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Tuesday March 19, 2024

‘I will return’

By Ghazi Salahuddin
November 06, 2022

Sitting in a wheelchair and wearing a deep blue hospital gown, Imran Khan held forth from his hospital room on Friday evening as if he were on the container or addressing a rally. And for the most part, it was the same drill: a catalogue of the conspiracies that were hatched by his adversaries to oust him from power in April.

But he did present his own version of what happened in Wazirabad on Thursday when an attempt was made on his life as he led his long march. Shots were fired at him and though he miraculously survived, he was wounded in his legs. One PTI supporter was killed and 14 persons, including lawmakers of the party, were injured.

The gist of it was that he would return to the streets as soon as he recovered from his injuries. This means that there is to be a sequel to the long march that was halted at Wazirabad. Meanwhile, he directed his party to continue with protest demonstrations until the resignations of the three persons he has nominated for planning his assassination.

He insisted that it was a plan he had previous knowledge of. Rejecting the theory that the person arrested for allegedly shooting at him was a lone wolf, he said that firing was done from two directions.

While it was good to see that the PTI leader was safe and well, though with his right leg fully bandaged, the eagerly awaited address did not make it any easier to understand what had happened and to make sense of the overall drift in the context of Imran Khan’s obstinately confrontational stance. He wants his revolution, either through the ballot or the bullet.

Ominously, there were intimations of bloodshed during the march. Faisal Vawda, an unlikely PTI rebel, was quite graphic in his ‘prophesy’ that the march would result in blood being shed and lives being lost. One can say that Imran Khan decided the date for the march after the murder of Arshad Sharif in Kenya, pointing his finger towards the establishment. The incident became the catalyst for his campaign.

The march was jinxed from the outset. It proceeded in fits and starts, shutting down during nighttime. Then, reporter Sadaf Naeem was crushed under the wheels of the PTI container on Sunday. Was it akin to that ‘ides of March’ warning that was whispered by a soothsayer to Julius Caesar during his triumphant march? Anyhow, there were two more accidental deaths. Even otherwise, the march was seen to have not drawn the crowds that the PTI would have expected, considering the buildup of Imran Khan’s ceaseless rallies that received more media coverage than Pakistan’s unprecedented floods.

Naturally, the assassination attempt on Imran Khan has shaken the country. It has triggered a new cycle of disorder because the PTI has launched a protest movement that is potentially violent. The party has taught its workers to be aggressive in their behaviour. We are seeing them demonstrating in the major cities.

Soon after Imran Khan was rescued from the container, a person of the status of Fawad Chaudhry was shouting for revenge, which amounted to exhorting the workers to have it out with their political opponents in a violent manner. A minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa raised a Kalashnikov and threatened Rana Sanaullah.

This defiance should have consequences in the light of the open hostility between the establishment and the PTI. Consequently, Imran Khan has also become more belligerent towards the establishment.

However, I detect great significance in the confession of the alleged shooter and what it portrays as the state of our society. This person, Mohammed Naveed, told the police that he had acted alone and he wanted to kill Imran Khan because music was played during the march at the time of prayers. In another video, he made even more serious allegations against Imran Khan. He had reportedly listened to recorded lectures by Dr Israr and had videos in his phone of TLP Chief Saad Rizvi.

Close your eyes and picture that face in your mind. Do we know how many of them are out there? And all the power of the state, with all its pomp and glory, has to bend before them when they, for instance, lynch a person on suspicion of committing blasphemy. Religious extremism and fanaticism have been nurtured by our rulers through their policies.

Imran Khan too, for that matter, has appeased religious extremism. He is guilty, like many of the rest, of using religion in his politics. There may be other factors in Naveed’s life that led him to this vile act, of which he is so proud. Consider the circumstances in which he was raised, becoming a religious zealot and also a drug addict.

Pakistan’s history is replete with assassinations and attacks on rallies. Let me only mention how Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on Dec 27, 2007 in Rawalpindi. Earlier, she had survived a midnight carnage – suicide bombings – when she arrived in Karachi on October 18, the same year.

By the way, Imran Khan wrote an article in The Telegraph of London, on October 21, 2007, with this title: ‘Benazir Bhutto has only herself to blame’. On Friday, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said that Imran Khan was himself to blame for the attempt on his life.

One wonders if more assassination attempts and more violence on the streets are in the offing. We should be afraid of our future. Now, let me conclude with this John Lennon quotation: “The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humour.”

The writer is a senior journalist. He can be reached at: ghazi_salahuddin@ hotmail.com