After the violent events of May 9 in Pakistan following former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s arrest in an alleged corruption case, the country’s powerful military establishment has decided to decimate Mr. Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). Negotiations are now off the table as the Army leadership swiftly dismantles the ‘Imran Khan Project’, which it had initiated with fanfare some years ago. Following his unceremonious removal last year, Mr. Khan and his PTI had targeted the military in an unprecedented manner. Mr. Khan’s arrest on May 9 was possibly linked to him publicly accusing and naming a serving Inter-Services Intelligence officer, Major General Faisal Naseer, for alleged assassination attempts on Mr. Khan’s life.
Never before has a civilian leader, especially an Opposition leader, in Pakistan’s 75-year history, challenged the Army in the manner that Mr. Khan has. The Pakistani military and its intelligence agencies are now avenging a year of public humiliation heaped on them by Mr. Khan and his party leaders.
This episode has provided the military establishment further opportunity to tighten its grip over democratic institutions in Pakistan, win back public trust – rather forcefully — and create a new political arrangement or “hybrid” regime. More importantly, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Syed Asim Munir, sees this as an opportunity to move away from his predecessor’s shadow (General Qamar Javed Bajwa) and shape his own legacy. Before his retirement, Gen. Bajwa, in a speech last November, had claimed that the Army’s role in politics was “unconstitutional” and that it had decided to remain “apolitical”. Gen. Munir has also made similar assertions, but the brutal clampdown on the PTI is belying those claims.
