Russia visit, Chinese investment work against Pakistan's Imran Khan as calls for ouster grow

More than three years after ushering Prime Minister Imran Khan into office, Pakistan's military-led establishment is under pressure to tacitly back a combined opposition move to overthrow the former cricket superstar.

"The army's role remains front and centre to Pakistan's domestic politics," said Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace, a Washington think tank.

"The ruling party is trying to retain the support of the military, whereas the opposition is trying to drive a wedge and compel the military into a neutral position," he said.

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Considered the arbitrator of Pakistan's nominally democratic political dispensation, the military could ensure Khan's demise by remaining a neutral observer of Tuesday's no-confidence move, said Najam Sethi, an eminent political commentator based in Lahore.

Because of constitutional vagaries, the move against Khan could take several weeks to play out, he said - especially if the speaker of Pakistan's National Assembly connives with the prime minister to delay or manipulate the voting process.

The military may yet intervene to save Khan's administration, Sethi said, but there is no sign of a rescue mission so far because the military is fed up with taking flak for the poor governance record of Khan's administration.

The Khan administration's mismanagement of Pakistan's economy - in particular its inability to curb persistent double-digit inflation of consumer prices - has made it deeply unpopular with the electorate.

"The military's own calculus may have shifted due in part to the backlash to Imran Khan's poor performance and widespread perception of his 'selection' by the generals in the 2018 election," said Washington-based analyst Mir.

Another significant factor in the military's thinking is the collateral damage inflicted on Pakistan's international partnerships by Khan's populist bombast, analysts said.

It is unclear if the military advised Khan against undertaking a visit to Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin on the day Russia invaded Ukraine.

But Pakistan is now under mounting pressure from the West as a direct consequence of the trip.

Upon his return from Moscow, Khan claimed he had negotiated natural gas and wheat purchases from Russia.

Pakistan, meanwhile, abstained from taking part in United Nations' votes to censure Russia, further angering the West and its allies.

The ambassadors of all European Union member states, Britain, Japan and Australia on March 1 wrote an open letter to Khan, demanding that Pakistan support the diplomatic alliance against Russia.

The United States also conveyed its displeasure to Islamabad through regular diplomatic channels, the State Department said.

Khan responded bombastically to the ambassadors' letter in an Urdu-language speech delivered at a political rally in a small town on Sunday.

"What do you think of us? Are we your slaves ... that whatever you say, we will do?" Khan said.

However, his claim about striking Russian gas and wheat deals appear to be false, analysts said.

"An isolated Putin played having Imran Khan over and we are happy at having been played," said Abbas Nasir, a London-based Pakistani analyst and former Asia-Pacific executive editor for the BBC World Service.

"All the so-called deals Pakistan is supposed to have signed in Moscow are a figment of the government spin doctors' imagination. There is nothing on the ground to support those claims," he said.

The military has controlled foreign policymaking for decades, but in recent years has repeatedly had to act to mitigate the damage caused by Khan's tendency to go off-script.

"Under Khan, Pakistan's foreign relations have suffered. The trendlines with the West were negative before he came in and after a brief improvement in ties with the US under Trump, Pakistan's ties with the West have steadily deteriorated," Mir said.

Parallel to Khan's posturing, his aides have propagated a conspiracy theory that the West was behind the no-confidence move against his government, a claim Nasir said was "daft".

The West's major bone of contention with Islamabad is the estimated US$60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a programme of Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative, he said.

CPEC provides Beijing with its sole overland access route to the Arabian Sea via the Chinese-operated port of Gwadar.

But the CPEC programme "has more or less stalled" since Khan assumed office in 2018, "so why would the West do any such thing?" Nasir said.

"I think Pakistan's foreign policy is all over the place and being run on a whim."

The generals are seeking to diversify Pakistan's international partnerships. But they also want to normalise Pakistan's relations with perennial enemy India, and to rebuild trust with the US broken by Islamabad's covert support for Afghanistan's Taliban.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's military is increasingly mired in a dramatic resurgence of terrorist attacks staged by militants based in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iran.

Militant separatists in Balochistan province have shocked the government and Pakistani public opinion with a recent series of audacious sophisticated attacks against paramilitary forces and police patrols in Western Balochistan province, which houses Gwadar port.

The Islamic State's regional affiliate Isis-Khorasan (Isis-K) has also recently unleashed a campaign of lethal attacks, including the suicide bombing of a festival in Balochistan on Sunday carried out just 30 minutes after Pakistan's President Arif Alvi left the venue.

The regional security and terrorism landscape "is only getting more complicated" Mir said.

"Dealing with these issues would require more than [just a] replacement for Khan."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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