Since 2022, the politics of Pakistan have been rocked by a struggle for power centered around former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan, who was ousted from office by a parliamentary no-confidence motion in April 2022, has alleged that his removal from office was orchestrated at the behest of the US government. This January, Khan was sentenced to 10 years in prison for leaking government documents as part of his effort to prove US involvement in his ouster. Khan’s saga has ignited mass protests across Pakistan over the past two years. Despite being imprisoned during national elections this February, Khan’s political party, PTI, won more parliamentary seats than any other political party. Journalist and policy analyst Raza Rumi joins The Marc Steiner Show for an in-depth look at Pakistan’s political crisis in the context of its long and turbulent struggle for democracy.
Raza Ahmad Rumi is a Pakistani writer and a public policy specialist. He is the director of the Park Center for Independent Media, Ithaca College, and founder of the digital media platform NayaDaur Media in collaboration with Pakistani diaspora in the United States.
Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner, and it’s good to have you all with us.
Today we continue our series of conversations about Pakistan, a nation that relishes and has fought for democracy, but has been twisted between colonialism, military dictatorships, Western support for those dictatorships, specifically the United States who continues to interfere in the internal politics of Pakistan, from instating coups to using it in its war against in Afghanistan and with the population seemingly at war with itself. There was election on February the 9th where the popular president, who once was the darling of the military, Imran Khan, whose party was banned and he himself languishes in prison, received a majority of the votes. Then all of a sudden it didn’t. The crisis continues in this once ally of the United States. Its influential power broker in South Asia, an ally in the Afghan war.
Why is it falling apart? Why is it important to the world and what could be the consequences? We’re going to talk with Raza Ahmad Rumi, a Pakistani writer, a public policy specialist currently based in Ithaca, where he’s a director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College and has been teaching journalism in that department since 2015. He writes with numerous journals from the New York Times to Al Jazeera and his own Friday Times, and was active in the political life of Pakistan and survived an assassination attempt. In 2014 they killed his driver and forced him to flee. He’s written books like Delhi by Heart: Impressions of a Pakistani Traveler, The Fractious Path: Pakistan’s Democratic Transition, Identity, Faith and Conflict: Essays on Pakistan and Beyond, and being Pakistani: Essays on the Arts, Culture and Society. As well. He writes about Sufism and the arts and culture of Pakistan and Raza Rumi, welcome. Good to have you with us.
Raza Ahmad Rumi:
Thank you so much, Marc.
Marc Steiner:
So Raza, as I said in the beginning, in the introduction, there was an attempted assassination on your life in Pakistan 2014. Talk a bit about that. Why did they want to get rid of you? What was the assassination attempt about that forced you to leave Pakistan in the beginning?
Raza Ahmad Rumi:
Thank you, Marc. It’s now almost a decade, actually this month, at the end of this month, it would be a decade. And so it was mainly due to my media work. So I had from a career in public policy, civil service, international development, I turned to journalism in 2005, ’06, around that time when I started writing, and then I started editing papers and left all my jobs and became a full-time media person. So I was an editor of a paper and a TV broadcaster, had a TV show.
And I think because TV is this mass, sort of has a mass audience or whatever you write in the English language as a limited readership and traction. But when you are on TV in the national language, obviously the influence and the scope increases. I think many of the things I used to say on television were not liked by a lot of powerful reporters in particular.
So this was a time, remember I was talking about war on terror earlier. So this was a time that Pakistan was in a serious grip of terrorism. And the thing there was that, yes, the Pakistani government and especially the military and the intelligence agencies had taken some really controversial decisions, but they had also propped up all these non-state actors like the Taliban and Pakistani Taliban, and there are various offshoots, etc. So I was very vocal about that. I used to question the state policy on extremism, on militancy, and then I was and I am a big advocate for peace with India. Now that is also not like… That is considered as treason. But anyway, so variety of reasons. I used to get all these threats and letters, and then on social media, I used to get all these death threats and I would think that, well, these are just things to scare me, but I didn’t realize that they might actually result in a physical attempt.
