Fiasco at Quetta: Imran Khan’s Waterloo?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
Timing in politics is as important as in cricket.
One couldn’t, therefore, expect a cricketer as seasoned as Imran Khan (IK) to not only err but go horribly wrong in timing his visit to Quetta to commiserate with the bereaved families of victims of that massacre of eleven innocent Hazara coalminers, at Mach, Baluchistan, last January 3.
The burden of an office of responsibility as high as that of PM of Pakistan can be, no doubt about it, taxing and robustly trying—much more demanding than leading a cricket team. But much against the disparaging propaganda of his political rivals, i.e., he was a novice to the game of politics, he wasn’t, exactly, a novice who gate-crashed his way into the sanctum of Pakistani politics. IK self-groomed himself in politics over a period of more than twenty years, during which he was an active participant—without much luck, of course—in Pakistan’s political game of power.
With so much knowledge of what’s needed of a leader in a moment of crisis, PM IK, already half-way through his five-year term, shouldn’t have wasted any moment to rush to Quetta to share the grief of victims’ families of that dastardly crime, on the spot where it was commissioned. He shouldn’t have any cobweb of confusion blinking his perception that a leader shouldn’t drag his feet in the midst of a tragedy.
The official narrative, since being hawked by his partisans, says he was all set to rush to Quetta to be with the mourning families but was ‘advised’ against it.
The question is, why should he have lent his ears so readily to such advice? As skipper of Pakistan’s cricket team, IK had the reputation of being his own man. He brooked no interference from any quarters, least of all from his team mates, in his captaincy and disdained those who dared cross him. His team of advisers and ministers may have a pool of wisdom. However, they aren’t answerable if the boss, acting on their advice, ends up making his leadership of the country questionable. He’s the leader of Pakistan. The buck, so to speak, stops at his desk and not at the door of his legion of advisers and ministers. Why, then, he was found so tentative and lax in this episode where he clearly committed an easily avoidable faux-pas?
IK missed the bus that could have brought him a lot of goodwill and gratitude—not only of the grieving families but of all those Pakistanis who shared their grief—by dragging his feet and delaying his visit to Quetta.
Any two-bit politico knows the value of being seen, as soon after a horrific incident of the kind that happened at Mach, outside a coal-mine, as possible. That kind of opportunity to display their concern for the well-being and welfare of a hurt people is Mana to a politician, irrespective of their pedigree or persuasion. Bilawal Bhutto and Maryam Nawaz—both bitter rivals of IK—were alive to the opportunity presented to them by the ghastly tragedy of bestial beheading of 11 innocent coal-miners at the hands of blood-thirsty barbarians of Daesh. They would be fools if they didn’t avail themselves of a public-relations bonanza.
But IK, by staying away from the scene in Quetta, literally handed them a trophy to go one up on him. While he languished, in the dubious company of his inane and clueless advisers in Islamabad, his political nemeses basked in the limelight of television cameras commiserating with the bereaved families of the victims of that heinous crime. They reaped further political capital out of it by taunting the country’s leader and PM for not showing up to be with a hapless people in their hour of gross tragedy.
Not only that IK delayed, for days, turning up at Quetta, he rubbed salt in the wounds of the mourners of the slain Hazaras by accusing them of ‘blackmailing’ him. Blackmail from the mourners belonging to a community that has long been in the cross-hairs of terrorists and communal fanatics? Who, in their right mind, would believe that a voiceless people, with no political base as Hazaras—who have been harassed and victimised by terrorists over the past two decades—could have the gall to ‘blackmail’ the PM of Pakistan?
But, for reasons best known to him and his brain-dead and bumbling advisers, IK persisted in his rhetoric that he wasn’t going to be blackmailed and dictated into ‘surrendering’ to the demand of the aggrieved families.
What, after all, were the demands of the victim families that so enraged the PM?
All that they were asking for was that the leader of the country come to share their grief, say a few words of sympathy, and make it easier for them to bury their dead. It wasn’t something so egregious as to arouse the PM’s ire, to such an extent that he refused, point blank, to entertain it. On his part, IK insisted that the dead be buried first, only then he’d go to Quetta to condole with the bereaved families.
Poor Hazaras, belonging to the minority Shiias of Pakistan, have long been in the line of fire at the hands of Daesh and other terrorists of their ilk. There was a similar incident in 2013, when Hazaras were gunned out by murderers because of their faith. Raja Pervez Ashraf, of PPP, was PM of the day. He didn’t waste any time, nor laid down any conditions, before rushing to Quetta to pay his condolences to the families of the victims. He tried, further, to salve their wounds by holding the provincial government, of his own party, responsible for the carnage and dislodged that government. IK, apparently, learned no lesson from that example. Or is it that an example set by the leadership of a party loathed and reviled by him isn’t worthy of being a model for him?
In the end, five days too late, when he did turn up in Quetta—after the bereaved families had met his demand and buried their slain loved ones—his conduct wasn’t that of a leader on a mission to placate or assuage the feelings of hurt of the grieving families. He acted more like a king by summoning the bereaved families to meet him at the venue of his choice, rather than going to their place to mourn with them.
It’s not only our Islamic tradition but a universal human value that one should go the place of the mourners to condole the deaths of their loved ones. Two years ago, when a white supremacist had attacked a mosque in the capital of New Zeeland and killed 22 Muslim worshippers, PM JacindaArdern lost not a minute before rushing to the scene of the crime to mourn with Muslims gathered there. She didn’t summon the mourners to her official residence or her office.
But our PM—with pretensions to establish a ‘New Pakistan’ modeled on the Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) state of Medina—had the gall of an all-powerful potentate to summon the bereaving families to the precincts of Quetta’s Sardar Bahadur Khan Women’s University to commiserate with them. Why should he shun a centuries-old tradition, of fundamental decency and humanism? Why should he have left the bereaved families sulking and waiting for him to show up at their Imam Bargah before ordering them to come to him?
The official explanation for his errant behaviour may well be the oft-used excuse of ‘security.’ But that pales against the mountain of negative publicity he earned in the process of acting like a pharaoh and not an elected leader that he and his aficionados claim him to be.
The old adage that power corrupts has fully proved its currency in this sordid episode. IK may not fully realize how badly his standing and his image of a popular leader has been bruised in this fiasco, which was easily avoidable.
For sometime now, it’s being painfully discovered by those who gave him a lot of political mileage in the beginning and were prepared to give him the benefit of doubt on more than one occasion, that of late he has been isolating himself from the people. This should be a wake- up call for any leader, especially for one like IK who set out on what he claimed was a crusade for him to salvage his country from the dubious legacy of thieves and robber-barons in power before him. His errant conduct in this latest episode presents him in more or less the same colours as theirs.
In fact, the heirs-apparent of Nawaz and Zardari—the two villains routinely reviled by IK with impunity—seem to have learned the ropes of politics much better than him. One may feel sorry for IK for losing his thread and stepping into a blind alley. However, those who value Pakistan above any political partisanship, should feel concerned for the fate of the country. If a ‘crusader’ like IK can be so easily manipulated by sycophants, then what future can be envisaged for a country with a history of lurching from crisis to crisis.
It only adds weight to the old adage, the more things change the more they remain the same!
