Imran Khan had been building up this hatred against the army since his ouster in April last year. His unsubstantiated fairy tale featured a conspiracy to oust him and the role of the army high command to get the present government into power. For the first time in history, the army chief was directly called a traitor dancing to the tune of foreign powers, and was given the title of ‘Mir Jafar’ by Imran Khan. All this is also reminiscent of the dark and tragic days of 1971, when Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the uncrowned king of East Pakistan and the Awami League took up arms against the Pakistan army on the command of Mujibur Rahman.
The 72-year-old cricketer-turned-politician was in the biometric room of the courthouse when he was taken into custody by the Pakistan Rangers. The timing and method of his arrest can be questioned, but there was nothing illegal about it. The Islamabad High Court has already ruled that the arrest was legal and according to all canons of law and jurisprudence. Imran Khan has been detained in the case after he repeatedly failed to appear before the court, despite being issued several notices. Khan has been arrested in the Al-Qadir Trust case in which he and his wife Bushra Bibi are accused of illegally purchasing land from a business tycoon. They are facing a NAB inquiry for accepting Rs.5 billion and 500 kanals of land from Malik Riaz in exchange for some commercial favours. The bloody onslaught of the forces of Imran Khan is being celebrated by the Indian media with joy and they are jubilant because according to them Imran Khan has achieved what they could not do in the last 75 years: that is, he has pitted the army against ordinary Pakistanis.
Because of the extreme polarisation created by Imran Khan the stakes have never been higher in Pakistan. Today the country is in a desperate fight for survival. The economy is collapsing, civil society is dangerously polarized, and the nation is still recovering from the ravages of the devastating floods last year, terrorism is on the rise, inflation is soaring and ordinary people are struggling to make both ends meet. Meanwhile the country fights a desperate battle for survival, as politicians and institutions are locked in a deadly power struggle over who should take control of the country. The superior judiciary is itself politicised and divided. Moreover, the establishment, too, seems to be divided between various political factions. Even the religious leaders are taking sides with this faction or that.
What makes the current situation unprecedented is the backdrop of the other serious crises. The economy is in ruins, the foreign exchange reserves have crashed to the lowest levels in decades. Meetings with the IMF have not yielded any results for a bailout package.
Rampaging hordes of the PTI have clashed with security forces in Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Peshawar and Faisalabad, and six lives have already been lost as a result of this violent protest by Imran Khan’s supporters. Well-planned and carefully orchestrated attacks were launched against army facilities, and even the house of the Corps Commander in Lahore was attacked and ransacked. The building of Radio Pakistan was set on fire in Peshawar. So far, the army has exercised remarkable restraint and patience. It was only two days of suffering attacks and humiliations that the army issued a statement through the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) that it will now give a fitting response to all attacks against army personnel.
Following a cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif denounced the attacks on public property and military installations and approved the deployment of troops in Punjab and KP. The military weighed Wednesday with a strongly worded statement, vowing to take stern action against those seeking to push Pakistan toward a "civil war." It called the organised attacks on its installations a "black chapter" in the country's political history. "What the eternal enemy of the country could not do for 75 years, this group, wearing a political cloak, in the lust for power, has done it," the statement said, adding that troops had exercised restraint, but that they will respond to further attacks, and those involved will bear the responsibility. It said those who facilitated or planned attacks on military installations had been identified, and "strict action will be taken against them as per the law, and all these evil elements will now be responsible for the consequences."
That brings us to the bottom line. The fundamentals of the system in Pakistan, beneath the intense ongoing political tug of war, remain the same. What matters for political success is whether you have the support of Pakistan’s military. Political parties now directly point to the military’s interference in politics – but only when they are in opposition. When they are in government and enjoy that support, they do little to challenge it. This was true of Khan’s party when it was in power, and it is true of Sharif’s government now.
In the end, what Pakistan’s soaring political tension amounts to is an opportunistic struggle for power. It has left the country a political tinderbox. And in all of it, little regard is displayed on either side for the ongoing suffering of ordinary Pakistanis, who continue to pay the price for the country’s long history of political instability.