forced closing of my daughter’s school for weeks.
And in 2014, as Khan laid siege to Islamabad for over six months, ending the normalcy of daily life for hundreds of thousands of residents and officials, I covered his first Long March, a failed attempt to overthrow the government of then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (he only ended the protest after a deadly terror attack killed 150, including 134 children, shocking the country).
Clearly, Khan thrives in such chaos. But this time, Shehbaz Sharif, Nawaz’s younger brother, is the prime minister, and the government has warned Khan about breaking the law. Crucially, Sharif has the support of the military, which Khan has fallen out with.
Yet since his removal, Sharif’s administration and its military backers have failed spectacularly in their attempts to stop the Khan juggernaut. Every tactic has backfired: from framing flimsy terrorism charges against Khan, to conditionally disqualifying him from running for office, to arresting and torturing his deputies, to cracking down on coverage of his rallies (including live reporting of the Long March itself). The establishment has been forced on its back foot in such an unprecedented way that the shadowy spy chief had to hold an emergency press conference to explain the military’s precarious positioning.
But as the generals call out his “illegal and unconstitutional” maneuvering, Khan marches on.
Will the pedestrian brinkmanship propel him back to power? “There’s no recent precedent of a Long March peacefully forcing a change of government or policy,” says Mosharraf Zaidi, founder of the Islamabad-based think tank, Tabadlab. “But two factors can change things: violence, or a long, enduring political paralysis that forces powerful players to blink first.”
Zaidi assesses that Khan has neither the stomach for the first nor the capability — sans military support — for the second.
But Khan might disagree. As his followers swelled into the thousands on the trek toward Islamabad over the weekend, Khan urged them to obey the law, even as intelligence officials warned about terror attacks. A stark warning of the dangers involved came Sunday with news of a female journalist being crushed to death. Sadaf Naeem, 36, died after falling from one of the Long March vehicles, prompting Khan to express his condolences and halt the march for the day.
Earlier, as the carnival atmosphere was sustained by lively music and speeches, the playback of one classic song, dating back to the 1965 war with India and with lyrics pushing to “destroy all that comes in the way and fill the battlefield with bodies,” prompted Hamid Mir, one of Pakistan’s most respected journalists, to advise caution and let politics be politics.
But as Pakistan’s failing security state — infected by decades of self-destructive jingoism, jihadism, and interventionism — finds itself increasingly polarized, confrontation is seen by some as a solution, not a problem.
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Supporters of former Pakistani PM Imran Khan's block a Peshawar motorway toll plaza after he was disqualified from holding public office.
Crisistan: Pakistan’s three-way political poker game
Always on the brink, Pakistan is in crisis mode. Former PM Imran Khan, the cricket hero-turned-born again Muslim populist firebrand, was disqualified Friday from holding public office. Meanwhile, his deputies are being arrested, recorded conversations are being leaked to damage his credibility, and his supporters are being threatened with legal action.
But nothing’s working to stop the Khan juggernaut. And the country, strapped for cash and still reeling from catastrophic flooding, is headed toward further political turmoil.
As protests spring up in his support, the “Kaptaan” — Captain, as Khan is known for his athletic accolades and lead-from-the-front style of politicking — is threatening to launch a movement of civil disobedience by marching toward the capital of the world’s fifth-most populous nation and only nuclear-armed Islamic republic.
Yes he Khan. The 70-year-old has created a stir since April, when he was ousted from the premiership after falling out with the military, Pakistan’s ultimate arbiter of power. Since his removal through a vote of no-confidence that brought in a military-backed parliamentary coalition made of older, family-run parties with Shehbaz Sharif as PM, Khan’s popularity has been surging.
Alleging without much evidence that he’s the victim of US-backed conspiracy, the ousted former PM has been holding massive rallies, leading his party to sweep by-elections triggered by parliamentary reshuffling, and is pushing back against Pakistan’s traditional power structures — even those controlled by the all-powerful military.
Now, as the economy continues to spiral due to rising inflation, a weakening rupee, a balance of payments crisis and over $30 billion of losses from flooding, Khan’s rising popularity is being challenged through the Election Commission, which has accused him of corruption for not declaring about $100,000 worth of watches, cufflinks, and a ring he received from foreign dignitaries as PM and for selling them for twice as much. While the charges are flimsy, they may stick longer than the terrorism accusations made against him earlier this year.
