Imran Khan Losing His Way?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
When one gets down to building a new house, one strives hard to make sure that there’s nothing old in it. But when one gives oneself the challenge of building on the foundations of a pulled-down old structure, one is particularly extra-sensitive not to allow any vestige of the past disfiguring the building’s new façade.
Imran Khan (IK) heralded his rise to the top of Pakistan with a clear and categorical message, not just for his countrymen but for the world, too. He was determined to build a ‘Naya (New) Pakistan’ in a clean break from the one handed down to him as a legacy of those who had preceded him into power.
Pakistanis, with starry eyes, had greeted him with exuberance and fervor. They were fed up with the past, with the sickening shenanigans of those who had robbed them in the name of leading them. They wanted a clean break with the past and were ready to entrust the stewardship of Naya Pakistan to their new Kaptan, Imran Khan. He’d their vote of confidence. They, the people, despite trepidation of having been misled by their old leaders, were prepared to invest their faith in him.
However, nearly a year-and-a-half down the road from where they had vested their reins in his hands, disillusionment is getting the better of them. They feel disappointed and heart-broken because they don’t see the contours of a new Pakistan rising within their sight. The old Pakistan refuses to give way; the status quo doesn’t seem to yield to the dawn of IK’s promised ‘Naya Pakistan.’
IK’s domestic agenda of cleaning up the house and sweeping away all its accumulated dirt is floundering. In a cynical way, the black coats’ rampage of the Punjab Institute of Cardiology PIC) on December 11, amply underlines the disarray that all and sundry can notice in the largest province of Pakistan on IK’s watch.
What the deranged lawyers did, on that fateful day, can’t be condoned on any logic or excuse. It was reprehensible the way they swooped down on PIC and laid it waste like vandals. But they could have been prevented from getting anywhere near their target had there been a vigilant, hands-on, Chief Minister of Punjab in command and control.
Usman Buzdar, the uninspiring and effete CM of Punjab is—cynically, again—a befitting foot-note to the unravelling of IK’s domestic agenda, if there was ever a blueprint of it.
Buzdar is the anti-thesis of what a leader or administrator should be. The man’s stolid persona and woody visage inspires confidence in none. There were murmurs of discontent aplenty when IK had scooped him out of nowhere and foisted on the largest and most important unit of the Federation of Pakistan.
But those with genuine reservations about an unknown entity that he clearly was, were still prepared to give the novice a chance to prove himself, nay prove that IK’s faith in his ability to deliver wasn’t misplaced. They felt fortified by IK’s eminent track record as skipper of the triumphant Pakistan Cricket team. They didn’t crib when IK hawked Buzdar as Wasim Akram-like.
But Buzdar’s performance, or palpable lack of it, makes him look more like a Wasim Akram ghost. He remains as callow, now after nearly 18 months in office, as he was callow on the day IK picked him up to be in the saddle of CM of Punjab.
What gives tons of grist to the rumor mills of IK’s umpteen detractors—and annoys legions of his still-admirers—is that despite dismal failure in Punjab, IK stoutly defends his choice and firmly stands by him. Punjab may be Buzdared but that doesn’t bother IK, at all.
The outcome of IK’s nagging refusal to fire Buzdar is that Punjab is becoming unstuck. The lawyers’ rowdy rampage of PIC is unmistakable evidence that governance of the province is falling by the wayside. Which only leads to conclude that IK is losing his way and is as clueless as the man thrust over Punjab.
The waves IK made in foreign affairs of Pakistan—where he was as much a spring chicken as Buzdar was in Punjab—partly compensated for his obvious short-comings on the domestic front. His adroit response to Modi’s brazen theft of the Kashmiris’ rights and freedoms in the India-Occupied Kashmir and his bold espousal of the Muslim Ummah’s cause at his UN GA appearance won the hearts of the people at home.
However, IK’s latest moves—erratic even to his admirers and aficionados—threaten to rob the people of Pakistan’s faith and trust in his stewardship of what’s undoubtedly a huge challenge and test to his abilities as a putative statesman on the global stage.
While people’s anguish and angst at the Lahore incident was still at fever’s pitch, IK suddenly dashed off to Riyadh to be closeted there with Saudi Arabia’s monarch-in-waiting, the overly-ambitious and adventurous Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS). He didn’t dash to the Kingdom off his own volition; he’d been summoned there by MBS and he couldn’t say no.
But the fallout from that impromptu confab with MBS could, in the near future, prove to be devastating for Pakistan’s foreign relations as well as for IK’s shepherding of the challenging task of giving a new direction to Pakistan’s tangled foreign policy.
