It is important to note that the aristocratic layer of the Movement for Justice never really gave two hoots about Imran Khan’s trenchant criticism of the ‘War on Terror’ or his advocacy of a welfare state.
By JUNAID AHMAD
As Americans coronate a new American president, the Zionist genocide in Gaza continues unabated.
And while the world witnesses an expansion of Israel’s mass murder campaign, Muslims continue to look towards the two Muslim countries that have the largest and most formidable militaries: Turkiye and Pakistan. When will these countries use their military strength to restrain Zionist slaughter, to protect the besieged people of Gaza – is the common refrain.
There is no question that the rhetoric, as well as some symbolic actions, from Ankara has been scathingly critical of Tel Aviv over the past year. But the people of the Global South, including the majority of Turks themselves, have expected more, especially with regards to enabling oil shipments to Israel to continue. Erdogan and the Turkish leadership claim that they really desire to do more, but they are constrained by economic blackmail by Western powers.
On the other hand, Pakistan’s rulers don’t even pay lip service to opposing Zionist aggression. The military-with-a-civilian-facade regime installed after the ouster of former Prime Minister Imran Khan in April of 2022 has done its best to pacify domestic anti-genocide sentiment so as not to offend its Zionist patron-masters.
It is in this context that the Movement for Justice (MFJ) [also known by its Urdu nomenclature Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)] – the political tendency associated with ex-prime minister Khan – gains particular salience in defining the (geo-) politics of the fifth largest country in the world, nuclear-armed. The Movement has impressively persevered under harsh state repression for over two years now. The generals in Islamabad thought that eradicating the ‘Khan virus’ would be a walk in the park. They were dead wrong.
In Vijay Prashad’s excellent little book, Washington Bullets, he has a delicious section called a ‘Manual for Regime Change’, in which he carefully outlines the conventional and most successful ways of accomplishing regime change.
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But if he also had a section on ‘How not to accomplish regime change’, I’d recommend that he says: do not target the most popular, well-respected and revered national icon for at least three decades. Khan and the movement he’s helped spur unambiguously prove this to be true.
But like any political movement that has reached the size and strength of the MFJ, something that no one really thought it would, different factions try to steer the movement in often quite opposing directions.
One could observe the steady rise of these internal tensions within the MFJ, especially after the rigged elections in February of this year when Khan’s party miraculously still was able to obtain the most seats in parliament.
We are now at a moment in which the battle lines are being sharply drawn within the MFJ. The internal contradictions and fissures can no longer be contained. For Pakistanis both within and outside of the country of over 240 million, the demarcation of essentially two factional camps could not be more crystal clear.
One tendency, largely composed of the ‘bourgeois’ elements of the Movement, wants to take a ‘safer’ road to their preferred reforms. These reforms generally revolve around transforming the political economy of hopelessly corrupt, ‘crony capitalism’ that this section feels characterises contemporary Pakistan. The emphasis here is on a much more smooth-functioning liberal capitalism that is based solely on meritocracy and free of corruption, something which critics consider to be a contradiction in terms, a nice theory but a practical impossibility. It is considered to be an age-old ideological conception that bears no truth to reality anywhere in the world, past and present.
This upper middle-class constituency of the MFJ also does not really believe in mass, grassroots activism for social transformation. It is more comfortable with ‘pragmatism’ and fundamentally a politics of elite actors wheeling and dealing. Within Pakistan, this translates into working with the generals and kleptocrats to be allowed a seat at the ‘table of pharaoh’. Only then will Khan be freed from jail to reconcile with these various elite actors in order to obtain concessions that help to pacify the mass movement.
These Movement elites are desperate to contain the anger and radical politics of the mass base.
Outside of Pakistan, this expresses itself in the endorsement by the Pakistani-American Public Affairs Committee (PAKPAC) of Donald Trump in the recent US elections. Made up exclusively of the upper strata of Pakistani-Americans, their sole concern seems to be to get Khan freed and improve the relationship between political and economic elites in Pakistan and the US.
They have argued that Trump will be better for his buddy Khan. They have reached this conclusion based on two meetings between the two wherein Trump compliments Khan’s athleticism and calls him his friend. This is effectively the only evidence provided.
