It was perhaps sometime after Imran Khan Niazi’s ouster as Prime Minister of Pakistan when the party leadership concluded that the time had come to openly confront and malign the institution that had brought them to power in the first place i.e Pakistan’s military establishment. The party had a large, enthusiastic, tech and social media savvy team at their disposal and they understood the impact that catchy slogans and sharp one liners on twitter could make. Once the go ahead was given, the PTI social media brigade got to work and used every possible medium ruthlessly and very very successfully to propagate their leader’s narrative. Both the new rulers and the military establishment were made to look totally impotent against the avalanche of propaganda and downright abuse that was to follow and has continued unabated for the months that have followed. Nothing like this had ever been experienced before in Pakistani politics and neither the PDM nor the so called establishment seemed to have a clue as to how best they could respond to it. The battle for hearts and minds had already been won by the PTI and it was time to go for the kill. For IK the only way was to use his immense popular appeal and hound the incumbent government out of power by the use of sheer street power. He had built his narrative on an entirely baseless and thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory and laced it with a very massive dose of faith. It was a foolproof formula. His followers had not only bought into the narrative, they had actually added a few versions of their own, all of which were now being openly propagated on social media and being gleefully lapped up by the believers. IK gave a call to his followers to converge on the capital on the 25th of May and to force the incumbent government out of power by laying siege to Islamabad. Unfortunately for them, they were up against Rana Sanaullah, the interior minister, who carried many old grudges and he wasn’t about to hold back. The PML N leadership had made it very clear to the military establishment that they should either rein in the PTI or get out of the way. The establishment adopted a wait and see policy which effectively gave Rana Sana carte blanche. PML N had the added advantage of controlling the provincial government in Punjab courtesy of the defecting members of the PTI which gave them leverage over the provincial police. They were to use both federal and provincial powers to maximum effect. Many thousands of PTI supporters paid heed to their leader’s call. Despite roadblocks and Punjab police using every underhand tactics to stop people from reaching Islamabad, a substantial number made it into the capital. The government responded with brute force.Despite early morning court orders obliging the authorities to allow the protest to go ahead peacefully in designated areas, the damage was done. It became a game of brinkmanship and almost inevitably it was IK who blinked first. By the time Khan arrived in Islamabad, the battle for the capital had already been lost. IK made a brief appearance and after giving an ultimatum to the government to resign in 6 days or else he would return with even greater numbers, he went back to his power base of Peshawar from where he did not emerge for several days after. That ultimatum was never to materialise. The very tame end to that sorry episode had given enough breathing space to both the incumbent government and the Establishment to regroup and strategise.

There were two very clear outcomes from the 25th of May episode: Firstly that despite IK’s enormous popular appeal the followers had not come out in the expected huge numbers and secondly when it came to the crunch IK bottled up. This habit of his had been evident from past history and more than a few examples could be quoted here, but 25th of May made it glaringly obvious. This was about as much as the Establishment needed to know. They were no longer going to be blackmailed by Khan’s popular appeal. And while the campaign of vilification continued unabated, PDM and the Establishment started making strategies of their own. There was a hardening of attitudes and as proof that they were becoming less and less tolerant of PTI’s rhetoric, Khan’s senior aide Dr Shabaz Gill was arrested and allegedly tortured before being released on bail. Gill had earlier appeared on a PTI friendly TV channel and seemed to suggest that the rank and file within the military should rise up against the high command. For an army that prides itself on discipline and unity of command, this was a step too far.

