Ali Tariq
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Jason Burke
The ex-cricketer joins a long list of outsiders who are transforming global politics
Sun 3 Jun 2018 08.00 BST
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‘The top job in one of the world’s most troubled, resilient and strategically important nations could soon be Imran Khan’s.’ Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images
It is election season in Pakistan. Expect massive rallies, dust, shouted slogans in stadiums, dirty tricks, a modicum of violence and industrial quantities of sweet tea consumed by candidates and voters alike.
The frontrunner in the poll is Imran Khan, the cricketer turned politician. Now 65, Khan has been on the stump for two decades. This is a long time in politics. I stood close enough at one of his first major rallies in his hometown of Lahore in 1998 to read his speech over his shoulder. The first line on the first page read: “Believe in Pakistan.” I was sceptical of his prospects and my report was headlined No Khan Do.
Now the top job in one of the world’s most troubled, resilient and strategically important nations could soon be his. The story of how this happened contains a lesson for us all. Khan has attracted much attention in western media over the years, much of it for the wrong reasons. His sporting prowess, playboy reputation and marriage to and divorce from socialite heiress Jemima Goldsmith fuelled tabloid fascination. His midlife turn to religion, conservative values and political ambitions attracted more serious analysis. But what I, like most others, long missed was that Khan was ahead of his time, not behind it.
It is now a truism to say that we live in a world where the liberal, progressive and secular have ceded ground to the populist, nativist and nationalist. In Europe, the shocks of Brexit and Donald Trump’s election as well as the success of Marine Le Pen in France, Victor Orbán in Hungary, Beppe Grillo in Italy and many others have made this amply clear. In many cases too, Poland, for example, the secular has retreated before the religious.
It is also a truism to say that these events came as a tremendous surprise to many of us. Much of the subsequent handwringing has centred on the failure of metropolitan elites, particularly politicians, pollsters and media professionals, to understand what is thought and felt across vast tracts of their own countries. If we had understood or known Middle England or Middle America better, we would have seen this coming.
Yet there has been much less interest in our collective failure to look beyond our backyards and out into the wider world, where, if we had been paying attention, the rise of populism, nationalism and all the other bogeymen that now haunt our liberal dreams has been evident for many years. Khan is a fine example. Throughout his political career, his rhetoric has remained remarkably consistent. In an early pre-9/11 interview, he praised the Taliban for bringing order to neighbouring Afghanistan. When I interviewed him before the last elections in Pakistan, he spoke of the “foreign invasion” of his country. Khan has never hidden his contempt for the “liberal elite”. He recognised early that the most westernised elements in Pakistan are also often the most privileged, writing in a 2010 book that “in today’s Lahore… rich women go to glitzy parties in western clothes chauffeured by men with entirely different customs and values”. After the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, he spoke of “a national depression at the loss of national dignity and self-esteem as well as sovereignty”. Sound familiar?
The reality is that long before such themes surged into the public and political conversation in Britain or the US, they were being heard in what we casually dismiss as the developing world. The rise to power of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s nationalist, majoritarian strongman, began when he was elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994. He has proved pragmatic – tacking towards moderation and Europhilia after becoming prime minister nine years later – but constant in many of his central ideas and beliefs.
During the early moments of the Arab spring, European commentators gushed over the sudden eruption of the secular, democratic, progressive and globalised forces in the Middle East. The existence of a massive conservative constituency across the region with a very different set of values and aspirations was obscured or ignored.
Nor is it just the Islamic world that might have taught us lessons about the powerful appeal of nation, faith, tradition and a sense of cultural authenticity. In Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose folksy appeal to the Buddhist Sinhala majority depended on ruthless prosecution of the brutal war to defeat violent separatism and a well-publicised taste for rough rural scarves and traditional food, ruled from 2005 to 2015. In India, Hindu nationalists began their rise to power in the late 1980s. Their apotheosis came with the election of Narendra Modi with a crushing majority in 2014.
Both Rajapaksa, who may yet mount a comeback, and Modi are masters of populist politics. Both portray themselves, like Khan, as outsiders who will “drain the swamp” dominated by the metropolitan elite of their respective countries. This appealed to the millions of voters who felt disenfranchised, betrayed and frustrated. Both men promised not just the obvious balm of more wealth, wider and fairer opportunity, less corruption and better services, but the hugely potent medicine of national and cultural pride too. A new and noisy media helped them as well.
There are other examples – from Latin America, east Asia, Africa. Some leaders make much of the battle against “western neo-imperialism” and the need to defend national sovereignty, a few rely on faith, many on historical grievances, a few on promises of “radical economic transformation”. But there is one element almost all share: few in the west paid them much attention in their early years.
There are many good reasons for this. We have short attention spans and busy lives. Our newspapers and websites have limited space and resources. Foreign news is inevitably seen as of secondary significance. But there is a more pernicious reason. The lesson of recent years in Europe and the US is that these supposedly distant and irrelevant lands often show us the future, not simply the past. In the UK or the US, the margins of our world are often seen as backward. Out there, we instinctively believe, are countries and communities that will, with luck and some assistance, develop the capabilities and attitudes to live their lives a little more like us.
It seems inconceivable that rising leaders in far-off places are pioneers of a new style of politics that some day will be seen much closer to home, with massive consequences for us all.
