Pakistan Considers Banning Imran Khan’s Party After Failing to Keep Him in Jail

Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said on Wednesday that his government is considering a ban on Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the political party of Imran Khan.

The government has tried and failed to imprison Khan on several occasions, as mobs of PTI members rioted to protect him from being arrested. 

Khan is campaigning for prime minister and has demanded early elections, while the government of current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif increasingly views him as a subversive who is trying to evade justice for the many corruption charges outstanding against him.

“It is under consideration to ban PTI,” Asif said at a press conference on Wednesday. “The PTI has attacked the very basis of the state, that never happened before. It can’t be tolerated.”

Asif was referring to the riots that erupted after Khan was arrested on May 9 in a paramilitary operation at the High Court in Islamabad, where he was appearing for testimony on one of his corruption cases. 

The influential Pakistani military was especially outraged that rioting Khan supporters damaged military buildings. Khan claims the attacks on military assets were false-flag operations conducted by impostors who wanted to turn the army against his party.

Pakistan’s Express Tribune noted on Wednesday that PTI is in a state of disarray due to a string of arrests and resignations, which Khan portrays as an effort by the Sharif government to smash PTI before Khan has a chance to win re-election:

Rioters now face trials in military courts, while PTI leaders face repeated arrests and raids at their residences.

Moreover, in a confusing political situation marked by arrests, releases, and rearrests, the PTI leaders are seemingly caught in a revolving door as they continue to quit the party and politics, leaving people and pundits constantly perplexed.

It seems their spirits are being broken by a relentless cycle of arrests and rearrests from prison gates. It took five rearrests for senior PTI leader Dr Shireen Mazari to abandon her resilient spirit and leave the political stage on Tuesday evening.

At least 19 senior PTI leaders have been arrested since May 9, some of them more than once. A few of these leaders have resigned from the party, and while some clearly indicated they were resigning under pressure and feared for their lives, others resigned in disgust over PTI’s actions to protect Khan.

The Express Tribune offered a list of 24 PTI departures as of Tuesday:

The most prominent figure to exit the party so far is former federal minister Dr Shireen Mazari, a senior leader within PTI. Mazari, who had been detained for over a week despite court orders for her release, announced her departure from both the party and politics altogether, citing family reasons.

Joining Mazari in parting ways with PTI is Abdul Razaq Khan Niazi, a former PTI Member of Provincial Assembly (MPA) from Khanewal. In a press conference, Niazi condemned the attacks on military installations and suggested that such actions could not have occurred without the support of the party leadership. He further claimed that the events of May 9 had brought joy to India, insinuating a connection between the PTI’s actions and India’s interests.

Former Punjab information minister Fayazul Hassan Chohan, Makhdoom Iftikharul Hassan Gillani, a former MPA from Bahawalpur, and Mian Jaleel Ahmed Sharaqpuri from Sheikupura have also formally announced their departure from the party.

Other PTI leaders are reportedly on the verge of resigning or switching parties, including two who are currently in prison over the May 9 violence.

On Wednesday, police in Khan’s hometown of Lahore submitted a list of 746 PTI officials who should be banned from foreign travel for at least the next month, so they do not flee prosecution. All of them are accused of fomenting or participating in the riots on May 9, based on surveillance camera footage, video clips posted to the Internet, and other intelligence. Imran Khan’s nephew Hassaan Niazi is on the list.

Punjab minister Fayazul Hassan Chohan quit PTI on Tuesday with a fiery press conference in which he railed at Khan for endorsing a “policy of violence,” and accused Khan of showing a “lack of sympathy” toward PTI members who were uncomfortable with Khan’s criticism of the Pakistani military.

“There was no one who could make Imran Khan understand that politics should be done with patience and tolerance,” he lamented.

“I tried to make Imran Khan understand that we are Quaid-e-Azam’s followers, and told him to halt this conflict against the state and institutions,” Chohan said. He accused Khan of freezing him out of important decisions because “someone had told Imran that I support the Army a lot.”

Quaid-e-Azam, which means “Great Leader,” is a term of reverence for Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of the modern Pakistani state, which was partitioned from India in 1947. Jinnah was noted for encouraging unity among Pakistan’s notoriously factional and often bitterly divided populace. Choan was effectively saying that the Great Leader would not have approved of Khan’s apparent strategy to burn the country down so he can return to power – or, in a less idealistic interpretation, that Khan was foolish to pick a fight with the Pakistani Army.

Khan said on Tuesday that all of these PTI leaders have been pressured into turning against him by the Sharif administration.

“People are not leaving the party on their own, they are being forced to do so, and that too at gunpoint,” he told journalists while appearing at a session of the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) in Islamabad. 

Khan dismissed the importance of the PTI leadership resignations and claimed he was mostly “worried about the workers, and especially the women” who could be arrested for demonstrating on his behalf.

The ATC is considering whether or not to extend Khan’s protective bail, which would prevent him from being arrested for many of his pending corruption accusations. Khan’s lawyers argued that appearing in court puts his life in jeopardy – he claims assassins from the Pakistani intelligence service have infiltrated courthouses and are standing by to murder him – so Khan should be allowed to “answer every question” from his home.

Khan took the stand at the ATC on Tuesday and repeated his allegations that the Sharif government is trying to kill him. He portrayed his arrest on May 9 by the paramilitary Pakistan Rangers as a botched assassination attempt.

“The interior minister even admitted on Monday that there was a threat to my life. Every time I leave the house, I put my life in danger,” he complained.

Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said on Monday that the government has enough evidence to ban PTI as a terrorist organization. He claimed Khan recruited 250 trained Afghan fighters to join the crowd of supporters protecting his house in Zaman Park. Pakistan is constantly worried about terrorism from Afghanistan.

Sanaullah did indeed say that Khan needed security protection “as per law,” but he also said the “same security” forces will immediately arrest Khan “once his bail expires on the 25th of June.”

The interior minister said Khan is a suspect in “more than two dozen cases including rioting, instigating violence, and armed attacks on the federation.”

“How can a person having mischievous agendas and complete disregard for moral and democratic values head a political party in a democratic system? He even stamps his opponents as traitors and Yazeed. It’s a moment of reflection for the whole nation,” Sanaullah said. 

“Yazeed” can be a serious insult in Islam, more or less synonymous with “traitor,” depending on the context and user. Khan’s supporters often use the term to denounce the lawmakers who pushed him out of office with a vote of no confidence in April 2022, while Khan’s critics sometimes hurl the insult at him.

The UK Guardian said on Wednesday that Khan and PTI are gaining support among young Pakistanis, and his ability to inspire – or, according to his detractors, secretly organize – street protests remains formidable. 

“The youth are following Khan; he is fighting for us and our future. Khan might have done some corruption but not like the politicians who have done it for decades,” a student at the University of Karachi told the Guardian, tacitly acknowledging that not all of the hundred or so corruption cases pending against him are fabricated, as Khan charges.

“Khan does not come from a political dynasty and he does not want to build any dynasty. He is in politics to save us from these corrupt families,” said another young supporter.

The Guardian wondered if Khan knew what he was doing by pitting himself against the powerful military, because young voters are weary of the military’s influence over politics and they respond well to Khan’s populist speeches. 

Those young voters, plus religious conservatives drawn by Khan’s shift from playboy sports star to hardline Islamist and anti-Americans willing to believe he was driven from office by a U.S.-orchestrated conspiracy, might be enough for Khan to win the early elections he constantly demands. If the Sharif government tries to ban Khan and his party from politics, a showdown with his devoted followers seems inevitable.