A MAD, MAD WORLD

The global rise in rightwing populism

by

Muneeb Qadir

Daastan Publishing 2024

First Published in Pakistan by Daastan PVT LTD

House # A-41, Madni Street, Lala Rukh, Wah Cantt, Punjab 47040

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Text copyrights © Muneeb Qadir

Book Design copyright © Muneeb Qadir

Edited by: Mariam Rizvi

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ISBN 978-969-696-962-4

eISBN 978-969-696-963-1

Printed and bound in Pakistan by Daastan Printing Solutions

Contents

Prologue

Part One: Populism in Pakistan: Project Imran

Chapter 1: The Background of Events to the Night Between 9^th-10^th April 2022

Enter Imran Khan

So, how did Imran Khan shape up his narrative during the Musharraf era?

Chapter 2: But…What is Populism?

Chapter 3: So, how does all this talk of ‘Populism’ and ‘Cult’ relate to Imran Khan?

Chapter 4: Did Imran’s Populist appeal result in political power?

Chapter 5: Imran’s style of opposition during 2013-2018

Chapter 6: Project Imran: 2018-2022

The Religion Card

Chapter 7: Did ‘Populist’ strategies also shape up Imran Khan’s foreign policies and his relationship with the ‘Establishment’?  

Chapter 8: Downfall of Project Imran but greater strengthening of the ‘Cult Of Personality’ politics 

Chapter 9: The Aftermath of 9^th May 2023.

Chapter 10: Project Imran: Lessons to be drawn from Pakistani version of Populism 

Part Two: Populism In India: Abb Ki Baar Modi Sarkaar

Chapter 11: A Peek into Narendra Modi’s Mindset

Chapter 12: 2019, Pulwama: Modi’s electoral campaign gets stronger

Chapter 13: Abrogation of Article 370 and the introduction of CAA

Chapter 14: Modi’s complete consolidation of power

Chapter 15: Is the age of populism nearing an end in India?

Part Three: USA: Make America Great Again

Chapter 16: Trump’s strategies and challenges in his race to the White House

Chapter 17: Key features of Trump’s Populist administration

Chapter 18: Aftermath of the 6^th January insurrection and Trump’s future in US politics

Part Four: Britain and the Post-Brexit Conundrum

Chapter 19: The move towards Rightwing Narratives affecting Brexit Referendum voting patterns 

Chapter 20: ‘Get Brexit Done’: Enter Boris Johnson

Chapter 21: 195Boris Johnson’s gaffes and new opportunities for the Tory Far-Right

Chapter 22: Liz Truss: Absolute Shambles

Chapter 23: The doomed Rwanda policy and a new era of Culture Wars

Part Five: The Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza.

Chapter 24: ‘But…Do you condemn Hummus?’

Chapter 25: How has the war in the Middle-East emboldened the global far-right?

Conclusion: Making Sense of a Mad, Mad World

Acknowledgements

About The Author

‘We must stop this regression into the disasters of the past and put brakes on this descent into absolute chaos in order to introspect and build bridges. That is the only way our generation could add some semblance of sense to this mad, mad world.’

A MAD, MAD WORLD

Prologue

We walked into 2024 with the baggage of a massive humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the much-prolonged Russia-Ukraine war, knowing full well that this was going to be the year of elections; in 64 countries at least, along with the European Parliamentary elections. Every generation that has ever lived on planet Earth must have always felt that ‘The world is going mad. There seems to be a disastrous future ahead, plagued with wars, hunger, poverty, in fact complete annihilation of the world’ AND YET, the human race has managed to survive. Isn’t that what we’ve been doing for millions of years: Surviving? At least, that’s what the Darwinian theory of evolution tells us about our history.

…But, would it be too much of a cliché if I were to say that we are truly living in some of the most dreadful and uncertain times in history? In a precarious world where disaster seems to be impending and the apocalypse is truly descending on us? A world where much of its downhill slide seems to be induced by the human race itself?

