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--:-- Noel King: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm your host, Noel King.
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--:-- Noel King: 174 members have recorded their votes in favor of the resolution. Over the weekend, Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan lost his job. The country's parliament held a vote of no confidence despite his fervent attempts to stop it.
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--:-- Noel King: Has been passed by a majority of the total membership of the National Assembly. The new Prime Minister? Shahbaz Sharif.
--:-- Noel King: I am Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif. The brother of a three-time former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, and himself a three-time former Chief Minister of Punjab.
--:-- Noel King: Experience and family connections. But the story of how he got into office and how Imran Khan was removed, there is intrigue, there are allegations of conspiracy, and there is a U.S. president who maybe should call once in a while.
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--:-- Noel King: I'm Noelle King. That story's coming up on Today Explained.
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--:-- Noelle King: Support for Today Explained comes from BetterHelp.
--:-- Noelle King: Let me tell you a true story. Last weekend, I got an email from a listener who wanted to discuss their problems with me. And I said, look, I don't think that this is about me personally. At least I hope it's not.
--:-- Noelle King: Why don't you try BetterHelp.com slash Explained? Absolute truth.
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--:-- Madeeha Afsal: I'm Madeeha Afsal, a fellow at the Brookings Institution.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: She's been watching Pakistan carefully, like a lot of people, because a little over a week ago, then-Prime Minister Imran Khan gave a speech before a cheering crowd.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: He was holding two microphones, and he was speaking in earnest.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: At one point, he used the words in English, off the record.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: And then he took a folded piece of paper out of his breast pocket and he made an allegation.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Khan is claiming that the U.S. is part of a conspiracy to oust him, that the U.S. wanted regime change in Pakistan.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: The letter he was waving around, he called it a threat letter.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: But the letter is really a diplomatic cable written by a former ambassador of Pakistan to the U.S. about his meeting with the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: And the letter Khan says was written on March 7th, the day before Pakistan's opposition parties filed a motion of no confidence against Khan.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: But Khan claims that the letter basically says that the U.S. relationship with Pakistan depends on whether Khan stays in office or not.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: If Khan stays, the relationship will be bad.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: But if Khan were to leave office, and Khan claims here that the vote of no confidence was referenced, the relationship would be good again.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Did anyone actually see the text that was written on this letter?
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Pakistan's National Security Committee, basically the equivalent of the National Security Council, has been shown a text of that letter, but that's it.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Opposition parties, the public, have not seen that letter.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: And Khan claims it's because, you know, it's government protocol not to share these letters.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: But there are big questions about what the letter actually says.
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--:-- Noelle King: This is quite a big deal. You have the then-leader of a country saying that the United States wants him out of office and has conspired against him.
--:-- Noelle King: What does the United States say in response to this allegation?
--:-- Noelle King: The prime minister of Pakistan accused the U.S. of working with the opposition to remove him from power.
--:-- Noelle King: He just said that today.
--:-- Noelle King: What's the White House reaction?
--:-- Noelle King: The spokesperson literally said there is absolutely no truth to that allegation.
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--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Why was Imran Khan facing this crisis of confidence?
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: What happened?
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Essentially, the opposition party say that Khan came into power because he was the favored candidate of Pakistan's military and that they helped him along in the election.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: And they've been calling for his ouster since 2018.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: The reason all of this gained traction is because Khan had slowly, but increasingly so in recent months, lost the favor of Pakistan's military.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: And when that happens in Pakistan, that essentially means that, you know, a prime minister or a government's time can be really limited.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: How did he come to be prime minister in the first place?
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: What was the root of his popularity?
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Well, Imran Khan was an extremely popular cricket star.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Internationally renowned, he was the captain of Pakistan's cricket team, who took Pakistan to a pretty amazing World Cup victory in 1992.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: For cricket Pakistan, you know he was really revered.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: He then went into philanthropy.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: You know he formed a network of cancer hospitals named after his late mother that are considered to provide very good care and free care for the poor, which is unusual again in Pakistan.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: He entered politics in the late 1990s, kind of refashioning himself from this international playboy that he was to sort of a born-again religious politician.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Whether it's a cricket player, businessman or lawyer or anything, it surely has to depend on the individual.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: And in 2013, you know, his party became the third largest party in parliament.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Before that, power had always alternated between two major parties in Pakistan, and Khan's party was not significant.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Since he first started his party, Pakistan Tariq Insaf, 15 years ago, he has never been able to draw such large crowds.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: In 2013, he became a significant force politically and then became a politician and an opposition leader who really became a thorn in the side of Pakistan's major political parties, holding huge opposition rallies, clamoring for the ouster of then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Ironically, it's Sharif's brother who has now replaced Khan.
