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No Exit from Pakistan
his home in Lahore, and it appears that other HuT operations in Pakistan have
so far been foiled.110 Still, the group holds appeal – and may have built a wider
network of secret members – within Pakistan’s most sensitive and powerful
security institutions, possibly even its nuclear program.111
In short, Pakistan is now a country where individuals like Navid Butt can call
for a revolution on the Internet, where a thirty-three-year veteran of the army
like Brigadier Ali Khan was arrested for treason, where conspiracy theorists and
terrorists like Hamid Gul and Hafiz Saeed rant before public rallies, and where
groups like Al-Huda are redefining mainstream religious practice. Under such
circumstances, new sorts of revolutionary Islamist movements – somewhere
between Al-Huda and HuT – seem ever more likely to gain political traction
where the country’s tired old Islamist parties and the Pashtun insurgents of the
wild western border regions have thus far failed.
youthful idealist
In 1992, Imran Khan captained an underdog Pakistani national team to the
World Cup championship, beating favorites New Zealand and England along
the way. When the lime-green uniformed Khan finally hoisted the globe-shaped
trophy over his head in triumph, it was a victory of mind over matter. The
thirty-nine-year-old Khan was well past his prime and had been coaxed out of
retirement for the series. Despite a severe shoulder injury, the fiercely compet-
itive superstar – Pakistan’s nearest equivalent to Michael Jordan – managed
to keep his teammates inspired after they lost four of the tournament’s first
five matches. For tens of millions of his cricket-obsessed countrymen, the feat
won Khan everlasting glory and placed him among a tiny pantheon of national
heroes.112
Almost twenty years later, on October 30, 2011, Khan’s underdog political
party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice, or PTI), which had
won only a single seat in Pakistan’s 2002 national elections and had skipped
the 2008 election altogether, drew huge crowds to a rally in the center of
Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s largest Punjab province. Commentators noted
110 On Butt’s alleged arrest, see www.freenaveedbutt.com.
111 For more on HuT, see Michael Kugelman, “Another Threat in Pakistan, in Sheep’s Clothing,” New York Times, August 3, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/04/opinion/hizb-ut-tahrir-threatens-pakistan-from-within.html.
112 There have been several recent profiles of Khan that discuss his life, personality, and place in Pakistani politics. See Madiha R. Tahir, “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” The Caravan, January 1, 2012, http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/i%E2%80%99ll-be-your-mirror; Steve Coll,
“Sporting Chance,” The New Yorker, August 13, 2012, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/
2012/08/13/120813fa_fact_coll; Pankaj Mishra, “Imran Khan Must Be Doing Something
Right,” New York Times Magazine, August 16, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/
magazine/pakistans-imran-khan-must-be-doing-something-right.html.
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The Four Faces of Pakistan
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that Pakistan had not seen such a large rally for decades. It looked like a major
turning point in Khan’s post-cricket career as a national politician.
Most political rallies in Pakistan are staged events managed by party hacks
and thugs. The politicians pay to bus peasants in from the surrounding coun-
tryside to create the illusion of popular support. Khan’s rally in Lahore was dif-
ferent. It felt more like a giant picnic, with pop singers on hand to warm up the
crowd before Khan and other PTI leaders took the stage. Pakistanis streamed
into the city from all over the country. The assembled masses included rich and
poor, men, women, and children. Hundreds of green, red, and white PTI flags
waved above the sea of humanity, framed by mammoth campaign posters and
a towering stage for the party leadership and performers.
People who had never before attended political events came out in droves,
especially students, eager to show their dissatisfaction with the ruling govern-
ment and the other major parties that have dominated Pakistani politics for
decades. Eventually, their chants and cheers gave way to rousing renditions of
Pakistan’s national anthem. When he stepped to the podium, Khan described
the PTI’s success as a “tsunami” and warned, “Anyone up against it will be
swept away.”113
Many of Imran Khan’s supporters that day were young urbanites, a popula-
tion that has grown rapidly over the past several decades. One impressive young
graduate of the Lahore University of Management Sciences, among Pakistan’s
very best institutions of higher education, explained later that she supported
Imran Khan because he represented something entirely different from the other
failed and corrupt politicians. When asked whether her parents felt the same
way, she quickly replied that they did not, and that it was not a topic she
could even broach with them.114 The generational divide over Imran Khan is
severe.115
Teens and twenty-somethings mobbed Khan’s rally. They organized on high
school and university campuses, delighting in their newfound engagement in
politics. In Lahore, one eighteen-year-old Pakistani student sported a badge
labeled “hope” under a picture of Khan. She changed her Facebook profile to
show support for PTI and might have fit right in with the crowds of young,
idealistic Americans who helped Barack Obama win in 2008. Others, like a
young Pakistani entrepreneur who flew from Britain to Lahore for the rally and
explained, “I am doing this for the love of my country and for change,” might
113 Salman Masood, “Political Shift Seen in Rally in Pakistan,” New York Times, October 30, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/world/asia/ex-cricket-star-imran-khan-leads-anti government-protest-in-pakistan.html?_r=2&ref=asia.