One might feel that the questions I’m raising here tend to border onto exaggeration. ‘There is no doomsday coming anytime soon, so you can keep your thrills for some other day’, you could say to me perhaps. But one thing is for sure, our progress as a species has led us human beings into regress and that too a dangerous one. In the post-Enlightenment era, the post-American War of Independence, the post-French Revolution centuries, it was thought that a capitalist economic system based on a liberal, secular, democratic political model, could be the way forward for humankind in realizing their full potential.

Unfortunately, with the first half of the 20^th century, Two World Wars had already taken place and one had already seen the atrocities of the Holocaust primarily against Jewish people in Europe. The fact that many of the states and world leaders who had expressed horror at the gross human rights violations spearheaded by Nazi Germany had proudly founded their own Empires through centuries’ long process of colonization was immaterial. The idea at the end of World War 2 in Europe was ‘NEVER AGAIN’. The fact that this success of a liberal, anti-fascist world order came about after relentless bombing campaigns in Dresden, Germany, followed by the devastating Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombing in Japan at the hands of the victorious Allies was considered immaterial. At the end of such devastation and human suffering, a United Nations (UN) was formed with a Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) having been framed by the UN General Assembly in 1948. This was followed by a process of decolonization, even though problems relating to the Palestinian statehood and the declaration of a Jewish Israeli state, along with apartheid in South Africa, remained unresolved.

The mood post-1945 was one of avoiding armed conflict & preventing human rights abuse worldwide. The two superpowers of the time, USA and USSR had different political ideologies and economic systems and the subsequent Cold War became a war of narratives. The ideological battle was won largely by the US led Western bloc in this post WW2 world. So, a liberal, secular, democratic political model, bolstered by free market economies became the new ‘cool’ and the (almost) standard definition of what it meant for nations and their peoples to be ‘civilised’. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was almost certain that the ‘free world’ offered by the capitalist nations with a liberal political ideology had emerged triumphant and our dear planet Earth was now almost a decade away from the New Millennium, for we were now in the 1990s, around the time when I had stepped into this world.

As a ‘90’s kid’ (that’s what I call myself), I am part of the generation which has seen seismic shifts in the ways of the world. What I had almost taken for granted as a child growing in the ‘90s was that there was nothing peculiar about being Pakistani (at least in the eyes of the ‘civilised world’), that there was and would be no such thing as people being separated from their families and put into concentration camps on a mere difference of identity or belief (I was blissfully ignorant of what had been going on in Bosnia (the Srebrenica massacre, anyone?) or the genocide in Rwanda).

Of course, as a child growing in Pakistan, two things had been very much told to me by my elders (including teachers and parents’ friends): 1. Pakistan was (is) an Islamic country where the ‘true’ people of faith, i.e. Muslims exist and 2. India was our arch-rival and a hostile nation. Listening to Hinduphobic remarks from the ordinary Pakistani (whether they be from the upper echelons of society or domestic workers or the next person on the street) was a matter of routine and so a lot of the antagonism towards India had also stemmed from this Hindu/Muslim divide which we had unwittingly inherited from our history. I used to find it very confusing when I used to see the same anti-India, ‘patriotic’ Pakistanis watching Bollywood films (they even used to cry at the emotional scenes) and playing Bollywood songs in those ‘Sonic’ or ‘Eagle’ labelled pirated cassette tapes whilst driving through the streets of Lahore. Whilst listening to Bollywood songs or watching Indian movies on pirated VHS tapes, I used to hear from the very same uncles & aunties, ‘These people won’t go to Paradise; all these actors that you’re watching on your tv screen’. Again, I was confused that if this is what my elders believed, why did they used to watch Indian produced Hindi films so ardently? In retrospect, I’m proud of myself that I could feel a sense of disgust at the sheer hypocrisy of many of my elders. Perhaps, I was innately multicultural in my outlook, even as a pre-teen kid.

But apart from this jingoistic talk from lifestyle liberals giving religious sermons wherever it suited them, the world that I saw around myself seemed to be rather peaceful. If your family could afford, it was very easy for Pakistani children like me to travel with our parents to the aforementioned ‘civilised’ world and oh boy, I did get my fair share of travel opportunities to the ‘Global North’ during my early childhood years; to first-world countries like the USA and Switzerland and Italy. That was my earliest exposure to the ‘global world’. Travelling was fairly simple, visas were easily obtainable (being Pakistani was not much of an obstruction in globe-trotting) and I’m glad that in the earliest years of my life, I got to see the world beyond my own very parochial, local sphere in Pakistan.

