Pakistan’s current Prime Minister, Imran Khan, secured his “hero” status as a world champion cricketer and critic of the mass corruption within the Pakistani government. His political image as a relentless “anti-corruption crusader” has come under fire as Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Party are continuously embroiled in numerous scandals.
Khan’s past political career is troubling to some and robust to others. After creating the PTI Party in 1996, he ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Parliament lower legislative house, National Assembly. In 2002, he won a seat, serving as the opposition member from the city of Mianwali until 2007.
Khan claims that he had been invited to be Prime Minister under President Pervez Musharraf’s government and to be Deputy Prime Minister by Nawaz Sharif, whose government was overthrown by Musharraf in 1999. He denied both respective roles, saying that he did not want to be tainted by corruption.
His strong anti-corruption platform is what made him so popular in Pakistan. After decades of dishonest politicians and Prime Ministers involved in bribery and fraud, the populist platform that Khan ran on, embedded with Islamic values and a sense of anti-corruption was a breath of relief to many Pakistanis.
Years of stealing, corruption and money laundering by Pakistan’s previous prime ministers have depleted the country of resources and in a state of economic crisis. His populist platform translated into attractive appeals to ordinary Pakistanis, many of whom were ridden by poverty due to the corruption by previous Prime Ministers.
After taking office in 2018, Khan set out to stabilize the economy. This included a $6 billion bailout by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) –– a rescue plan that Khan had opposed, but then later embraced after Pakistan’s soaring deficit hit an existential crisis in 2019.
Khan has been the most stable prime minister in Pakistan’s history, and it seems likely that he will finish a full term. His and the PTI government’s economic policies and effort to stabilize Pakistan was met with much fanfare after a controversial election.
However, the Pakistani hope for improvements in governance, the economy, living standards, and safety has been marred by the same government they strongly believed in. Khan’s government has perpetuated sexual violence, instigated minority discrimination, failed to protect the vulnerable during a global epidemic, and has thrusted the nation into yet another economic crisis. Now, even the government’s most ardent supporters are disappointed with the failures seen by PM Imran Khan’s government.
Sexual violence
Just this past week, Khan has come under fire for linking rape to how a woman dresses. In a televised address, the Prime Minister was asked about what action the his government was going to take to halt the disturbing increase in sexual violence against women in Pakistan. Khan, instead, pointed to women to do their part by wearing a purdah, the practice of concealing the entirety of oneself with clothing, an act commonly practiced by women of the Muslim and Hindu religions.
“What is the concept of purdah?” Khan asked. “It is to stop temptation. Not every man has willpower. If you keep on increasing vulgarity, it will have consequences.”
His baffling ignorance and victim-blaming to address the increasing gravity of the issue has spiked uproar in Pakistan. His government is under immense pressure to use the death penality as punishment for individuals convicted of rape.
Rape culture in South Asia is one of egregious concern. A culture of misogyny along with political discourse has subjected women to abhorrent sexual violence. There are few reliable statistics of rape in Pakistan because the crime is deeply underreported. Just last year, a mother was gang-raped on the side of the road while her children were forced to watch.
Rape and victim-blaming has become a crisis in Pakistan. There are detrimental dangers of living in Pakistan as a woman. Pakistan is a deeply conservative country where victims of sexual abuse are viewed with suspicion and as a result, criminal complaints, if made, are rarely investigated seriously. The country’s gender violence has become abominable enough for it to be consistently ranked among the worst places in the world for gender equality.
Much of the sexual violence can be traced back to lack of education. Toxic misogyny is embedded in South-Asian, or desi, culture. Desi culture teaches men to look at women as objects. Without proper sex education and a set standards on how to treat women, men grow up in a patriarchal society and don’t question their authority over women.
Pakistan’s government is also deeply infused and influenced by religion, specifcially conservative, orthodox Islam. Without the separation of church and state, conservative Muslims, like Khan, are able to incorrectly use religion as a means of restricting further access to sex education in schools.
