A surprising aspect of Imran Khan’s ouster

Imran Khan, who ceased to be prime minister of Pakistan after losing a trust vote in the National Assembly, has not shed his anti-American affectations because he has few other viable political assets. What is puzzling is that so many should have fallen for his line that the United States administration was involved in a conspiracy to oust him from office.

When US officials desire to steer Pakistan in a particular direction, they do not need to deal with elected civilians. They deal with the men in uniform sitting in Rawalpindi. Politicians, even those possessing rabble-rousing abilities, can at best cause delay in the arrival when it comes to decisions on national security. However, in times such as the present, obstructionist tactics can have dangerous consequences. Given the context in which Imran Khan was kindling the hostility of a superpower, it is reasonable to think that the most formidable force against him was within Pakistan, not outside.

There is one great difference this time round in that the necessary political cleansing was carried through democratic, constitutional means. Pakistan’s Supreme Court upheld the spirit of democracy by annulling a presidential decree dissolving the National Assembly and another order by the Deputy Speaker of the House by which a no-confidence motion against the government was invalidated. Imran Khan was judicially mandated to take a floor test. The ruling Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf resorted to all manner of delaying tactics when the revived House reconvened but was eventually defeated.

Khan could not have taken Pakistan out of the US orbit and into the Russian one no matter the degree of excitement he felt when meeting Vladimir Putin on the morning the 21st-century Ivan Konev drove his forces into Ukraine. Given the current closeness between Russia and China — and Islamabad’s multi-dimensional dependence on Beijing — there could not have been any wholehearted endorsement of US policy by Pakistan. But the Americans surely understand that. As they also know that with only about $200-million trade between Pakistan and Russia, there is hardly anything the South Asian country can do to stiffen the sanctions regime.

To the US, Khan does not and never has posed the sort of threat that would have necessitated a regime-toppling effort. Within the country, he had become a loose cannon that could jeopardise the operations of the ship of state during a difficult passage through stormy waters. This is a phase in history when Pakistan, like India, has to manoeuvre with precision to safeguard its interests.

Can it be said that the conspiracy, if any, originated in Rawalpindi, not Washington? No one will perhaps ever know the truth. According to the broad trend of independent opinion from across the border, the crisis erupted at a tricky moment for the military. Antipathy towards Khan was increasingly being directed at the army as well for installing and keeping in office a grossly incompetent prime minister. On the other hand, disgust at the military’s proclivity to grab power and make messes even messier had built up over the decades. The dam of respect that had held it back was about to be breached. The military, apparently, was not of a mind to mount a coup and invite more opprobrium.

Whatever be the truth about the army’s active participation in anti-Imran operations, that is less relevant than the manner in which it handled the reverberations. Its moves before Khan’s coup of April 3 and afterwards, have been sure-footed. While maintaining an overall posture of rectitude, the military top-brass flashed signals at just the right moments to keep national policy and politics on the tracks it prefers.

Even as Khan was boasting about being the only politician who had dared to confront the US, Army Chief General Qamar Bajwa was to tell a security conference that Pakistan had an excellent relationship with the superpower and had every intention of maintaining it. Immediately after Khan declared that the National Security Council had endorsed his assertion that a letter from Washington provided irrefutable evidence of his conspiracy charge, Inter-Services Public Relations issued a communique that had no mention of this letter being discussed. Khan still claimed that he had the army’s endorsement only for a top officer to deny it in a private briefing to the media.

The operations of this “guiding hand” certainly had political implications. Khan’s whole case, legal and political, was that the no-confidence motion was unmaintainable because it was the product of a US-backed conspiracy and thus violative of the country’s constitution. The “letter from Washington” was cited as evidence of this conspiracy. By rubbishing the letter and celebrating ties with the US, the army damaged this case severely.

That done, GHQ seemed content to let the judiciary perform its duties. A five-judge bench seemed to be taking inordinately long to settle what many senior advocates in the country believed was an open and shut case. To be fair to their lordships, they seemed to have moved with due deliberation, giving all sides a hearing so that they would not themselves be later accused of mounting a judicial coup.

From the long-term perspective, the verdict might itself be only a little more momentous than the processes through which it was wrought. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, the guardians (of the national interest and not the ideology on this occasion) seem to have done their job with a sense of responsibility and due seriousness. A dangerous megalomaniac had to be ousted from power and that outcome was achieved without the stench of direct intervention.

The writer is former editor of Mathrubhumi and was a correspondent in Pakistan from 1990-93