Imran Khan in Taliban peace
spotlight By Syed Saleem
Shahzad
Imran Khan, the former Pakistan
cricket captain turned politician, is in the
spotlight as Pakistan develops a roadmap for
reconciliation with the Taliban that aims to close
down the war theater inside its borders.
Khan, who leads the opposition
Tehrik-e-Insaaf party, has emerged as a potential
prime minister after the country's military
oligarchs built a consensus that peace is unlikely
in the absence of out-of-the-box thinking and that
an internationally credible person is needed to
lead the process. Serving and retired military
officers and academics, businessmen and
politicians sense that neither the current
Pakistan military and political leadership, nor
Afghan President Hamid
Karzai, has the ability to deliver a result. They
believe the best hope lies in a person who can be
trusted in all quarters - by the Taliban,
political Islamists, liberal secularists, Western
capitals, India and other regional players.
Pakistan Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza
Gillani led an unprecedented entourage, including
Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani and
Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the director
general of the Inter-Service Intelligence, to
Kabul last week to officially inaugurate the peace
reconciliation process with the Taliban under the
auspices of Washington and London. The decision
had already been made that the Afghanistan and
Pakistan governments will occupy a central role in
a reconciliation process that could bring the
Taliban into the mainstream Afghan political
process.
Khan, 58, is leading a two-day
sit-in outside Peshawar, capital of northwestern
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, planned for Saturday
and Sunday to block supply convoys ferrying goods
to North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in
Afghanistan. People displaced by the war have
vowed to join the protest, which is against United
States drone attacks. Khan has been a fervent
critic of the Pakistan government, claiming it is
subservient to the United States in the region.
Several months before the leaders of the
two countries met in Kabul, the Pakistan military
establishment began preparations for
reconciliation and it was agreed that Khan would
be suitable for leading the peace process.
A prominent Urdu media commentator of
right-wing leanings, who is close to both Khan and
army chief Kiani, arranged a series of meetings
between the two which eventually led to a
consensus around Khan becoming the next leader of
the country.
While no formula was
finalized, according to sources, general elections
scheduled for February 2013 could be brought
forward and a political alliance engineered that
would result in a simple majority under which Khan
would be installed as prime minister. Another
scenario would be for Khan to take the lead in an
interim government.
Khan's leadership role
has found favor across Pakistan's political
spectrum, including the Muttehada Quami Movement
(MQM), the second-largest party in the ruling
coalition and largest urban party in Sindh
province. The Awami National Party (ANP), the
largest Pashtun nationalist party, which governs
Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, and Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan
and Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam, the two main Islamic
parties, also back the role.
ANP president
Asfandyar Wali Khan, a strong critic of the US
drone attacks, has backed the process started in
Kabul and said his party had always supported
dialogue with ''saner elements'' among the
Taliban.
Imran Khan's position has been
lauded by the militants and his popularity in
Pakistani tribal areas is unparalleled. In 2007 in
Afghanistan, Naseeruddin Haqqani, the son of
legendary Afghan commander Jalaluddin Haqqani,
whose Haqqani network is regarded the most lethal
network against the Western coalition in
Afghanistan, met with Imran Khan and in that way
Khan indirectly entered into a dialogue process
with the Taliban.
In the second week of
March, Khan held a long meeting with the US
ambassador in Islamabad, Cameron Munter. A few
days later a major shift in his politics surprised
many. Khan produced a statement supportive of MQM
policies despite formerly filing a money
laundering case against MQM leader Altaf Hussain
in a British court.
Troublesome
turf There is a long-held understanding
within Pakistan's military that any reconciliation
process with the Taliban would require a whole
package dealing with the Taliban, al-Qaeda and the
affiliated group on one side and another with the
the Western coalition, India and other regional
players. The job requires credible leadership.
Pakistan supported the Taliban movement
when it emerged in the mid 1990s. When the student
militia formed its government in Kabul, Pakistan
stood behind it in the face of global opposition.