So this was in end of March 2014 when I’d finished my television show. I used to do a daily show on the TV where I was the sort of both a presenter and analyst. And I finished that and I was going home and on my route I was attacked at a corner by a group of people and they fired a spray of bullets on my car, and the person who was driving the car died there and then, and I had another.
So I hired a guard after all these threats because the Pakistani branch of the Taliban had issued in the late December of 2013, a list of people who were on their hit list. They had posted it on their website. Once again, so people told me, “This is serious.” So I’d hired a guard and the guard was also injured, and I was luckily at the back seat of the car, and I ducked and lay on the floor of the car protecting my head and body, and the bullets just whizzed past by over me.
So it was a very close call. I’m very fortunate, but a person died in front of me. And so for years, so I had to leave because I was told that stay home for a couple of months, don’t go out, stop your media work, blah, blah, blah. And I said, “Well, I’m not going to.”
So initially I came to the US, my family, parts of my siblings are here. They’re based on the East coast. So I thought, okay, I’ll come for a few months, take a break. And then they arrested a group of militants who belong to the Pakistani branch of the Taliban and other religious extremists. Now also, it’s very difficult to differentiate between these militants and the Pakistan’s deep state because they have been so enmeshed for decades. And so you don’t know who’s who and what is what, right? So then I was advised, don’t come back until these trials are over because you might be threatened or targeted again.
So anyway, I mean that kind of changed my life, but for years I had to deal with the trauma of seeing a human being die in front of me, and it’s still not gone, but I’ve really struggled and dealt with it. And I’m in a way being away and being in a small town like Ithaca was somewhat of a comfort because it allowed me to heal. But of course, then, so part of the reason that I’m still engaged with Pakistani media and write there and I edit publications and I founded platforms, is also the fact that I don’t want to give up. Just because this happened that I did not want to completely give up my passion and what really interested and enthused me back then. So it’s a bit of a struggle.
Marc Steiner:
So let’s just start the news of the moment in this election of February the 8th, and this again, the constant presence of the military, which really is the power in Pakistan as opposed to any kind of democratic process. So give folks a bit of background about what’s happening with it.
Raza Ahmad Rumi:
Yeah, so Pakistan’s election just concluded early February, as you mentioned. And it was of course a very hotly contested and a contentious election because prior to election, for the months before Pakistan’s powerful military establishment had taken all sorts of measures and used all instruments to ensure, at least from their perspective, that the former prime minister, the popular leader, Imran Khan, should not return to power.
So Imran Khan was the prime minister of Pakistan. He’s a celebrity. He was a hero of sorts in the game of cricket in Pakistan and South Asia and wherever cricket is played. And then he turned into a philanthropist, and finally he joined politics and became the prime minister in 2018. He had very cordial relations with the military establishment, to say the least. But when he was in power during 2018 to 2022, he fell out with the military and then he turned against them.
So this election was due, and they had ensured that his party should suffer at the ballot box, but his supporters defied all such restrictions and came out in large numbers and voted for the candidates that belong to his party, Imran Khan’s party. And so obviously that was a big shock for the plans of the establishment. So then they have managed to cobble together a coalition of all the other parties that are opposed to Imran Khan. But you see, it is not going to lead to political stability because Imran Khan’s party has big numbers in the Parliament. They have a widespread support, especially among the younger people. And I just want to add that Pakistan is a country of youth. More than two thirds of the population is below the age of 35, and that basically means that it’s a different kind of a society we are dealing with.
So we have the old school military establishment, the bureaucracy, the older parties, and you have this young new kind of dynamic politics led by Imran Khan and his supporters. So they are now at loggerheads with each other, and that is what is a challenge, I suppose, for the country and the country’s mired in a big crisis, especially economic crisis where it is now, again, seeking a big IMF loan to stay afloat, to repay the huge debt that Pakistan has accumulated in the past decades, foreign debt by that I mean. And so without political stability, without a legitimacy of the government at the helm, it would be difficult to manage the economy.