114 Author interview, Lahore, May 2012.
115 For a smart take on how Pakistan’s younger generation is starting to mobilize politically, see Arsla Jawaid, “Game Changer,” World Policy Journal, Winter 2012/2013, http://www
.worldpolicy.org/journal/winter2012/game-changer.
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No Exit from Pakistan
have found themselves at home in one of the “Arab Spring” uprisings earlier
the same year.116
Young Pakistanis cheered for Khan, but also for the popular musicians who
participated in his Lahore rally and at another enormous gathering in Karachi at
the end of December. Two prominent musicians to take the stage were Salman
Ahmad and Abrar Ul-Haq. Both are artists who, like U2’s Bono, have devoted
their talents to larger humanitarian causes. These musicians were not merely
looking to sell a few million more albums or pro
mote their latest releases; they
were associating their own heartfelt idealism with Khan’s party.
In Salman Ahmad’s case, he was lending the credibility of his own struggle
to promote greater tolerance within the Muslim world and between people of
different faiths. The United Nations Goodwill Ambassador was calling upon
the well of support he built by raising money for countrymen in need, as in
2010 when he released the single “Open Your Eyes” with Peter Gabriel to help
Pakistan’s millions of flood victims.
Abrar ul Haq took his PTI affiliation even further. He officially joined Khan’s
party and was later nominated head of its youth wing. In ways that echo and
complement Khan’s own life story, ul Haq’s career began as a teacher at the
same Aitchison College that Khan had attended. He went on to become a huge
Pakistani pop star, and later a philanthropist who built a general hospital in
his hometown near Lahore. Like Khan and so many of the young men and
women who came out in support of PTI, Haq was not born into politics.117 In
a country of so many political dynasties, where parliamentary seats are often
bequeathed from fathers to sons, this was in itself a meaningful distinction. At
Khan’s Karachi rally, Haq spoke movingly of the need for a government of
the “common man, of the youth, not that of the VIPs,” and declared that “a
revolution is just waiting to happen.”118
A Reform Agenda
These passionate endorsements and the palpable energy of Khan’s fans over-
whelmed some of the cynicism of Pakistani politics, at least temporarily. Khan’s
party claimed it would back its idealism with action. Unlike the other major
parties, the PTI would require its candidates to submit tax records and run
in internal primary elections to win the right to fight in national polls. Khan
announced that if elected his government would cut corruption by half in
116 Taha Siddiqui, “Youth Sees Imran as Agent of Change, Hope,” Express Tribune, October 30, 2011, http://tribune.com.pk/story/284806/youth-sees-imran-as-agent-of-change-hope/.
117 Waqar Gillani, “Abrar’s Hospital All Set to Serve Humanity,” Daily Times, July 26, 2003, http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story 26-7-2003 pg7 15.
118 Saba Imtiaz, “Imran’s Dream Team Wows Karachi,” Express Tribune, December 25, 2011, http://tribune.com.pk/story/311748/pakistan-tehreek-i-insaf-rally-in-karachi-live-updates/.
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The Four Faces of Pakistan
61
its first ninety days.119 After making examples of some of the nation’s most
thoroughly corrupt leaders, Khan argued, others would quickly fall into line.
They would begin paying their taxes, creating a new stream of revenue that
would allow Pakistan to improve government salaries and education funding,
and would make Islamabad less dependent on outside donors or international
loans. That, in turn, would give Pakistan greater leverage in its relationship
with the United States, something that Khan also believed would require a
thorough overhaul.120
Khan’s many critics, and even some of his friends, worried that he erred in
overstating just how quick and easy tax reform, anti-corruption, and renego-
tiating relations with Washington would be. They were right; there is a big
difference between igniting a popular movement and governing a nation, as so
many revolutionaries have learned throughout history.
