Imran Khan, the former Pakistan cricket captain turned politician, is in the
spotlight as Pakistan develops a roadmap for reconciliation with the Taliban
that aims to close down the war theater inside its borders.
Khan, who leads the opposition Tehrik-e-Insaaf party, has emerged as a potential
prime minister after the country's military oligarchs built a consensus that
peace is unlikely in the absence of out-of-the-box thinking and that an
internationally credible person is needed to lead the process. Serving and
retired military officers and academics, businessmen and politicians sense that
neither the current Pakistan military and political leadership, nor
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has the ability to deliver a result. They believe
the best hope lies in a person who can be trusted in all quarters - by the
Taliban, political Islamists, liberal secularists, Western capitals, India and
other regional players.
Pakistan Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani led an unprecedented entourage,
including Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani and Lieutenant-General Ahmad
Shuja Pasha, the director general of the Inter-Service Intelligence, to Kabul
last week to officially inaugurate the peace reconciliation process with the
Taliban under the auspices of Washington and London. The decision had already
been made that the Afghanistan and Pakistan governments will occupy a central
role in a reconciliation process that could bring the Taliban into the
mainstream Afghan political process.
Khan, 58, is leading a two-day sit-in outside Peshawar, capital of northwestern
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, planned for Saturday and Sunday to block supply
convoys ferrying goods to North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in
Afghanistan. People displaced by the war have vowed to join the protest, which
is against United States drone attacks. Khan has been a fervent critic of the
Pakistan government, claiming it is subservient to the United States in the
region.
Several months before the leaders of the two countries met in Kabul, the
Pakistan military establishment began preparations for reconciliation and it was
agreed that Khan would be suitable for leading the peace process.
A prominent Urdu media commentator of right-wing leanings, who is close to both
Khan and army chief Kiani, arranged a series of meetings between the two which
eventually led to a consensus around Khan becoming the next leader of the
country.
While no formula was finalized, according to sources, general elections
scheduled for February 2013 could be brought forward and a political alliance
engineered that would result in a simple majority under which Khan would be
installed as prime minister. Another scenario would be for Khan to take the lead
in an interim government.
Khan's leadership role has found favor across Pakistan's political spectrum,
including the Muttehada Quami Movement (MQM), the second-largest party in the
ruling coalition and largest urban party in Sindh province. The Awami National
Party (ANP), the largest Pashtun nationalist party, which governs Khyber
Pakhtoonkhwa, and Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan and Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam, the two
main Islamic parties, also back the role.
ANP president Asfandyar Wali Khan, a strong critic of the US drone attacks, has
backed the process started in Kabul and said his party had always supported
dialogue with ''saner elements'' among the Taliban.
Imran Khan's position has been lauded by the militants and his popularity in
Pakistani tribal areas is unparalleled. In 2007 in Afghanistan, Naseeruddin
Haqqani, the son of legendary Afghan commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose Haqqani
network is regarded the most lethal network against the Western coalition in
Afghanistan, met with Imran Khan and in that way Khan indirectly entered into a
dialogue process with the Taliban.
In the second week of March, Khan held a long meeting with the US ambassador in
Islamabad, Cameron Munter. A few days later a major shift in his politics
surprised many. Khan produced a statement supportive of MQM policies despite
formerly filing a money laundering case against MQM leader Altaf Hussain in a
British court.
Troublesome turf
There is a long-held understanding within Pakistan's military that any
reconciliation process with the Taliban would require a whole package dealing
with the Taliban, al-Qaeda and the affiliated group on one side and another with
the the Western coalition, India and other regional players. The job requires
credible leadership.
Pakistan supported the Taliban movement when it emerged in the mid 1990s. When
the student militia formed its government in Kabul, Pakistan stood behind it in
the face of global opposition. After al-Qaeda attacked the United States on
9/11, Pakistan tried to explain to the world the difference between al-Qaeda and
the Taliban and emphasized the need to engage with the Taliban.
However, the Pervez Musharraf administration's arguments were dismissed by
George W Bush and Pakistan's logistical support helped American-led
international forces toppled Taliban's ragtag militia government by the end of
2001.
In 2006, the Taliban re-emerged as a powerful armed opposition group and stunned
the world with organized attacks throughout southern Afghanistan. Within a few
years, according to influential Western think-tanks, they had expanded their
influence to over 80% of the country and in several parts even established local
rule.
Western experts are still at a loss to explain what exactly happened between
2002 to 2006 to bring the defeated Taliban back as a major player in
Afghanistan, with some claiming Pakistan's ISI backing amid a resurgence in
Pashtun nationalism which supported the Taliban. However, it is likely a due to
a dialectic of al-Qaeda-affiliated groups. Al-Qaeda migrated into Pakistani
tribal areas in 2002 and worked with different tribes, gradually succeeding in
replacing Pakistan’s tribal system with the al-Qaeda affiliated structures in
Pakistani tribal areas as well as in southeast Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda’s strategy from 2002 was to regroup pro-Taliban factions and pitch them
in Afghanistan's southwest in 2006 to support the Afghan Taliban. In early 2007,
under a meticulous strategy, al-Qaeda retreated into the tribal areas and in
mid-year moved into Pakistani cities to pressurize Pakistan to stop supporting
the American war in Afghanistan. It countered American moves in Pakistan for
establishing a broadbased anti-Taliban alliance and assassinated Pakistan's
former premier Benazir Bhutto, thwarted a peace reconciliation process which was
inaugurated in Kabul in 2007 through opening a war theatre in Malakand-Swat and
carried out so many attacks in Pakistani cities and tribal areas by the
beginning of 2008 that they outnumbered insurgent attacks against occupation
forces in Iraq and Afghanistan
By the middle of of 2008, al-Qaeda's leadership receded into Pakistani tribal
areas and then expanded operations across the world including Yemen, India,
Somalia and Europe.
On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it is clear to the world community that dealing
with the Taliban is not an open and shut case that ends in simply signing an
agreement.
Why Imran Khan?
Imran Khan captained the winning Pakistani cricket team in the 1992 World Cup in
Australia and returned to Pakistan a national hero. He then pursued the cause of
establishing a free cancer hospitals in memory of his deceased mother Shaukat
Khanum, who died of cancer.
At the same time, Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul retired from the Pakistan Army
and began working on a new plan for the future leadership of the country. He
chose three prominent Pakistanis; namely, former governor, renowned social
worker and reformer Hakim Mohammad Saeed, the social worker and philanthropist
Abdul Sattar Edhi, and Imran Khan. Saeed refused to take part in politics, and
was gunned down in front of his clinic in 1998. Edhi left Pakistan in the mid
1990s, alleging that Pakistani intelligence was trying to force him into
politics. Imran Khan agreed to take a political role.
The transformation of an Oxford University political sciences graduate seen as a
sex symbol in the West into a politician who penned articles in leading Urdu
newspapers against the Western lifestyle and Westernized thinking in Pakistan
stunned many.
After the October 12, 1999 military coup, Khan jumped on Musharraf’s bandwagon
but by 2003 he had distanced himself from the president. The military
establishment continued to engage him. However, Khan has remained a major
campaigner against the Pakistan military's oppression of Islamic forces. Even in
2009, as all Pakistani politicians including Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz Group
supported military operations in Swat, he insisted that they could only breed
militancy.
This weekend's protests in Peshawar are likely to be seen as the curtain-raiser
for Khan's entry into the AfPak arena.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief and author of
upcoming book Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban, beyond 9/11 published by Pluto - By Syed Saleem Shahzad
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