This is not the first time that PTI chief Imran Khan has lashed out on Pakistani liberals, alongside exposing his absolute ignorance about what Pakistani liberals stand for. Ever since he made a conscious decision choosing his way of politics back in late 1990s, the poor guy has found himself on the wrong side of liberals. It is natural then that he would spare no opportunity to spit his deep-rooted loathe and contempt for them.
In his recent comments, Khan got carried away and started bragging about his education in the United Kingdom. He said that he had studied at the country from where ideologies like liberalism have come from. John Locke, he’s right, was a British empiricist known as the father of liberalism. But anyone who is familiar with his works would also know that he is equally important to the social contract theory, which is concerned with the question of legitimate authority of the state and its responsibility towards citizens. The social contact theorists posit that citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the state (to be exercised through the decision of the majority), in exchange for the protection of their remaining rights. This might be too complicated for our simpleton politician, so put simply: pressing the state to fulfill its obligations is part and parcel of classic liberalism that originated in the country where Mr. Khan spent 20 years.
Apart from these dense academic arguments – since the average contemporary politician in Pakistan doesn’t seem to be capable of absorbing such concepts -some recent memories can be refreshed to show why Pakistani liberals often find themselves on the other end of Imran Khan’s smoking gun.
Political liberals – as opposed to social liberals who’re not much bothered about state’s regressive political and strategic policies – have been greatest critics of Pakistan’s national security paradigm as well as political adventurism of the powers-that-be and constant meddling in politics by the deep state to completely dominate the public policy and societal narratives. Unfortunately, Mr. Khan is always found appeasing the deep state on pretty much every single aspect of their strategic, political and social engineering projects.
In 2009, he took a position against the operation in Swat at a time when Mullah Fazlullah and Sufi Mohammad were playing havoc with people’s lives, closing down girls’ schools, suspending formal judicial system, persecuting religious minorities and attacking law enforcement agencies and the armed forces. Liberals had supported a decisive action against the terrorists so the people and the security forces could be spared of the daily bloodshed.
Then in 2012, Mr. Khan endorsed terrorism in Afghanistan committed by Afghan Taliban calling it holy war against what he called ‘foreign occupation forces’. In September 2013, he urged the government to allow TTP – a proscribed terrorist organisation that had mercilessly killed our jawaans apart from killing thousands of Pakistanis in hundreds of suicide bombing attacks all over the country – to open an office on Pakistan’s soil so the dialogue process could be facilitated. Little did he know that the government and the armed forces had done more than a dozen peace talks with these terrorists starting with the 2004 Shakai Peace Agreement, which had invariably ended up providing more space to the terrorist organisations by buying time to reorganise and train.
On the other hand, Mr. Khan had unequivocally supported the Zarb-e-Azb operation in 2014 that continued without any transparency. A year latter in 2015, he wholeheartedly supported Karachi operation by the Rangers and rather demanded similar operation in Lahore in August 2016. At no point did Khan express any concern about the carpet bombings in Waziristans or in Balochistan, extrajudicial killings, mutilated bodies and illegal detentions by security agencies in Karachi, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Rather, he was quite vocal in supporting a senior police officer in Karachi who is known for extra judicial killings.
Between 2007 to 2013, when the American drone programme – credited with killing several key Taliban and Al-Qaida commanders – was at its peak, Mr. Khan kept criticising these strikes. As opposed to a blanket endorsement of drone strikes – as Mr. Khan wrongly claims – liberals’ position on the programme had stressed the need for greater transparency in target identification, clarity on legality of these strikes, and guarantees for zero collateral damage.
Liberals preferred precision strikes over carpet bombings of villages (that was pretty much the case during the Khan-endorsed Zarb-e-Azb operation). In those days, terrorists residing comfortably in the mountainous region were involved in widespread incidents of bloodletting across the length and breadth of Pakistan. Liberals favoured action against these terrorists but they also sought legal cover, transparency, accountability, and protection of human rights by minimal collateral damage.
This too, proved to be a bit complicated to be understood by our simpleton politician as is evident from his recent statement.
In the recent sit-in in Islamabad, Pakistani liberals wanted the state to fulfill the social contract that it has with law-abiding and peaceful citizens to safeguard their lives, property and rights to movement and peaceful living. All of these were being threatened by the violent mob that beat up policemen, media and passersby, alongside burning down whatever was coming their way. Someone needs schooling in liberal values and state’s responsibility.
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