Like many Pakistanis, I admire Imran Khan and his sincerity. But supporting him politically is a different matter. He and his party – Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) – have some serious soul searching to do before people give it their political support.
Imran Khan is one of the few principled politicians we have. There is no doubt that he truly cares about the country. His bold stance on May 12 and his consistent support for the restoration of the judiciary was unmatched by any other prominent politician. His cancer hospital and the projects he has started in the field of education have been praised even by many of his critics.
Someone like myself, who is dissatisfied with the politics and corruption of the leading parties, is naturally attracted to Imran Khan who talks about principles and accountability. However, as much as I like Imran for his honesty and devotion to the country, I have some concerns about him and can not help agreeing with Shafqat Mahmood’s statement that Imran never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Being politically inclined, I have even considered joining PTI at times, but reservations about his politics prevent me from doing so.
Imran Khan has been in politics for 13 years, and this is a long enough period to develop the party into a vibrant, democratic entity. Unfortunately, PTI still comes across more like an Imran Khan fan club rather than a democratic political party. For the most part, there is an absence of grass roots forums that meet regularly where any party member can raise issues and be heard, and the party line almost completely comes from the top.
Secondly, Imran does not realize that politics requires an appropriate mix of idealism and pragmatism and confuses this balancing act with opportunism. If he wants to serve the people of Pakistan by coming into power, then his decisions should be geared towards that goal. He had an excellent opportunity to launch himself when Nawaz Sharif offered him 20 odd seats in 1997 and again when Musharraf was willing to help him become the prime minister. Instead of spurning these offers, he should have taken a few ministries and worked hard on demonstrating through performance that he was someone who could truly deliver if given a chance. This could have provided him with the impetus needed to launch PTI into a force capable of getting elected into power on its own and then implement its reform agenda.
This unwillingness to balance idealism and pragmatism also creates doubts about his ability to deliver even if he came into power some day. It makes one wonder whether he would really take a practical approach towards addressing the country’s problems.
On top of all this, Imran Khan has a very confused stance on the Taliban where he still falls well short of fully condemning them.
He has been very consistently and forcefully bashing the Americans in recent years but the same kind of condemnation for the Taliban has not been forthcoming. This sharp contrast, when the Taliban have killed many more Pakistanis than the American drones, and when they are directly trying to destroy the state structure to establish their own rule, is hard to understand. It has taken some strong criticism for Imran Khan to finally make a few “too little too late” statements criticizing the Taliban, whereas what one expects from a good leader is the ability to clearly identify and point out a problem well ahead of time.
His stance on the current situation in Swat has again left a lot to be desired. He first vehemently opposed the military operation but did not explain what the government should do when the Taliban break a peace agreement and keep on expanding into neighbouring districts as they blatantly did after the Swat deal. Only after coming under regular fire has he finally accepted that a military operation can also be an option. He rightly says that bombings should be avoided and the operation should be carefully targeted, but the national debate could have been more focused on discussing how military action can be carried out in a way that minimizes civilian suffering if he and others had not been creating confusion by insisting that there should never be an operation.
In yet another example of muddled thinking, he now argues that before sending the army, a group of politicians should have been allowed to go and try to convince the Taliban to abide by the Swat peace deal. This makes one wonder why he did not publically propose this in the days leading up to the operation and what he is trying to accomplish by undermining the military’s efforts now that the time for this idea has clearly passed.
I really admire Imran Khan for his sincerity, but these are some of the serious issues that he and his party have to come to grips with, before PTI can make serious headway in realizing its full potential.
@Qasim
These picture perfect military operations that you and Imran Khan want only happen in novels and films. In real life, you may solve the problem in one go, or you may have to try many different times.
It is irrelevant what the people of Waziristan did in 1948, or how allegedly patriotic they are. That place is the root cause of terrorism in Pakistan, with all the major warlords, be they Baitullah Mehsud, Hafiz Gul Bahadir, or Mullah Nazir residing there with their militias. They have not respected a single agreement they signed with the Government of Pakistan, just like the Swati Taliban and other groups, they Waziristan militias use these peace agreements to re-group and re-arm.
These militants speak the language of force, give no quarter and only respect force. That is the language Pakistan is talking to them right now after trying every other option since 2001.
You raise interesting points Faraz. Those militants were and are heavily armed and well-equipped. Even the Pak Army finally raised this issue up with the US, asking how and from where the militants are getting thousands of US standard issue rifles and all.
