KARACHI, Pakistan — The assassination attempt on former prime minister Imran Khan and his
accusation it was a plot involving a senior intelligence officer has pushed
Pakistan into a “dangerous phase”, analysts say.
اضافة اعلان
Khan escaped with
bullet wounds to his legs from an assassination attempt Thursday as he led
supporters on a highly publicized march to the capital to press for early
elections.
He claimed Friday
that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah, and Maj.
Gen. Faisal Nasir — an intelligence officer — plotted to have him killed and
have it blamed on “a religious fanatic”.
“The political
situation in Pakistan has entered into a dangerous phase,” said academic and
political analyst Tauseef Ahmed Khan, who is also a board member of the
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
“In a country
with a history of political chaos, the sounds echo.”
Despite being
ousted by a vote of no-confidence in April, Khan retains mass public support —
winning a string of by-elections even as he battles a slew of legal cases
brought by the current government.
As the pressure
rises, the government’s dependence on the country’s “deep state” — a term often
used to refer to the powerful military — for its survival is increasing, Ahmed
Khan said.
“It is a perilous
situation — not only for the democratic process but also for the country —
especially with regards to economic development,” he said.
“The issue(s) of
poverty, hunger, and development fall into the background.”
At each other’s
throats
Khan and Sharif have been at each other’s throats for months, trading
accusations of incompetence and corruption with language and tone dripping with
contempt.
But such a public
accusation by Khan, and the naming of a senior military officer, has taken the
situation to a new level of crisis.
Khan has offered
no evidence to back his claims, which the government has dismissed as “lies and
fabrications”.
Criticism of the
military — which has ruled the country for roughly half of its 75-year history
— has always been a red line, but Khan has been increasingly outspoken against
a security establishment many say backed his original rise to power.
On Friday, the
military’s press wing issued a statement urging the government to take Khan to
court for defamation.
Officials from
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party could also be in the crosshairs.
Senior party
members have already been charged with “sedition” and other offences since
Khan’s ouster, as have journalists considered sympathetic to the former PM.
“It seems that
now some sort of operation might be launched against PTI,” said analyst Ahmed
Khan, adding there was a risk the party could fragment.
As Khan’s huge
rallies are designed to prove — to both his political opposition and the
military — that he has the support of the public, the results could be “chaos,
despair, and disappointment”, he added.
In such a charged
atmosphere, multiple accusations and denials from both sides are unlikely to
ever be properly probed, said Karachi-based political analyst Kaiser Bengali.
That, he added,
leaves room for conspiracy theories to abound.
“The state has
lost its legitimacy ... police, law and order institutions — even the
judiciary,” he said.
What went wrong
Bengali said the military was now “sitting and wondering what went wrong
and what can they do”.
The government
has said the assassination bid against Khan was “a very clear case of religious
extremism”, blaming a lone gunman who hailed from a poor village.
Pakistan has long
grappled with Islamist militancy, with right-wing religious groups having huge
sway over the population in the
Muslim-majority country.
Khan and his PTI have
been accused in the past of stoking religious sentiments to appeal to a wider
support base.
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