Now, how difficult would it be for Trump to speak publicly about the treacherous indignity meted out to Khan, to inform his base of yet another disastrous undertaking of Joe Biden. Why the fear to do this? Adding to this is these expatriate elite’s excitement that neocon and warmonger extraordinaire, John Bolton, speaks for roughly 30 seconds about the terrible and illegal targeting of Khan. Bolton and other neocon hawks could care less about Khan but are very eager to point to yet another imbecilic debacle they can invoke to indict the Biden Administration.
PAKPAC mimics the lobby politics of the powerful Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Just as AIPAC in no way represents the majority of American Jews, neither does PAKPAC represent the bulk of Pakistani-Americans. Both engage in an elite, wining and dining politics that is top-down and is interested in influencing – rather, buying – political favour in order to strengthen inter-elite bonds and interests. They have zero concern for popular sentiment.
However, unlike PAKPAC, AIPAC is smart enough to never put all of its eggs in one basket. The Israel Lobby makes sure they purchase the loyalty of both the Democrats and the Republicans.
PAKPAC’s endorsement statement is solely obsessed with issues of the self-interest of their upper-class social strata. It is a smack in the face of the overwhelming majority of Pakistani-Americans certainly concerned with the release of Khan and all political prisoners in Pakistan, but is equally if not more focused on their government’s support for the Israeli genocide as well as on advancing a progressive politics of social justice within the US.
Indeed, how ethically bankrupt must a political group in the US be to ignore the moral issue of our lifetime: The never-ending Zionist slaughter in Gaza, now extended to Lebanon.
Yet PAKPAC can’t even mention it. Are any of this lobby group’s concerns to be taken seriously if it cannot extend its sympathy and solidarity to a people that their government is helping to exterminate?
Unprincipled and scheming posturing like PAKPAC’s gives credence to progressive criticisms of the political character of the Movement for Justice.
The Pakistani-Americans embracing anti-Empire and social justice politics are much more in line with the mass, grassroots base of the MFJ in Pakistan. The latter detests calls for ‘pragmatic’ politics. As opposed to the elites within the Movement, they are not interested in removing some ostensibly anti-Khan general and replacing him with one that is more favourable to the former prime minister. This constituency has developed a political consciousness, based significantly on the robust, institutional analysis of the traditional Left, that no longer tolerates the military establishment’s interference in the political life in the country. Nor will it allow Khan to give the time of day to any of the dominant actors within the political class, perceiving the latter as vile bloodsuckers of the nation.
The MFJ has often confronted the accusation by its critics of being a cult. It seems that this may contain some validity. But these critics get it backwards. It’s not the mass base of the Movement – which is unyieldingly advocating a political programme of radical social and political reforms – that supports Khan in a cult-like fashion. It is the oligarchic sections who simply in love with the man because he is a Western-educated, English-speaking international superstar.
It is noteworthy that since the release of the PAKPAC statement, plenty of Pakistani-Americans have felt that now is the time to restrain and reject the opportunism and hubris of an unaccountable leadership before things really become ugly. Most of the Pakistani diaspora, including those from the professional-managerial class, have held Trump in contempt, and recognise that groups like PAKPAC want to bludgeon them to support the former US president. According to PAKPAC types, if you don’t get in line behind Trump, you’re supporting the ongoing persecution of Khan. This twisted logic has been resoundingly rebuffed.
What should be inferred from these divergent approaches within the MFJ is that Khan has effectively become what critical theorists call a ‘floating signifier’. Khan’s politics, or rather this political moment in the country, is being interpreted quite differently by different Movement factions. The obsession of Pakistan’s intelligentsia to determine the ‘true’ and ‘authentic’ politics of Khan is an entirely useless and irrelevant exercise. He is languishing in jail with no sight of respite anytime soon. The buffoonish generals have already ensured Khan’s name on the long list of revered martyrs, and the Pakistani icon really does not need to do anything more.
Now, it is the meaning that Pakistanis at home and abroad are ascribing to their Movement for Justice which matters, and which will determine the MFJ’s political direction.
It is important to note that the aristocratic layer of the MFJ never really gave two hoots about Khan’s trenchant criticism of the ‘War on Terror’ or his advocacy of a welfare state. In fact, this has been the stuff this class would rather not hear because it has always made them very uncomfortable. It was convenient for them to just pretend that Khan was not arguing for a more social justice-oriented agenda.
