If Khan had continued as Pak PM, Gen Bajwa might have been removed before his term ended to facilitate the appointment of Faiz Hameed as the next Army Chief.
New Delhi: The imminent ouster of Imran Khan as the Prime Minister of Pakistan—though being blamed by his supporters on the pressure applied by “foreign powers” (read the United States)—has more to do with the all-powerful Pakistan Army deciding that Khan has to go, say sources tracking the developments. Khan, in his televised address to Pakistanis on the night of 31 March, said that he received a “threatening” letter from the US government on 7 March.
Khan will face a no-confidence motion on 3 April, Sunday. The opposition leader in the National Assembly, Shehbaz Sharif, tabled the motion on 28 March, which had 161 members as signatories. By Thursday, that number had swelled to 199, much more than the magic number 172 required in the 342-seat National Assembly.
The Sunday Guardian had recently reported how Khan had been challenging the GHQ (General Headquarters), Rawalpindi, either by delaying the appointments of key officials or by trying to bypass the well-placed hierarchy in the military system by reaching out to key officials directly (‘Future’ Pak COAS pushes for talks with TTP without any result).
In February, former chief of Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s intelligence agency, Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, who is presently the Commander of XI Corp, Peshawar, had played a key role in sending a four-member team to talk with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leadership to persuade them to arrive at a ceasefire. The XI corp is responsible for operations at Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) region of Pakistan.
Hameed, who was transferred out from his post as ISI chief last October, is in the “good books” of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, who wanted him to be appointed as the next Chief of Army Staff, replacing the incumbent General Qamar Bajwa, whose tenure ends in November.
Authoritative sources tracking the matter said that if Khan had continued as PM, Bajwa might have been removed before his term ended to facilitate the appointment of Hameed as the next chief. The first public display of things not being cordial between Khan and GHQ surfaced in October last year, when Khan took 20 days to notify the appointment of Lt Gen Nadeem Anjum as the new Director-General of ISI, replacing Lt Gen Hameed. This “sitting on” on directions given by the Army generals by a civilian government is a rarity in Pakistan where no PM has ever completed the full term.
Bajwa had cleared the name of Anjum on 6 October, but it was not until 27 October that Khan notified it, thereby making it clear that he was not a “rubber stamp” of the GHQ anymore, irrespective of whether he was doing their bidding earlier or not. Khan, as per sources who support him, wanted Hameed to continue in view of the situation in neighbouring Afghanistan. The appointment of the ISI director general is technically a prerogative of the Pakistan Prime Minister, but the PM, as a convention, agrees on the name the same day it is sent by the GHQ. The outgoing Hameed was appointed to the post in June 2019.
The Army and the ISI made it even clearer that they were no friends of Imran Khan as they refuted his allegations about “external, foreign” forces conspiring to remove him from power, something which he had stated publicly in front of thousands of his supporters and a worldwide international audience by showing a “letter”.
On the days leading to the no-confidence motion in the Pakistan Assembly, the national media of Pakistan carried reports quoting “unnamed sources” (euphemism for the ISI and GHQ) stating that no evidence of any foreign power trying to interfere in Pakistan was found. The said letter, as it later emerged, was a regular diplomatic communication that originated from Washington and was sent by the previous Pakistani ambassador to the US, Dr Asad Majeed Khan.
This denial of Khan’s theory of foreign power trying to remove him from power by the GHQ made it amply clear that Khan, who was considered the “blue-eyed” boy of the GHQ, was now all alone. Pakistan’s usual benefactor, the United States, too, has made its anger with Khan pretty much clear in the last one year which explains Khan’s tirade against the country. Even since Joe Biden took over as US President from Donald Trump in January 2021, Khan has never been given an opportunity to directly speak to the US President.
According to an Islamabad-based political observer who has close ties with the Army, the opposition leaders were successful in putting pressure on the GHQ not to take the side of Khan even if they wanted to, by publicly expressing the chances of such an eventuality.
According to these sources, Khan had recently discussed the domestic situation with key officials during his recent visit to Russia and in his one-to-one interaction with the Chinese officials, but failed to get the kind of support that he was expecting, especially from China, which commands a lot of control over GHQ’s way of thinking.
Earlier this week, a spokesperson of the Chinese foreign ministry, while responding to a question regarding the political instability in Pakistan, stated that “China is committed to a non-interference policy. As an all-weather strategic cooperative partner and friendly neighbour of Pakistan, it is our sincere hope that all parties in Pakistan will stay united and uphold the major interest of the country’s developments and stability.” Thereby, making it clear that had no special interest in the continuance of Khan.
The disappointment that he faced from Russia and China made it clear that he was neither getting any help from his internal guardian (GHQ) nor from his external benefactors, Russia, and China. China has made a lot of investments in the country which it cannot secure without the explicit support of the Army generals at GHQ. Khan had met Chinese President Xi Jinping on 6 February in China and Russian President Vladimir Putin on 24 March in Moscow.
China has made it clear multiple times that it is not happy with Pakistan’s inability to return the loans that it has taken. The situation is likely to remain the same for some time considering the economic situation the country is going through which is likely to exacerbate after Khan’s vocal attack on the Biden government and the US intelligence agencies.
On 27 February, the opposition parties commenced a “long march” from Karachi to Islamabad with the stated aim to oust Khan from power; the march ended on 8 March. To counter this march, Khan announced a show of strength of its own on 13 March. The said mass gathering called “Jalsa” took place in Islamabad on 27 March.