Marc Steiner:
So why has… I’m going to take it backwards for a moment and talk a bit about Pakistan and in terms of its history and why it is where it is at the moment. It used to have this booming economy, now it’s falling behind India whose economy is booming, and Pakistan is literally in debt and economically disintegrating on some levels. And you have the military, which constantly seizes power in a nation that is kind of this multinational nation of many different groups that are thrust together in one country. And then you also have the element of the United States, which clearly, if you look at the cables that were sent before, had something to do with Imran Khan’s downfall and the military seizing power again, and then Sherif coming, the prime minister. So talk about that political dynamic, why it exists and how it exists.
Raza Ahmad Rumi:
So the political dynamic, I mean, the thing with Imran Khan is not… He himself has stated on many, many occasions that he’s not a traditional politician. So basically, which means that he’s a populist, he’s an out-of-box political character, a bit like former president Trump here, who himself states that I’m against the establishment. I’m not one of these typical corrupt politicians in Washington, DC. I’m different, etc. And actually, this claim has been made by other populists across the globe as well. Whether it’s Orban in Hungary or Erdogan in Turkey, to some degree, even the former prime minister of the UK, Boris Johnson, who used to make all these populist claims and took Britain out of Brexit and et cetera, et cetera.
So Imran Khan belongs to that particular creed. So in a way, because he’s a disruptor of the old political order he’s liked and he’s loved as well, because people are sick of the status quo politics in Pakistan like many other countries. And they think that such a strong leader, such strong men can bring about a systemic change, can shift things around for their daily lives, can improve the economy, can improve Pakistan’s standing in the international community, et cetera, et cetera, and bring that nationalistic pride. Now, this is obviously in a way, somewhat in conflict with the political structure that we have in Pakistan is a constitutional democracy, at least notionally. It is a constitution that follows a parliamentary democracy. Despite the fledgling and the weak democracy, it has some forms of rules of the game as well.
And so Imran Khan says, “Well, what are these rules? I am above the rules.” So in a way, that particular tension is at the core. Imran has been labeling his political opponents as corrupt. And the truth is, Pakistan’s political system, like most political systems in the world, is corrupt. There’s no denying. Political campaigning, campaign finances, what politicians do in power and how they dole out money and benefits and patronage to their supporters. It’s all well known. It’s a big game. So Imran promised that he would end that. He’s against that kind of politics, and that’s why a lot of people supported him for the past decade at least.
But when he became the Prime Minister, he had to play by the book. So two things he had to do. One, of course, he was heading a coalition government. He had to appease his coalition partners and indulge in the old school politics. At the same time, he had to work with the powerful military, which always wants to dominate the political scene. And the previous politicians, his opponents had also had to deal with the same dilemma because the former Prime Minister Sharif, who was Pakistan’s prime minister for three times, was ousted by the military every time he was in power. He could not complete his term. Benazir Bhutto, late Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007, was prime minister of Pakistan twice, and she was also ousted by the military. So therefore, this is a dilemma that Imran Khan faced, and I guess he still faces, but his rhetoric, his populism is appealing, has found widespread traction within the country.
Marc Steiner:
So I guess he does have his problems since he’s facing prison maybe of 17 years or more on two people say, are trumped-up charges, even though his party being banned, won the votes, and still they didn’t rule Pakistan. So the question I have is to kind of parse this out, why is the military so strong in Pakistan? What is that political dynamic that allows that to happen? I was reading about how a woman, Manzari, who was a human rights activist and lawyer also was put in prison after she made a speech against the military. And there are so many political prisoners in Pakistan and the United States seems to be, from everything I’ve read, deeply involved with the Pakistani military and deeply involved in the rcoups that are taking place inside Pakistan. So kind of parse this kind of political dynamic out.
Raza Ahmad Rumi:
Yeah, yeah. No, no. I think this is a very important point that you’ve raised is so, a lot of it has to do with the Pakistan’s colonial experience. Pakistan, as you know, was a British colony. Part of India then later on emerged as an independent country, 1947. And in this part of the Indian subcontinent, the political and the civic institutions were really weak. What you had was an overdeveloped state. Terrorists have called it, political scientists have called it that. So the military, the British military and the British Civil Service were the most powerful institutions. They ruled and they sided everything. I mean, almost for 200 years or so. And Pakistan was an inheritor to this British system. And these two institutions maintained their dominance for a long time. So there was no general election in Pakistan between 1947 and 1970. So you can imagine that they had an anathema for democracy despite all the lip service and rhetoric.
