PAK GHQ HAPPY AT IMRAN’S BOUNCERS AGAINST INDIA

The Trump administration is mixing harsh words in public with significant concessions to Islamabad in private. Moscow is giving top of the line offensive military equipment to Pakistan. China too remains a generous armourer of GHQ Rawalpindi.

When GHQ Rawalpindi placed its bets on Imran Khan as the Prime Minister, most likely to carry forward its regional and international agenda in 2015, there were several sceptics among the Corps Commanders who collectively form the Politburo of the ruling power in Pakistan, the army. The former cricketing sensation was known to be “difficult to handle”, given his ego-centric personality and mercurial temperament. However, over the previous six years that he was being carefully studied by the military top brass, Imran Khan had shown himself to be attentive to the needs of the army and attuned to their wavelength, both domestically and externally, if only because of his ambition to head the civilian government in Pakistan. After testing him in informal and quasi-diplomatic missions in Europe, the Middle East, the US and China (which in ascending order are the most important theatres for Pakistan’s military-linked diplomacy), it was decided by the generals that an Imran Khan Prime Ministership would give a misleading and internationally acceptable civilian face to GHQ Rawalpindi’s policies. Thereby, enough camouflage netting could get drawn over military policies concerning ter- ror auxiliaries. Imran was clearly capable of charming sceptical establishments in Washington, London and Delhi into making concessions today on the promise of good behaviour by Pakistan tomorrow. Although Imran Khan saw himself almost as much Brit as he was a native Pakistani (while remaining a nominal Pashtun), such a cultural anchor did not prevent him from accepting the military’s views on how to deal with China, the country that is now seen by GHQ Rawalpindi as central to the future of the troubled and vivisected state. On Afghanistan and India, a Prime Minister Khan would do what the Chief of Army Staff “advised”. Towards mid-2015, the operation to remove Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif through use of the judiciary, which historically has been as dismissive of civilian governments in Pakistan as it has been fawning towards the men in uniform, went into high gear, and was reported in The Sunday Guardian. It may be remembered that Sharif himself was similarly discovered and promoted by the military towards the close of the 1980s, falling foul of GHQ only after he developed unreal views about his actual power by the close of the 1990s and even committed lese majesty by throwing out an army chief and publicly humiliating his successor.