The boys played well

The military's crackdown on Imran Khan and his supporters is anti-democratic, and will further reduce Pakistan's chances of normality and growth

Pakistani politics has one rule, and one rule only: Don’t bet against the boys in uniform. Here’s a short history of recent developments in Pakistan. First, the boys wanted Imran Khan as prime minister five years ago, and they pushed the mainstream political parties and the media around until Mr Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party managed to get enough votes to lead a governing coalition.

Second, they began to understand — much later than absolutely everyone else — that it was unwise to expect a man with an ego the size of Mr Khan’s to be an obedient follower of military diktats. And so they resolved to get rid of him, and managed to push around various politicians until an alternative governing coalition was created last year.

Third, they made yet another unwelcome but entirely predictable discovery: That Mr Khan’s following was oddly loyal. Several previous prime ministers and presidents have been bullied, fired, exiled, or executed by Rawalpindi, and their voters had the basic decency to shut up and stay home, accepting that their patriotic and efficient army knew best. Mr Khan’s popularity, in contrast, only seemed to grow. This should not have surprised them: Mr Khan is at his best as a politician when he is feeding his followers’ paranoia, not when crafting policies to make their lives better.

And so, fourth, they had to somehow ensure that Mr Khan was not a candidate at the general elections this fall. Pakistan’s brave and independent judiciary coincidentally convicted and disqualified Mr Khan, the leader of the country’s Opposition, shortly before general elections were due to be held. (We are so fortunate in India that nothing of this sort could ever happen here.)

This is grim stuff even by Pakistan’s standards, given that it comes during an exceptionally dire economic crisis. Pakistan has never, since Partition, really exported enough to justify the level of its imports. Neither has India for most of our independent history; but at least we consistently raise enough money against our great prospects to make

up for it on the capital account. Pakistan’s equivalent is to ask its powerful friends — in Washington, Riyadh or Beijing — for a bit of cash to tide over the hard times. The International Monetary Fund alone has had to bail out Islamabad through stand-by arrangements 22 times.

Given the country is completely dependent on outside assistance, Pakistani politics is naturally virulently anti-foreigner. The latest twist is the leak of a Pakistani diplomatic cable that

Mr Khan’s supporters believe justifies their leader’s accusation that the United States was behind his ouster as prime minister last year. The cable — if genuine — supposedly reports a meeting between Pakistani officials and low-level officials from the US State Department. The Americans complain at length, and perhaps justifiably, about the then prime minister having the poor judgment to turn up for an official visit to Moscow at the exact moment President Vladimir Putin was ordering his tanks across the Ukrainian border in February 2022.

The meeting between diplomats described in the cable took place as the military was organising the Opposition into a vote of no confidence against

Mr Khan (for reasons, as we have seen, that predated and were quite unrelated to the Russian invasion or visit). The Americans very sensibly pointed out that the visit would only be a problem if Mr Khan was still prime minister after the vote, and that they were not stupid enough to hold Mr Khan’s actions against any possible successor. For

Mr Khan’s backers, this has been transmuted into “US pressure to remove Imran Khan”, a superb example of the sort of magical thinking that leads you to imagine Mr Khan is a transformative political leader in the first place. 

The cable, in fact, seems to suggest relative US disinterest in how Pakistan’s political crisis turned out. The only major question it raises is why on earth it should matter to Washington what middle powers like Pakistan say or don’t say about Russia. If Washington’s only stakes in today’s Pakistan are what it says on far away crises, that isn’t good news for the Pakistani establishment.

Although blaming America is the sport that Pakistanis play best, there’s no point in blaming minor bureaucrats in Washington. Only the military matters in Pakistan, and its crackdown on Mr Khan and his supporters is  anti-democratic, and will further reduce Pakistan’s chances of normality and growth. Of course, Mr Khan himself is an anti-democratic populist, whose rule would reduce Pakistan’s chances of normality and growth. As usual, there are few good choices on offer across the border.