Khan’s redistributive politics have come in a period of extreme economic immiseration in the country, one that has made the Islamic Republic a humiliated basket case. First, the generals extend their begging bowl to the IMF, desperately anticipating their patron-masters put in a good word for them. The military and civilian elites quickly spend that ‘stimulus’ package on the wellbeing of the nation – meaning on themselves. Then, they run to China to bail them out, beseeching the restructuring of existing loans and imploring for new ones.
Geopolitically, the ruling elite of Pakistan is like a deer caught in the headlights – those of Washington and Beijing, to be precise. Shamefully, the military top brass has obsequiously invited American military personnel to conduct joint exercises for the purpose of ‘counterterrorism’. The same Taliban, who Islamabad considered its ‘boys,’ is now number one on the military establishment’s list of enemies.
What a tragic and mortifying twist of irony. The Taliban no longer have any beef with those occupying its country for two decades, but with those who were its supporters for almost three decades.
There can be no greater sign of the abject political decay of Pakistan’s rulers than how this ‘blowback’ of poorly armed, poorly trained guerilla fighters on Islamabad’s payroll for most of the latter’s existence now engender fear and terror in the hearts and minds of over half a million Pakistani troops.
Indeed, the predicament of the generals in Islamabad has truly reached a new low. This Pakistani regime is panically offering whatever the Americans desire, including military bases, yet still more and more members of the US Congress are denouncing Pakistan’s ruling elite for gross human rights abuses, and calling for an immediate release of Khan and other political prisoners. Most ironic is the fact that these American lawmakers are exactly on the same page as the Movement for Justice – the same MJF that Washington schemed to overthrow in April of 2022!
In addition, the covert CIA drone bases are back in Pakistan with the population not really up in arms as in the past, but simply seeing this development as part and parcel of a miserable and pitiful puppet regime in Islamabad.
Another episode that few detected on the radar screen was the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting a few weeks ago. SCO summits are no joke. But there seemed to be a tacit agreement amongst the various nations, especially and crucially China and Russia, that the less said about the meeting, the better. Publicity was kept to a minimum. A sense of collective embarrassment that something as significant as an SCO meeting was taking place in a country whose elites have made it into a banana republic – was clearly palpable.
One of the most awkward news items revealed before the meeting was the Chinese embassy reaching out not to the military or political establishment, but directly to MFJ leadership. Beijing wanted guarantees that their delegates would be safe – unlike its workers in the country whom the generals’ regime has been unable to protect – in light of massive anti-regime protests by the Movement. The MFJ had assured the Chinese that its every single demonstration for almost three years now has been completely peaceful. The violence, the MFJ insisted, came exclusively from the national security state and the kleptocratic politicians’ fascist goons.
Not only were the Chinese fully satisfied by the commitment of the MFJ to the former’s safety and security, some of the delegates from Beijing – somewhat scandalously – spent more time with MFJ leadership than with their government hosts and interlocutors in Islamabad.
Being barely seen publicly for even a handshake, it seemed like the attendees would’ve rather been at Guantanamo Bay rather than in Islamabad. Diplomats and government leaders treated the summit like a Halloween party, trying their best to disguise themselves in costumes and to flee the country as fast as they could.
But it was important for Islamabad to continue to imagine it had any relevance in world affairs.
The machinations of Pakistan’s military-intelligence apparatus during the Cold War and during the ‘War on Terror’ may have been the stuff of a riveting spy thriller. Now, one meandering and dim-witted blunder after another by the Pakistani deep state would make for a good spy comedy.
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Movement for Justice has now reached a momentous inflection point. The MFJ did not begin with any clear political ideology. What was discernible then was its programme to combat corruption, nepotism and colonial hangovers. The Movement is now being given the chance to define its politics and ideology in a much more explicit and coherent manner.
The eruption of mass anti-systemic political activism in Pakistan is no longer about the beloved Khan, but about the direction of the movement he helped inspire. The ‘antagonistic contradictions,’ to quote Mao, can only lead to two fundamentally irreconcilable paths at this point: the politics of collusion and accommodation, or the politics of resistance and emancipation.
- Professor Junaid S Ahmad teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID), Islamabad, Pakistan.