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--:-- Noelle King: What were the promises he made when he was running for office?
--:-- Noelle King: What did he say he would do?
--:-- Noelle King: Two major promises.
--:-- Noelle King: One was to root out corruption.
--:-- Noelle King: I assure you that you do not need rocket science here in Pakistan.
--:-- Noelle King: We only have to correct the system.
--:-- Noelle King: We have to bring an honest team that is accountable to itself.
--:-- Noelle King: Khan has railed against corruption his entire career.
--:-- Noelle King: Despite four governments being dismissed on corruption charges, only few people are held accountable.
--:-- Noelle King: The rest who are known crooks get away with it, come back to fight another election.
--:-- Noelle King: And against the two major political parties that have run Pakistan for much of the last few decades.
--:-- Noelle King: And then to build an Islamic welfare state was his second.
--:-- Noelle King: The founding fathers of our country wanted Pakistan to be what was called an Islamic welfare state.
--:-- Noelle King: Islamic welfare state.
--:-- Noelle King: Essentially what he means is, you know, he often looked to sort of Scandinavian countries to talk about, you know, their concept of a welfare state and then linked it to the initial days of Islamic rule in Saudi Arabia.
--:-- Noelle King: All the policies which we make in Pakistan are towards that end, to make it into a humane country where the government takes responsibility of the weaker section of its society.
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--:-- Madeeha Afsal: OK, so I see why he might be very popular. He's a celebrity. He's brought great honor to the country.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: And then he's saying, we are also going to take care of people who need care.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Did he keep his promises?
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: By and large, while there was progress on some of the promises he made, he was unable to deliver on all the expectations he set up.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Two of the three and a half years that he was in power were taken up by the pandemic.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: The pandemic is actually one of the places where Khan and his government actually did well.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Pakistan has not had the death rate of neighboring India, for instance, and of other countries with huge populations.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Pakistan is a country of 220 million.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: And part of the reason is because Khan said, look, we can't engage in a blanket lockdown.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: The poor will not be able to survive.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: And so he engaged in what are called smart lockdowns, essentially kept the country going while still shutting down key areas and key sectors, keeping the spread of the pandemic limited while not allowing the poor to starve, essentially.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: So that's one.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: He also launched a health insurance scheme, started from one province, has spread to others.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: And while there are problems with its implementation, it's good in theory.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: But the big thing that Pakistan needs are not these sort of smaller piecemeal schemes, but, you know, institutional change, you know, figure out how to shore up, you know, an ailing economy, figure out how to control inflation, to control unemployment.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Khan's economic team was not able to do this.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: So ultimately, it's his handling of the economy that made the common Pakistani really upset.
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--:-- Noelle King: OK, so some promises kept, some not.
--:-- Noelle King: A bad economy is bad for any leader.
--:-- Noelle King: That said, Imran Khan was ousted through a legal parliamentary procedure.
--:-- Noelle King: He was not ousted in a coup.
--:-- Noelle King: Pakistan has had coups before, and they are inevitably a sign of real instability in any country.
--:-- Noelle King: The fact that he was taken out through a parliamentary procedure, is that a positive?
--:-- Noelle King: Is that a good sign for this democracy?
--:-- Noelle King: It is.
--:-- Noelle King: And that is essentially the reason he was taken out through a no-confidence vote, becoming, by the way, the first prime minister in Pakistan to be ousted from power through a no-confidence vote.
--:-- Noelle King: That being said, it's still part of a long history of Pakistani prime ministers never lasting five years in office.
--:-- Noelle King: No Pakistani prime minister has lasted five years in office, and it's a parliamentary system, not one.
--:-- Noelle King: Not one.
--:-- Noelle King: And only two civilian governments in Pakistan have lasted full five-year terms and handed over power to the next civilian government.
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--:-- Madeeha Afsal: A lot of the analysis about what's happening in Pakistan right now focuses not just on Imran Khan and on the man who will replace him, but also on Pakistan's military.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: And this I think raises the question if we have a democratic country that holds democratic elections why does it matter what the military thinks about anything
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Right I mean I can totally understand why this is confusing
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: Essentially this is part of a really long cycle in Pakistan where prime ministers and civilian governments don't complete their terms in office precisely because they lose the support of or they fall out with Pakistan's military.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: In the past, it's been through sort of other means, right? coups in some instances, the president dissolving parliament in others.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: In this case, essentially what the military's lack of support for Khan meant was that the military had become ostensibly neutral when it came to Pakistan's politics.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: So it withdrew its support from Khan.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: It gave the space to the opposition.