Even Khan’s efforts to build a new style of party for the 2013 elections, one
less rife with corruption and more responsive to constituents, ran headlong into
the persistent realities of Pakistani patronage politics. Bowing to the local vote-
getting power of entrenched politicians, the PTI only partially implemented
internal partly elections even as it took on board a number of seasoned, high
profile candidates. These defectors from other political parties, such as Javed
Hashmi (from PML-N) and Shah Mahmood Qureshi (from PPP), were not
credible standard-bearers for a new style of reformed politics.
Nor, ultimately, did the tsunami of youthful energy and idealism launch
Khan into the prime minister’s office in May 2013. Instead, in a triumph
of traditional machine politics, that job went to Nawaz Sharif, an old-style
politician who had already served two terms as prime minister in the 1990s.
PTI’s 2013 electoral setbacks do not necessarily diminish the potential ben-
efits of political and economic reform. If Pakistan were to undertake serious
reforms in education and the economy, some of the nation’s liabilities could
turn into assets. Properly employed, Pakistan’s bulging youth population could
spark massive economic growth as it has in neighboring countries like China
and India.
Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States and now
one of the country’s best-known political commentators, believes an agenda
of “bold reform” is conceivable despite Pakistan’s huge challenges. She argues
that Pakistan is already witnessing the rise of an urban middle class that is better
able to engage in organized politics. By her logic, the “Mehran men” – lower-
middle-class owners of Mehrans, cheap Pakistani-made Suzuki hatchbacks that
119 Ahmad Hassan, “Imran Announces Intra-Party Polls,” Dawn, March 26, 2012, http://www
.dawn.com/2012/03/26/imran-announces-intra-party-polls.html.
120 Author interview, May 15, 2012; also Alex Rodriguez, “Pakistan Cricket Legend Imran Khan’s Political Cachet Grows,” Los Angeles Times, March 1, 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/
mar/01/world/la-fg-pakistan-khan-20120302/2.
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No Exit from Pakistan
clog many city streets – will be more likely to determine the fate of their nation
than the country’s Islamist insurgents or feudal lords.121 Pakistan already has
the highest share of population living in urban centers among all South Asian
countries. By 2030, half of the country’s entire population will live in cities.122
The full political mobilization of Pakistan’s growing urban middle class
would represent a culmination of many different trends in Pakistani society.
Chief among these would be the dramatic changes experienced by Pakistan’s
news media over the past decade.
Media Matters
Pakistan’s media culture changed radically after Musharraf opened the air-
waves to private competition in 2002. To be sure, “the country has a long
tradition of oppositional journalism,” as one of Pakistan’s top national secu-
rity reporters explained to me over coffee during his visit to Washington in
late 2011. For decades, Pakistan’s most intrepid journalists expected that they
would land in jail as the inescapable consequence of speaking truth to power.
Until the Musharraf regime came in, overt and often heavy-handed censorship
leaders. For instance, Najam Sethi, one of the country’s most decorated and
outspoken journalists, was first detained in 1978 by the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
government, then in 1984 by the Zia-ul-Haq regime, and again in 1999 during
the rule of Nawaz Sharif. Each time, the detentions were politically motivated.
Pakistan’s journalists still work under threat from the state and, increas-
ingly, from terrorists. In addition to his bouts in prison, Sethi has received
written death threats from al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. Several young
journalists have been forced to leave their homes in Pakistan and resettle in
the United States because their stories had so upset the authorities. In May
2011, the body of Syed Saleem Shahzad, a reporter who routinely wrote about
the seamy underbelly of relations between various terrorist groups and the ISI,
was fished out of a canal 100 miles from Islamabad. Days before, Shahzad had
published a story about secret negotiations between the Pakistani military and
al-Qaeda. U.S. officials, including then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Admiral Michael Mullen, claimed that senior Pakistani officials sanctioned the
murder.123
Pakistan has a very long way to go before its media is remotely free or fair.
But these problems cannot negate the huge changes that have already taken
121 Maleeha Lodhi, ed. Beyond the Crisis State (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), p. 74.
122 G. M. Arif and Shahnaz Hamid, “Urbanization, City Growth, and Quality of Life in Pakistan,”
European Journal of Social Sciences, 10, no. 2 (2009), http://www.eurojournals.com/ejss 10
2 04.pdf.
123 “Pakistan ‘Approved Saleem Shahzad Murder’ Says Mullen,” BBC, July 8, 2011, http://www
.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14074814.
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The Four Faces of Pakistan
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place. Where in 1999 the country had two television channels, in 2009 it had
Daniel S Markey Page 14