The impression I got of the Western global powers when I travelled to these countries was one where there were equal opportunities, where I would be standing in the same queue as an American or a European without feeling discriminated against. That is not to say that racism and imperial attitudes did not exist at the time (I’m talking about the 90s) but those things were mostly under the surface. On the face of it, liberty and democracy seemed to be the touchstone features of the developed world.

BUT THEN, 9/11 HAPPENED and changed the world as we knew it, especially for Pakistani citizens such as I. I must have been an 11-year-old, barely aware of global or national politics, quite much entrenched in my life as a student in a very strict all-boys school at that time. However, it was deeply disturbing for me to see the visual display of what was unfolding on my television screen with my parents commenting frantically, ‘Look, that’s the World Trade Centre where we took you guys in 1994’. It was a major global event, the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York City. What did one listen to? The attack was masterminded and executed by radical Islamists; the remnants of those who were once equipped and trained by the United States in collaboration with Pakistan’s Zia regime in the 1980s to bring the Soviets down (which they did). So, many people of Muslim identity possessing Pakistani Passports had now come under the radar of the ‘free world’, as each one of them had now become suspects in the eyes of the global-powers-that-be.

Now this was the kind of world which I had never witnessed before in the first decade of my existence on this planet. That’s when many of us, especially ‘Liberal Pakistanis’ (Yes, that’s a thing! I do consider myself a liberal Pakistani) started facing the pressure of letting it be known that ‘Yes, I’m Pakistani but not that kind of Pakistani’ whenever we would come into contact with people from the Western world or whenever we wished to apply for a foreign visa or wished to travel to Europe or the USA. ‘Not that type of Pakistani’ is the kind of thing that many of us Pakistani Passport holders have to constantly prove till this day… for someone else’s heinous crimes.

Then President George W Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ strategy was the beginning of a new world order, or perhaps, a return to the old-world order, actually; A world order where the pretense of equal sovereignty of states had started to drop and closed borders and a move back to rightwing ideas had started to reemerge. ‘Might is right’ was once again back in fashion. The 2003 military intervention in Iraq, unlawful use of torture in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons and ‘American exceptionalism’ were out in the open as the ultimate source of global authority. No longer was the President of the US only his country’s President. The US President had become the de facto World President, as it were. ‘You’re either with us or against us’ was President Bush’s mantra during his 8-year-long stint in the White House.

That is not to say that the alarm bells that went ringing after 9/11 particularly towards Muslims and Pakistani Muslims were devoid of logic. In Pakistan itself, anti-American and anti-Western sentiments had been taking root for quite many decades. The US’s unrelenting support for every stance of Israel, abandonment by the USA of Pakistan after defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan and an extremely defensive (almost to the extent of paranoia) sense of self as a leading nation of the wider Muslim Ummah (brotherhood) were some of the factors which shaped up Pakistani masses’ aversion towards the Western world and ‘democracy’ was seen as a mere excuse used by the US & its allies to justify American/NATO military intervention in the Global South.

It's also ironic that many of the aforementioned Pakistanis would have leaped at the chance of getting US or EU citizenship if that could be a possibility. Many Pakistanis still long for getting residency or settlement visas in Western countries despite their resentment of Western values and ‘Western hypocrisy’. With such hostile sentiments harboured among many Pakistani masses towards the West, it does present a sense of security threat to the Western bloc to have unchecked and unregulated borders. The fear of letting in individuals with such antagonistic view of the Western world is real and even more real is the risk of subsequent radicalization of members of immigrant communities, those who do not seem to blend with the multicultural environment of today’s powerful, economically prosperous and secular, multi-faith countries. Hence, there apparently seems to be some justification for immigration controls being tightened by the Western world.

Nonetheless, many critics of powerful Western countries, especially Pakistani and Middle Eastern and African leftists believe that the USA’s hegemony along with its European allies is based on centuries’ old exploitation of the so-called ‘third world’ via the historical tools of colonialism or the Transatlantic slave trade. Hence, according to these post-modernist, post-colonial leftists, the West itself is to blame for anti-Western sentiments among the masses in developing and underdeveloped economies.

