ISLAMABAD: He’s a thrice-married playboy who hangs out with Mick Jagger. But he’s also an Islamist who has kept company with a cleric and spiritual adviser to many in Afghanistan’s Taliban movement.
He has denounced Washington’s intervention in Afghanistan, but also has criticized Pakistan’s turn toward China, which has invested billions of dollars in the country.
Former international cricket star Imran Khan turned to politics more than two decades ago and may be on the verge of becoming Pakistan’s next prime minister in Wednesday’s parliamentary elections.
The 65-year-old opposition leader has disparaged liberals, attacked feminism, embraced radical religious parties and vowed to uphold Pakistan’s blasphemy law. He enjoys the support of the country’s powerful military establishment, although he has been known to go his own way.
Khan has led his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI, in widespread protests alleging ballot-rigging in the 2013 election, in which he received about 19 percent of the vote.
He also has seized on an anti-corruption message and led demonstrations against former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, demanding a criminal investigation after leaked documents from a Panama law firm revealed that Sharif and his family had undisclosed assets abroad.
Sharif was convicted in one case of corruption involving the purchase of luxury apartments in Britain and is serving a 10-year sentence while awaiting an appeal. He also has been banned from running for office.
But Khan also has drawn criticism by having his party field candidates chosen not on merit but on their likelihood to get elected — the so-called “electables.” Novelist Mohammed Hanif described in a recent column as “land-grabbers, feudal lords and rent-seekers” who know how to win at the ballot box.
Khan’s priorities will be the economy, security and foreign policy, specifically Afghanistan and how to move forward with the US, said Mohammad Amir Rana, executive director of the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies.
In an earlier interview with The Associated Press, Khan said US President Donald Trump’s policy on Afghanistan was “deeply flawed.” He said US attacks against militants in Pakistan won’t end the protracted war in Afghanistan, now in its 17th year and the longest US military engagement.
Trump “neither understands the history of Pakistan nor the character of the Afghan people,” Khan said, He criticized the US drone strikes in Pakistan, saying they kill innocent people and have failed to bring success.
“Drone attacks lead to collateral damage. If (they) were such a successful strategy, they would be winning the war,” Khan said in the interview.
His critics have nicknamed him “Taliban Khan,” a reference to his earlier support for negotiations with Pakistan’s Taliban. He also has expressed admiration for the tribal system of justice that still regards women and young girls as property to resolve disputes.
Khan also has supported the blasphemy law, which urges that the death penalty be imposed on anyone found to have insulted Islam or the Prophet Muhammad. There has been widespread criticism of the law, saying it has been misused to settle personal disputes and to target minorities in Pakistan, where the mere suggestion of blasphemy can incite mob violence.
Khan enjoys almost mythical status in Pakistan after leading its cricket team to victory in the 1992 World Cup. Since then, the Oxford-educated athlete with the rugged good looks has parlayed his celebrity into a political career, founding the PTI in 1996 and espousing a message of change.
His married his first wife, wealthy British heiress Jemima Goldsmith, in 1996. They have two sons who live with Goldsmith, who has publicly supported Khan’s political ambitions and praised his skill as a leader, even after their divorce in 2004.
His second wife, Rehman Khan, divorced him within a year and has recently written a book attacking him and members of the PTI.
Khan rarely responds to the gossip that relentlessly swirls around him, and over the years has become more conservative and religious.
He married his third wife, Bushra Maneka, earlier this year after dismissing months of speculation about it. After his marriage to Maneka, also known as Pinki Pir, was disclosed in February, he said he was drawn to the mother of five’s spirituality.
Women’s rights groups loudly criticized Khan’s attacks on what he called Western feminism, saying it “degraded the role of a mother.” Pakistani women took to social media to accuse Khan of pandering to his conservative religious base.
The new prime minister will have to address Pakistan’s dire economy, including a dangerously low foreign exchange reserve, heavy debt load to China and others, and a currency that has fallen more than 20 percent recently against the US dollar.
Khan has promised to create 10 million jobs and direct his efforts to Pakistan’s poor.
Rana, the political analyst, said that as prime minister, Khan would have to reach out to China, even though he has criticized Beijing’s massive construction project to link Pakistan’s Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea to its northern border with China.
