JUNAID KATHJU
Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan visits earthquake victims at a hospital in Mirpur in Kashmir on Sept. 30, 2019. Many Kashmiris believed Khan was their best bet in negotiating with India to find a solution to the Kashmir crisis. (PAKISTAN PRIME MINISTRY/HANDOUT/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES).
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 2023, pp. 42-43
Special Report
By Junaid Kathju
THE ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in a corruption case has angered many in Indian-administered Kashmir. A resident of Srinagar’s Habba Kadal area, Ghulam Mohammad, 70, said he was in disbelief at seeing the turn of events in a country that claims Kashmir in its entirety and has been supporting a struggle for self-determination on the Indian side. Mohammad said it was the second time in the past year he felt anguished after seeing the popular leader being “ill-treated” which he believes “Khan doesn’t deserve.”
“I am at a loss for words. I don’t know what to say any more,” he said, sitting in his small room on the second floor of his house and watching the updates from Pakistan on his mobile phone. This time, though, Mohammad was mentally ready to see the action against Khan without endangering his health.
That wasn’t the case last year. On the evening of April 10, 2022, soon after Khan was removed as prime minister after he lost a vote of no confidence in parliament, Mohammad complained of chest pain and was rushed to a hospital where the doctors said he had suffered a “mild heart attack” due to stress. “I got very upset when I heard that Khan had been removed from office,” Mohammad explained.
ANGER OVER KHAN CRACKDOWN
Khan, who served as prime minister between 2018 and 2022, was charged in nearly 150 cases after his removal, including corruption and “terrorism.” The charges came after he blamed the country’s powerful “establishment”—a euphemism for the powerful military which also dabbles in politics—for his removal.
Finally, after a series of court appearances and a brief arrest in May, a court in the capital Islamabad on Aug. 5 sentenced the 70-year-old cricketing legend-turned-politician to three years in prison in a case related to the non-declaration of gifts he received from foreign leaders and governments when he was the premier. Pakistan’s election commission also barred him from politics for five years due to his conviction. Khan has denied all the charges.
Khan’s Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Party says nearly 10,000 of its leaders and supporters have also been arrested in the government crackdown since May, while dozens of top PTI leaders have quit the party, reportedly under pressure from the military.
Mohammad, who describes himself as an avid political observer, said that Khan’s approach toward India on the Kashmir issue was the most striking thing about him. “I believe if Khan would have continued as a prime minister and Modi [India’s prime minister] would have shown some flexibility, the resolution of the Kashmir issue could have been possible,” he said.
Mohammad is not alone in thinking along these lines in Indian-administered Kashmir, where pro-Pakistan sentiment is rampant. A decades-old rebellion against New Delhi there seeks to either merge with Muslim-majority Pakistan or form an independent state.
Many Kashmiris remember Khan’s first address as prime minister in 2018 when he urged India to “take one step forward, we [Pakistan] will take two” in resolving the dispute. The call was well received in Indian-administered Kashmir and many residents saw a rare glimpse of hope.
Months later, a new and unprecedented misfortune struck the region. On Aug. 5, 2019, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government unilaterally abrogated the region’s special status guaranteed by the Indian constitution and brought the country’s only Muslim-majority region under direct federal control. The move forced Pakistan, led by Khan’s government, to downgrade diplomatic and trade ties with India, which have not yet been restored.
Meanwhile, a series of laws and policies imposed by New Delhi to further tighten its grip over Indian-administered Kashmir have worsened the already tense relations between the two South Asian nuclear powers.
But many in the region still believe Khan was their best bet in negotiating with India to find a solution to the Kashmir crisis.
In an interview in June this year with the Atlantic Council, a prominent United States-based think tank, Khan said despite India’s 2019 move, the then-Pakistan government headed by him was working on a “peace proposal with India” that would have seen New Delhi announce “some sort of road map” for the Kashmir issue and could have also led to a visit by Modi to Pakistan.
“[There] was supposed to be a quid pro quo. India was supposed to give some concessions, give some sort of a road map to Kashmir, and I was going to host Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi in Pakistan. But it never materialized. So it never went further than that. That’s how it was,” Khan said.
FEELINGS TOWARD PAKISTAN HAVE CHANGED
The Himalayan territory of Kashmir has been the subject of a bitter dispute between Hindu-majority India and mainly Muslim Pakistan since 1947, when the borders of the two countries were drawn along religious lines by the departing British colonial rulers.
Since then, the two countries have fought two of their full-scale wars over Kashmir. Tens of thousands of people have been killed since an armed rebellion against Indian rule began in 1989.
New Delhi accuses Islamabad of backing the rebels with weapons, money and training. Islamabad denies the charges, saying it only provides diplomatic support to the rebel movement.
But the crackdown against Khan and his party has angered many Kashmiris.
“I am stunned to see this face of Pakistan. I never expected that its army could be so brutal against its own people. My thoughts toward Pakistan have completely changed after seeing what has happened with Imran Khan and his party,” said Irfan, a 27-year-old shopkeeper from the Rajbagh area of Srinagar.
Pakistan’s military has organized several coups and directly ruled over the country for more than three decades. Many observers call it the most powerful institution in Pakistan, which had even backed Khan during his rise to power. But the relations soured when Khan was in power, resulting in his eventual overthrow.
Irfan now says Pakistan is the most “corrupt country where the army holds the ultimate power. These days you can’t hide things. With social media, you come to know about everything. The way police are arresting and humiliating women and the media is being muzzled, it feels like Kashmir,” he said.
Khan’s rise to fame in Kashmir is largely attributed to him portraying himself as an anti-corruption crusader.
“What have Nawaz Sharif [former prime minister of Pakistan] or [former president Asif Ali] Zardari done for us all these years apart from filling their own coffers and living luxuriously in European countries? They are all a bunch of corrupt people who looted Pakistan all these years,” Imran Hussain, owner of a Kashmiri handicraft business said.
Kashmiri political analyst and scholar Sheikh Showkat Hussain told Al Jazeera that although Kashmiris do feel negatively about Pakistan and its army after Khan’s imprisonment, it is Pakistan’s state policy on Kashmir that matters in the long run, not an individual’s approval or dislike.
“The political and economic stability of Pakistan has always been a factor in orienting Kashmir politics. But ultimately it is the Pakistan state’s narrative that prevails over here [in Kashmir],” Hussain concluded.
Junaid Kathju is a Kashmir-based freelance journalist. This is an excerpt from a longer article published on Al Jazeera.com 0n Aug. 9, 2023. Reprinted with permission.