How Imran is driving Pakistan towards civil unrest

Weeks after getting ousted from power, former Prime Minister Imran Khan, it seems, is on a rampage. He’s hopping from one rally to another across the country, making fiery speeches, instigating vigilantism against his deserters, and indirectly threatening the military to hold elections, bring him back to power, or else he’ll spill the beans on them.Last weekend, in an angry speech, he even accused “them” of conspiring to kill him. If this happens, he told his charged supporters, “people will take revenge”. Does this all come as a surprise? Well, not really. Khan has consistently used populism and incendiary polarisation to achieve his political objectives — to make his place in a system dominated by two bigger and older parties and strengthen his hold on power. Now, he’s relying on the same ploy to get back to power by exploiting Pakistan’s internal divisions along religious and ethnic lines. In doing so, however, he is not only inciting violence by appealing to the brutish aggression of his followers, but also creating a general and overall disregard for the Constitution, disdain for the rule of law, and contempt for democratic institutions. medium91705604Rule breakerReports suggest that Imran Khan had started working on this strategy in the days leading to his ouster. When speaking at a rally, he accused the opposition parties of taking money from the US to depose him. When the vote of no confidence was imminent, he tried everything to prevent it, while violating the Constitution.When a no-confidence motion is submitted against a PM, the leader cannot dissolve the assembly as per the constitution, but Khan did so anyway on the pretext that the motion was motivated by a foreign power. He made his lackeys, in key offices like the speaker/deputy speaker, and the President, follow his lead in trampling the Constitution. When the Supreme Court ordered the holding of a no-confidence vote, he pulled out every trick up his sleeve to disregard the law, judicial orders, democratic norms and even the basic ethics of office. His appointed President notified the dissolution of the assembly within minutes of his ‘advice’ without giving any heed to due process. medium91707262Why Imran Khan's cult is growing even after resigning as PM medium91707268After the election of the new PM, the President even refused to administer an oath. His appointed governor in Punjab province made it impossible for the provincial assembly to take oath from the chief minister-elect after his nominee CM had resigned earlier. Alongside all this, he is upping the ante in installments in his well-attended daily rallies. He is coming with all guns blazing at the army chief in an indirect way because he thinks the head of the armed forces was responsible for his ignominious fall. While declaring his respect for the army, he targets Gen Bajwa, and in various speeches recently, he has ridiculed Gen Baber Iftikhar, the military spokesperson, for his repeated assertions that the army was “neutral”. For Khan, this neutrality means the army was done backing him.His potshots against Gen Bajwa, however, must not be mistaken as a supposedly ‘anti-establishment’ stance. It is, in fact, the exact opposite of it. He has repeatedly asked the army to hold elections immediately in his recent tirades, which is hardly the military’s domain. medium91706298An Army’s petImran Khan has a long history of association with the military, especially the most conservative elements within the national security elite. He joined politics with a weird CV [curriculum vitae]. After all, he never worked in a professional setting, helmed a business, or pursued any profession other than playing cricket. He was mostly a ‘philandering prince’, whose most evenings were spent in posh nightclubs of London’s West End among the equally notorious international celebrities, sometimes of the ilk of Ghislaine Maxwell, who had little chance in a deeply Islamised Pakistan in the 1990s. But the miracle was made possible with the constant and proactive support from the institution that had fostered the very values Khan has flouted throughout his adult life.It’s an open secret that Khan was groomed by Gen (Retd) Hameed Gul — the former ISI chief who was instrumental in carving out Taliban from the Mujahideen groups he primed during the Afghan Jihad — as a promising political stooge. But several twists and turns aside, the only permanent factor in his 25-year political career has been the patronage by the military.General Shuja Pasha, Gen Zaheer ul Islam and Gen Faiz Hameed are also some of the most recent heads of ISI alleged to have provided support services to Imran Khan. In fact, he depended on Gen Hameed so much that his relations with the Army chief were damaged irreparably when the latter posted Gen Hameed out of ISI. The rest, as they say, is history. medium91707230Poison pillWhile insisting that America hatched a conspiracy to oust him for his Russia visit during the onset of the Ukraine invasion, Khan uses two of his favourite tropes: religion and national sovereignty. If religion is the opiate of the masses, patriotism is the opioid. Combined, they provide Imran Khan with a permanent pitch that resonates with people like magic. His message is vox populi. Among his diehard supporters are not just religious extremists and alt-right evangelists, he is also supported with equal zeal by social liberals, wealthy industrialists and a considerable section of the intelligentsia comprising feudal lords and bureaucrats, judges and generals, etc.On the one hand, he has united this diverse range of groups under his wings; on the other, he has bitterly divided and polarised the society in the name of some righteous war. He has convinced them, with textbook precision, that they’re all part of a moral struggle between the ‘pure people’ and the ‘corrupt elite’. He has given this sense of purpose to a causeless, ideology-less populace. medium91707288Why Pakistanis believe US is conspiring against their country medium91707298Things can quickly escalate with emotions this high and a populace this reckless. In his recent speech, Imran Khan likened his fight with conspirators (the army and ISI chiefs plus the ruling parties) to the battle between good and evil in a religious sense. “What else is jihad?” Khan asked a charged and cheering crowd at a recent rally. Before turning into a full-blown vigilante mob baying for blood, this crowd is a ticking time bomb. This is precisely what Khan had warned against last January when he said he’d be more dangerous if he were ousted from power.Now that he has come up with the theory that his assassination plan is in the works, his kitchen cabinet members are openly threatening civil unrest and violence on the streets, and his party leaders are running trend after trend on social media, directly attacking the army chief and the ruling parties’ leaders, inciting violence against them. Given that the country is facing one of the worst economic meltdowns, a violent implosion just seems a matter of time. Unless Imran Khan is brought to the office again, he would be ready to burn everything, even the branch he’s dwelling on. The writer is a Pakistani journalist, currently an adjunct professor of Human Rights Journalism at the University of Connecticut