Pakistan Can Imran Khan take on the military?

The highly popular former prime minister says the military was behind an attempt on his life – but could he still make a pact with the generals?

It was the moment Imran Khan had been building up to for weeks. Last Saturday, Pakistan’s former prime minister made his first public address since being shot in an assassination attempt last month. The shooting was the latest twist in months of political turmoil that began in April when Khan was ousted by a vote of no confidence in parliament.

The rally in Rawalpindi was the climax of a “long march” by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party to press the government to call a snap election before parliament’s term expires in October next year.

“I’m more worried about the freedom of Pakistan than my life,” said Khan, who hobbled to the stage to speak to supporters from behind a panel of bulletproof glass. “I will fight for this country until my last drop of blood.” Khan said he was calling off his protest march to Islamabad because he feared it would cause havoc.

Khan attracts cultish devotion from supporters but made his speech hundreds of metres from the bulk of the crowd of around 25,000, separated by coils of barbed wire and a buffer of police officers. Mobile phone signals were jammed in the vicinity.

Since he was removed as prime minister in April in a vote of no confidence, his popularity has gone from strength to strength just as Pakistan has spiralled further into a state of political crisis. The former prime minister – known to thrive as an opposition agitator – has mobilised hundreds of thousands of people at his rallies and made speeches filled with incendiary rhetoric.

Khan accused the US of being behind a conspiracy to remove him from power, and has recently gone on to accuse the new coalition government, led by Shehbaz Sharif, of being “imported” and corrupt. But it is Khan’s decision to go up against Pakistan’s mighty military establishment that has gripped the people and left the country reeling.

Khan and the senior aides in his party have not only accused the military of being responsible for pushing him out of office, but also for having a role in the assassination attempt. He unsuccessfully tried to file a police report naming Sharif, the interior minister, Rana Sanaullah Khan, and the senior army general Faisal Naseer as the three conspirators.

“It is no secret that the [military] establishment played a huge role in removing Imran Khan from power, by forcing our allies to abandon him,” said Fawad Chaudhry, a PTI spokesperson. The government and the military have denied this, and the shooter held responsible has said that he acted alone.

Khan’s outspoken position is all the more extraordinary given his once entrenched relationship with the military, who have kept a stranglehold on Pakistani politics and in the past have taken power through coups. Yet many believe Khan is once again looking for their backing to return to power. His huge appeal, particularly compared with the declining popularity of the Sharif government, is his trump card.

Zahid Hussain, a political analyst, said: “Khan is hugely popular while the army position has been weakened and they are on the defensive, so they may cave to pressure and talk to him. The military is not neutral, it has never been neutral.”

Khan was dealt a blow last Thursday when it was announced that the new army chief, arguably the most powerful position in Pakistan, would be Gen Asim Munir, whom Khan fired from a senior post in 2019. Munir is reported to be apolitical but the former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said: “To remain out of politics will be a big challenge for the new chief. The army has so much influence in governmental matters, it is so ingrained in the system, that it is difficult and complicated for this to just end.”

Though Khan denies it, many in his party say he was elected in 2018 with the help of the military, who are accused of pressuring MPs to join PTI and rigging the election in his favour.

Khan’s government operated as a so-called hybrid regime where the military interfered directly, though behind the scenes. One senior PTI leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “Our politics was outsourced, it was run by ISI,” referring to Inter-Services Intelligence, an agency controlled by the military.

Even Khan recently stated that while in power he received help from military agencies and could not pass bills without their support.

Under the hybrid regime, the army cracked down on media freedom, and Khan’s opponents were imprisoned. Pakistan’s ranking in the Transparency International corruption index slipped a record 20 places between 2019 and 2021 due to “state capture” and an “absence of rule of law”.

Last year relations between Khan and the military, and with the army chief, Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, began to fray over concerns that Khan was running the economy into the ground, as inflation soared and the government spent wildly on subsidies on fuel and power. Khan’s erratic approach to foreign policy, alienating allies such as the US and Saudi Arabia, was also a source of consternation.

The relationship broke down completely after the military refused to back Khan’s candidates in regional elections, then decided against his plan to transfer Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, the head of the ISI.

Despite Khan’s best efforts to prevent a vote of no confidence, it went ahead and he was removed after many of his own PTI MPs and coalition allies voted against him.

The ferocity with which Khan has since turned against the military appears to have taken the establishment by surprise. Khan criticised the military in speeches, in particular the army chief Bajwa.

Last Wednesday, Bajwa, who retires this week, took the highly unconventional step of openly admitting military interference in politics for 70 years. In what appeared to be a pointed response to Khan, Bajwa criticised those building a “false narrative” and said the army had now decided “it would never interfere in any political matter”.

This was met with scepticism among analysts and politicians. Instead, Khan’s fate is likely to rest on whether Munir, the new military chief, is willing to negotiate.