To this, an observer might say, ‘But hey, the Western world aren’t scared of the people of Global South in general; They are only suspicious of Muslim immigrants from underdeveloped Muslim-majority countries’. It is true that memories of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS)’s attacks on European soil (the Paris bombing attacks in November 2015 or the terrorist attack in Brussels in March 2016 or the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing) are still fresh in everyone’s minds and that incidents like the Westminster Bridge Attack in April 2017 or the 7/7 bombings in London and many more were carried out by individuals self-identifying as Muslims and that too in the name of religion. It is also true that there might not be many instances of Hindus or Scientologists or Mormons carrying out terror attacks against the Western world on Western soil citing religion as their motivation (Individuals identifying as Christians have although carried out acts of terror against Muslims in Western or Western-allied countries citing religion as their motive, for example, the 2019 Christchurch Mosque attack on New Zealand’s Muslim community executed by the anti-Muslim extremist Brenton Tarrant or the 2019 Baerum Mosque shooting carried out by the 21-year-old far-right Neo-Nazi Philip Manshaus but their targets were not ‘Westernism’, so to speak), which explains why the Global North feels so alarmed when they see (particularly) Muslim men arriving in their countries from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, etc.

However, this security risk in a post 9/11 world has fed into the xenophobic and bigoted narratives of the far-right in the West. Individuals like Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson, Katie Hopkins, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Suella Braverman and Donald Trump and white supremacist groups like Ku Klux Klan are now feeling more empowered in pushing their agendas forward. Their agenda is anti-immigration, anti-wokeism and anti-multiculturalism, especially against Muslims and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Many (not all) of them are also opposed to transgender rights and climate change activism as part of their wider anti-wokeism agenda. Rather than bringing about reconciliation, such ideas only deepen the divide between the far-right in the Muslim world and the far-right in other countries, between the left/far-left and the rightwing across various countries.

Returning back to the rivalry between Pakistan and India that I was told about quite early on in my life, I have already mentioned that even as a child, I was reasonable enough not to buy into anti-India sentiments for the sake of it. The Bollywood movies which I mentioned earlier in this Prologue, although they did consist of many anti-Pakistan, jingoistic productions, were still in most of the instances representative of an inclusive India and in the period between 2004-2016, many of these Bollywood movies had started glorifying greater sense of friendship between India and Pakistan under then emerging ideology of ‘Aman Ki Aasha’ (Hope For Peace). However, that changed for the worse with the Modi-led BJP Government which got elected in 2014. Now, any talk of ‘Aman Ki Asha’ started seeming to be an act of ‘Deshdrohi’ (Treason) and popular culture in India, i.e. Bollywood started producing content, which was completely aligned with the BJP Government’s agenda, with an over-emphasis on Pakistan as the enemy and the demonization of liberal intellectuals through divisive films like ‘The Kashmir Diaries’ and ‘Article 370’.

Living in Pakistan, where a majoritarian rightwing mindset has been prevalent at the highest levels of governance, I was now seeing a hyper-nationalist rightwing regime coming into power in neighbouring India whilst the Taliban regime in Afghanistan also assumed power on Pakistan’s Western border, making life a living hell for women and religious and sexual minorities as well as for dissidents and critics of the religious extremist regime. Women in neighbouring Iran were yet marching on the streets against the oppressive ‘morality police’ whilst China (another of Pakistan’s neighbours) was busy demonstrating its military might against the West and their allies whilst also cracking down on pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong.

