A Political-Military Confrontation: This Is How Imran Khan Is Betting on Returning to Power

The political crisis in Pakistan is exacerbating, and the conflict is intensifying day after day between the government and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led by former Prime Minister Imran Khan on the one hand, and also between Khan and the military establishment.

The apparent reason is the government’s refusal of Khan’s request to hold early elections and its insistence that this election takes place on the specified date in August 2023.

According to observers, Pakistan’s problems are the result of the policies of previous governments, exacerbated by the Russian-Ukrainian war and high energy prices, as well as the decline in US aid and Imran Khan’s endeavors towards a more independent approach by allying with Turkiye to form an Islamic bloc, and not to vote for the United Nations resolution condemning Russia.

On April 10, Khan’s government was overthrown through a vote of no confidence in parliament, and he was replaced by Shahbaz Sharif, who heads the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) coalition, which was described as a political conspiracy woven by the current government, army leaders, and foreign countries.

However, Imran Khan’s popularity rose again after the overthrow of his government, and since then, Khan has been calling for early elections and opposing what he calls the imported government, until his convoy was targeted on November 3, 2022, and Khan was shot in the leg.

 

Long March

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan entered into a rare confrontation with the army after accusing a high-ranking military official of planning his assassination, which put the country’s army leaders in one of the biggest challenges it has faced in decades.

In a strongly worded speech on November 4, 2022, Imran Khan accused Major General Faisal Naseer, an official of the ISI, of collusion with his arch-rival Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, to try to kill him.

Shahbaz Sharif rejected the accusations against him, which indicated that the democratic transition in the country is still faltering, and that the Pakistani military has not yet given up its role in influencing the country’s political scene.

Khan blamed the coalition government for suppressing peaceful protests and criticized intelligence officials for allegedly torturing his party’s top leaders, Azam Swati and Shahbaz Gill.

Khan appealed to the Chief Justice of Pakistan to achieve justice and demanded that the army chief pay more attention and take action against the black sheep in the military establishment.

The former prime minister also criticized the election commission, which last month excluded him from holding any position for a period of 5 years for not disclosing transactions related to the official gifts he received as prime minister.

In turn, the Pakistani army responded to Khan’s remarks, saying: “The baseless and irresponsible allegations against the military establishment and a senior army officer are completely unacceptable and unwarranted.”

The army confirmed that it called on the government to investigate the matter and take legal action against those responsible for defamation and false accusations against the military, according to the statement.

Since his overthrow, Khan organized a series of anti-government demonstrations for freedom and independence of decision, and claimed that he was overthrown through a conspiracy sponsored by the United States, which Washington and the Pakistani coalition government denied.

Last October 28, Imran Khan began a long march to the capital, Islamabad, in an attempt to pressure the government to hold early elections, which came on the heels of the Election Commission’s decision to disqualify Khan from any public office for a period of 5 years.

The committee’s decision was issued on October 21, days after it was announced that Imran Khan’s party had won six of the seven National Assembly seats for which it ran across the country in by-elections at the end of the same month, confirming its high internal popularity.

 

Military Political Row

In the same context, The Financial Times stated in its report on November 10 that the Pakistani army, which has 500,000 soldiers, is considered the most powerful establishment in the country, as it has a large and strong role in foreign and security policies, and has previously led several coups.

The Pakistani military establishment wants to maintain its independence in all its decisions, starting with determining its budget, passing through drawing the broad lines of foreign policy, specifically what is going on in the region, and having a say in what is also going on inside Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Khan believes that the military establishment has no involvement in politics, whether it is internal or external, and it must provide a clear account to the government about its budget.

The newspaper quoted analysts that if Khan’s confrontation with the army succeeds, the PTI party will win the general elections scheduled for 2023, which will return the party leader to power less than a year after his ouster, with much greater influence.

The Financial Times stated that the generals continued to rule Pakistan openly, but politicians say that they have chosen in recent years to influence politics behind the scenes, but the army denies its interference in the country’s politics.

Many believe that the armed forces, which have interests in everything in the country from security to business, helped Khan’s rise to power in 2018, something both sides deny.

However, the relationship between the two sides became strained after Khan challenged the army over some vital issues in the country, according to the newspaper.

The Financial Times said that if the Pakistani army had predicted that Khan would disappear from the scene after his dismissal, then this has proven to be a major miscalculation, because the economic crisis that the country is suffering from—due to the painful International Monetary Fund program—prompted the former prime minister to criticize mismanagement and corruption of the ruling elites.

On the other hand, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is holding consultations described as exceptional in the British capital, London, with his older brother Nawaz Sharif and Defense Minister Asif Zardari regarding choosing a new chief for the Pakistani army, to replace General Qamar Bajwa, who will retire from his post on November 29.