“The disqualification seems to fit into a pattern of legal harassment by the Sharif government, with the support of the military,” says Eurasia Group analyst Pramit Chaudhury.
To challenge the verdict, Khan’s party wants a petition to be heard on Monday at the Islamabad High Court.
The disqualification verdict, held under wraps for more than a month, was not duly processed and is “suspicious as well as patently illegal," says Khan’s lawyer, Chaudhry Faisal Hussain. What’s more, as far as the merit of the case is concerned, “it’s the unanimous opinion of the legal fraternity across Pakistan that it is naive and weak to the extent of absurdity — there is no legal substance that can help this verdict stand in any court of law.”
Hussain is confident that Khan’s disqualification will be overturned. But in Pakistani politics, the military eats the courts for breakfast.
Will the real leader please stand up. All this unrest might just be theatrics to leverage the backroom politicking underway for the real prize: the appointment of the country’s next army chief —ostensibly the most powerful office in the land — by the end of November.
Here’s how it works in Pakistan's complicated system of a hybrid democracy: While an elected prime minister heads the government, he/she must reckon with the 600,000-strong military and share power with the army chief, who is selected personally by the PM. Given Pakistan’s civil-military imbalance, this arrangement has never gone well — akin to the hen choosing the fox to guard the hen house.
Consequently, army chiefs have usually outlasted and mostly outmaneuvered PMs. In 75 years, Pakistan has had 26 premierships, but only 16 army commanders — even though the latter are supposed to serve for three years, while the former are elected for five.
Fun fact: no Pakistani PM has ever finished a term in office. Every single premier has either been assassinated, executed, ousted, forced to resign or go into exile. Meanwhile, four army chiefs have served as presidents after conducting coups or declaring emergencies, and three of the last four have been granted or given themselves extended tenures.
Political poker. In the three-way struggle between Khan, Sharif, and the military to retain power, everybody has cards to play.
Khan’s ploy is to kick and scream against his disqualification to force an election and/or threaten a “long march” that will undoubtedly paralyze the country, perhaps even trigger violence. He’s actually quite effective at activism and protesting: Back in 2014, as opposition leader he laid the capital under siege for almost six months in his “Azaadi” [Independence] march, similar to the one he’s threatening now. Khan is not only savvy with the politics of unrest — in fact he thrives on it. So, will he be able to muster similar momentum to stage a popular comeback?
“A key test will be the response he gets to his call for mass protests,” says Chaudhury. “While Khan’s ability to hold million-men rallies and tap popular discontent over Pakistan’s present economic malaise is impressive, it is hard to see Sharif conceding his demand for early elections.”
Meanwhile, the incumbent PM is sitting on an even thornier decision: who will be the next army chief. To make the right choice, he must ensure that the military is satisfied and that his own political future is secure.
“Choosing the right candidate,” Chaudhury explains, “will be crucial for Sharif’s political future and potentially for Khan’s as well — if a general who doesn’t like the opposition leader takes the helm.”
But perhaps the most powerful card of all is being held by the current army chief, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, expected to retire in a month. The 62-year old has been here before: early in his tenure in 2017, former PM Nawaz Sharif — the elder brother of Shehbaz and Khan’s nemesis — was also disqualified from office on similarly dubious charges.
The political instability and polarization borne from that tussle helped Bajwa secure what he wanted: an even bigger seat for the army at the table, and then an extension of service for himself.
On Friday, just as protests were swirling in Khan’s support across the country, the general reiterated that he’s going to retire on time. Will this round of civilian political infighting favor the military even more?This article comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Sign up today.
Men carry children on their shoulders and wade along a flooded road, following rains and floods during the monsoon season in Nowshera, Pakistan.
Pakistan underwater
Pakistan is in full-blown crisis mode. More than 30 million people have been affected by unprecedented rainfall and flooding — and one-third of the country is now underwater.
This deadly natural disaster came as Pakistan was already grappling with a series of out-of-hand economic and political crises. What’s the backstory and where might this all be heading?
Background. During the pandemic, many countries took on new debt to insulate their economies from the economic pain caused by rolling lockdowns, closed borders, and business closures. But even before COVID, Pakistan’s economy was struggling to stay afloat as a result of years of economic mismanagement, in large part due to corruption and excessive government expenditure.
Indeed, Pakistan’s public debt surpassed 87% of GDP at the end of 2019, up from about 72% a year earlier. Under former Prime Minister – and cricket champ – Imran Khan, Islamabad was caught in a vicious cycle of borrowing more money from domestic and foreign sources — largely China — to service its existing loans. China, for its part, has also tampered down its investments in the country, in part because its personnel and projects have been targeted by insurgents.