And within the first decade of Pakistan, after very weak prime ministers and multiple governments, Pakistan went under the military rule under general Ayub Khan. This was the height of Cold War era in 1958, and Ayub Khan ruled Pakistan for more than a decade with the support of the West and especially the US. So there’s a big foreign dimension that Pakistan’s domestic political evolution has been influenced by the global security dynamics. And so Ayub Khan was propped up as this military leader, supported by the US, given lots of military and civilian aid because he was useful as a bulwark against the evil communists. And then later on in the 1980s, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, for another decade or so, Pakistan was involved in that war against the evil Soviets in Afghanistan, where Pakistan propped up and trained Mujahideen with the financial and military support of the US and Saudi Arabia and others.
So that was the time when the second powerful dictator, general Zia ruled Pakistan. So I’m trying to bring in these connections that yes, there are domestic variables of history and the way political structures exist, but this kind of situation has also been largely aided by the Western countries, especially the US.
And then we know in the more recent years, general Musharraf who had taken power in 1999 through a coup and who was not accepted by the US, at least formally, suddenly became the most favored leader of the United States after the 9/11 attacks and after the so-called war terror. And then Musharraf was everywhere in the foreign capitals and Pakistan’s military aid was resumed. So common themes, US aid, support for military dictators, and undermining of domestic democratization on evolution of democratic institutions. Now, this is a baggage, To understand what is happening in 2024, we have to look at what has been happening in the troubled history of 75 years.
And I think that is where, that is what we are grappling with here, because these young people, Pakistan is now a country of 240 million people. It’s still, I think, the fifth most populous country in the world. People want a voice. They want a say in their governance. They want in day-to-day affairs, into policymaking, into how the country behave and acts. And there’s a stranglehold of the old elites, the military, the bureaucracy, and the political class, which has been in bed with the military. And that’s why the politicians in Pakistan have to work with a military, which is a euphemism of seeking their blessings and support to gain and sustain power.
Marc Steiner:
So help me understand a few things here. The United States was clearly involved in the removal of the prime minister, of the president. The intercept exposed the cables that took place between the United States and the military of Pakistan, especially when the president went to Russia. And so it seems in many ways, the US sees it as it is in its interest to control what happens in Pakistan, to support the military, and to actually thwart democracy, at the same time, it alleges that it’s supporting democracy. That is part of a dynamic that we don’t talk about a lot in terms of what’s happening in Pakistan. And it doesn’t control everything, but it clearly is part of what underlies the problem facing Pakistan.
Raza Ahmad Rumi:
Yeah. So yeah, I think there is the US role in Pakistan’s history as I’ve outlined cannot be minimized or cannot be written off. And it’s an open secret that the United States administration did not like the fact that Imran Khan, the then Prime Minister visited Russia and was in Moscow the day Russia attacked Ukraine. And obviously in terms of optics, it was really, really problematic because Pakistan is after all a longtime ally and dependent on the United States as a weaker and a poorer country. And there’s no secret that they did not like Imran Khan, the Americans.
But the cables that you referred to certainly testify to this fact that what the US State Department official, mid-level officials said to the ambassador of Pakistan in Washington DC, that the relationship between the two countries will improve once the government changes. Now this is being interpreted as a call to remove that government within the country. I don’t really think that it is as clear or simple as that because remember that the relationship between Pakistan and the United States is a security relationship. It has been securitized beyond belief. And the US military and the Pakistan military have a direct line. For that matter, the CIA or the Pakistan Intelligence Agency, the ISI would be also directly connected by that, I’m assuming that.
Marc Steiner:
And from the beginning. From the beginning of Pakistan and India, the United States has always back Pakistan and backed its military as a counterweight to India’s being friendly to the Soviet Union and the left. So that was always part of the dynamic.
