Imran fights for control of nuclear Pakistan: WSJ

NEW YORK: One of the world’s most compelling political dramas is largely ignored in America. With 230 million nuclear weapons, Pakistan’s stability rests on a duel between the country’s most popular politician and the head of its most powerful institution. Can Army Chief General Asim Munir prevent former Prime Minister Imran Khan from regaining power?

According to the Wall Street Journal; US magazine, Mr. Khan is very popular in Pakistan. He topped the latest Gallup Pakistan poll with 61 percent approval, 25 points ahead of his two nearest rivals. However, his recklessness, impractical ideas and poor administrative skills risk uprooting a nation teetering on the brink of floods, terrorism and bankruptcy.

The 70-year-old former prime minister’s determination to return a year after Parliament removed him from office also poses a dilemma for Washington. Mr. Khans’s authoritarian streak, his sympathies for radical Islam and his anti-Americanism put him in the mold of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A second Khan government is likely to worsen the country’s domestic problems and sour relations with the United States.

Mr. Khan has a real chance of a comeback. He has real political powers, including a reputation for competence, an ability to rouse both the masses and the middle class, and a tenacity that has transformed the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, from a one-man group to the country’s political leader. party.

At the heart of Mr Khans’ populist appeal is his reputation for leadership in cricket. For more than two decades, Mr. Khan has held a position at the pinnacle of the sport. In 1992, he led a ragtag underdog team to victory in the World Cup in Australia, Pakistan’s greatest sporting achievement. As Mr. Khans supporters see it, the charismatic leadership skills that transformed the national cricket team can also transform the nation.

Mr. Khan also offers a religious salvation story. As a young playboy, he frequented London nightclubs and was photographed in a bathrobe in a bachelorette gown decorated with tiger posters. Critics consider his religious stance and frequent criticism of Western culture to be hypocritical. But social transformation plays well in a deeply religious nation. Oxford-educated and once married to British heiress Jemima Goldsmith, Mr Khan could easily have lived a comfortable life in the West, his admirers have seen. Instead, he chose the squalor of Pakistan, where he built a first-class cancer hospital in memory of his mother and launched the PTI in 1996 to fight corruption in public life.

Imagine if Michael Jordan was also America’s most famous philanthropist and became president after starting a new party, says PTI lawyer Taimur Malik in a phone interview from Lahore. This is how Pakistanis feel about Imran Khan.

Mr. Khanlar’s party finished second in the 2013 election and eventually won in 2018 with the help of the military. This helped Mr. Khans build a coalition by chasing down his opponents. But three years into his tenure, Mr Khan fell out with the then army chief, General Qamar Bajwa, over the appointment of a new general to head the army’s Inter-Services Intelligence, which has long been mired in domestic politics. A few months later, Mr. Khan’s government collapsed in a no-confidence vote.

The army has ruled Pakistan directly for almost half of its 75-year existence, and indirectly for most of the rest. Usually a discredited politician is either dead or in exile. Mr. Khan claims, without evidence, that senior generals and ruling party leaders were behind the failed November assassination attempt. The army and the politicians accused deny the charge, but rather than fade away, Mr Khan has taken the fight to the new army chief, General Munir.

In January, Mr Khan ordered his party’s provincial governments in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to resign in a bid to force early national elections. Mr Khan has criticized the army chief in interviews with foreign journalists and his supporters have flooded social media with attacks on the army. In about a year, Pakistan has gone from a country where even top journalists choose their words carefully about the military to one where PTI supporters openly insult the serving army chief.

Mr. Khans’ popularity has helped him rewrite the rules of Pakistani politics, and unlike previous leaders who were ousted by the military, he enjoys support among serving and retired officers. In addition, the courts have shielded Mr. Khan by preventing the government from arresting him on charges ranging from corruption to terrorism. He denies all the charges brought against him.

But Mr. Khans’ drunkenness reinforces the argument that he is too reckless to be trusted with power again. With the election due in October, the dilemma for the army chief could not be more acute. As an old Pakistani saying goes, there is only one grave, but two candidates, Atlantic Council Pakistan expert Uzeyir Yunus said in a phone interview. Imran Khan assured that either he or Munir will rule Pakistan.