He is dangerous
YOU don’t declare political opponents ‘wanted criminals’ unless you have decided to follow the war path against them, instead of the path of political rivalry, in which sometimes you win sometimes opponent wins. Imran Khan, (IK) is on a war path and his preference is discernable from his statements, his actions, his inactions, and his policies. Even IK can be accused of harbouring policy, albeit limited to the goal of regaining office. If you declare your democratic opponents wanted criminals, you make the democratic environment toxic wherein Democracy cannot breathe, cannot exist, let alone thrive. Democracy entails accepting the majority opinion and respecting the elected representatives even if you know them to be far from perfect. Hence IK is a threat to democracy in Pakistan.
More so, he is a potential threat to Pakistan’s very existence. Once you have occupied the highest executive office in a state, you don’t vilify a sitting general or a bunch of sitting generals of your own military. Any mature statesman knows there are usually silent disagreements between generals. Military is unified machinery whose corps commanders, responsible for the core functions of this machinery, are intelligent and informed individuals who may not see eye to eye with each other and during a highly politicized and prolonged war-like NATO’s in Afghanistan, or the US in Vietnam, or Saudi Arabia in Yemen, differences of perspective are sure to emerge between corps commanders. These, however, remain within the framework of military discipline.
Pakistan military has recently suffered the not-so-indirect impact of a long war waged by the West in Afghanistan. If a political leader starts vilifying a general or some generals, starts calling out loud the name of good serving general versus the bad one, this can exacerbate preexisting differences of opinion among commanders, which can harden into polarization within military and in the worst case scenario like Sudan, can even tear the military force apart. That is why political leaders do not cross these red lines and are all the more cautious during sensitive times, even when they harbour serious resentments against their own commanders. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, while facing trial, said to the media that the conspiracy that wants him removed from politics is not a GHQ conspiracy, nor a PNA conspiracy, but a fascist conspiracy against the Islamic country of Pakistan. He was referring to the foreign powers that disapproved of the nuclear defence programme Bhutto initiated to make Pakistan invincible vis-à-vis India and did not want his personal tragedy to adversely impact the very institution he was trying to fortify, hence the statement.
There is yet another very significant reason a statesman cannot tear into his own military or demoralize it in any way. It gives new opportunities for hostile foreign agent infiltrators to launch false flag operations against one’s military officers. Such attacks are carried out by enemy’s military intelligence with the belief they will not incur the blow back of escalation in bilateral tensions because they can be pinned on domestic opposition. The fear of tensions flaring up and leading to full scale war discourages one’s enemy from launching undercover operations against one’s military officers. Take the tragedy of arson in train bound from Karachi to Lahore a day ago, in which the whole family of a colonel died. We cannot rule out enemy action seeking to add to the harassment of military officers Imran Khan initiated in Pakistan.
Imran Khan is the first one to abuse, vilify and accuse Pakistan’s senior military officers in the same vein in which one tries to vilify, abuse and accuse one’s political opponents in a democratic race. This is why a civilian leader like Jonejo did not cross such red lines even while facing direct opposition from military under Zia. Statesmen have always paid allegiance to this principle of country’s defence. IK violated this decorum. He is a potential threat to Pakistan’s defence system.
Such men should not be encouraged to continue to act in their public capacity. The system cannot absorb them. They operate like a virus in a software. They are neither like the revolutionary with a better vision and ability to execute it, nor means of furtherance of democratic values that facilitate the socio-political evolution of a nation-state.
IK was politically dying out on his own, but judicial interference keeps resuscitating him. This has caused judiciary to face the level of non-compliance with judicial orders never faced in Pakistan before at such a scale and has even polarized the apex judiciary itself. Hence IK’s indirect assault is on the judiciary also and historically, comes in the heels of the period in which judges incurred tremendous personal endangerment to make the institution of judiciary strong in Pakistan.
The question is: how can such a threatening malware be fire walled in a democracy. It is here that the indictment of democracy as a system lies. Despite the most dramatic manifestation of this malware during the last century, the enabling environment it gave to Hitler, to European fascism, democracy has failed to develop protection against miscarriage. Less able leaders is one thing. They are voted out. Liz Truss is an example. So is repeated out of term elections in Israel. “Dangerous” leaders is another thing. Mavericks, fascists, rabble rousers, uncomprehending fools, imposters and populists find easy access to corridors of power in democratic system and once inside, find it even easier to exploit system’s resources for their own limited purpose, which is to be powerful vis-à-vis domestic opponents, to the detriment of the purpose of their nation, who seeks power and prestige within the entire international community.
Politicians like IK can push a country that has propelled them into position of leadership towards chaos, a derailment in which democratic system is damned if it functions, damned if it stops. There is no surety that when it finally gives way to another system, it will be way out of trouble for the nation.
—The writer is security analyst, based in Islamabad.
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