Pakistani society and the political forces within it will have to bury behind the trait of self-destruction, as the last sun of 2024 sets and as we enter the new year of 2025, if we want to survive and prosper as a political community. What do I mean by the term self-destruction? Unleashing the full force of the state’s coercive machinery on a popular political party to undermine its political capacity and to undermine its popularity tantamount to self-destruction. Popular political forces out of their frustration launched a poisonous social media campaign against the country's military tantamount to self-destruction. We have a peculiar nature of our political system in which the military dominates and engages with the political forces with highhandedness as a main feature of its systemic DNA.
However, most of the mainstream political parties have been a beneficiary of the military’s hegemony of the political system. Some of them have in turn happened to be on the wrong side of the military. This results in a lot of friction and ensuing political wrangling and anti-military narrative building have become part of our political culture. The PTI social media campaign against the military, however, does not fall under this category of traditional military bashing.
PTI seems to be torn between its revolutionary expatriate members of PTI based in Washington, New York, and other Western capitals and the badly pressurised second-tier leader based in Pakistan. Expatriates want to run a no-holds-bar campaign against the military leadership. Pakistan-based PTI leaders cannot afford to indulge in any such activity. Expatriates’ idea of a no-holds-bar campaign in any case could not be described as anything other than self-destruction of the party and the political system. A political system that is a source of massive anti-military campaigns, both on the national and international levels, could not long survive in a country like Pakistan where criticism of the military is equated with anti-state activities. There are countless other examples of self-destructiveness in our political and social life, but both the above-mentioned two instances pose a direct threat to the survival of our political system.
PTI workers and activists no matter how radical and revolutionary they might pretend before the media have to face this criminal justice system and overdeveloped state machinery in case anything goes wrong in their political activism
Modern political systems are normally repulsive towards extremist political ideas, especially if they are of the latest versions of parliamentary democracy or democratic presidential forms of government. The political parties in the political system function as gatekeepers which deprive extremist elements of any entry into the inner sanctums of the system where only pro-system and pro-status quo elements are allowed entry. Parliamentary systems are delicate businesses hanging by the threat of public legitimacy which is continuously under threat from the downtrodden segments of society—a segment of society which due to the harsh economic conditions prevailing in a country like Pakistan is ever expanding in size. Political parties that attempt to manage this ever-expanding segment of the downtrodden from falling into the hands of radical ideologies while struggling to expand the economic pie so that everybody gets a larger share are the ideal type in such a parliamentary system. Political parties that are in the business of exploiting this hapless downtrodden by making them cannon fodders of their political adventurism normally play with fire. In such a situation nobody gets anything. The downtrodden are mobilised, expectations are raised, we have a larger-than-life leadership image, and they clash with the state machinery which has already outgrown the society due to a conducive international environment as a result the hopes are smashed.
PTI’s Imran Khan’s biggest folly in the context of functioning within a parliamentary democracy is their self-pretensions as a revolutionary group. Announcement of a protest rally as a final call, a do-or-die situation was one of the manifestations of these radical pretensions. Bringing protestors armed with firearms to Islamabad by a political party, whose cadre and leadership had no experience of managing violence on such a large scale was the height of self-destruction. PTI is a political party in a parliamentary democracy—a parliamentary democracy that acts as a façade for overdeveloped state machinery. There is a criminal justice system heavily tilted against political activity in place in the country. PTI workers and activists no matter how radical and revolutionary they might pretend before the media have to face this criminal justice system and overdeveloped state machinery in case anything goes wrong in their political activism. Their revolutionary pretensions will not help them if they are sentenced to long imprisonments in large numbers. For instance, they cannot go underground as the revolutionaries used to do in olden times. They must live in this society under the penetrating gaze of the state machinery. Self-destruction is the only word that comes to mind when we examine Imran Khan’s final call on November 26th.
The other side is that PTI is the most popular political party now, at least the public opinion polls indicate that. In the post-Zia political history of our country, there are only two instances where popular political personalities return to the parliament with a majority despite state machinery making all-out efforts to defeat their popularity. The first time it happened with Benazir Bhutto in 1988—Zia had died in a plane crash and the military and its intelligence agencies reluctantly agreed to a general election after cobbling together a right-wing alliance of political and religious parties against Benazir’s PPP. She won a simple majority even though ISI was openly conspiring against her. Second time in the 2024 parliamentary elections the state machinery—judges, generals, and spymasters—did their best to defeat Imran Khan. He emerged as the single largest party. Now undermining his popularity tantamount to self-destruction on the part of Pakistani state machinery. An organic link between society and political leaders is an asset in a society where the state is fast losing legitimacy. If a political leader has succeeded in gaining public trust in a society where state machinery is seen as a suspect, trust me, it is an asset, something that can bring stability to society. Anyone undermining this trust is working against public interests and pushing society towards restlessness and chaos. Rather, a popular political leader should be facilitated, no matter whether he is in government or opposition, to stabilise the social and political life in the country.
Imran Khan will have to prove that he is a political leader in a parliamentary democracy and that he is not some revolutionary leader at the top of a revolutionary uprising
This is not the end of the story as far as our tendencies to self-destruct are concerned. PTI’s anti-military social media campaign is highly poisonous. The military loves its image and any attempt to vitiate this image is seen as an anti-state activity. PTI’s expatriate revolutionaries are doing a great disservice to the political system and the country. Sitting away from the iron fists of Pakistani state machinery they have nothing to lose. But they are making things difficult for the Pakistani political system to come back to normalcy. A normal political system would require that bogus cases against PTI chief, Imran Khan are done away with, and he is released from jail as soon as possible. He should be allowed to function as a normal political leader. Anti-military social media campaigns should immediately end. The PTI leadership is helpless in the face of expatriate revolutionaries exercising greater control of social media handles which are operated from outside the country. The government leaders are now saying that the military spokesman’s Friday rant against PTI and its “political terrorism” was a response to anti-military social media campaigns coming from outside the country.
In Pakistan’s over 70 years of existence, there has hardly been any political agitation that has not attempted to create some kind of synchronisation with political opinions within the rank and files of the military. Few have succeeded. Some observers say Imran Khan is the first political leader after Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to have standing within the rank and files of the military. As prime Minister, Imran Khan used the military as a constituency. He is perhaps the only political leader in recent times who tried to influence the decision to appoint Chief of the Army Staff through some kind of street agitation. He strongly advocated for a partisan military leadership that would support him in his contest for power with his political opponents. He wanted his DG ISI to serve as his political advisor and chief troubleshooter. And then according to many, he used his connections with the retired generals to unleash a mutiny in the military.
This is all self-destruction. Imran Khan will have to prove that he is a political leader in a parliamentary democracy and that he is not some revolutionary leader at the top of a revolutionary uprising. Imran Khan’s biggest problem is that his capacity to influence Pakistani street is extremely limited—only a couple of thousands turn up at his protest calls—and yet he is not ready to part with his revolutionary pretensions. Self-destruction is a psychological tendency that stems from a frustrated and delusional mind. The kind of political environment political forces have created for each other easily leads to a delusional mindset. When you have too much power and yet that power is of no use in achieving your desired objectives, you engage in an activity that could be described as self-destructive. My advice to them is to step back from the brink. Stop doing stupid things. The consequences of your actions are likely to outlive you.