With pliant new prime minister Shehbaz Sharif finally ensconced in Prime Minister’s House in Islamabad for a second term, can Pakistan’s Army, the de facto rulers of this quasi-military ruled state, finally breathe? Unlikely. While Pakistan’s economy is in a shambles, with unemployment and food prices sky-rocketing, the Imran Khan genie—unmalleable, impervious to military pressure—is set to skew the Army’s well-laid plans.
Railing relentlessly against the establishment, Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf is poised this Saturday to unleash countrywide street protests, which cannot but stoke the seething anger among the young over a “robbed” election and upend the marriage of convenience that undergirds this military-political hybrid regime.
Despite every effort at intimidating him into silence, it is the incarcerated Khan, the Army’s former protégé, and whose voice in parliament is Omar Ayub Khan, grandson of Gen Ayub Khan, who can derail the deal that has placed yet another favourite in the hot seat.
Little wonder that former Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif, who returned to a grand homecoming as he ended his four-year self-imposed exile in London, has acquiesced to his younger brother taking office, rather than be seen as party to a sham election.
To analysts who have trashed Pakistan’s military establishment for continuing to play by its own rule book, squashing dissent even on social media, it is not working alone. It is being quietly dictated to by a powerful triad of foreign powers that cannot allow an uncontrollable maverick to have the kind of free hand that he was mistakenly given in 2018.
While Pakistan is no longer key to the US’s Great Game against China—that dubious privilege now rests with India—Washington cannot walk away from Islamabad either.
The sea-change in the US’s shift on Imran—which began when the Biden administration’s Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Donald Lu, was publicly named by Imran as instructing the Pakistan envoy in Washington to bring his government down—saw a brief pause as Pakistan’s electorate cast their votes in February and Imran’s AI images trashed the exercise as rigged. The sympathy in Washington, more a nod to public opinion, may have been limited to a few members of the US Congress and State department, with White House spokesperson John Kirby voicing fears about “intimidation and voter suppression”.
The US’s real intent came through this week, after Shehbaz was sworn in and his tough-talking niece Maryam Nawaz elected Punjab’s first woman chief minister. The US State department not only welcomed Maryam Nawaz’s election in “breaking the glass ceiling as a milestone in Pakistani politics”, but went on to say the US wanted to strengthen its “robust partnership” under the new premier.
The turn by Washington is also driven by growing concerns over its inability to step back fully into the power vacuum—not just in Pakistan-Afghanistan, but in Europe, where Russia, rattled by NATO’s expansion, is reclaiming dominance by decimating Ukraine, and the Middle East, where a nuclear Iran is orchestrating the Hamas-Houthi-Hezbollah fightback against Israel. Washington cannot be distracted by a meltdown in Pakistan.
While fully aware that its partner in arms, the Army, blundered in meddling with election results, as it did the last time around when it ousted a legitimately elected Nawaz and brought in the callow cricketer-turned-politician, it was Khan’s sympathies for the Tehreek-i-Taliban that were the real red flag. Imran had openly urged the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan and other extremist groups that had taken refuge in Afghanistan and preyed on the Pakistan military and civilians, to resettle in North Waziristan.
With Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province seeing the return of Imran’s PTI to office, Pakistan’s military chief Gen Asim Munir convened a Corps Commanders meeting within hours of Shehbaz taking the oath, signalling plans for a crackdown on Imran’s party and on TTP hideouts.
Long before the polls, US officials had been conferring with Gen Munir, hand-picked by Shehbaz in his first stint as prime minister. Meetings were also held with Nawaz in London. Washington, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh trust the Sharifs to ensure peace in their immediate neighbourhood, starting with forging peace with the emerging economic powerhouse, India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s congratulatory post to Shehbaz on being sworn in was remarked on for its brevity, in contrast with a fulsome post in 2022 when Shehbaz first became premier and Modi called for “peace and stability in a region free of terror”. But choosing not to rise to Shehbaz’ mandatory swipe at Kashmir in his acceptance speech was a nod to backroom consensus that there can be no change to the status quo. Shehbaz is well aware that opening trade links with India will go a long way in bringing down the cost of imported grains and pulses.
As the chief minister of Punjab, Shehbaz had been keen to visit the Indian Punjab, sentiments that family insiders say are shared by Maryam Nawaz. India’s confiscation of a ship bound for Pakistan may have thrown a spanner in the works. Either way, Pakistan’s India policy will no longer be for the Sharifs alone to determine, but the Army’s as well. Gen Munir, a part of the Special Investment Facilitation Council, a body that oversees Pakistan’s economy, indicates greater involvement by the army. The Sharifs’ trusted economic adviser Ishaq Dar may come in as foreign minister, charged with negotiating with donors ahead of October this year, when Pakistan must obtain a long-term IMF bailout and reschedule nearly $29 billion in loans to the IMF, World Bank, UAE, Saudi Arabia and China.
The spoiler from within the alliance could come from the Pakistan People’s Party led by the ambitious Bhutto-Zardaris, negotiating hard for the post of president and securing governments in Sindh and Balochistan.
But could it come from within the army itself? A perceived rift in the ranks between the pro- and anti-Imran soldiery is compounded by a division among the top brass, with generals drawn from the prestigious Kakul military academy ranged against those from Mangla, the school from which Gen Munir graduated.
With Gen Munir disinclined to stay on in office longer than his term that expires in 15 months, but promoting four more officers from Mangla to top positions nonetheless, a rumbling in the real power centre is the last thing Pakistan needs.
Neena Gopal
Foreign policy analyst