Religious men in Pakistan erroneously use Islam to justify heinous crimes such as sexual violence, revenge-rape, or even murder towards women. Misogyny doesn’t actually exist in Islam, which is a religion of peace. Rather, the words and concepts of the religion––like the notion of a purdah–– are taken out of context, twisted, and misconstrued by leaders like Khan, to continue preserving the power-imbalance between men and women.
The Prime Minister has even gone onto blame rampant sexual crimes on Bollywood movies and rising divorces on porn, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. His ludicrous comments are even more ironic, given that Khan is himself a two-time divorcee.
The protest against sexual violence towards women and girls in December 2020. Photo Courtesy of the New York Times.
Khan’s repeated misogynistic comments have instigated the culture of victim-blaming even further.
Last year, Khan faced backlash for his inability to criticize a Muslim leader’s opinion that the coronavirus pandemic was caused by the wrongdoings of women. In 2018, Khan came under fire after stating that feminism degraded the role of a mother.
The appalling nature of rape culture is common knowledge in Pakistan, but is rarely discussed as it’s considered taboo. Knowing this, protecting women from sexual abuse and gender violence should have been at the top of Khan’s agenda. Khan’s government only decided to take action after a mass protest of thousands in Karachi, which was caused by a police official blaming a woman who was raped on a deserted highway.
It was in December of last year after the protest, where Khan’s government established a long overdue national sex offender database for Pakistan. People finally saw some policy change, aimed at protecting women, when the government passed a measure where men convicted of rape could be sentenced to chemical castration.
His casual sexist comments personify the depth of the ongoing sexual violence crisis in Pakistan. His remarks are often taken as truth by the uneducated masses of Pakistan and a continuation of such comments could even invigorate further indoctrination of misogynistic beliefs.
Minorities
Imran Khan’s government’s failure has also come in the form of their lack of ability to protect minorities in Pakistan.
Christians, Ahmadi Muslims, Hindus, Shia Muslims, and more are subjected to deadly attacks and violence on their communities due to Sunni Muslim nationalism in Pakistan. Minority groups that disagree with traditional Sunni Muslim religious beliefs can be prone to fatal attacks by radicalists. Khan has done little to nothing to protect these vulnerable groups.
Just a day before 2020 ended, a mob led by local religious leaders and Islamic clerics vandalised a century-old Hindu shrine in Karak district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). The mob, made up of more than 1,000 people, set the historical shrine on fire. The ferocity of the mob was brutal; the barbaric group didn’t even spare homes under construction owned by members of the Hindu community.
Khan’s administration and the police were silent spectators as the mob vandalised and destroyed the premises.
Police finally arrested 24 people for arson only after public pushes from the minority Hindu community and human rights activists. The incident causes Khan and his PTI administration international embarrassment, forcing his Minister of Religious Affairs, Noorul Haq Qadri, to condemn the attack.
Khan, the Prime Minister of a Muslim country, has also refused to condemn China for the genocide of Uighur Muslims out of fear of damaging relations with the country.
The minority Christian community faces violence and discrimination in Pakistan as well. In May of 2019, a 35 year-old Christian rickshaw driver, Sagheer Masih, was mugged, beaten, and forced to drink poison. He died as a result of the attack. There have also been incidents of mobs attacking churches, including one in Lahore during Christmas prayer services in December 2020.
An angry mob burns down 200 Christian homes in Lahore Pakistan, after a report that a Christian sanitation worker had blasphemed the Prophet Muhammad. Photo Courtesy of New York Times.
Harassment and violence is not only limited to non-Muslim minorities, but are also targetted at minority Muslim groups as well. The Shia Hazara Muslim minority faces the wrath of terrorist groups, sectarian groups, and the state. On January 4 of this year, 11 members of the Shia Hazara community working as coal miners were attacked in their sleeping rooms. The men were blindfolded and then executed by unidentified gunmen. The Islamic State claimed responsibility.
