Additionally, Khan’s shrill and strident anti-American messaging – he once vowed to shoot down American drones if he were to be in power – likely unnerves the military, which hopes to salvage Pakistan’s sputtering relationship with the US.įurthermore, back in 2011, Khan faulted Pakistani counterterrorism efforts that entail sending troops to the country’s tribal region “to kill our own people with American money”. Khan also calls for better cooperation with India – a position that got Sharif in trouble with the army. Indeed, last year, a former Pakistani army chief, Raheel Sharif, was appointed to lead a Saudi-led military alliance of Muslim countries focused on counterterrorism.
Tehran is the bitter regional rival of Saudi Arabia, which enjoys a deep partnership with the Pakistani military. Khan has taken strikingly positive positions towards Iran he has lambasted US President Donald Trump for his anti-Iran speeches, and he has even said Pakistan should “become like” Iran. In a country where the military’s tentacles extend deep into politics, such comments from civilian leaders who aspire to ascend to the top echelons of power should come as no surprise.Īnd yet, dig a bit deeper, and the differences begin to emerge. “It is the Pakistan Army and not an enemy army,” he said in a New York Times interview in May. Khan regularly expresses strong support for Pakistan’s armed forces, and he has signalled his willingness to work with the army. To be sure, there are many convergences – from Khan’s strong desire to resolve the Kashmir dispute and his strong embrace of China to his refusal to criticise the military. Meanwhile, Khan expresses some views that are at odds with the military’s. If the military truly has a favourite son, Shehbaz Sharif may have a better claim to the title than does Imran Khan. Strikingly, in a recent interview with the Financial Times, Shehbaz Sharif called for the PML-N and the military to improve their ties. While lacking his brother’s charisma, he has a solid reputation as a capable and steady politician, and he gets along well with the military. Shehbaz Sharif, the brother of Nawaz, would be the PML-N’s candidate for premier if it wins the election. Ironically, a potentially more palatable prime minister choice for the military hails from the very party that the armed forces may be trying to undercut. Cult of personality types aren’t known for being submissive. Even some of Khan’s positive traits – like his charisma and supreme self-confidence – could be liabilities for the military, because these qualities suggest he would be unwilling to defer to higher authority. Khan, however, is known for being mercurial and stubborn. The army prefers a predictable and pliable civilian leader. Indeed, given considerations of personality and policy positions, there’s reason to doubt that Khan is the military’s blue-eyed boy. However, the notion that the military would actually be comfortable with Khan as its man in Islamabad is questionable. Indeed, events of recent weeks – arrests of PMLN members dozens of parliamentarians throwing their support behind the PTI the sentencing of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to prison less than three weeks before the poll the sentencing of another top PML-N leader, Hanif Abbasi, to life in prison on drug smuggling charges just four days before the election and the censoring of media outlets perceived to produce favourable coverage of Sharif – all point to the possibility of efforts by the military and a politicised judiciary to undercut the PML-N’s electoral prospects. Indeed, Pakistan’s army – which has held direct power for nearly half of Pakistan’s 70-year existence, and has enjoyed an outsize role in politics when not in direct control – does have a strong incentive to undercut the PML-N, with which it sparred frequently in recent years, and to help propel the PML-N’s main challenger, the PTI, to victory. It’s a theory – one could certainly call it a conspiracy theory – embraced by many commentators inside and outside Pakistan. A big storyline in the lead up to Pakistan’s July 25 election has been the nature of the relationship between Imran Khan, the cricket star-turned-politician and leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, and the country’s powerful military.Īccording to the insinuations of some top leaders with the incumbent Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, the military is working behind the scenes to engineer an electoral outcome that results in a government helmed by Khan.