After al-Qaeda attacked the United States on 9/11,
Pakistan tried to explain to the world the
difference between al-Qaeda and the Taliban and
emphasized the need to engage with the Taliban.
However, the Pervez Musharraf
administration's arguments were dismissed by
George W Bush and Pakistan's logistical support
helped American-led international forces toppled
Taliban's ragtag militia government by the end of
2001.
In 2006, the Taliban re-emerged as a
powerful armed opposition group and stunned the
world with organized attacks throughout southern
Afghanistan. Within a few years, according to
influential Western think-tanks, they had expanded
their influence to over 80% of the country and in
several parts even established local rule.
Western experts are still at a loss to
explain what exactly happened between 2002 to 2006
to bring the defeated Taliban back as a major
player in Afghanistan, with some claiming
Pakistan's ISI backing amid a resurgence in
Pashtun nationalism which supported the Taliban.
However, it is likely a due to a dialectic of
al-Qaeda-affiliated groups. Al-Qaeda migrated into
Pakistani tribal areas in 2002 and worked with
different tribes, gradually succeeding in
replacing Pakistan’s tribal system with the
al-Qaeda affiliated structures in Pakistani tribal
areas as well as in southeast Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda’s strategy from 2002 was to
regroup pro-Taliban factions and pitch them in
Afghanistan's southwest in 2006 to support the
Afghan Taliban. In early 2007, under a meticulous
strategy, al-Qaeda retreated into the tribal areas
and in mid-year moved into Pakistani cities to
pressurize Pakistan to stop supporting the
American war in Afghanistan. It countered American
moves in Pakistan for establishing a broadbased
anti-Taliban alliance and assassinated Pakistan's
former premier Benazir Bhutto, thwarted a peace
reconciliation process which was inaugurated in
Kabul in 2007 through opening a war theatre in
Malakand-Swat and carried out so many attacks in
Pakistani cities and tribal areas by the beginning
of 2008 that they outnumbered insurgent attacks
against occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan
By the middle of of 2008, al-Qaeda's
leadership receded into Pakistani tribal areas and
then expanded operations across the world
including Yemen, India, Somalia and Europe.
On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it is
clear to the world community that dealing with the
Taliban is not an open and shut case that ends in
simply signing an agreement.
Why Imran
Khan? Imran Khan captained the winning
Pakistani cricket team in the 1992 World Cup in
Australia and returned to Pakistan a national
hero. He then pursued the cause of establishing a
free cancer hospitals in memory of his deceased
mother Shaukat Khanum, who died of cancer.
At the same time, Lieutenant-General Hamid
Gul retired from the Pakistan Army and began
working on a new plan for the future leadership of
the country. He chose three prominent Pakistanis;
namely, former governor, renowned social worker
and reformer Hakim Mohammad Saeed, the social
worker and philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi, and
Imran Khan. Saeed refused to take part in
politics, and was gunned down in front of his
clinic in 1998. Edhi left Pakistan in the mid
1990s, alleging that Pakistani intelligence was
trying to force him into politics. Imran Khan
agreed to take a political role.
The
transformation of an Oxford University political
sciences graduate seen as a sex symbol in the West
into a politician who penned articles in leading
Urdu newspapers against the Western lifestyle and
Westernized thinking in Pakistan stunned many.
After the October 12, 1999 military coup,
Khan jumped on Musharraf’s bandwagon but by 2003
he had distanced himself from the president. The
military establishment continued to engage him.
However, Khan has remained a major campaigner
against the Pakistan military's oppression of
Islamic forces. Even in 2009, as all Pakistani
politicians including Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz
Group supported military operations in Swat, he
insisted that they could only breed militancy.
This weekend's protests in Peshawar are
likely to be seen as the curtain-raiser for Khan's
entry into the AfPak arena.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief and author of upcoming book Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban, beyond 9/11 published by Pluto Press, UK. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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