The economic situation was already dire when Pakistan, long thought to be particularly vulnerable to climate change, experienced a series of extreme weather events in recent months. Record-breaking heat caused by global warming exacerbated drought throughout parts of South Asia. Now, deadly flooding has killed 1,100 people in Pakistan and damaged more than 1 million homes.
Unstable politics. With the country’s economy in shambles and Khan at loggerheads with Pakistan’s powerful army, the former PM was ousted in April in a no-confidence vote held by Pakistan’s notoriously corrupt and raucous parliament. Since then, however, sky-high inflation, a plummeting local currency, and unpopular measures like cutting fuel price subsidies have caused current PM Shehbaz Sharif to lose favor with much of the public, perhaps including the military, which directly or indirectly calls the shots in Pakistani politics.
What’s more, Khan has successfully whipped his supporters into a frenzy, holding mass marches on the capital that have resulted in violent clashes between his growing support base and police.
Crucially, the situation is particularly tense at the moment, after Pakistani police recently charged the ousted former PM with violating the anti-terror act for threatening judicial officers in a speech. Khan is currently out on bail after the courts ruled that he couldn't be arrested before Sept. 1. His supporters, meanwhile, have warned they'll march on Islamabad if he's arrested, so things could soon spiral out of control.
An IMF bailout: A double-edged sword
As Pakistan continues to reel from floods, the International Monetary Fund this week approved a $1.1 billion bailout package to help Islamabad stave off default. That’s a good thing for the country, but it won’t come without pain. Pakistanis were furious when the government raised fuel costs — and enforced other austerity measures — to secure the IMF loan.
Pramit Chaudhuri, who heads Eurasia Group’s South Asia desk, believes there will likely be some leeway given the current scale of devastation.
“The IMF has cleared the new tranche,” he says. “The floods will mean the conditionalities will have to be relaxed. For example, the target of achieving a 0.2% GDP primary budget surplus in this fiscal year is a dead letter.”
Islamabad now has the added task of appealing for international aid, with estimates that the floods could cost the economy a whopping $10 billion. Moreover, they’ve destroyed millions of acres of farmland — particularly in the southern provinces of Sindh and Balochistan. This is a catastrophe in a country with a teetering economy and where agriculture accounts for just under one quarter of GDP.
Looking ahead. The Sharif government hopes that the IMF bailout — as well as funds from foreign donors like the Chinese and Saudis — will help ease inflation and get the economy back on the right course before elections, which must take place by Oct. 2023. But is that a pipe dream?
“Imran Khan controls the street, so the government and military are using legal harassment and worse to try and contain him,” explains Chaudhuri. “As long as the economy is stressed he will want to keep up the pressure,” he says, warning that “more social unrest is very likely."
Pro-Russian troops inspect streets in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine.
What We’re Watching: Mariupol on the brink, Pakistan’s new leader, Finland’s NATO bid
Is Mariupol on the brink?
The fight for the strategic southeastern Ukrainian port of Mariupol continues to rage. Unconfirmed reports late Monday pointed to the possible use of chemical weapons dropped by a Russian drone. US and British officials said they were monitoring reports of the possible chemical attack. The fate of Mariupol is critical for the next phase of the war. If Russia is able to take the city, it would be able to do two things: establish a land bridge to Crimea and punch northward as part of a broader effort to encircle Ukrainian forces fighting in the Donbas. As Russia now points its army towards a full-fledged assault on eastern Ukraine, Kyiv has warned of the bloodiest land battles in Europe since World War II and pleaded for more military assistance from the West.
Can Sharif bring economic healing to Pakistan?
Pakistan’s new prime minister doesn’t have an enviable job. Parliament elected Shehbaz Sharif on Monday amid economic and political turmoil in the Islamic Republic following Imran Khan’s ouster on Saturday. Khan’s party resigned en masse on Monday, part of a larger mobilization of supporters the former PM hopes will lead to street protests and agitation against the new government. Sharif, meanwhile, hit the ground running on economic matters, raising the minimum wage and some government pensions — a bid to help average Pakistanis cope with high inflation and soaring fuel prices. He is expected to form a broad coalition government and will aim to get Pakistan’s IMF funding back on track, along with electoral reforms, before calling a new election to try and secure a fresh mandate.