The community has been the target of extremists in Pakistan for three decades. As a result of the negligence and injustice, the families of the men brought the dead bodies out on the streets, sitting beside them in freezing cold weather to demand justice and protection. This protest lasted for four days, during which the families of the victims demanded a visit by the Prime Minister. Instead of offering sympathy and protection, Khan accused the group of blackmailing, and said he would not visit until the bodies were buried.
When Khan was newly-elected in September of 2018, he removed Atif Mian, a Princeton-graduated world-renowned economist from his advisory board because Mian belonged to the Ahmadi Muslim community. Khan was under pressure by religious political parties to remove Mian because he was Ahmadi.
The persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan is due to their unique Islamic views. Ahmadis believe that their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, is another Islamic prophet, or messenger. This sentiment contradicts the orthodox Islamic belief that Prophet Muhammad was the final messenger sent by God.
Unlike other Muslim countries, Ahmadis in Pakistan are prohibited from calling their place of worship a mosque, nor are they allowed to say the common Islamic greeting, “Assalamo Alaikum.” Ahmadi Muslims are not considered Muslims in the Pakistani Constitution. Furthermore, the group is singled out on any legal identification, including passports, and cannot hold positions in the government without publicly denouncing their founder.
Anti-Ahmadi legislations, or Pakistan’s version of Jim Crow laws, are draconian mandates for the nation’s millions of Ahmadi Muslims. This bigotted legislation influences Pakistani cultural and societal attitudes towards the group, leaving Ahmadi Muslims shunned by Muslims and vulnerable to extremists. Over 260 Ahmadis have been killed since 1984. The most recent attack in 2018 occurred in Faisalabad, where 30 were injured as a result of an Ahmadi mosque being burnt down.
Lack of governmental protection forces for minorities in Pakistan to live under a constant cloud of fear, as they have been discriminated against for decades. Even before Khan’s term, in 2015, Muslims of the Shia Ismaili sect were murdered after a gunman attacked a bus with all Ismaili passengers. 43 people were killed and 13 wounded.
The militant group Jundullah, which has attacked minorities before, claimed responsibility. The group has links with the Taliban and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in November of 2015. The Shia Ismaili community is one of the most peaceful religious minorities in the world.
While Imran Khan was not in office during this attack, he has had a concerning history of being sympathetic with the Taliban, and only believes that peace can be achieved with the militant group through diplomatic talks. He has even been branded as “Taliban Khan,” and went as far as saying Osama Bin Laden, the terrorist leader behind the 9/11 attacks, was “martyred.”
“I will never forget how we Pakistanis were embarrassed when the Americans came into Abbottabad and killed Osama Bin Laden, martyred him,” he said.
Minority discrimination has always existed in Pakistan. The only difference is that Khan likes to champion himself as the messiah of minorities, when the reality is that his government has failed to comply. The plight of minorities has not changed under Khan’s rule, and minorities continue to be demonised and exploited.
COVID-19 and Poverty
Imran Khan has failed at curbing the coronavirus crisis in Pakistan. His messaging has been ambiguous and unclear. In his first address to the country regarding the pandemic, he said that the virus was like the flu and that 97 percent of those infected would recover. What Khan did not realize was the 3 percent of cases that would not recover would scale up to thousands of deaths and three deadly waves of the virus.
In another address, Khan warned that the sick and elderly were in danger. This was directly contradicted by the Prime Minister’s special assistant on health, Dr. Zafar Mirza, who insinuated that younger people were in danger as well, and that the majority of cases in Pakistan were all linked to young people.
“Twenty-four percent of the confirmed cases in Pakistan so far are between 21 to 30 years of age,” warned Dr. Mirza. “This constitutes a majority of the cases. The pattern is unlike other countries where cases mostly comprise older people.”