Raza Ahmad Rumi:
Exactly, exactly. Well put, Marc. And so I really don’t think that the US would actually be telling the Pakistani Ambassador for a regime change. They’d rather some mid to high level CIA official could very easily call his or her counterpart in Pakistan and tell them, “Hey, get rid of this guy.” They don’t have to actually state that in a diplomatic meeting. So that’s why that whole theory, yes, US role is contentious. Yes, it should not be there. The US has played that role in Latin America and other parts of the world, including Pakistan. But in this case, it’s not that crystal clear. However, Imran Khan did use it in the public once. When he was facing a vote of no confidence in the Parliament, he came out in a public rally and he waved that cable and he said, “Look, the US wants to get rid of me.”
And then later on him and his party, they use this particular cable to garner popular support and tell the people that he is being thrown out of power because the US wants him out. The US does not like him. And because of Pakistan’s problematic history and the asymmetrical nature of power relations, there is of course resentment against the US role, especially during the so-called war on terror when thousands and thousands of Pakistani civilians and soldiers and security officials have lost their lives in the northwestern part of the country, and the fact that Pakistan became the theater of war itself. So there’s a lot of those fresh wounds and memories that propel and fan anti-Americanism. So Imran Khan was able to capture that moment. Now, obviously, that was more of a… And later on he denied these things. He changed his statements. He said, “No, the US did not directly call for my removal. It was the Pakistani military that wanted me out, but they wanted a green light from the US.”
Later on, he said, “No, something else happened.” So as a populist leader and his followers believe in every statement they say. It’s just like Trump. If Trump said it’s dark outside, they’ll say, “Yeah, there is dark. It’s a conspiracy by the loony left that the sun is shining outside.” I’ve been living here for a decade now, Marc. I’m a read follower of Trumpism and the right wing narratives.
Marc Steiner:
But you see in some ways a political dynamic and connection between the political movement, not directly, but the political wave that pushes Trump is the same one that pushed Khan.
Raza Ahmad Rumi:
Yes, yes. I think there’s a lot, there are many similarities, and I’ll outline them. I think the first and foremost is that Trump has not emerged from, let’s say, a traditional political party structure. He’s not been a mayor of a town, and then he entered the Congress or ran for Senate and served on house committees, understands the business of the government or the legislative affairs, etc. In a way, he’s an outsider, and that is what is appealing to his fan base. That he’s a good guy. He’s rich, he’s smart, he’s a reality TV star. He has Trump Towers. He doesn’t mince his words. He can be racist when he wants to be. He can be a sexist when he wants to be. See, he’s so honest. That’s what people told me when I interviewed people in 2016 when I was really stunned by the Trump phenomena, and I was asking people, “Why do you support him?” In upstate New York? He has a huge base, by the way, the rural areas. And they were like, “He’s honest. He says what he wants to say.” So basically, in other words, he says things we want to say, but we are being told by the…
Marc Steiner:
And you’re saying Khan is the same way?
Raza Ahmad Rumi:
Yeah, Khan is exactly, and then the rising income inequality and economic hardship in Pakistan, that is something that Khan has been able to highlight. And he blames corruption as the reason why people are poor, why people are not getting their due. So for a decade, his politics was around an anti-corruption narrative of politics where he said he would end corruption because he’s honest himself. And of course, compared to other politicians, because he’s not a traditional politician, he has far fewer scandals under his belt. Only now when he was a prime minister, he’s been accused of some wrongdoing. And of course, the courts are adjudicating on that. It’s too early to say whether those charges are real or trumped-up. But Khan has a reputation of being relatively cleaner than other politicians in Pakistan. So that’s the economic anxieties. I think it’s also a crisis of the capitalist order and the neoliberal policies that Pakistan has been implementing. Now, this IMF program, which is currently underway, is I think the 25th or so, if I’m not wrong.
Marc Steiner:
Yeah, the 25th. Yeah.