As if that were not enough, our generation has had to go through the experience of a global pandemic, followed by the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine since February 2022. However, never has the world seemed more divided than after 7^th October 2023, the date which brought to the fore the inner demons of all across the globe; from the far-right to the so-called developed world which used to brand themselves as exporters of democracy and human rights to the ‘uncivilised world’. On that day, the militant Hamas group carried out terror attacks on Israeli civilians, with around 1200 victims either having been killed or taken hostages whilst many others were subjected to torture and sexual abuse. In ‘response’ Israel resorted to war crimes on an almost unprecedented scale killing thousands of civilians in the process, mostly civilians trapped in that strip of landlocked area which neighbours onto Egypt. Narrative wars took a whole new shape following 7^th October 2023 with sharp increase in anti-semitic and Islamophobic rhetoric worldwide…

…Which brings me to the point of writing this book. Today, we are living in a mad, mad world where everyone is engaged in a tug-of-war, a war for power grab. Rightwing, nationalist, autocratic regimes are on the rise, religious zealotry and intolerance are taking the centre-stage, racism and ‘otherization’ of vulnerable communities has become the norm and talks of world peace are running ‘out-of-fashion’. This book will explore this rise in global frustration and hate crimes and trends of rightwing populism in the following chapters and the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and challenges posed by climate change shall remain a running theme throughout my analysis. This is very much a book of its time, reflecting the world as it is as we are inching towards the mid-2020s. I hope this book can help you and I to make some sense of our mad, mad world.

PART ONE:

Populism in Pakistan: Project Imran

Years of political upheaval and military dictatorships are the most common and recurring features of Pakistani political dynamics but in the summer of 2018, something almost magical happened. Pakistani public got a political leader of their choice; One who was loved by all and sundry (apart from a few supposed ‘traitors’). Such was the charm of this political leader that he made his public fall even deeper in love with the country’s powerful and already fairly popular military establishment. You won’t be needing a crystal ball to guess the name of the leader that I’m talking about here because it is for sure, Imran Khan. Men aspired to be like him, women (whose sexuality is heavily repressed in Pakistan’s patriarchal, conservative society) of all ages openly declared their ‘crush’ on him and the youth of the country finally saw a man who had successfully captured their imagination. The stardom of this former cricketer turned politician was extraordinary and the envy of the Sharifs and Bhutto political dynasties. This was the kind of stardom which these political dynasties had fought to achieve for so many years but alas, to no avail.

AND THEN, it was the night between 9^th-10^th April 2022. A vote of no-confidence (VoNC) was held against then Prime Minister Imran Khan in Pakistan’s National Assembly. It was one of the most dramatic nights in Pakistan’s political history. Each one of us were on the edge of our seats. Doors of the Supreme Court had to be opened up at midnight to demand that the National Assembly went ahead with the VoNC against Imran Khan after hours of obstruction caused by the National Assembly Speaker in withholding the said VoNC.

As an ‘analyst’ or ‘political commentator’ (I still don’t know what exactly these terms are supposed to mean?), I had been invited by the Türkiye based international news channel TRT World to give my commentary on the events of that dramatic night unfolding in Pakistan’s lower house of Parliament. Whilst I was answering the anchorperson’s questions, I could see on my screen, live coverage of scenes from the National Assembly, where Imran Khan’s political opponents were making ‘Victory hand gestures’ with the widest of smiles on their faces. It all seemed almost comical. Why? Not necessarily because of Imran Khan’s apparent downfall but because one could see how the non-democratic setup of that time, operating from behind the scenes of Pakistan’s political landscape had scored an own goal by losing their potentially best poster boy (or propagandist, more like?). I knew immediately that there were going to be very open and uncomfortable conversations within public discourse; Conversations that I was longing to have and to listen to after the very toxic ‘same page hybrid regime’ led by the ‘establishment’ with Imran Khan as their frontman. Friends had turned into foes and here was an opportunity to finally drop the pretense of ‘democracy’ and fake jingoism. It was an exciting moment in Pakistan’s history.

CHAPTER 1:

The Background of Events to the night between 9^th-10^th April 2022

To understand the context of the last few paragraphs above, some basic understanding of Pakistan’s political dynamics are a must. I won’t go into a long history of wrangling between ‘civilian leaders’ and military dictators in the decades after the creation of Pakistan in 1947. There is plenty of literature available on Pakistan’s troubled history in the ‘50s and ‘60s but yes, some of the ultimate scars that had been left on Pakistan’s political system around the time I was born in the 1990s had been the immediate leftovers of political events of the 70s and the 80s. 1971 was a traumatic year for the nation as a huge chunk of the country called East Pakistan had broken away from the Republic of Pakistan and became what is now known as an independent country called Bangladesh. Separatists in East Pakistan were propped up by the Indian sponsored Mukti Bahini who brought about what is known in Pakistan as ‘The Fall of Dhaka’, resulting in East Pakistan’s secession from the country against the efforts of the Pakistani military. Whilst Pakistan’s official narrative ever since has been one of having fallen victims to unlawful military intervention from India, the international community and many historians put the blame on Pakistani establishments’ alleged human rights violations in the former East Pakistan.

