Imran Khan offstage – Letter22

June 30, 2023 Paolo Affatato

[foto Wikimedia Commons –  Stephan Roehl]

I’m not a big fan of Imran Khan. I used to criticize the former Pakistani Prime Minister for a long time but now it’s getting hard to do so. It is de facto forbidden to mention his name or show his photo in the media. Pakistani television channels are not allowed to interview him or broadcast his statements. This madness must stop. Widespread dissatisfaction among Pakistani television hosts and commentators has been voiced by Hamid Mir, a journalist and writer who considers the guidelines issued by the government media regulator to be absurd. His criticism, also published in an article hosted by the Guardian, does not spare Khan but neither does his successor: Imran Khan tried to transform Pakistan from a democracy into an autocracy. His successor, Shehbaz Sharif, seems to be following suit.

With the directive sent to the mass media, which orders them to refrain from reporting on people who spread hate speech, the government is trying to silence the story of Khan, leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI, or “Pakistan Justice Movement”), which has shaken up the country’s political and social scene in recent months. However, the gag on the mass media could prove counterproductive in the current phase of instability, as the country is torn apart by the economic crisis, with new legislative elections due to be held later this year.

Khan disappeared from the media. I want to talk about his mistakes, but I can’t do that without mentioning his name and using video clips. Khan was declared an irresponsible politician and enemy of the army after the May 9 riots that followed his arrest. They don’t want to see his name or his picture in the media. They don’t want to see dissenting voices in the media criticizing military tribunals, reiterated Hamid Mir, giving voice to colleagues who are embarrassed to try to report on the ongoing crisis. You cannot erase Khan’s name from the public arena as if it never existed. the very idea of ​​a democratic Pakistan is at stake, the writer concludes, touching on a crucial point in the troubled affair.

Imran Khan has been defined, with decidedly apt expression, as the man who divided Pakistan, the one who polarized the nation and who, on the strength of his popularity (as a former cricketer loaned out to politics), challenged the established power such as the executive and especially the army. Today, as the crackdown on his party continues, his own political survival is in jeopardy. Ousted from the government in a vote of no confidence in parliament last year, Khan has waged a fierce campaign to force an election, mobilizing supporters across the country and openly defying the powerful Pakistani military accused of orchestrating his ouster in arguing undeclared martial law and accusing a soldier of preparing an attack against him.

Loudly arrested on corruption charges two months ago, Khan, who denies all charges and has been released on bail, has sparked a wave of sometimes violent protests and vandalism of military installations by PTI supporters. The clash with the military now appears to have reached a fever pitch: in recent weeks authorities have arrested thousands of PTI members, while dozens of top leaders (such as former ministers Shireen Mazari and Fawad Chaudhry) have left the left. Another maneuver by the government to weaken him was to promote censorship: considering that the rise of Imran Khan was mainly due to his presence in the mass media and on social networks, the objective was to limit his presence media, with the idea that the PTI was relatively new in the political landscape is a passing phenomenon in society.

However, it is not certain that this conviction is the right one and that the party of the current Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif will obtain the expected results. Also because the economic crisis is biting and the government is the main recipient of popular protests, while the Parliament will end its term in August and the vote, scheduled for October, is fast approaching.

Pakistan is going through a long desert of severe financial crisis, with balance of payments imbalance, currency devaluation, soaring inflation and huge debts due by the end of the year. The country received a tranche of $1.17 billion under an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout program in August 2022, and Islamabad is now asking the IMF to release a further tranche of $1.1 billion. dollars, pending since November last year and not released before the nation met the lender’s requirements.

According to official data, Pakistan has $4 billion in foreign exchange reserves with the Central Bank, enough to cover four weeks of imports, as the currency has lost more than 50% of its value against the US dollar. over the past year and inflation has reached 38%. The Monetary Fund, in its report on the global economic outlook, published last April, forecast that the country’s economy would grow only 0.5% this year, down sharply from 6% in 2022. According to the agencies international financial institutions, the risk of default around the corner if you do not respect the agreement with the IMF.

Remember that the catastrophic floods in the summer of 2022 have worsened the situation: in the four provinces affected, the waters have killed more than 1,000 people and forced 33 million inhabitants to leave their homes, devastating more than 3,642,000 hectares of cultivated land, killing 1,200,000 head of cattle, sharply increasing the percentage of poor people, especially in rural areas: the national poverty rate increased by 35.7% and the country ranks 92nd out of 116 states in the list of the international poverty index. The crisis therefore has fierce repercussions on the lives of people, even those reduced to hunger. The executive has been forced to adopt emergency measures and in the cities there are long queues to buy flour at a reduced price, while social media broadcast videos of people fighting over foodstuffs basic foodstuffs or fighting desperately for a sack of wheat to fall from a truck.

In the background, two knots give the domestic question an international dimension: first, the economic crisis represents a danger for security, because it fuels the resurgence of terrorism. Armed groups like Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have reactivated (see the 262 terrorist attacks recorded in 2022, i.e. 52% more than the previous year), taking advantage of the crisis to regain ground in society and stigmatizing the institutions, guilty of having dragged the country into bankruptcy. Second, the geopolitical structure is at stake: Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons and one of the most powerful armies in the world, has for years been an ally of the United States in the fight against terrorism, despite the ambiguities detected in the intelligence sectors and the accusation of having al-Qaeda leaders like Osama Bin Laden as proteges. Today, China is watching with great interest and reaching out to Islamabad, which sees the Pakistan Corridor as an essential segment of the Belt and Road Initiative, for the outlet of the New Silk Road to the ocean. Indian. At the center of a complex geopolitical matchup, beleaguered by internal turmoil and instability, with a polarized society and close to elections, which usually exacerbate tensions, Islamabad’s future remains to be written.

[L’articolo stato pubblicato su Atlante di Treccani]

Paolo Afato

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