Imran’s problem with Gen Asim
Imran Khan’s frontal assault on the army chief Asim Munir needs to be understood in its actual context.
Imran Khan’s frontal assault on the army chief Asim Munir needs to be understood in its actual context. There are pull factors, meaning things that he anticipates or senses, and then there are push factors, essentially his compulsions and fears.
Pull factors first.
Judicial chaos. He is getting a sense that the judiciary is now asserting itself against the General-Asim led establishment. The judges’ letter in his estimation has broken the ‘consequence momentum’ of the 9th May violence. His party men are getting bails, and those who had left the platform are returning home. He thinks that the Supreme Court that is now in charge of the fate of this letter can be put under pressure by throwing stones at its chief justice, forcing the suo moto proceedings to confront the army and the ISI on the issue of judicial independence. In case that does not happen, he could always turn up the heat on the Establishment and trigger some sort of a lawyers’ movement that would paralyze the functioning of the government and force the Establishment to cut a deal with him.
A shaky government. The Shehbaz government’s first weeks in power are nothing to write home about. The ruling party itself is divided and there are serious anger issues within. The cabinet formation and Senate elections have reinforced the image that this is a compromised arrangement in which the Establishment has a decisive say. The more the government’s prospects of survival become dim and grim, the more the chances of Imran’s return to power increase. Or at least that's what he thinks. By attacking the army chief he is trying to hit the center of this government’s gravity in the hope that the legend further spreads that this political dispensation is hanging by the skin of its teeth and can collapse at a touch.
Media and political momentum. Imran Khan is sensing a media and political drift in Pakistan in his favour. Government and state institutions trolling is back. Old propagandists are crawling out of the woodworks spinning yarn, spewing poison. The international environment is not conducive for crackdown against trolls because most of them can easily pretend to be victims of political persecution. Domestic voices against the state’s strong-arm tactics are becoming shriller. With courts being big on fundamental rights protection and tough on attempts by the Administration to dodge their verdicts, Imran wants to add to the gains of his party made in recent elections. The more he lays in to the army, the more dissonance he generates for his opponents, the more resonance he creates for himself in the media and in politics.
Regional and global situation. It is possible that he sees the Establishment’s plate being full. Afghanistan on one side, India on the other, the Iranian border calm touch and go, the TTP striking hard, and Baloch groups attacking the state in different ways. And this is at a time when the Middle East and the Gulf are on fire; the Ukranian war is threatening to expand; the US is on the verge of re-electing Trump. Pakistan is surrounded by a terrible situation. How much can the Army tackle especially if the generals are also handling the economy and run everything, from cricket to politics? He thinks now is the time to pile more pressure on the army. If he could isolate the high command (it is insidious to target the army chief and at the same time insist that he is not against the institution) and paint them as the real problem in the country, he might generate some debate within the ranks about dealing with Imran “more reasonably” because “now is not the time to have problems at home.”
Precarious economic situation. Part of the same strategy is to create an image of more chaos in the months ahead to scare away investors and further aggravate the economic situation. Thus the resultant public anger could be directed against those running the system. He wants all hate to flow towards the army chief.
Now the push factors.
Party in total disarray. The PTI has become a silly circus. There are as many factions as there are members of the so-called apex committee or its core committee. Spokespersons change faster than infants change nappies and everybody is pulling each other down. It is such a strange show that there are always three versions or more of the same event. This bewildering bedlam is generally covered by consistent attack against the government, threats of protests and appeals to the judiciary—all of them mere distractions from the reality of the disarray within.
There is nothing Imran can do about it. He is in jail and totally dependent on one-sided views that reach him. He can’t control his party from behind bars. What he can do is to keep sounding more and more aggressive and paint himself as the man who is calling the shots.
Power politics. KP CM and his cabinet briefing by the corps commander must have shaken Imran to the core. This is a serious matter for him. He knows how things work in the real world. Amin Gandapur may owe him his chair but now that he has got this chair, he has to carve his own future with the Establishment. You can’t run KP without the Army. Not in the current state.
This engagement of the party’s real base with the army is anathema to Imran. His jitters are causing him to up the level of his propaganda to message the KP government that his bottomline is clear: the army command is the enemy and there is no way anyone can engage with them without securing his interests first—coming out of jail.
Bluff. Imran is a super bluffer. Till his bluff is called that is. More than that he is a brilliant bullshitter. (I never used the word till such time Harry G Frankfurt’s awesome work, On Bullshit, 2005, made it to the New York Times best seller list.)
Imran is in jail. The elections are over. Government formation is complete. The system has completed an important procedural loop without him being anywhere in the equation. How does he stay relevant? What can he say that would keep intact his image of a planner and a strategist? Attack the army chief. Speak about the old London Plan. Bring in the poison story. Re-open the Bajwa Betrayal novel. Equate the current situation with 1971. Tell the party I am coming out soon. Talk about Allah’s plan. Pretend as a natural born winner. Spread more fear. Cause more tension. Grab some attention. That’s vintage Imran Khan for you, the most successful bullshitter of recent times because he can sound so convincing.
So what would become of his gambit? His bluff. His hopes, fears and bullshitting. For now it has got some headlines, created the usual social media gossip storm but has not impressed the army high command, whose response is to reiterate that they would deal with 9th May criminals with an iron fist and there would be no compromise on this goal. If Imran by attacking the army chief wanted to look like a man dictating terms, this response should deflate that expectation. However, he would persist because he is desperate for a breakthrough for himself that so far has not come his way. He would expand his attack against the army chief and would take his power gamble to the next level.
"An excellent analysis. IK's actions are a desperate attempt to gain power and attention again. He wants to gain power by all means, but you are right; this time he cannot drift away easily for what he has done. The high command is not influenced by his attempts, and they should remain firm to counter his threats."
Imran, or his backers within the bureaucratic structure wheresoever they are, have been persistently playing with fire. They are foolishly underestimating the resilience of the Pakistani state, which deliberately projects an image of chaos and turmoil to catch and neutralize its overconfident prey.
For what he attempted last year, any other dispensation in Rawalpindi would've long ago squashed him and his worthless worshippers (khaki and black-ties included) like a bug.
They're lucky that there is a General in GHQ who has shown till date that he likes to go by the book, although he still seems hesitant to let the former managers of "Project Imran" who belong to his own institution to face humiliation in a proper court of law.