The general election of that time had been won by Sheikh Mujeeb ur Rehman of the Awami League (AL) but because Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (ZAB) of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) was the supposed blue-eyed boy of the ‘establishment’ of that time, accusations of rigging the political system against Sheikh Mujeeb ur Rehman who was not allowed to form the Government at the Centre, led to discontentment among East Pakistanis who then managed to secede from Pakistan by declaring a newly created Republic of Bangladesh under the leadership of Sheikh Mujib ur Rehman. This had put the political and military establishment of the country very much on the defensive. A new narrative had to be introduced to prevent any such subsequent attempts of rebellion within what was left behind, i.e. the former ‘West Pakistan’ which under the 1973 Constitution was declared to be the ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’.

This new narrative was focused on unquestionable deference to the authority of the powerful military establishment, redefining what it meant to be a ‘true Pakistani’, rooting Pakistan’s national identity in it being an Islamic Republic with religion as the binding factor among the peoples of all of the country’s 4 (ethnically diverse) provinces. State led censorship was increased, a revised version of events was introduced into students’ history textbooks (one which quite much inculcated a sense of seeing the rest of the world as hostile to Pakistan’s interests and security) and the religious rightwing had been given greater power who had now needed to be appeased by mainstream political leaders such as ZAB. No wonder then that Bhutto, who was seen as a ‘liberal’ and modern, forward-thinking Pakistani leader introduced the 2^nd Amendment to the Pakistani Constitution to appease and win over the religious rightwing who were agitating on the streets against certain communities whom they considered to be a threat to Pakistan’s sense of religious and national identity.

It is also no wonder that Bhutto soon fell out of favour with his benefactors and was turned into the very picture of what could be described as political victimization. He had stopped toeing the line set by the ‘establishment’. Thus, flouting all rules of natural justice and due process, the compromised judiciary awarded him a death sentence, paving in the way for Zia-ul-Haq’s military dictatorship. Zia-ul-Haq built his conservative religious regime very much on the foundations of Bhutto’s 2^nd Amendment to the Constitution by introducing the strictest version of religious laws one can find in any part of the Islamic world. Zia’s Islamisation policies also led to the enactment of the Hudood Ordinances prescribing severe penalties on perpetrators of adultery and fornication, the major burden of which fell upon Pakistani women (who had needed to prove rape allegations by bringing forward 4 male eyewitnesses at the risk of being jailed for Zina offences).

The USA found a natural ally in the military dictator Zia whose tilt towards an extremist version of religious orthodoxy was seen as an opportunity by the Americans to bring the Soviets down in Afghanistan. Dollars had flooded into the hands of the Zia regime to arm trained mujahideens who were recruited from among impressionable, young, angry male children, indoctrinated with extremist ideas about religion and this led to a mushroom growth in Madrassas all across Pakistan. These Madrassas turned into breeding grounds for preparing child soldiers and armed religious extremists for decades to come. Yes, there was a lot of foreign funding behind this ambitious project, no less by the guardian of Western secularism and liberal democracy, i.e. the USA.

Having landed a defeating blow to the Soviets in Afghanistan, the USA had achieved its purpose and had deserted Pakistan in a way that today’s Gen-Z could only define as ‘ghosting’. That’s what Pakistan felt: used and betrayed. What the USA had left behind and what became Zia’s legacy for future Pakistani generations was an ever-growing rise in violent religious extremism. Zia died in a helicopter crash, Benazir Bhutto (ZAB’s daughter) became the new face of Pakistani politics and one of Zia’s very own protégé, Mian Nawaz Sharif had now entered the political domain as well. This was now the time around which I was born.

