meIn recent days, Imran Khan has cut an increasingly isolated figure. Since Pakistan’s former prime minister was released from prison following a brief but explosive attempt to arrest him last month, his return has been marked by a mass exodus of his party’s top leadership, to a scale that has surprised even its critics.
On Thursday night, Pervez Khattak, the former chief minister and defense minister, became the latest high-profile resignation from Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. He followed in the footsteps of Khan’s former finance minister, his former human rights minister, his former information minister and his former shipping minister, who all resigned from high-level posts or went abandon the PTI completely in recent weeks. Dozens of other federal and state ministers have followed suit.
Most of those who haven’t defected are now behind bars. On Thursday night, PTI chairman Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, who recently said he would support Khan during these “tough times”, was arrested by counter-terrorism police at his home in Lahore. Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Khan’s former foreign minister, remains in jail after his arrest in May, along with several other key ministers and thousands of PTI rank-and-file members.
There is no doubt among analysts who is orchestrating the arrests and resignations. Ever since Khan’s relationship with the all-powerful military establishment broke down and led to his fall from power, he has been on a crusade against the army leadership. He has accused them of trying to kill him and of being behind his arrest in May, before he was released when the courts declared his detention illegal.
In response, analysts and PTI members say, the army chief is now trying to systematically break up Khan’s party, before arresting him and trying him in a military court. The likelihood that Khan will be able to stand in Pakistan’s next election, scheduled for October, is considered by most to be very slim.
“This dramatic crackdown is a clear strategy by the military to break all the support structures that Khan has,” said Avinash Paliwal, associate professor of international relations at Soas University in London. “Once those structures are gone, Khan is next.”
However, despite Khan’s claims that this was a “crackdown never seen before in Pakistan’s history”, Paliwal said it was instead a continuation of a pattern by the army that it has marred the country’s path to democracy since 1958, when the first military coup took place.
Since then, the military has routinely asserted itself as the most powerful political actor in Pakistan, either through direct rule or by controlling and directing things behind the scenes. All the most powerful political parties in the country have fallen into oblivion due to military repression and arrests. Before Khan, it was Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, who in 2017, after falling out with the military, were ousted from power and jailed for corruption, as before several others were. he
Nawaz Sharif spoke in Islamabad in 2017, the year he was ousted by the military. Photograph: Faisal Mahmood/Reuters
“This is not an anomaly, it is something the military does from time to time whenever it feels it has to tame a civilian political outlet that is getting too big for its boots,” Paliwal said. “The army is the only party that rules the country.”
Khan would not be the first prime minister to be tried by the military. In 1977, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was deposed in a military coup, tried under martial law and then executed.
The pressures placed on senior officials, and even those below the PTI ranks, have been strong. A senior party leader who was arrested in May and has since resigned from the PTI described being handed over by the police to the notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) military agency.
“For me, they used multiple methods to pressure me to leave the party, but one of the worst was torture,” he said, requesting anonymity for fear of the military. “They tied my feet and hung me upside down and I was like a punching bag to them. They beat me with sticks and punched me and kicked me.
“They called my family and threatened them and told me they were going to look for my children and the whole family if I didn’t leave the party. The offer they made me was that if I left PTI, I would get relief. I knew there was no other way.”
Even the lower ranks of the party described the pressure they were receiving from the military, with many accused of taking part in riots and violent protests that broke out on May 9 after Khan’s arrest. Homes and army headquarters were among the buildings attacked in the violence.
The military and government have since described it as a “black day” for Pakistan and have vowed to bring down the full force of the state on those involved, while accusing Khan of of being the brain Those who took part, and even those who had just joined the party, have been rounded up by the thousands and charged with terrorism offences, with some facing trial in military courts.
People on the streets of Peshawar during the May 9 protests. Photograph: Hussain Ali/Pacific Press/Shutterstock
The brother of a PTI youth wing leader said his entire family had been in hiding since May 9, after suffering beatings in their homes and constant harassment by the police. He said he had been separated from his wife and baby for nearly a month as a result.
“Why are they harassing me or my parents just because my brother is part of the PTI leadership?” he said “We have received indirect messages to ‘leave PTI if you don’t want to be in this situation’. This is the worst political situation I have seen in my life.”
Human rights groups have expressed concern that the military is resorting to its other notorious intimidation strategy for those aligned with PTI or opposed to the military: disappearances.
Pro-PTI journalist Imran Riaz Khan has been missing since May 11. On Sunday, Murad Akbar, the brother of a former adviser to Imran Khan, Mirza Shahzad Akbar, was picked up at the family home and has not been seen since, with police denying knowledge of his whereabouts.
“We all know who is responsible,” said Mirza Shahzad Akbar, who is in the UK and is no longer a PTI official but is named as an accused in one of the high-profile corruption cases against Khan. “My brother is not involved in politics. Going after my brother and kidnapping him is putting pressure on me.”
On Thursday night, prominent lawyer and rights activist Jibran Nasir, who was an outspoken critic of the army, was picked up by unidentified men in Karachi, according to his wife.
Lawyer Jibran Nasir, who was picked up by unidentified men in Karachi, says his wife. Photograph: Akhtar Soomro/Reuters
However, despite all the pressure being brought to bear, the scale of defections and the speed of the PTI’s collapse has surpassed that of any other party that has faced similar repression. Analysts say it is a reflection of the PTI’s ideological weakness under Khan, who was unable to build any institutions within the party and relied solely on its own populist appeal to hold it together.
There had been growing frustration with Khan’s political games. While his public crusade has been to demand general elections as soon as possible, according to members of the former PTI leadership, and confirmed by Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar, Khan twice torpedoed the ruling coalition’s bids to hold elections.
Imran Khan: Who is the man dividing Pakistan? – Explanatory video
The first offer came in May last year and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had even written his resignation speech, but after the government approached Khan with the election proposal, he announced his “long march” protest. Not wanting to appear to be bowing to pressure, the government scrapped the plan.
Then, during Supreme Court-ordered negotiations between the PTI and the government in early May, the government proposed to dissolve parliament in July and hold elections in late September. Senior PTI leaders at the meeting were enthusiastic, but after a phone call with Khan, they were told to reject the plan and appeared visibly dejected according to those in the negotiations.
As confidence in Khan’s loyalty to his party members has waned, few in the PTI’s upper echelons have been willing to confront the military and face the likely draconian consequences, rather than chose to leave it. A former party leader confirmed that several of those who resigned were now discussing a plan to rebuild the PTI “minus Khan” as a way to “save the party”.
“It’s the bitter truth [that] Khan doesn’t care about his close workers and aides or what they go through or face,” he said. “Anyone who has known him closely knows that he only thinks about himself. Khan is a huge narcissist.”