And all the while, at least in public, PTI stuck to their conspiracy theory and catchy slogans such as “imported hukoomat namanzoor” and “haqeeqi azadi” became all the rage on social media as well as in the huge public gatherings that IK continued to muster throughout a scorchingly hot summer. Meanwhile the economy continued to tank and the country was hit by the worst floods in recent history. Neither of which seemed to make any difference to the machinations that were taking place, in public as well as in private. And it was in private that IK finally started to show his hands in the many secret meetings that took place between him, the now retired army chief General Bajwa and senior officials from the intelligence service. The meetings were mainly facilitated by the President Arif Alvi although others have also claimed to have arranged separate meetings, the veracity of whom cannot be confirmed. And it was in those private meetings that some sort of a consensus started to develop between IK and the military high command. For IK, the aim was always to have the next army chief of his choice. With his main benefactor Shuja Pasha now gone, he was banking on General Faiz Hameed as his man running the show once Bajwa was gone in November. General Faiz had a soft spot for IK and prior to IK’s removal from office, it almost sounded like a done deal that Faiz would be the next COAS. However as the time of Bajwa’s departure from office grew closer, and no clear signals were forthcoming regarding the successor being General Faiz, IK’s desperation started to grow. He had to cut a deal before Bajwa left. So on the one hand there was a softening of the rhetoric and on the other hand there were statements suggesting that PTI would’ve supported Bajwa’s extension had they been allowed to stay in power. Slowly but surely IK was coming to the realisation that Bajwa’s successor may not be his chosen man and therefore letting Bajwa continue would be the next best option until the next general elections which he remained confident of winning. Alongside that he was still under pressure from his support base to keep up the protests and revive the promised long march. Khan had, to all intents and purposes, become a prisoner of his own rhetoric. He was still smarting from the 25th of May debacle and he could not risk another failure. He needed a spark and that came as a result of the sad and tragic killing of the journalist Arshad Sharif, an ardent IK supporter, in Kenya. As per Kenyan police, Sharif’s killing was the result of mistaken identity as they were looking for a potential kidnapper in the same area where the car Sharif was traveling in came under fire. However the circumstances remain dubious and the the real reasons may never come to light given the refusal of Kenyan authorities to divulge any further information. The tragedy however gave IK the kind of impetus that he was looking for. As keen as he was to cut a deal with the military establishment, he had to keep up the pressure on to let them know he still held the upper hand. Sharif’s tragic killing gave him the raison d ‘etre and yet another long march was called. Meanwhile very clear signals had started to emerge from Rawalpindi suggesting that Bajwa was onboard with the extension idea and he had managed to convince at least some factions within the PML N that it would be the best option to get out of the impasse. There was to be another twist to the saga however with the shooting incident in Wazirabad. IK was rushed to his own cancer hospital Shaukat Khanum in Lahore after receiving bullet wounds in his lower legs and the long march was temporarily halted. But of course the long march in itself was a complete side show to what was going on behind the scenes. All the time that these meetings between Bajwa and IK had been taking place, there were also meetings taking place far away in London. And people in London were not entirely on board with the idea of Bajwa being given an extension. Everyone knows that the real power behind the throne and the man who still holds sway over the core support of PML N is Nawaz Sharif. And he was not enamoured with the idea, even though all indications are that PM Shahbaz Sharif had already conceded to Bajwa’s extension and the defence minister Khawaja Asif was also on board. But they had to get it past Nawaz himself. Rather mysteriously, Maryam Nawaz who had been PML N’s most vocal anti IK campaigner in Pakistan, had left for London some weeks ago and father and daughter had effectively set up a power base in London that was not being influenced by the shenanigans in Islamabad. And this is where the Bajwa extension idea became a non starter. Sharif had been humiliated by the generals more than once. He now smelt blood and he had found an ally in the greatest political fixer of them all, a certain Mr Asif Ali Zardari. Zardari’s advice to the Sharifs was very clear: an extension to Bajwa would be letting General Faiz through the backdoor and this must not be allowed to happen. Under any circumstances. The long march had lost steam and IK had no stomach for another showdown. This was the time to go for the jugular. NS called Shahbaz Sharif on an unscheduled trip to London following the climate summit in Egypt and he was followed by Khawaja Asif from Pakistan. It was a charged summit from what the people with inside knowledge have to say. There had been subtle hints from Rawalpindi about things getting out of control and possible Martial Law. The country was on the edge of default. Civil unrest was a very real possibility. An extension would take the sting away from Khan’s rhetoric, give the government some breathing space and allow them to get the economy back on track which would hopefully give them momentum to win the next elections. It would be a win win for everyone. Both AZ and NS stuck to their guns. The only person with the authority to appoint the next COAS would be the PM and there will be no extension for General Bajwa. As Shahbaz Sharif and Khawaja Asif returned to Islamabad, the name of the next COAS had already been decided and with that the fate of Khan’s long march was sealed. And to make things worse for Khan, Bajwa himself delivered the ultimate Coup de Grace. In his farewell speech he made it abundantly clear that the military had played a big role in political machinations pre 2020 but realised their mistake and now was the time to withdraw from politics altogether despite the pleas and veiled threats from IK. For the great Kaptaan, the game was well and truly over as far as using the long march as a means of leverage to bring about any potential change was concerned.

And so it was on the 26thof November, in a non descript suburb of Rawalpindi, not far from the place where it had once been decided to install Khan on the throne as a hybrid experiment, that he appeared on crutches and after a long and rambling speech full of the usual rhetoric but lacking any substance, he informed the people gathered that he was calling off the march onto Islamabad, while also promising to continue the fight until the last drop of his blood. It was the speech of a defeated man. A man who had tried every trick in the book to first try and cling on to power and then to try and get it back through threats, intimidation and backroom deals. In a last desperate bid to maintain the chaos, he announced that he would dissolve the two provincial assemblies under his control, ostensibly to force early elections, once he had consulted his party leadership and the provincial governments. It is a desperate act of a desperate man and quite bizarre in terms of timing, as he could have done exactly the same many months ago without having to resort to all the mayhem.

I find it bizarre also because i am almost 100% sure even now that IK would win a general election whenever they happen to be. He could also retain Punjab and KPK which would allow him a pretty firm grip on the centre even if he didn’t get the 2/3 majority. And therefore the only conclusion I can draw from the events of yesterday is that Khan carries a massive bruised ego which overrides any rational thought and leads him to make entirely rash decisions. I do hope, for his sake and for the sake of his millions of followers and for the country at large that at some point in the coming days and weeks he will take a cold hard look at the events of the past 6 months or so, tone down the rhetoric and allow constitutional norms to take precedence over his personal grievances. It would be the wisest decision he will ever make.