Raza Ahmad Rumi:
Yeah. Program. For 25 programs, Pakistan has been implementing. Of course, the IMF says, “You don’t implement it fully, you don’t listen to us. We the neoliberal doctors know what’s good for you.” But so all of that has resulted in a lot of economic hardship. People want a leadership that can improve their daily lives, and in a way, this crisis of capitalism has engulfed other countries, and Pakistan is included in that.
Marc Steiner:
So let me ask you this question to close out here, because I think it’s important with what you just raised. Clearly the Western neoliberal agenda has affected what’s happening in Pakistan, and you just talked a bit about the contradictions inside of capitalism that are affecting Pakistan. So where do you think this… Talk a bit about what you see as the immediate and future of Pakistan with Khan, with the power, with his popular support, but with the military in power, what do you see happening next and how’s that going to affect the dynamic between the US and Pakistan and the whole South Asian region? Where do you see it going?
Raza Ahmad Rumi:
So I think that’s a very important question. What happens and what is. So, I think the issue is for now, the military has been able to manage the situation by installing a government of their choice. It’s a coalition government. It’s a government that will be very subservient to the military’s whims. And certainly they’ve, for now, they’ve kept Imran Khan locked up.
But I think there is, with such a strong public opinion in favor of Imran Khan and which is also by default turning into an anti-military popular expression, it is not a sustainable situation. So sooner than later, within a year or so, I see that the military is going to, within Pakistan, enter into some kind of an arrangement or a deal with Imran Khan whereby they give him concessions, bring him out of jail, and perhaps tell him that, “Okay, we will go for another election and we won’t impede your return to power, provided you don’t rile the public opinion against us.”
And Imran Khan, he has been saying that he’s willing to talk to the military. He says that he wants to open the dialogue, but they don’t want to talk to him, which is also his very, very brazen way because he doesn’t want to talk to his political opponents. He doesn’t want to talk to other parties in the parliament so that this issue of civil military imbalance can be tackled on a long-term basis. He says he wants to deal directly with the military. So I think that would happen. That’s one thing.
Now, what happens in the region is obviously the new government is trying to go and make, because of Pakistan’s economic compulsions, it has gone to three wars with its neighboring India, the much bigger country. And India is now booming in economic terms. And on the other side is China, another success story in economic terms. So Pakistan will perhaps try and open up a trade with India to sort of revive its economy and perhaps generate more economic activity. And I think in that process, they might have to get back to Imran Khan and get his tacit support that he doesn’t oppose that kind of a deal. Because again, it would be a great nationalist rhetoric line to normalize things with India, which is a traditional enemy of Pakistan since the country’s creation. \.
So I think all these dynamics at work, but in short to answer your very important and complex question in one or two lines is that it is uncertain. It is more uncertainty, more instability in the short term. And the only way Pakistan can be a more stable, functional democracy is where the military takes a back seat and lets civilian politicians and lets the constitution operate independent of their interference. Otherwise, it is going to always create a situation where you have some kind of an imbalance, some kind of a systemic shock. And so let’s hope that the politicians and especially Imran Khan understand that it is vital for the political actors and the political class as representatives of people to forge a kind of a unity and create, bring in laws, bring in reform structures, and reform the political system to stop this military’s excessive interventionism.
Marc Steiner:
Raza Rumi, I want to thank you so much to this conversation. There’s so much more to cover. I look forward to exploring more about Pakistan and its effect on not just Pakistan and South Asia, but its effect on the globe and the dynamic of the US involved in that as well. Thank you so much for your work, your writing, and I appreciate you taking the time today.
Raza Ahmad Rumi:
You are most welcome.
Marc Steiner:
Once again, let me say thank you to Raza Rumi for his work and for joining us today. And thank you all for joining us today. We’re going to link to the work of Raza Rumi and articles from Pakistan on our site here at The Real News Network, and we’ll be bringing you more conversations and stories about the importance of Pakistan often overlooked by the major media. And thanks to David Hebden for running the show today and editing this program and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making all that’s possible behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Now, please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at MSS@therealnews.com, and I will get back to you right away. Once again, thanks Raza Rumi for being here today, and thank you all for joining us. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
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