--:-- Madeeha Afsal: It let the opposition do what they wanted to do to oust Khan.
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--:-- Noelle King: You have a situation in which a week ago, the prime minister of the country whips out a piece of paper and says, a vast international conspiracy is trying to take me down.
--:-- Noelle King: He did this right before he faced a vote of no confidence.
--:-- Noelle King: Do ordinary citizens of Pakistan look at this gentleman and say, you are out of your mind?
--:-- Noelle King: There's no vast international conspiracy. you didn't do good at your job.
--:-- Noelle King: Pakistan is incredibly polarized right now.
--:-- Noelle King: So I will say that Khan supporters look at this and say, oh, my God, what he's saying is totally right.
--:-- Noelle King: This is what is happening.
--:-- Noelle King: The other side, the opposition parties and their supporters are trying to play this down and arguing repeatedly that there is no international conspiracy.
--:-- Noelle King: But Pakistan has a long history of blaming other countries for what happens in Pakistan and, you know, pointing fingers at the U.S., also pointing fingers at India for what's happening in Pakistan.
--:-- Noelle King: This really lands.
--:-- Noelle King: Why, though?
--:-- Noelle King: India makes sense. Longtime rivalry there and also their neighboring countries.
--:-- Noelle King: Why is the United States involved in this narrative?
--:-- Noelle King: It really sort of took hold starting in the 1980s.
--:-- Noelle King: When the U.S. was involved in the region with the Soviet Afghan Jihad, the U.S., Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia were involved in helping fund, arm, train the Mujahideen to fight the Soviets in what was a covert war for the U.S.
--:-- Noelle King: In Pakistan, it was very much in sight.
--:-- Noelle King: and the U.S. left the region.
--:-- Noelle King: Once the U.S. left the region, Pakistan felt it had been abandoned.
--:-- Noelle King: And so there's a blame of everything that went wrong in the 90s was because of U.S. abandonment.
--:-- Noelle King: Then the narrative that took hold after 9-11 was that Pakistan allied with the U.S. in the war on terror, in helping the U.S. and Afghanistan, and Pakistan saw the blowback of that in the form of terrorist attacks, which killed tens of thousands of Pakistanis in Pakistan post 9-11.
--:-- Noelle King: Khan really seizes upon this narrative.
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--:-- Noelle King: As we've learned, the U.S. and Pakistan have a history.
--:-- Noelle King: But back in December, Joe Biden invited Imran Khan, along with a bunch of other world leaders, to a summit for democracy.
--:-- Noelle King: It was a whole deal.
--:-- Noelle King: Big names, a town hall for youth, panels on protecting human rights and fighting corruption.
--:-- Noelle King: China, very explicitly not invited.
--:-- Noelle King: Russia, very explicitly not invited.
--:-- Noelle King: Pakistan was invited, but Imran Khan didn't go, which Mediha Afzal of Brookings says might have something to do with the fact that Joe Biden has not called Imran Khan in, you know, more than 14 months in office.
--:-- Noelle King: You know who had been calling, meanwhile?
--:-- Noelle King: Putin, meanwhile, called Khan three times since August.
--:-- Noelle King: and, you know, invited Khan to visit.
--:-- Noelle King: Pakistan then felt it could not refuse that trip.
--:-- Noelle King: The Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent and Pakistan's trip was coming up.
--:-- Noelle King: Many advised Pakistan's foreign office to cancel the trip.
--:-- Noelle King: The foreign office felt it couldn't.
--:-- Noelle King: Khan ended up being there, sitting next to Putin as Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine.
--:-- Noelle King: Russia's President Putin met Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan in the Kremlin today.
--:-- Noelle King: And this was the first face talk since the start of the military operation in eastern Ukraine
--:-- Noelle King: You know no doubt helping Putin in his optics but hurting Khan
--:-- Noelle King: Now Khan remained sort of studiously neutral on the Russian invasion of Ukraine after that and even during his trip.
--:-- Noelle King: In recent weeks, the prime minister lashed out at EU diplomats, asking for public condemnation of Russia.
--:-- Noelle King: I asked these EU ambassadors if they wrote a similar letter to India.
--:-- Noelle King: Our country's economy lost $100 billion.
--:-- Noelle King: I ask, did you appreciate or acknowledge us?
--:-- Noelle King: Are we your slaves that whatever you order, we must comply?
--:-- Noelle King: Pakistan's military, on the other hand, just about a week ago now, essentially called it an invasion of Ukraine, which Khan hasn't done, and says...
