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"We will see / Certainly we will also see this day that has been promised to us." So say the first lines of one of the most famous poems of the Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. The Pakistanis eagerly trace it in any situation that requires waiting and watching, as the elections in Pakistan invariably do. So it was with the general election last week, when the two who were ambivalent about Imran Khan's fledgling victory and those who were elated about it were sharing the poem on social media.
Faiz would certainly have balked at this use of his work. Marxist who endured imprisonment and then exile, he did not like demagogues and did not even like the Pakistani army, which he had happily opposed to. habitual interference in political affairs. But postcolonial countries often have to adapt the past to their present. The present belongs to Imran Khan, the cricketer turned playboy turned right-wing politician, who swept the Pakistan elections last week.
Khan's victory was fostered by a series of fortuitous events. On July 6, a high court in Islamabad issued a verdict against its main opponents, Nawaz Sharif, the destitute Pakistani prime minister, and his daughter and alleged political heiress, Maryam Nawaz, who were found guilty of corruption. On their return from London, where they were staying in a Park Lane apartment paid for with the proceeds of their transplant, the military commandos and the Pakistani police arrested them and transported them to jail. Their supporters of the Nawaz party, the Muslim League of Pakistan, were left confused and demoralized. The Sharifs have accused the military of intriguing, both to bring the corruption file and to distort the election results.
Like many others in the labyrinthine politics of Pakistan, proving the involvement of the military in Sharifs' criminal convictions is impossible. It is clear, however, that the Sharifs had conducted polls up to this point, but that the army favored Imran Khan and his Islamist party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice). ). In an interview in May, Khan declared his loyalty to the army. "It's the Pakistani army and not an enemy army," he said. "Two years later, the Sharifs were sitting in Adiala Prison, and Khan was delivering a victory speech to a delighted Pakistan – promising" open borders "with Afghanistan and an Islamic revival of Pakistan ( already officially an Islamic republic)
Khan's speech and victory reveal much about how the Pakistani army is considering the country's place in a post-American world. change came in January with President Trump's New Year tweet accusing Pakistan of "lies and deception." A few days later, the Trump administration suspended $ 2 billion in military aid to Pakistan, accusing Pakistan to have failed take decisive action to crack down on the Haqqani group that supports a terrorist insurgency against US-led forces in Afghanistan while using Pakistan c as a refuge from American forces.
Imran Khan, then in the Pakistani opposition, his response, denouncing Trump as "ignorant and ungrateful". In his own tweet, he delivered another mockery: the United States, in its desperation to explain its defeat in Afghanistan, was using Pakistan as a scapegoat, he accused. "A couple of thousands (Taliban allies) Haqqanis in Pakistan is supposed to be the cause of why the best-equipped military force in history … can not succeed," he writes. For Khan, attacking the US intervention is a favorite theme: in the speeches, Khan claimed that the reason why so many Pakistanis have been radicalized is because the country was fooled into a war at the request of the CIA .
Khan to the Pakistani army, who was furious with Trump's reprimand because she sees herself as having fought hard to eliminate the Taliban and other militant groups from the tribal areas. Pakistan, according to the army, has sacrificed thousands of more soldiers than the United States, but it has received little credit for that. The mention of Khan of the Haqqani is also noteworthy. Khan's party controls Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the Pakistani province bordering Afghanistan, and earlier this year made a huge donation of 277 million rupees to Darul Uloom Haqqania, the Taliban-related seminary and considered a line supply for Haqqani Network fighters
Khan played along. In another whistle to the uncompromising Islamists – those like Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, himself a pioneer of Afghan jihad, who are already in his alliance, and others that he hopes to attract – Khan the week last reiterated his promise to create the state that was established in Medina ", referring to the first Muslim city-state during the life of the Prophet Muhammad.A few seconds earlier, Khan had pledged to make Pakistan the country Pakistani founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah dreamed: "The two, the secular democracy of Jinnah and the Islamic state of Medina, are polar opposites, but this Janus leader is not bothered by the contradiction. [19659003] The military, too, do not care about its duality.It is, in fact, what makes Khan so salable; The young Pakistani townspeople, tired of the battle of many Islam who raged during most of their lives, As the solution, here is the face shaven by "good Islam", the so-called creator of an Islamic welfare state, which might not be so different from the Taliban-like theocracy, but which seems much better. And on the other hand, among activists such as seminar administrators Darul Uloom Haqqania and other Pashtun tribal leaders, one can envision with the election of Khan the advent of the dynasty. an Islamic state that embodies anti-imperialist values and Shari'a sovereignty, with Pashtun tribal tribal customs, Pashtunwali, thrown for good measure
The Pashtun-dominated Islamic state may be closer of Khan's truth, and he does not care who he sacrifices to obtain it. In the past, Pakistani leaders of dubious legitimacy have used religious restrictions that control women, their clothing and their behavior, as a practical way to rally support and consolidate political control. Khan seems to want to follow. In the past, he opposed the legislation criminalizing domestic violence and expressed support for the enforcement of the Zina and Hudood ordinances, which were used to imprison women on the basis of the law. unproven accusations of unlawful bad. the law means that the position of religious and sectarian minorities such as Christians and Ahmadi Muslims will become even more precarious. In the recent tumultuous climate of Pakistan, Ahmadi Muslims who do not ensure that the prophetic transmission of revelation ended with the Prophet Muhammad were described as blasphemers and prosecuted. Many of them did not vote in this election, Ahmadis protesting against their segregation on separate voters lists, and Christians opposed the continued relegation of minorities to a handful of seats. reserved parliamentarians. With religious conservatives promoting Pakistan's blasphemy law, now reinforced by Khan's victory, accusations of blasphemy, which can be brought without evidence and lead to a potential death sentence, may skyrocket
. The results, and the allegations of rigging and interference, are likely to be tied to the promise of Faiz's poetry. They console themselves by thinking that one day they will see "this day that was promised to them". The fact that they do not have a united vision for this future day does not seem to be the concern of Imran Khan or anyone else.
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