G for Grenell, G for gesture

It won’t be the Grenells of the world who would make a real difference to Pakistan’s future politics. It is how the Establishment handles the new phase in their treatment of Imran...

Richard Grenell has set in early Christmas for the PTI. Many in the party can’t thank Santa Trump enough for picking this reindeer. They now expect that the Grenell guy will end Imran’s harsh winter and sleigh him all the way to the Prime Minister House. Grenell is a known Republican die-hard, worked with Mitt Romney as his frontman on foreign policy in the 2012 presidential campaign, is a former acting Director of National Intelligence, and doesn’t care if the Gazans live or die. From the looks of it, he likes to pig-roll in the mud of controversies to become, well, “that important dude!”

The PTI is jubilant because Grenell has been X-ing for Imran Khan’s release. He has equated him with Donald Trump, which the PTI thankfully takes as a consecration of their political bread and wine. Lately, Grenell has dived deep into the cesspool of propaganda and has set new low standards for diplomatic nominees who are designated to shoot troubles abroad for their governments, in his case, the Trump Administration. He has trolled Pakistani media outlets, retweeted Imran’s social media calls for civil disobedience, gloated over his presumed popularity in Pakistan, and endorsed tweets that directly attack the present army chief, General Asim Munir. He wants to vote for Imran Khan and cut off imaginary USAID funding to Pakistani TV channels because they are “army mouthpieces.”

This has generated full-on excitement in PTI ranks whose love for Grenell flows so intensely that they all seem set on putting a G before their surnames. So high is this emotion that many among those wowing Grenell’s booming balderdash now sit before their cellphones every day, anxiously waiting for his new asininity to arrive from across the Pacific.

To think that Grenell’s growls really matter is like believing Santa gives gifts. The only thing that has come out of Grenell’s social media grandiosity so far is more attention on him, which he loves and perhaps also lives for.

But at the same time, it would be foolish not to register the importance of Imran’s case resonating in a Trump-ruled Washington. When the likes of Grenell take up positions of power and policy influence and start to echo PTI’s domestic and foreign propaganda, life cannot remain the same for Imran, nor for the Establishment.

But it won’t be the Grenells of the world who would make a real difference to Pakistan’s future politics. It is how the Establishment handles the new phase in their treatment of Imran that has begun with the announcement of punishments to 25 PTI members for 9^th May’s nationwide riots.

The punishments range between 2 to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment. These cases were held up because the Supreme Court last year had stalled proceedings. The case is still in the Supreme Court’s newly-formed Constitutional Bench, which, this year while allowing the military courts to pronounce judgments and proceed with punishment enforcement, has subjected the fate of these trials to its final judgement. But the official narrative accompanying today’s punishment announcement leaves nothing to the imagination as to where the Army’s thinking is going as far as the

9^th May trials are concerned. The message is clear: They want all of them prosecuted and heavily punished and insist that the planners (read Imran Khan and Co) must also meet the same fate.

But Imran getting punished, possibly even a death sentence, is a tough proposition to pull off. The 9th May mayhem’s legal process has lingered on for a year and a half. This time has been used by the PTI efficiently to build a narrative of gross human rights violations and subversion of due process of law. From the manageable molehill that Imran was when these events happened, he has now become a growing mountain of trouble that the likes of Grenell want to climb to throw boulders down on the army’s General Headquarters. More important, the PTI is a popular party. It has a belligerent government in the KP and its local roots are spread in most parts of Pakistan.

Also, Imran and his team have effectively used the country’s youth as a cannon fodder to fight the battle for survival. They have crafted and pushed sob tales of victimhood that the youth find appealing. Nearly 44 percent of those who got the punishments today are in their twenties. (This is the same age group as that of all of Imran’s children and those of his third wife’s. But they are fine, perhaps preparing for the new year’s parties. It is always someone else’s child who has to walk to the altar so that the great leader can live to lie yet another day.)

The Party has used the youth card at home to create next-generation hate for the Establishment. The sentiment is central to malignant social media campaigns that are now being fueled by Grenell and other foreign interests. This makes the next step in the Imran case very complex.

Will Imran be punished too? Will he be kept in jail? Will he be released? Will he be the lightning rod of Washington to tighten the screws on Pakistan for more strategic reasons like Nukes and China? Will he come out? Won’t he come out?

These questions have no answers available at present. All we know is that the Army by announcing these punishments has spoken its mind about 9^th May and about its planner, which they believe is Imran Khan. At another level, through today’s military court judgments, the generals may have (un-intentionally) also shown a certain finger gesture to those like Grenell who think they can game Pakistan’s formidable Establishment by becoming PTI’s megaphones. Let’s see how Grenell takes in this gesture.