--:-- Noelle King: Sadly, the Russian invasion against Ukraine is very unfortunate as thousands of people have been killed, millions made refugees, and half of Ukraine destroyed.
--:-- Noelle King: Adopting a strikingly different stance from Khan.
--:-- Noelle King: We cannot be responsible geopoliticians without now asking, what does China think about all of this?
--:-- Noelle King: Pakistan has had an increasingly close, as I said, relationship with China.
--:-- Noelle King: Pakistan is the home of China's flagship project and its Belt and Road Initiative.
--:-- Noelle King: More than $62 billion in investments as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
--:-- Noelle King: And Khan was in Beijing.
--:-- Noelle King: In the face of a Western boycott of the Olympics, Khan was at the opening ceremony.
--:-- Noelle King: So was Putin, by the way.
--:-- Noelle King: It's unclear how much Beijing is prevailing on Pakistan to stand by its side in remaining very neutral on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
--:-- Noelle King: And Pakistan says that its relationships with the U.S. and with China are not zero-sum.
--:-- Noelle King: But in some ways, Pakistan has had to choose a little bit between the U.S. and China.
--:-- Noelle King: Here's what you've told me.
--:-- Noelle King: We have the former prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, who has now been removed from office.
--:-- Noelle King: He got paranoid at the U.S. at the same time that he appeared to be getting closer to Russia, which made the U.S. nervous, which made China happy, which made India nervous, which made Pakistan's military feel all sorts of conflicting things.
--:-- Noelle King: Is it fair to say that this saga that is unfolding is reminiscent of the Cold War era in which you have a country being torn between the United States and, in this case, Russia and China?
--:-- Noelle King: I would say that Pakistan certainly has felt the tug from all sides here.
--:-- Noelle King: But where this is manifesting is in terms of the political divisions this is sowing in the country.
--:-- Noelle King: Rather than any outside influence affecting things in Pakistan, it is actually manifesting itself as a rift between the major players in Pakistan, the military and Khan on foreign policy.
--:-- Noelle King: The next leader of Pakistan, we've got a guy here who has some family ties, who is a name.
--:-- Noelle King: What does he need to do differently than Imran Khan?
--:-- Noelle King: Shahbaz Sharif comes into power on April 11th of 2022 with a maximum of a year that he can be in power before the next election.
--:-- Noelle King: Khan is going to make his life tough.
--:-- Noelle King: They held massive rallies in Pakistan all over the urban centers of the country.
--:-- Noelle King: Security is high after tens of thousands of people across the country answered Khan's call to protest against his removal from office.
--:-- Noelle King: So the kind of agitational street politics is going to occur.
--:-- Noelle King: They're saying they don't accept this government.
--:-- Noelle King: They're calling it a government of thieves, referring to the corruption allegations faced by the Sharifs.
--:-- Noelle King: And Shabazz Sharif is actually out on bail.
--:-- Noelle King: What is it?
--:-- Noelle King: What is he out on bail for?
--:-- Noelle King: Corruption charges.
--:-- Noelle King: So Khan's...
--:-- Noelle King: Wow, wow, wow.
--:-- Noelle King: This country cannot win.
--:-- Noelle King: No, it cannot.
--:-- Noelle King: So Shabazzariv has to contend with a very active Khan and a very mobilized opposition.
--:-- Noelle King: At the same time, he will want to set things up so that the next election runs smoothly.
--:-- Noelle King: For he and his party, because ultimately this is not about coming into power right now.
--:-- Noelle King: This is about coming into power in the next election for that next term.
--:-- Noelle King: So he'll want to set that up.
--:-- Noelle King: He has a formidable challenge in front of him, and that's on two dimensions.
--:-- Noelle King: The first and the biggest one is the economy.
--:-- Noelle King: And at the same time, he has to deal with this foreign conspiracy allegation that Khan is leveling at him.
--:-- Noelle King: So if Sharif tries to improve relations, let's say with the U.S., you know, he can have this charge leveled at him that, you know, look, he wasn't part of this conspiracy of regime change.
--:-- Noelle King: So he's going to have to tread pretty carefully.
--:-- Noelle King: But if he's able to set some things right with the economy, he might actually have a good chance going forward.
--:-- Noelle King: But after all of this, in Pakistan's constitution, there are no term limits for a prime minister, which means there is nothing stopping Imran Khan from making a comeback.
--:-- Noelle King: Today's show was produced by Halima Shah, edited by Matthew Collette, engineered by Afim Shapiro, and fact-checked by Laura Bullard.
--:-- Noelle King: I'm Noelle King.
--:-- Noelle King: It's Today Explained.
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--:-- Noelle King: Thank you.
