Imran Khan faces arrest, but the question in Pakistan is: Is the army’s power waning?

There has been a sharp escalation in the level of political turmoil in Pakistan. In particular, the tensions between former prime minister Imran Khan and his erstwhile mentors in the Pakistan army have crested, with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader facing imminent arrest under the country’s anti-terrorism laws on charges of intimidating the law enforcement agencies and the judiciary following the arrest and alleged torture, in police custody, of his chief of staff, Shahbaz Gill. Gill’s remarks on a prominent television channel have been interpreted by the Army as a thinly-disguised call to mutiny.

When Khan was installed as PM following a flawed election, widely perceived as having been manipulated in his favour by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), political commentators saw the development as the culmination of a “political engineering” project going back to the days of the late Lt. General Hamid Gul, who headed the ISI in the early 1990s. The objective of this murky project was to foist on Pakistan a supposedly “clean” political leader, untainted by the charges of corruption that had dogged both the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), which alternated in power during the decade, and whose political beliefs would be more in consonance with the hardline Islamic ideology espoused by the army.

Others, however, more realistically assessed that for all the initial optimism expressed by Khan’s supporters about the army and the civilian dispensation being on the “same page”, this state of bonhomie might not last long, with Pakistan’s economy entering a sharp downward spiral and the PM remaining fixated on exacting revenge against his political opponents rather than focussing on the more pressing tasks of providing good governance. While the “novice” PM was initially content to be deferential to the military on matters of national security, his natural propensity for exercising a leadership role in all spheres soon manifested. The inescapable conclusion that followed was that it was only a matter of time before the military leadership began viewing its former protégé as a liability and distancing itself from him.

That Imran Khan hastened his government’s demise by his irrational insistence on retaining Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed as the ISI chief, when the latter was due to be moved out of the ISI on a routine posting as a corps commander, an essential rite of passage for all aspirants to the post of Chief of Army Staff, is well known. Other factors such as Khan’s reflexive anti-Americanism, his angry denunciations, with scant evidence to back his claims, of a US plot to destabilise his government and his public eulogisation of global terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden whom he described as a “martyr,” contributed to the army’s disenchantment with him.

In transgressing the “red lines” of the army, Khan displayed a lack of adequate appreciation of the civil-military balance of power in Pakistan. In this, he appears to have not heeded the salutary lessons emerging from former PM Nawaz Sharif’s summary dismissal of the then Army Chief Jehangir Karamat and his hobnobbing with Lt. Gen. Tariq Parvez, the then Quetta Corps Commander, reportedly behind the back of the newly-appointed Army Chief Pervez Musharraf. This contributed to the unravelling of the relationship between Nawaz and Musharraf in the wake of the Kargil fiasco and eventually led to the PM’s overthrow by the army.

Since the fall of his government, Khan has attempted to galvanise his party’s rank and file by holding a series of well-attended rallies in which he has stepped up his fulminations against the US and the self-professed political neutrality of the army. Predictably, this has led to the inevitable “leaks” by “well-placed” sources, highlighting the violation of Pakistan’s electoral laws by the PTI in accepting foreign funding. The recent story published by The Financial Times of London, containing details of the alleged funnelling of funds to the PTI by a company owned by the non-resident Pakistani businessman, Arif Naqvi of the Abraaj Group, bears the hallmarks of a covert campaign to irredeemably tarnish Khan’s image in the eyes of the Pakistani public. It is, perhaps, only a matter of time before Khan is disqualified from contesting elections, a fate similar to that which befell Nawaz Sharif when he ran afoul of the army.

Irrespective of which way the chips eventually fall, there are certain broad contours of the political landscape taking shape in Pakistan. Notwithstanding its underwhelming performance, the shaky political coalition presently ruling Pakistan under the stewardship of Shehbaz Sharif, may manage to complete its remaining term of less than a year, paving the way for a caretaker government to hold fresh elections in 2023. Relations between Pakistan and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan will remain troubled. The army’s ill-advised efforts to undercut the strength of secular Pashtun and Baloch nationalist voices by striking yet more “peace deals” with extremist groups such as an ostensibly “pacified” Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) may bring more bloodshed to the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas, now amalgamated with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and to the adjoining province of Balochistan. Lastly, barring some unforeseen development, Pakistan is likely to have a new army chief come November when General Bajwa completes his extended term of office.

Above all, it is the growing inability of the Pakistan army, the ultimate arbiter in Pakistan’s scheme of things, to decisively shape the course of events that is most striking. Notwithstanding the “deep state’s” attempts to stifle dissenting voices and the sustained assault on civil society, the army’s allegations about the country being a victim of externally-sponsored “fifth generation warfare” appear increasingly contrived, generating a healthy pushback from civil society, including the political parties. If it was Nawaz Sharif earlier who challenged the all-powerful army’s narrative, it is Imran Khan today. The latest reports about Pakistan’s decision to scrap the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Authority, set up amid much fanfare by the army to free languishing CPEC projects from the clutches of an allegedly venal civilian administration, offer conclusive proof of its inability to ensure successful implementation of a project it views as being indispensable for ensuring Pakistan’s economic and strategic security.

The prospect of fishing in troubled waters may be alluring but the best course of action that India can adopt under the circumstances is to maintain a safe distance from the chaos engulfing its Western neighbour, without letting its guard down in any manner.

The writer retired as Special Secretary in the Research & Analysis Wing, India’s external intelligence agency. Views are personal