Through the looking glass

An eerie disquiet has settled in places of power – behind closed doors and in crowded meeting rooms, politicians and generals plan for what is yet to come.

Khan and his stalwarts’ ruthless barrage of attacks on the military establishment has gained momentum. Fuelled by the outpouring of outrage following Arshad Sharif’s ignominious murder and the sheer ineptitude the ruling parties have shown at forming concrete narratives, Khan has set the stage for his long march.

But what cause does Khan champion? What principles does he stand by? It is certainly not civil supremacy that he is fighting for. During his tenure, freedom of speech was curbed, state security apparatus was used for crushing dissent, and any negative reporting by the media was dismissed as the work of some unknowable ‘enemy’. Out of power and on the streets, he has turned to the oldest trick in the playbook – dismiss all actions against him as the result of a conspiracy.

To cheering crowds, Khan claims that a civilian-hating military has joined hands with foreign conspirators to install the corrupt in the highest offices in the land. He goes on to assert that only he has the willpower, charisma, and sheer mental fortitude to defeat this sordid cast. As much as it reads like something out of a poorly written spy-thriller, it works.

In Khan’s personal revolution, he is both the martyr and the saviour.

To incredulous generals and journalists, perhaps the past few months have been an unprecedented display of support for an ousted leader. But for anyone who has been reading the ebb and flow of politics, for anyone who has been paying attention to the vast support given to a leader who made no excuse for leveraging his position for personal benefit, this is not unprecedented. It is inevitable. Khan’s personal failing is not lust for money, nor necessarily power – it is his desire for public adoration. To be loved by society, whether his actions warrant such admiration or not.

From a half-decade-long campaign to engineer his reputation as that of an exemplar of selflessness to being declared ‘Sadiq and Ameen’ by the Supreme Court, is it any surprise that the main power stakeholder’s own Frankenstein’s Monster has chosen to rebel against its wishes?

The conspiracies he purports hold weight for two simple reasons. First, it is Khan, a politician whose personal virtues were exhorted at every turn for years, who has put them forth. Second, it taps into deep-seated discontent with the West – an amorphous enemy of Pakistan and Islam as a whole. Countering such a narrative cannot be achieved through force or bluster alone.

If the state wishes to curb Khan’s influence, it must acknowledge its own failures first. The public’s disillusionment with politics – crystallized perfectly in the refrain ‘siyasatdan fouj ki pedawar hain’ – stems from a systematic programme of replacing politicians unpalatable to the military’s views with those more favourable to it.

The state must confront its role in inculcating an environment where distrust of public officials and foreign powers is used as a weapon to silence dissent. It is not enough for the military to dismantle the infrastructural support given to Khan in his years in power – his popularity has long since become organic, existing independent of official mandate or his guardian angels’ interference.

Khan’s continuing popularity, in the end, is a by-product of a lack of aptitude shown by the powers-that-be to connect with the common citizen. Even now, their recent attempts are not seen as an earnest attempt at reaching out to the public, but simply a repeat performance of them extolling their own virtues.

The sacrifices of our jawaan are well known by the public, but they have been overshadowed by the seemingly ever-present threat of Khan’s rise. In a country that has had the privilege of birthing martyrs like Rooh-Ullah Shaheed, that is an utter disgrace.

For the military to regain its image, for the state to be able to focus on matters of importance, it is necessary that the old pattern of divisive politics backed by the threat of force is broken. Only then will Frankenstein’s Monsters, present and future, be put to rest.

The writer is a student of law at King’s College London. He can be reached at: salar.rashid@kcl.ac.uk