In my childhood years, from 1990-1999 particularly, I had heard only 2 names associated with the words ‘Prime Minister’: Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. The former was the leader of her father’s PPP whilst the latter had created his own version of Pakistan Muslim League (PML), i.e. PML-N. So, political power within Pakistan’s apparent Parliamentary style of politics was mostly shared between these 2 political parties; PPP and PML-N and these parties came to be labelled as ‘dynasties’ because nepotism became the norm in the way they operated, whereby it was a given that the children of these leaders and their children’s children would be leading each of these respective political parties and not just their children but even their siblings and relatives (which explains why Nawaz Sharif’s brother Mian Shehbaz Sharif was repeatedly appointed as the Chief Minister of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province).   

Enter Imran Khan:

Towards the late 90’s, a potential threat to the exclusive political power-sharing that was wielded by PPP and PML-N had started to emerge. The name of that threat was Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi (known more popularly as just Imran Khan or IK) who founded a new party called Pakistan-Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI). The name of Khan’s party was enough to suggest what his politics was going to centre around. The name PTI literally means ‘Movement for Justice in Pakistan’, which suggested that there was no justice in Pakistan. So much was even declared by Jemima Goldsmith/Khan, IK’s then wife in one of her earlier interviews when she had said that PTI was going to act as a buffer in Pakistan’s political landscape as ‘There [was] no accountability’ among Pakistani political leaders and that their ’corruption’ was the reason why common Pakistani citizens did not have access to food and means of sustenance[1].

Creating a new or ‘Naya Pakistan’ thereby became Imran Khan’s PTI’s political slogan much early on in his political career. However, Pakistani politics went through another major crisis with then Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Pervez Musharraf’s military coup which lasted for almost a decade, starting from 1999 until 2008. Both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif and their families were made political victims, and both had to go into self-exile, hopping and jumping from Dubai to London to lobbying powerful figures within the Saudi and American establishment. Victimizing them politically was made even easier owing to the vast amounts of properties and foreign assets these political figures owned; From Bhuttos’ Swiss accounts to ‘Surrey Mahal’ and the Sharifs’ Avenfield properties in the poshest of London neighbourhoods. ‘Where did that money come from? What was the source of income for inquiring these properties?’ were the kind of questions which became Musharraf’s best scoring points in demonizing these mainstream political leaders from PPP and PML-N, in furtherance of which Musharraf had created an organization called National Accountability Bureau (NAB) under the Ordinance of 1999 and this proved to be instrumental for the country’s establishment to exact their revenge on ‘civilian leaders’ who dared to go rogue.

So, how did Imran Khan shape up his narrative during the Musharraf era?

Initially, following the 1999 coup led by Musharraf, Imran Khan saw a huge opportunity to establish himself as a viable frontman for the establishment to keep up the false appearance of ‘democracy’. Why would he not seize a golden opportunity where his Bhutto and Sharif rivals were finally ousted from the mainstream political scene, after all? So, no surprises there that Khan seemed very much in support of the military coup initially.

However, later upon realizing that Musharraf was as narcissistic as Khan Sahab himself, the latter realized that there was no power sharing up for grabs under the Musharraf dictatorship. It was an unapologetic, ‘no-pretense’ military rule that Pakistan was under. Then, global events, triggered by 9/11, which led Bush to threatening Musharraf if Pakistan were not to become an ally in the USA’s ‘War on Terror’ brought about a ‘Bush and Mush’ alliance. Musharraf had vowed to help the USA in establishing military bases in Pakistan and to eradicate the Taliban and Al-Qaeda threat from the Afghan-Pak region. Drone attacks ensued, resulting in hundreds and thousands of civilian deaths while Musharraf was kept on being accused of playing a ‘double game’ providing safe havens to Taliban/AQ militants. Nonetheless, Musharraf kept up the image of being utterly devoted to American interests in the region under his rebranding of Pakistani ideology as ‘enlightened moderation’.

