{"id":328094,"date":"2020-10-29T11:36:25","date_gmt":"2020-10-29T11:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=328094"},"modified":"2020-10-29T11:36:26","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T11:36:26","slug":"imran-khans-moves-boomerang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/imran-khans-moves-boomerang\/","title":{"rendered":"Imran Khan\u2019s moves boomerang"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/imran-khans-moves-boomerang\/39-5\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-328116\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\" wp-image-328116 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/39-300x235.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"557\" height=\"436\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2020\/10\/39-300x235.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2020\/10\/39.jpg 350w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 557px) 100vw, 557px\" \/><\/a>His cricketing captaincy, celebrity status and political game-plan hatched with the army or establishment, though initially helped him to reach the pinnacle of power, the cricketer-turned politician, Imran Khan, the angry prime minister, finds himself stumped in the contemporary murky politics of Pakistan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">The Khan\u2019s politics, as explained by Najam Sethi, one of the most respected journalists of the country, that he, perhaps, rightly believed that \u201cthe establishment, an euphuism for the army and its intelligence outfit, Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), should stand by him in his political battle with the country\u2019s main opposition parties.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">However, he did not realize that each institution has its own limitations which are true about the armed forces too. His another perception is that any confrontation between the army and the opposition would benefit him politically and would strengthen his government too has failed any impact in the country\u2019s politics. In spite of the confrontationist speeches of the three-times prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, blaming the establishment \u201cstealing the votes to install the Khan government\u201d, there are reports of secret parleys between the opposition and the army. Khan is naturally perturbed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">Khan and cronies were expecting that this high-pitch confrontation would ensure full support to his \u201cnon-performing\u201d government, but their hopes appear to have dashed. It must have been really shocking for him, when the army chief, Kamar Javed Bajwa, personally telephoned. Rauf Klasra, one of the pro-establishment journalists, blames Khan\u2019s stubborn nature for breaking the possibility of any possible dialogue between the government and opposition.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">Bajwa had assured the Pakistan People\u2019s Party supremo, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, that army would conduct enquiry within 10 days to fix the responsibility of the officers of the Pakistani Rangers, who had stormed the room of Maryam Nawaz Sharif during her recent stay at a five-star hotel in Karachi.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">A 20-member force of the Rangers had gone to the hotel to arrest Marym\u2019s husband Captain Safdar, who is an accused for raising slogans, \u201dGive respect to ballots, honour Fatima Jinnah, the sister of the founder of the Muslim nation, Muhammed Ali Jinna.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">Apart from the army\u2019s assurance for conducting the enquiry, the other two institutions, the provincial government of Sind and the Senate, too have sought for a detailed report about who had asked the Pakistani Rangers to break open the door of the hotel room in the early morning. The Rangers had also abducted the Inspector general police of Sind forcing him to order the arrest of Safdar. It had led to the exchanges of fire between the army and the Sind police.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">Since the Pakistani Rangers function under the administrative control of the federal interior ministry, Imran Khan feels that he is being implicated. However, the initial reports claim that the FIR against Safdar was registered by a volunteer of the Imran Khan\u2019s political outfit, Pakistan-Tehrek-i-Insaf (PTI). Earlier, his move to implicate his opponents by framing sedition charges against the opposition leaders, which included the prime minister of the Pakistan occupied Kashmir drew a flak.\u00a0 In this case, the FIR was lodged by a PTI volunteer facing several corruption charges. The FIR has promptly been withdrawn.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">Khan\u2019s disillusionment with the establishment is natural. During the past two years, his efforts to control the terrorists groups in Pakistan have been non-starter. The reason is that while he is being asked to get Pakistan removed from the grey list of the FATF (Financial Action Task Force), but the establishment and ISI continue to harbor them. In spite of engaging a well-known lobbying firm, Pakistan could not come out from the grey list, because it failed to comply all the 27 point advice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">It has been asked to comply with the remaining six parameters before the next FATF meeting scheduled in February 2021. Pakistan will continue to be among the countries like Albania, the Bahamas, Barbados, Botswana, Cambodia, Ghana, Iceland, Jamaica, Mauritius, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Panama, Syria, Uganda, Yemen and Zimbabwe known for the sourcing funds for terrorists. It means Pakistan will continue to face serious economic crunch in coming three months unless the army cooperates with him in taming the dreaded terrorists like the chief of the Lashker-e-Toiba, Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">Meanwhile, the opposition parties comprising Sharif\u2019s Pakistan Muslim League (Noon), Bhutto\u2019s Pakistan People\u2019s Party and Maulana Fazlur Rehman\u2019s outfit Jamayat-i-Ulema Islam are continuing their scheduled rallies. If the political pundits could be believed, Pakistan may have a new leader with the dawn 2021.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">letters@tehelka.com<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>His cricketing captaincy, celebrity status and political game-plan hatched with the army or establishment, though initially helped him to reach the pinnacle of power, the cricketer-turned politician, Imran Khan, the angry prime minister, finds himself stumped in the contemporary murky politics of Pakistan. The Khan\u2019s politics, as explained by Najam Sethi, one of the most [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":328116,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,2205],"tags":[3867,48],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328094"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328094"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":328118,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328094\/revisions\/328118"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/328116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}