Farhan Bokhari
In the days since Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan ordered his followers to march on the country’s capital on Nov. 24, life across Islamabad has come to a virtual halt.
The government has been forced to shut down the internet, major roads leading to the capital have been closed, schools are shut and a powerful security crackdown has led to the arrests of hundreds of opposition activists.
By Wednesday morning, Khan’s followers began retreating — though only after causing incalculable harm to the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. In spite of being in prison, Khan has emerged yet again as Pakistan’s most popular politician, and his followers appear ready to agitate at his call.
The protests were the largest since Sharif came to power in last February’s controversial parliamentary elections, which were rejected as rigged by Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), or Pakistan Justice Movement.
The magnitude of this week’s unrest prompted some to predict a coming change comparable to last August’s public protests that forced out Bangladesh’s once powerful leader Sheikh Hasina.
The latest unrest has revived a two-pronged fear for the ruling structure: Imran Khan, jailed in August last year, remains a powerful figure; and Pakistan is unlikely to witness the badly needed stability that is central to any hope for a recovery from a long period of economic disarray.
Khan’s loyalists, who rule the provincial government of the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan, continue to use that region as a sanctuary to regroup and return to agitate in an often repeated pattern this year.
While Khan remains in jail in Rawalpindi, just outside Islamabad, his loyalists have vowed to keep on agitating until he is released. They are also demanding fresh elections for Pakistan to move beyond the controversy over last February’s election results.
A worker clears the road after security forces launched a raid on supporters of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party on Nov. 27 in Islamabad. © ReutersFor now, the powerful army, which is widely viewed as being the main arbiter of political events in Pakistan, visibly remains loyal to Sharif. Yet, a larger crisis such as further protests combined with an already worsening security situation and economic disarray could force the prime minister out.
In recent weeks, continued violence linked to hard-line militants has badly exposed fragile security conditions, with incidents including an attack on a train station in southwestern Pakistan and the subsequent killing of more than 40 Shiite Muslims in attacks on vehicles on a single day this month in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The government has turned to placing tighter controls on the internet such as the targeting of online use of increasingly popular VPNs, or virtual private networks. But such controls have done visibly little to curb Khan’s supporters from joining hands to agitate.
Going forward, Pakistan — the Muslim world’s only country armed with nuclear weapons — cannot afford to have downward sliding internal conditions.
The country needs to immediately embrace three related actions.
First, the imprisonment of Khan and hundreds of his followers has failed to dampen their resolve to launch protests. Instead, a path towards a political resolution must be built by releasing these prisoners, followed by comprehensive national negotiations to end the unrest. It is clear to many across Pakistan that the parliamentary elections were widely seen to be suspect. A way forward will not be sustainable unless Pakistan can overcome the controversy over the elections, which will eventually need to be followed by another set of elections for their legitimacy to be popularly accepted.
Second, the mounting violence, notably in parts of Pakistan close to the Afghan border, need to be resolved through an urgent push for national unity involving all political players including Khan. Additionally, the southwestern province of Balochistan, where China has made large investments under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) banner, now faces growing militancy involving separatists who seek to create a country of their own. Tackling these matters requires rallying the public behind a common national consensus in support of a comprehensive security crackdown. The history of the world has shown other examples of countries that have successfully fought security threats, with a national political resolve that appears to be missing in Pakistan today.
Finally, Pakistan needs to undertake tough new reforms to rebuild its economy. The country’s revenue and tax collection systems remain in tatters, while the rate of economic growth has plummeted and stands marginally around Pakistan’s population expansion rate. In recent days, the government has targeted banks with a new push for tax in a country where finance is among the very few sectors that continue to grow. In sharp contrast, politically powerful landlords remain practically exempt from paying income tax, though the government has said that it will withdraw that exemption in the near future. Clearly, this is an untenable situation that must change.
The way forward requires bringing Pakistan to peace in a break from a recurring pattern of political unrest and economic disarray. For the international community, Pakistan’s location next to Afghanistan and its long conflict with India are elements that cannot be ignored. A jailed Khan’s influence on the streets of Pakistan has sparked challenges that must be urgently addressed.
source : asia.nikkei