Why who becomes Pakistan PM matters to India

NEW DELHI: For years now, Pakistan's cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has trained his guns on opponent Nawaz Sharif, not just on the issue of corruption, but also majorly on his relations with India.


Khan has accused Sharif of "protecting India's interests", "speaking (Indian PM) Narendra Modi's language" and called him a "modern-day (British collaborator) Mir Jafar" for saying that Pakistani elements were indeed responsible for the 26/11 Mumbai attacks of 2008.

Sharif, meanwhile has urged that the 26/11 probe be expedited, held out an olive branch to India and even ecstatically hosted Modi when the latter made a surprise Christmas day stopover in Lahore in 2015 to wish him on his birthday and felicitate him for a family event.

On the face of it therefore, it appears that a win for a PML(N) candidate - Sharif's party, although he's banned from contesting - in Wednesday's general election in Pakistan would be a more favourable outcome for India than a win for Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party. However, there are more reasons than Sharif's bonhomie with Modi and Khan's antagonism toward India that make a PTI win not at all favourable for India.

A PTI win - with Khan becoming Prime Minister - will see a resurgent religious nationalism, as Khan's recent pro-blasphemy law statements have confirmed. Worse, Khan is widely seen as the PM candidate not just closest to the country's powerful army but actually preferred by that army to lead Pakistan.

Imran Khan, the changeling
The once-flamboyant playboy cricketer has come a long way from the time when he spoke against Islamic radicalism. His party's poor showing in the 2013 elections made him a changed man. He realised that his personal charisma and genuine incorruptibility were no longer enough. He desperately wanted to be PM. And for that, he had to change.

Political analysts in Pakistan point to that pivotal 2013 loss as the catalyst for Khan's shift toward overt Islamist ideology. It also marked his shift to a more army-friendly stance. Khan saw this two-pronged strategy as a sure-fire way to galvanise his chances of becoming PM.

Read also: Pakistan election live updates

Woo hardliners - in a resurgent Islamist Pakistan - and be nice to the army whose tacit support still influences swathes of Pakistanis in a country that has seen three military coups without much public resistance to them. That's a win-win for the army as well, as Sharif was a thorn in its side, especially on the issue of its support to terror elements both India and Afghanistan-focussed.

So, a win for Khan will see a renewed and vigorous targeting of India by hardline elements and a Pakistani army with a pliant PM who will be more than agreeable to the armed forces being complicit in actions by India-focussed terror groups like the (banned in name only) Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Not surprising then, that PTI recently sought and received the support of Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil. This man is the founder of the Harkatul Mujahideen , whom the US has classified a global terrorist for his involvement in dozens of terror attacks, as The News International reported.

There's more. News agency AFP reported that Khan's candidates are asking Pakistanis if they plan to vote for "the party who executed Mumtaz Qadri", whose picture PTI put on its banners. Qadri is the man who was hanged by the Nawaz Sharif government for assassinating Punjab governor Salman Taseer because he wanted to water down the country's strict blasphemy laws. In fact, AFP reported that Khan openly told clerics in televised comments that the PTI "fully" supports the blasphemy law "and will defend it".

This, along with Khan's regular statements supporting the Army, just doesn't bode well for India.

What the army would like
Michael Kugelman, deputy director and senior associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars think tank, said in a recent column for Al Jazeera that Khan has strongly signalled his willingness to work with the army.

"In a country where the military's tentacles extend deep into politics, such comments from civilian leaders who aspire to ascend to the top echelons of power should come as no surprise," wrote Kugelman.

Yet, Kugelman believes that given Khan's personality, "it's hard to imagine him happily ceding ground and giving in to the military". He thinks Sharif's brother Shahbaz, who now leads the PML (N), is likely to be a more pliant figure for the army.

What the army wants most, though, is a hung verdict in the elections, Kugelman wrote. Khan has averred that the PTI will not partner with the PML-N or the Bhutto clan's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) in the event of a coalition. If indeed Pakistan delivers a hung verdict both, the PML(N) and the PPP will be involved.

Then "...the military may well get what it wants", said Kugelman.

None of this is good for India. Sadly, it isn't for Pakistan either.