 

Expected Scenarios

Despite the recent decision of the Election Commission to ban Khan from practicing politics for a period of 5 years, Umer Karim, a researcher at the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham, believes that “the former prime minister can overcome the army and return to power.”

In his article on the Middle East Eye website on October 24, Mr. Karim believes that “the populist politician still has a potential chance to return to power, judging by the unique political history of Pakistan, and how he has turned the relationship between the executive branch and the army into one of the country’s defining features.”

“The military establishment is often the dominant political decision-making body, the majority of civilian rulers have had to cede space to it in the areas of foreign policy and national security, and any attempt to resist the status quo has been met with a strong response from the military establishment,” according to the article.

Under this situation, the country’s civilian leaders cannot maintain their political position without reaching a settlement with the military leadership. Nevertheless, Mr. Karim sees indications of a possible change, in light of former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s refusal to withdraw from the political arena despite his ouster from office.

On his part, political analyst Javed Siddiq said in a statement to Al-Jazeera Net on November 7 that there is a state of anxiety prevailing in the Pakistani street about what is to come, adding that most Pakistanis now believe that early elections are the only solution to end this conflict.

Regarding the expected scenarios, Mr. Siddiq says that the most prominent of them, which the Pakistani people hope to happen, is the dialogue between the political stakeholders under pressure from the military establishment.

He recalled a case from the past, when the conflict escalated in the 1990s between former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, as the army had the most prominent role in forcing them to engage in dialogue and hold early elections.

Although Imran Khan believes that the army is working against him, Mr. Siddiq says that the appointment of a new chief for the army during the current month can change the equation and pave the way for a new phase, noting that any new chief will not be satisfied with this situation, and resolving the political conflict will be a priority for him.

It is noteworthy that it is possible that the new army chief decides to distance himself from the legacy of the outgoing army chief, and to review the political approach of the institution, which may pave the way for early elections that can reshape Pakistan’s political balance between civilians and the military.

Khan had earlier suggested that the army chief’s transition should not take place until the next elections in hopes that he would have a chance to appoint the next army chief instead of Shahbaz Sharif.

According to Khan, Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari have robbed the country so badly that they have no right to appoint a new army chief.

In the event that peaceful solutions fail, analyst Siddiq suggests that the country will slide into civil war, saying: “If early elections are not held, or if the peaceful transfer of power in the country is disrupted in one way or another, this will lead to a state of violence.”

 

Internal Conflict

The overthrow of the government is not an unusual occurrence in Pakistan. No prime minister in the country’s history has completed his five-year term of government for a variety of reasons, which have been linked on many occasions to internal political conflict, whether between army leaders and civilian governments, or between competing political forces.

The overthrow of Imran Khan’s government comes as a result of internal domestic political and economic developments, but it also represents an important event when considering the geopolitical factors that may have contributed to its realization, or that may result from it.

On the internal level, the Pakistani army enjoys enormous political influence, as Pakistan has gone through three successful military coups since its independence, and even during periods of elected governments, the army plays a fundamental role, in addition to its influence in economic activities, and foreign and security policy.

Despite the positive relations between the Pakistani army and Imran Khan since the rise of his political star, there have been recent developments that have raised doubts about the army’s continued support for him, due to some of Khan’s foreign tendencies and their cooling of his government’s relations with Washington, in addition to the crisis that erupted between the two parties following the appointment of the army as a new head of Pakistani intelligence in late 2021.

Although Pakistan’s relationship with Turkiye began to take on closer dimensions before Khan’s government, since Khan’s rise to power in 2018, he has emerged as a partner to Turkish President Erdogan in seeking to build a more independent Islamic bloc, which strained his relations not only with the United States but also with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

In addition to Imran Khan’s endeavor for Pakistan to stand neutral towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine, refusing to criticize Russian President Putin, and even making a predetermined visit to Moscow hours after the start of the war, despite the advice of the army and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to postpone it, which angered Washington, especially with Pakistan abstaining from voting on a United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning Russia.

Strained relations between Khan and Washington escalated after his return from Moscow. Where he announced the continuation of buying wheat and oil from Russia, and accused Washington of supporting the opposition and seeking to overthrow him, which was considered a bias towards the Sino-Russian axis rather than a neutral approach, so the army chief sought to address the situation and plot against Khan.

It is noteworthy that the current political crisis comes at a time when Pakistan is going through one of its biggest economic crises, as a result of the floods that flooded a third of the agricultural area, destroyed and disrupted much of the infrastructure, claimed hundreds of lives, and caused the country losses of more than $10 billion.