“When China’s president was visiting, Imran Khan said ‘China is not bringing prosperity in Pakistan. China is bringing another crisis,’” according to Rana.
Pakistan’s former cricket star Imran Khan may be on the verge of victory
Pakistan’s former cricket star Imran Khan may be on the verge of victory
- The 65-year-old opposition leader has disparaged liberals, attacked feminism, embraced radical religious parties and vowed to uphold Pakistan’s blasphemy law
- Khan enjoys almost mythical status in Pakistan after leading its cricket team to victory in the 1992 World Cup
Afghan returnees in Bamiyan struggle despite new homes
- More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan: Sitting in his modest home beneath snow-dusted hills in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province, Nimatullah Rahesh expressed relief to have found somewhere to “live peacefully” after months of uncertainty.
Rahesh is one of millions of Afghans pushed out of Iran and Pakistan, but despite being given a brand new home in his native country, he and many of his recently returned compatriots are lacking even basic services.
“We no longer have the end-of-month stress about the rent,” he said after getting his house, which was financed by the UN refugee agency on land provided by the Taliban authorities.
Originally from a poor and mountainous district of Bamiyan, Rahesh worked for five years in construction in Iran, where his wife Marzia was a seamstress.
“The Iranians forced us to leave” in 2024 by “refusing to admit our son to school and asking us to pay an impossible sum to extend our documents,” he said.
More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), as neighboring Iran and Pakistan stepped up deportations.
The Rahesh family is among 30 to be given a 50-square-meter (540-square-foot) home in Bamiyan, with each household in the nascent community participating in the construction and being paid by UNHCR for their work.
The families, most of whom had lived in Iran, own the building and the land.
“That was crucial for us, because property rights give these people security,” said the UNHCR’s Amaia Lezertua.
Waiting for water
Despite the homes lacking running water and being far from shops, schools or hospitals, new resident Arefa Ibrahimi said she was happy “because this house is mine, even if all the basic facilities aren’t there.”
Ibrahimi, whose four children huddled around the stove in her spartan living room, is one of 10 single mothers living in the new community.
The 45-year-old said she feared ending up on the street after her husband left her.
She showed AFP journalists her two just-finished rooms and an empty hallway with a counter intended to serve as a kitchen.
“But there’s no bathroom,” she said. These new houses have only basic outdoor toilets, too small to add even a simple shower.
Ajay Singh, the UNHCR project manager, said the home design came from the local authorities, and families could build a bathroom themselves.
There is currently no piped water nor wells in the area, which is dubbed “the dry slope” (Jar-e-Khushk).
Ten liters of drinking water bought when a tanker truck passes every three days costs more than in the capital Kabul, residents said.
Fazil Omar Rahmani, the provincial head of the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation Affairs, said there were plans to expand the water supply network.
“But for now these families must secure their own supply,” he said.
Two hours on foot
The plots allocated by the government for the new neighborhood lie far from Bamiyan city, which is home to more than 70,000 people.
The city grabbed international attention in 2001, when the Sunni Pashtun Taliban authorities destroyed two large Buddha statues cherished by the predominantly Shia Hazara community in the region.
Since the Taliban government came back to power in 2021, around 7,000 Afghans have returned to Bamiyan according to Rahmani.
The new project provides housing for 174 of them. At its inauguration, resident Rahesh stood before his new neighbors and addressed their supporters.
“Thank you for the homes, we are grateful, but please don’t forget us for water, a school, clinics, the mobile network,” which is currently nonexistent, he said.
Rahmani, the ministry official, insisted there were plans to build schools and clinics.
“There is a direct order from our supreme leader,” Hibatullah Akhundzada, he said, without specifying when these projects will start.
In the meantime, to get to work at the market, Rahesh must walk for two hours along a rutted dirt road between barren mountains before he can catch a ride.
Only 11 percent of adults found full-time work after returning to Afghanistan, according to an IOM survey.
Ibrahimi, meanwhile, is contending with a four-kilometer (2.5-mile) walk to the nearest school when the winter break ends.
“I will have to wake my children very early, in the cold. I am worried,” she said.