The ex-cricketer joins a long list of outsiders who are transforming global politics
Sun 3 Jun 2018 08.00 BST
Shares
12
‘The top job in one of the world’s most troubled, resilient and strategically important nations could soon be Imran Khan’s.’ Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images
It is election season in Pakistan. Expect massive rallies, dust, shouted slogans in stadiums, dirty tricks, a modicum of violence and industrial quantities of sweet tea consumed by candidates and voters alike.
The frontrunner in the poll is Imran Khan, the cricketer turned politician. Now 65, Khan has been on the stump for two decades. This is a long time in politics. I stood close enough at one of his first major rallies in his hometown of Lahore in 1998 to read his speech over his shoulder. The first line on the first page read: “Believe in Pakistan.” I was sceptical of his prospects and my report was headlined No Khan Do.
Now the top job in one of the world’s most troubled, resilient and strategically important nations could soon be his. The story of how this happened contains a lesson for us all. Khan has attracted much attention in western media over the years, much of it for the wrong reasons. His sporting prowess, playboy reputation and marriage to and divorce from socialite heiress Jemima Goldsmith fuelled tabloid fascination. His midlife turn to religion, conservative values and political ambitions attracted more serious analysis. But what I, like most others, long missed was that Khan was ahead of his time, not behind it.
It is now a truism to say that we live in a world where the liberal, progressive and secular have ceded ground to the populist, nativist and nationalist. In Europe, the shocks of Brexit and Donald Trump’s election as well as the success of Marine Le Pen in France, Victor Orbán in Hungary, Beppe Grillo in Italy and many others have made this amply clear. In many cases too, Poland, for example, the secular has retreated before the religious.
It is also a truism to say that these events came as a tremendous surprise to many of us. Much of the subsequent handwringing has centred on the failure of metropolitan elites, particularly politicians, pollsters and media professionals, to understand what is thought and felt across vast tracts of their own countries. If we had understood or known Middle England or Middle America better, we would have seen this coming.
Yet there has been much less interest in our collective failure to look beyond our backyards and out into the wider world, where, if we had been paying attention, the rise of populism, nationalism and all the other bogeymen that now haunt our liberal dreams has been evident for many years. Khan is a fine example. Throughout his political career, his rhetoric has remained remarkably consistent. In an early pre-9/11 interview, he praised the Taliban for bringing order to neighbouring Afghanistan. When I interviewed him before the last elections in Pakistan, he spoke of the “foreign invasion” of his country. Khan has never hidden his contempt for the “liberal elite”. He recognised early that the most westernised elements in Pakistan are also often the most privileged, writing in a 2010 book that “in today’s Lahore… rich women go to glitzy parties in western clothes chauffeured by men with entirely different customs and values”. After the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, he spoke of “a national depression at the loss of national dignity and self-esteem as well as sovereignty”. Sound familiar?
The reality is that long before such themes surged into the public and political conversation in Britain or the US, they were being heard in what we casually dismiss as the developing world. The rise to power of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s nationalist, majoritarian strongman, began when he was elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994. He has proved pragmatic – tacking towards moderation and Europhilia after becoming prime minister nine years later – but constant in many of his central ideas and beliefs.
During the early moments of the Arab spring, European commentators gushed over the sudden eruption of the secular, democratic, progressive and globalised forces in the Middle East. The existence of a massive conservative constituency across the region with a very different set of values and aspirations was obscured or ignored.
Nor is it just the Islamic world that might have taught us lessons about the powerful appeal of nation, faith, tradition and a sense of cultural authenticity. In Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose folksy appeal to the Buddhist Sinhala majority depended on ruthless prosecution of the brutal war to defeat violent separatism and a well-publicised taste for rough rural scarves and traditional food, ruled from 2005 to 2015. In India, Hindu nationalists began their rise to power in the late 1980s. Their apotheosis came with the election of Narendra Modi with a crushing majority in 2014.
Both Rajapaksa, who may yet mount a comeback, and Modi are masters of populist politics. Both portray themselves, like Khan, as outsiders who will “drain the swamp” dominated by the metropolitan elite of their respective countries. This appealed to the millions of voters who felt disenfranchised, betrayed and frustrated. Both men promised not just the obvious balm of more wealth, wider and fairer opportunity, less corruption and better services, but the hugely potent medicine of national and cultural pride too. A new and noisy media helped them as well.
There are other examples – from Latin America, east Asia, Africa. Some leaders make much of the battle against “western neo-imperialism” and the need to defend national sovereignty, a few rely on faith, many on historical grievances, a few on promises of “radical economic transformation”. But there is one element almost all share: few in the west paid them much attention in their early years.
There are many good reasons for this. We have short attention spans and busy lives. Our newspapers and websites have limited space and resources. Foreign news is inevitably seen as of secondary significance. But there is a more pernicious reason. The lesson of recent years in Europe and the US is that these supposedly distant and irrelevant lands often show us the future, not simply the past. In the UK or the US, the margins of our world are often seen as backward. Out there, we instinctively believe, are countries and communities that will, with luck and some assistance, develop the capabilities and attitudes to live their lives a little more like us.
It seems inconceivable that rising leaders in far-off places are pioneers of a new style of politics that some day will be seen much closer to home, with massive consequences for us all.
