Khan’s tiny political party, Tehreek-e-Insaf, or P.T.I., expanded rapidly, and it surged in national and provincial elections, ultimately leading a provincial government for a number of years, to mixed reviews. But Khan fell short of winning a high national office and, in recent years, he has largely played a role of opposition agitator and provocateur. Now he appears to be within close reach of his ambition to serve as the Prime Minister. According to results in Pakistan’s general election, held on Wednesday, the P.T.I. won the most seats, by far, in Parliament, although not an absolute majority. The expectation is that Khan will be able to negotiate a majority coalition by attracting support from smaller parties and independent members of parliament. [...]
There can also be little doubt that the office of Prime Minister of Pakistan will remain the country’s second most powerful position, after the Chief of Army Staff, currently held by General Qamar Javed Bajwa. Bajwa and his senior generals exercise authority well beyond their constitutional role, influencing the media, politics, and the judiciary. Their power has only consolidated in recent years, as evidenced in military-sanctioned crackdowns on media outlets critical of the “establishment” (as the military is euphemistically known in Pakistan), human-rights activists, and other sections of civil society. However, for more than a decade, the Army has found it preferable to rule Pakistan indirectly, focussing on national security and foreign policy, and leaving the messy and intractable problems of poverty, energy deficits, and development to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. Imran Khan is only the latest in a series of junior partners whom the Army will expect to concentrate on the economy and other domestic matters but tread lightly on foreign affairs. [...]
Khan’s attitude toward the Taliban has shifted over the years, but his current outlook seems aligned with the Army’s. That is, where Taliban factions leave Pakistan alone and seek to be accommodated in Afghan politics, he is sympathetic to, or at least tolerant of, the movement’s legitimacy. (Since the Afghan Taliban emerged, in 1994, the Pakistan Army and its principal intelligence service, Inter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I., has sought to use the movement as a source of influence in Afghanistan, and as a check on India’s ambitions in the country.) Khan also describes Pakistan as a victim of the American-led war in Afghanistan. He has denounced U.S. drone strikes inside Pakistan and rejected the premises of U.S. counterterrorism policy in the region. “I never thought the Taliban were a threat to Pakistan,” he told me in 2012, when I interviewed him for a Profile in The New Yorker. Still, it has always been hard to think of Khan as anti-Western, in the sense that he was educated in Pakistan’s finest British-inspired prep school, attended Oxford University, married a British woman (the first of three wives), and thrived as one of the first English-speaking global athletic superstars of the satellite-TV age. His Westernness has always been a part of his identity, and even of his political appeal inside Pakistan. [...]
If Khan does become the Prime Minister, he will inherit an economy in crisis, with debts rising and foreign reserves shrinking, likely presaging yet another painful round of bailout negotiations with the International Monetary Fund. The economy is growing, with the gross domestic product forecast to rise nearly six per cent this year, but corruption, persistent terrorist violence, and decades of bad government have saddled the country with an almost bottomless list of structural problems, such as illiteracy, sectarianism, and public-health crises. It’s no wonder that the Army does not wish to run Pakistan directly these days. Better to let ambitious civilian politicians like Khan take on the intractable problems, while the generals take care of themselves offstage. If Khan actually changes Pakistan in the ways that he has promised, it will be a greater miracle than any of those he achieved on the cricket pitch.
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