Each rifle has a serial number associated with one single US army soldier, and normally, the Afghan taliban would only get US guns when they killed US soldiers. Since the US hasn’t lost tens of thousands of soldiers in Afghanistan yet, it’s very strange that all these arms find their way to these militants in Pakistan. This is called an exterior manouver, in which you create such an entangling web inside a country, supplying the militants while pretending to aid the country, that you tremendously weaken the country. I understand how this would sound like nutty conspiracy theory stuff to the average person, but if you feel that way, I highly recommend you do your own research into this to find the truth; read up some of Chomsky’s books, watch The Obama Deception, it’s a documentary freely available on the web, to see that our resident superpower has a history of doing stuff like this.
My point was that Pakistan plays right into their hands. Now the army’s talking about going into Waziristan again. The people living there are heavily armed, but patriotic. They didn’t get bribed when the soviets tried, and they fought in Kashmir in 1948 when Pakistan couldn’t mobilize it’s army in time. However, those people were promised that their houses, crops, and other property destroyed during the earlier military operations (2004, 2007), would be compensated for by the govt. And the govt didn’t keep it’s promise. It’s understandable why those people are severely resentful of yet another army operation in their area.
The US keeps pushing Pk to expand into Waziristan and other areas. You’re right about small things snowballing into much bigger problems. My point is that our top leadership, whether it’s from the army or our political parties, isn’t sincere. Kiyani runs to Brussels to brief NATO about how well Pk is adhering to their objectives. Zardari runs to the US to get more money for god knows what – the average Pakistani never sees a dime. And the army carries new operations every two or three years, this is the third operation so far, and all these operations accomplish is that they make the militants trickle out of one area and into the next, causing alot of problems for the people living there. This can snowball into a much bigger problem. I do believe that without an operation these heavily armed militants couldn’t have been erradicated. I just wish it got accomplished in such a way that the locals living there were taken care of properly, not left for weeks with nothing to eat except leaves, like in Mingora. And that the results got delivered in one single operation.
Qasim said: “In short, he believes the military operation should not have been rushed, especially that it shouldn
I’m inclined to agree with Imran Khan on this though, because the issues raised don’t make alot of sense to me.
Yes, there’s a difference between pragmatism and opportunism, but taking the seats offered by n_sharif or the puppet presidency offered by mush, would have been opportunism, it wouldn’t have been pragmatic because he would have had his wings clipped, and wouldn’t have been able to deliver the way he wanted to.
As the guy says when people ask him why he never goes for such political opportunities by compromising and negotiating a bit, you compromise other things to get closer to your end-objectives and the principles you stand by; you don’t compromise your principles to get a seat. The ends don’t justify the means.
As for the Swat issue and the taliban, he wrote a rather long article called “Where I stand” in The News describing in detail what he thought and the reasons behind. Here’s a link: http://www.insaf.pk/News/tabid/60/articleType/Arti cleView/articleId/2312/Where-I-stand-By-Imran-Khan .aspx In short, he believes the military operation should not have been rushed, especially that it shouldn’t have been started when zardari was on his way to the US. He was the first politician to visit the camps, and he felt that way because the general perception was that people’s houses were being destroyed and all so zardari could scurry over to his US masters bringing some good news to please them, so zardari could get another couple of hundred million for his personal bank accounts in Switzerland or South America or whatever.
Now that the operation has started, he feels that it should be followed through in such a manner that we wouldn’t have to start yet another operation in a year or two; this would be the third operation the army’s carried out in different parts of that province. And he says that the military operation should be backed by well-defined political objectives, that there shouldn’t be a political leadership vacume where people come back finding their houses destroyed, no water, power, and no-one there to address the grievances of the people.
I just don’t find that to be a very ambiguous stance at all, it seems well-thought, and it makes alot of sense, atleast to me.
@Vigillant:
I don’t think any of us needs any credit from the other person.This is a political dicussion and we are simply shraing our point of view with disgreements.
I would just say couple of things as my closing remarks:
1)No one in PTi is talking about revolution.You are right abt iranan revolution and same is true abt russian and french rev.
We want a “change within this sytem “and froming a new party to achieve that change does not equate with a revolution nor it means working out side the system .I also think that our ( yours and mine) goal posts are not much different although we definitely disgree on the methadlogy which is pretty natural.
Lastly i wish you luck in your struggle and if you bring the desired changes through it ,it will be a victory for all of us…..Till then i will work my way……..
PS: Iwas rather surprised by your remarks about Zardari…..I think he is the expected outcome of the present political structure ( representing the 80% of the bad lot and wekaness of the rest of the 20%). I wish Aitezaz replaces him soon as Chairman hopefully wothout a “Shareek Chairman”
( my hindsight says that this is one of the reasons he is sticking to PPP and he silently aspires for it but waiting for the right time).