THE RISE, FALL, RISE AGAIN OF IMRAN KHAN, PAKISTAN’S NEXT LEADER
‘Toughest job in the country’ awaits prime minister-elect and former playboy cricketing hero
Imran Khan, a charismatic cricket star who has fiercely criticised US counterterrorism policy in a region plagued by extremism, is poised to become Pakistan’s next prime minister though the strength of his government may depend on the coalition he is able to put together in coming days.
After results showed his party decisively ahead in an election that critics say was deeply marred, Khan addressed the nation on television, outlining what he would do as prime minister.
He said he would fight corruption at the highest levels, improve relations with China, seek a “mutually beneficial” relationship with the United States and create a just welfare state along the lines of what the Prophet Muhammad did centuries ago.
“We’re going to run Pakistan in a way it’s never been run before,” he said.
He also said he would never live in the prime minister’s mansion. In a country of so many poor people, he said, “I would be embarrassed” to stay in such a house.
For years, Khan had tried but failed to take the reins of this nuclear-armed Islamic republic, which has struggled with poverty, economic stagnation and instability and which is increasingly torn between its two biggest allies: China and the United States. But this time around, he found a powerful ally in Pakistan’s military.
In recent months, army and intelligence officers pressured, threatened and blackmailed politicians from rival parties, human rights groups have said, steadily thinning out Khan’s competition.
Members of rival parties said unfair practices continued during the vote, with some ballot counting done in secret, guarded by soldiers. But Pakistan’s election authorities said the vote Wednesday had been fair.
“The way this stage has been set, it would have been a surprise if he didn’t win,” said Nighat Dad, executive director of Digital Rights Foundation, an advocacy group.
Khan’s ascendance injects a volatile element into relations with the United States under President Donald Trump, who has accused Pakistan of lying about the Taliban, al-Qaida and other militants embedded in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Khan has denied that and accused the United States of recklessness and murder in its use of drone strikes on suspected extremists in his country, signaling he wants them to stop.
Friends and foes describe Khan, 65, as relentless, charming, swaggering and highly unpredictable.
As a young man, his good looks, prowess on the cricket pitch and success with women made him something of a fascination in England, where he lived for a time. In 1982, he posed for a London newspaper lounging on a bed, wearing only briefs.
“Imran Khan is worried in case I portray him as a sex symbol,” wrote the London newspaper journalist sent to interview him. “This is possibly why Imran is stretched across his hotel bed wearing only a petulant expression and a pair of tiny, black satin shorts.”
But a complex, mysterious transformation would begin soon after. In 1992, Khan captained Pakistan’s cricket team to a World Cup victory over England, the country’s former colonial ruler. It was a moment of immense Pakistani pride, and Khan was at the centre of it.
But looking back on it, he told interviewers, he felt empty.
He began to stay away from the clubs, the partying, the girlfriends. He began a quest to build a cancer hospital in Pakistan for the poor; his mother had died of cancer, and the two had been close.
He turned to Islam and the Sufi sect, which he said helped lend purpose to his life.
Then he entered politics. Pakistan in the late 1990s was a mess: Its Machiavellian spy services were working with the United States, and at the same time, supporting the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. The country was poor, troubled and divided — which could still be said today.
Khan seized on a single issue: governance. “In Pakistan, the main problem is not extremism,” he said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “We are a governance failure. And in any Third World country, the moment the governance collapses, mafias appear.”
He focused on corruption, repeatedly stating that a few political dynasties had shamelessly enriched themselves while governance weakened, and the country grew poorer.
But Khan’s shouts for reform were not taken seriously at first. The Justice Movement he founded in 1996 initially won only one seat in Parliament — his — and a Pakistani newspaper ridiculed him as “Im the Dim.”
His personal life also careened back and forth, always attracting enormous attention, especially after he married a wealthy British heiress, Jemima Goldsmith. She converted to Islam, they had two children, and tried living in Pakistan together. But it did not last, and they divorced. Khan married twice more, the last time to his spiritual healer, which again raised eyebrows across Pakistan.
But he seemed adept at not letting the gossip pages distract him, and he kept hammering on about corruption. And two years ago, he received a gift from the Panama Papers.
Those files, an avalanche of millions of leaked confidential documents from a law firm in Panama, included several pieces of information that incriminated Pakistan’s prime minister at the time, Nawaz Sharif. Evidence began to build that Sharif had stolen millions of dollars from public coffers in Pakistan to buy expensive apartments in London, under the names of his children.
Khan capitalised on this and called for Sharif to resign. The Supreme Court removed Sharif from office, and just two weeks ago, right before the election, Sharif and his daughter were imprisoned.
Few would disagree that corruption is out of control in Pakistan. But many observers here saw something in Sharif’s downfall that was more selective, possibly more sinister.
The widespread suspicion was that Pakistan’s powerful military and intelligence services had pressured the judiciary to take out Sharif, clearing a path for Khan to take over. Sharif had clashed with the army chiefs, even some of those he had chosen, many times. He was a thorn in their side.
Khan, on the other hand, was someone the military bosses seemed to think they could work with. Analysts said he shared their worldview, in which Pakistan would kowtow less to the United States and talk more with the Taliban and other extremist groups.
In the prelude to the election, the military seemed to push even harder for Khan. Human rights groups, academics and members of other political parties said security officers threatened politicians to defect to Khan’s side. Several did.
That does not mean that Khan was not genuinely popular. He was, especially among young men who lionised him as a sports hero. As elections loomed, a Khan wave swept Pakistan. His face was everywhere — on banners, lampposts and torn flags flying from the sputtering rickshaws that flit in and out of traffic. His supporters were the most energized and confident. His party’s symbol: a cricket bat.
Khan’s party is likely to fall short of an outright majority in parliament.
He is likely to have to form a coalition government, with him as prime minister, which many have likened to the toughest job in the country. Depending on how many smaller parties he woos, his government could be strong or weak.