RayKalm
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Stuffed into the drivers seat of his silver Land Cruiser, Imran Khan, the cricket sensation and possible next prime minister of Pakistan, careens wildly through the Punjab night around livestock and Mack trucks tricked out with trinkets. His is the most recognizable face in Pakistan yet Khan speeds unnoticed past pickup beds and rickshaws full of constituents, swerving into oncoming traffic and along the shoulder of the road. When two women from the wheat fields appear suddenly in his high beams, Khan finally flinches, jams the brakes, cuts the wheel, and then squeezes his SUV between them with just inches to spare. He quickly collects himself. You need good reflexes, he says.
Khan talks like the man who would be kingnot like someone who spent years waging a lonely Ron Paul-like candidacy, as Foreign Policy described it. In the fall, he shocked observers in Pakistan and the West by staging the largest political rally Pakistan has seen in years. If he manages to become prime minister in the elections, which are expected early next year, he will be the countrys first top leader since 1971 who is not a member of the Bhutto-Zardari family, a military dictator, or Nawaz Sharif. We will win the election, he says confidently. God willing, we will sweep it. Unless we do something stupid.
As if it were an easy win in a cricket match, Khan predicts that his centrist party, the Pakistan Movement for Justice, can fix the countrys problems in just 90 days. But his strategy for dealing with the Taliban and other Islamic militants has led to charges that he is soft on extremists. His plan is to order the Army to withdraw from the unruly tribal areas and start a dialogue with the militants. To him the war in Afghanistan and on the Pakistan border conforms to Einsteins definition of madness: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result ... The Pakistan Army is killing its own people. Its the most shameful period in our history. We created militants through collateral damage, and we are creating more militants through collateral damage. Its a ruling elite which sold its soul for dollars.
Beyond ending the fighting in the border area, his campaign is built on the twin promises of battling corruption and standing up to the American administration, which puts him in the interesting political position that the worse things get in his country, and the further U.S.-Pakistan relations deteriorate, the better for him.
The disenchantment with the other political parties is so acute, and thats the space that has been carved for Imran Khan, says Jugnu Mohsin, publisher of The Friday Times, an independent weekly based in Lahore, and a frequent Khan critic. When asked what kind of president he would make, her response is visceral. I shudder to think because he is a man who doesnt really have a firm grip on history, or politics, or economy, she says. He would be very easily led and misled ... And I think the military would probably continue to call the shots.
Khans campaign is funded by Pakistani businessmen, and supported by the middle class and the young, along with many right-wing voters who choose not to vote for a religious party but want more or less the same policies, according to Hasan-Askari Rizvi, an analyst based in Lahore. Mohsin and other observers have also suggested that Khan is secretly propped up by the military and Pakistans notorious spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Khan himself denies any clandestine connections and Hamid Gul, the former director of the ISI widely considered the father of the Taliban, says that although some security forces have sympathy for Khan, he doesnt think that Khan takes their orders. Many individuals might support him, but thats individuals.
When asked whether he believes the Pakistan Army or the intelligence brass knew about Osama bin Laden hiding out in Pakistan, Khan says they had little to gain and much to lose, though he does think its possible that lower-level officers played a role. And he is quick to criticize the killing of bin Laden, which inspired a total sense of humiliation among Pakistanis, he says. Rather than shooting him, they should have picked him up, he says. Heres a country thats lost 35,000 troops in your war. Are we an ally or not?
His populist rhetoric has often been aimed at the U.S., and he is dismissive of President Barack Obama, whom he describes as intelligent but without the strength to take those big decisions which we were all hoping he would. Some commentators have described him as anti-Americana charge he denies. I guess they call me anti-American because slaves are not supposed to disagree with the policies of the masters.
Page 2 = Imran Khan May Become Pakistan's Next Prime Minister - The Daily Beast
Page 3 = Imran Khan May Become Pakistan's Next Prime Minister - The Daily Beast