What Musharraf meant by ‘enlightened moderation’ was that Pakistan was to be shaped up as a modern, progressive, forward-looking Islamic Nation, where although the essential character of the country would be based on Islamic principles, but in such a manner that the basic Islamic values of Pakistan could be reconciled with the ‘freedoms’ and ‘individual rights’ envisaged by the modern Western world. Thus, a more liberal, American values-based Pakistan had been imagined. Consequently, there was media boom with the rise of private TV channels in Pakistan. You could even see a flirtatious transgender Begum Nawazish hosting a TV programme, which was quite a unique concept at its time in a conservative country like Pakistan (signaling the ‘opening up’ of Pakistan to taboo ideas within the mainstream). Bollywood films were opened up for screening in Pakistani cinemas after decades and towards the end of his dictatorship, Musharraf era also saw a wave of ‘Revival of Pakistani cinema’, with the release of Shoaib Mansoor’s fairly progressive film ‘Khuda Ke Liye’ which became an instant box-office hit at that time. I firmly believe that in the 2020s, a film like ‘Khuda Ke Liye’ would never be allowed for screening in the cinemas as rightwing religious groups such as TLP would successfully threaten cinema owners and filmmakers into silence. We have truly regressed from where we stood in 2007.

Musharraf also dared to crackdown on Islamabad’s Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), a seminary led by the brothers Abdul Aziz and (now dead) Abdul Rashid. Lal Masjid was under siege as Musharraf regime had resolved to bring an end to breeding grounds for indoctrination of fundamentalism in Pakistan. Ironically, the same ‘free media’ which Musharraf had introduced under his tenure turned against him, portraying Lal Masjid militants as ‘martyrs’ and ‘innocent children’ under attack by the State. Musharraf failed at achieving his aim and Abdul Aziz can still be seen threatening leaders and state institutions in his fiery social media clips and no one can even so much as touch him.

But what was Imran Khan doing all this while? He was developing a parallel popular narrative, quickly highlighting how Musharraf had apparently sold Pakistani sovereignty to the West and the imperialist American establishment. Now that’s a textbook example of populism. Imran Khan’s narrative became a mixture of reclaiming nationalist sovereignty and Pakistan’s ‘true identity’ centering his identity politics around culture wars. He went vocal about the ‘invasion’ of Western, liberal, secular values into the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s social structure. He saw ‘enlightened moderation’ championed by Musharraf as a form of Western cultural imperialism and therefore reminded Pakistanis of their essentially Muslim identity which had nothing to do with Musharraf’s Western-inspired enlightened moderation. Khan even went on to the extent of opposing the Musharraf-regime led ‘Women’s Protection Bill’ which had sought to undo much of Zia era’s anti-women legislation (especially the need for a rape survivor to bring 4 male witnesses in order to be able to register charges against the alleged perpetrator). So, hyper-nationalism and hyper-religiosity became two of the most recurrent features of Imran Khan’s brand of politics.

CHAPTER 2:

But…What is Populism?

It’s so difficult to define populism in a single sentence, no? And I’ve consciously made sure that I don’t open up any dictionary definitions while writing this part of the book because I wish to bring my own take on what ‘populism’ is. Whilst I find it tough to define populism in a single sentence, I can most definitely identify certain features of the same. Another word which is very much used by people in the same vein is ‘cult’ but of course, populism and cult are not synonymous, although they might overlap with one another every now and then.

One of the key features of populism is to appeal to the masses. Many people use the term ‘Playing to the gallery’ to define this phenomenon. The word ‘populism’ seems to be a derivative of the word ‘popular’. So, when I say, ‘masses’ and ‘popular’, I believe I happen to be talking about narratives, actions and politics which have mass appeal among the populace of any given political society, i.e. you’re telling people what they want to listen to; Not what they NEED to listen to. One of the first rules of populist politics, therefore, is to tell your mass audience that:

‘YOU’RE NOT WRONG. YOU ARE ALL VICTIMS.’ That’s what populists like Adolf Hitler did back in the day in Nazi Germany. There was a man who was speaking to a frustrated German population, mostly consisting of young men and women who found themselves in the midst of an economic crisis (The Great Depression was very much a part of the experience of that particular generation), made worse by the very harsh sanctions imposed upon an already bankrupt Germany by the victorious powers of World War 1 under the Treaty of Versailles. These young people had gumption, they had fire within their bellies, they had skills, they may even have had immense qualifications, but they had no opportunities. There were shortages of job opportunities, there was growing frustration and self-esteem among the young German population was at an all-time low.