Khan’s approach to the crisis has been timid. He has ignored experts who reported that physical distancing could stop the exponential spread of the virus and continued to hold in-person meetings, even after he tested positive for COVID-19. Khan also didn’t enact a national lockdown, citing how it would adversely affect the bottom 25 percent of the population who live in poverty.
His argument had no merit. Instead, the lack of a lockdown led to mass spread of the virus and in the end, the poor suffered the ramifications the most due to the absence of adequate medical facilities.
Rather than enacting a full government-led lockdown, he encouraged people to self-quarantine. In the end, provincial governments and Pakistan’s powerful military took the initiative to impose shutdowns in areas after Khan failed to take action. Limited testing capacity has also affected the ability to report the accurate amount of cases in the country. Reports indicate that Pakistan’s low rate of severe COVID-19 infections is due to low testing, and that the actual number of severe cases is far higher than recorded.
Lack of response to crises seems to be a trend in the Prime Minister’s term thus far. Prior to being elected, Khan vowed to respond to the acute issue of malnutrition in the country. He was critical of the previous administration’s mishandling of the problem. Yet, in the two years he has come to power, the Prime Minister has done little to ameliorate the situation.
Imran Khan has done little to eradicate child malnutrition in Pakistan. Photo Courtesy of the Deccan Herald.
Members of his own PTI Party are also concerned about the rising levels of malnutrition in children and the government’s lack of response.
“It seems the government is not paying attention to this important issue,” said Ishaq Khakwani, a PTI official. “If we do not take immediate measures to tackle it, around 50 percent of the country’s children might suffer from stunted growth and a large population of the country will be malnourished.”
Human rights activist and health expert, Said Alam Mehsud, cites that Pakistan’s “security state” model leaves little money in the budget for health and human development.
“We spend more on the military than on common citizens,” said Mehsud. “If we really want to tackle the issue of malnutrition, we need to substantially reduce our defense budget and increase the health budget — from the current 2% to at least 10%. It is crucial to transform this country.”
The Economy
When looking at the economy, something Khan particularly prides himself on, what one sees is record inflation in the country, a falling growth rate, and a currency losing its value. The pandemic has pushed Pakistan into another dire economic crisis. It has projected to bring Pakistan’s gross-domestic-product (GDP) growth down to 0.98 percent, contrasting the 5.8 percent GDP growth in 2018 when Khan took office.
Prior to the pandemic, the country’s economy continued to suffer incessantly. Since Khan was elected in 2018, Pakistan’s growth rate has fallen by almost 50 percent, from 6.2 percent to 3.3 percent. In 2019, the Pakistan rupee lost a fifth of its value against the dollar. Inflation was also at 10.58 percent in 2019, a 5.5 percent increase from the previous year.
The increase in scandals, country-wide violence, incompetence to handle the COVID-19 crisis, and non-existent economic recovery poses the following question: Has Prime Minister Imran Khan actually done anything worthwhile?
Imran Khan’s failed policies depict how desperate Pakistan is for real leadership. Yet perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Prime Minister’s influence is the fact that Khan’s supporters blindly believe and practice what he says. His cult-like persona gives him massive status and dangerous power to influence many non-educated Pakistanis. Therefore, his claims of revitalizing the economy, his sexist values and comments, his belief that Pakistan was successful in combating COVID-19, and the lack of increased security for minorities gain massive attention and a truth-like status to his supporters in Pakistan.
The absences of rigorous action by his administration to address Pakistan’s most pressing issues is proof that Khan doesn’t stand for the social justice movements of women and minorities that many youth in Pakistan believe in. His government is not interested in solving these problems, but rather, he and his Party of power-hungry politicians leech on every opportunity to pry on minorities and women rather than take accountability for their own failures.
Imran Khan must listen to scientists, revoke religiously segregated policies, take action towards the deleterious violence against minorities and women, and start behaving like the competent Prime Minister he promised to be.