By the time these lines were read, we’d know, for sure, whether IK showed up, or not, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for a Summit with the leaders of Malaysia, Turkey and Qatar.
The idea of these non-Arab (except for Qatar, which has been cast into a pariah by fellow Arabs, led by Saudi Arabia) leaders putting their heads together to find solutions to festering crises in many an Islamic state, was germinated by IK, PM Mahathir Mohammad of host Malaysia and President Recep Erdogan of Turkey on the sidelines of UNGA, last September, when all of them happened to be in New York.
As recently as last November 29, IK reiterated his resolve to attend the Kuala Lumpur Summit, when receiving a special emissary of Mahathir Mohammad who came bearing the official invitation for the KL conclave.
Foreign policy gurus and pundits in Pakistan were delighted that IK was going to be part of a new team of dynamic and mission-oriented Muslim leaders determined to chart a new course for the Ummah. Their optimism was inspired because they saw in this new initiative a clean break with the lethargy of OIC, the Organization of Islamic Countries, the 50-year old collective of 57 Muslim-majority states in the world.
OIC has been rendered atrophied, moribund and practically inoperative because of Saudi Arabia, which largely bank rolls it and, by virtue of it, has held it hostage to its own whims and caprices. OIC’s failure to act as a watch-dog of collective interests of the Ummah are numerous and easy to identify. It hasn’t moved a finger to douse the flames of the war in Yemen because the Saudis are the ones making the lives of poor Yemenis a hell. By the same token, it has been reduced to a pathetic spectator of Israel’s brutal suppression of the rights of the Palestinians in its Occupied Palestine and Gaza.
The more notably example of a paralyzed OIC for the Pakistanis is its dismal failure to hold Modi’s rapacious India accountable for its barbaric conduct in its occupied Kashmir and the reign of terror let loose over the hapless Kashmiris.
So, the Pakistanis—intelligentsia and the common man, alike—had reason to feel happy, if not jubilant, by the news that their leader, IK, was going to be one of the pioneers of a forward-looking and purpose-oriented Islamic bloc not shackled to the whims of Saudi Arabia and its cohorts.
However, their optimism now threatens to be pre-mature, in the wake of noticeable equivocation and diffidence of Imran Khan’s government over the KL Summit.
Dismay of the enlightened and not-so-enlightened among the Pakistanis is understandable. They had doubts and reservations when IK didn’t waste a minute in dashing off to Riyadh when summoned by MBS. The announcement from Islamabad, on the heels of IK’s return home from meeting with MBS, that IK was having second thoughts on his decision to go to KL for the Summit there, starting December 19, was there to fortify their worst fear that MBS had twisted IK’s arm in their meeting in Riyadh.
MBS may have his own reasons for feeling threatened by the KL Summit. Ambitious and upstart leaders are basically insecure. MBS is no exception. His failures as his country’s de facto ruler are numerous. He’s not only a threat to the well-being of the Saudi Kingdom, but his insipid and immature leadership threatens to disrupt whatever little harmony there’s among OIC member states.
But what’s galling to the Pakistani people is the irony that MBS, despite his insecurity and flawed sense of leadership, is able to side-swipe IK and prevail on him to reconsider his decision to attend the KL meeting. Why, the Pakistanis feel rightly entitled to ask the obvious question, is the leader of the sole nuclear Muslim state in the world so vulnerable to the crude pressure applied on him by the upstart ruler of a country which, in more ways than one, belongs to the centuries past?
As these lines were being written, breaking news out of KL says the PM of Pakistan will not be attending the Summit with Mahathir and Erdogan. What a shame. What a precipitate fall from grace for IK. He’s no different from the maligned Nawaz Sharif who was as much a lap-dog of the Saudis as Imran Khan is beholden. Where’s IK’s so much touted ‘Naya Pakistan’? It’s in tatters.
Adding insult to injury, word from Islamabad says there will be no representation of Pakistan, at any level, at the conclave in KL which is slated to get more than 400 notables—scientists, thinkers, writers, political scientists et al—from 52 Islamic states assembled under one roof to chart ways and recommend solutions for a host of problems plaguing the Muslim world.
What a disgrace for Pakistan that it will be so conspicuous by its forced absence from this watershed gathering of Islamic intelligentsia and leadership. This U-Turn of all U-Turns of IK is a damning indictment of his utter helplessness to solve festering problems of ‘old Pakistan,’ much less provide any road map of his ‘New Pakistan.’
The bottom line is that in the ‘Land of the Pure,’ the more things are touted to change, the more they remain the same. Pakistan is becoming like a cesspool of stagnant water. And Pakistani leaders, old and new, are much to blame for this pathetic state.
K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The author is a retired ambassador and career diplomat)
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