Pakistan Cricket Star Imran Khan in Danger of Dropping the Ball as PM

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan gestures during an interview with Reuters in Islamabad, Pakistan, June 4, 2021. (Reuters)
Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan gestures during an interview with Reuters in Islamabad, Pakistan, June 4, 2021. (Reuters)
TT
20

Pakistan Cricket Star Imran Khan in Danger of Dropping the Ball as PM

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan gestures during an interview with Reuters in Islamabad, Pakistan, June 4, 2021. (Reuters)
Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan gestures during an interview with Reuters in Islamabad, Pakistan, June 4, 2021. (Reuters)

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan lost a main coalition partner on Wednesday after a series of similar departures ahead of a no-confidence vote expected in the next few days.

The defections have mounted along with questions over his performance, including his government's management of a struggling economy, beset by double-digit inflation and rising deficits.

Khan, a cricket legend who embarked on a long and difficult journey in politics to become prime minister, rallied his citizens with a vision of a corruption-free, prosperous country respected on the world stage.

To his critics, however, the firebrand nationalist was too much under the thumb of the powerful military - which has ruled the country for half of its history since independence in 1947.

Handsome and charismatic, Khan first grabbed the world's attention in the early 70s as an aggressive fast-paced bowler with a distinctive leaping action.

He went on to become one of the world's best all-rounders, and captained a team of wayward stars from bleak prospects to Pakistan's first and only World Cup win in 1992, urging on them with the famed battle cry to fight "like cornered tigers".

After retiring from cricket that year, he became known as a philanthropist, raising $25 million to open a cancer hospital in memory of his mother, before foraying into politics with the establishment of his Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), or Pakistan Movement for Justice party, in 1996.

Despite his fame, the PTI languished in Pakistan's political wilderness, not winning a seat other than Khan's for 17 years. This period had its dramatic moments, however, with Khan in 2007 escaping house arrest by leaping over a wall amid a crackdown on opposition figures by then military ruler General Pervez Musharraf.

In 2011, Khan began drawing huge crowds of young Pakistanis disillusioned with endemic corruption, chronic electricity shortages and crises in education and unemployment.

He drew even greater backing in the ensuing years with well-educated Pakistani expatriates leaving their jobs to work for his party and pop musicians and actors joining him on the campaign trail.

His goal, Khan told a gathering of hundreds of thousands of supporters in 2018, was to turn Pakistan from a country with a "small group of wealthy and a sea of poor" into an "example for a humane system, a just system, for the world, of what an Islamic welfare state is".

That year, after 22 years in politics, he was at long last victorious, marking a rare ascension by a sporting hero to head of state. Observers cautioned, however, that his biggest enemy was his own rhetoric having raised his supporters' hopes sky high.

Reformer

Born in 1952, the son of a civil engineer, Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi described himself as a shy kid who grew up with four sisters in an affluent urban Pashtun family in Lahore, Pakistan's second-biggest city.

After a privileged education in Lahore, during which his cricketing skills became evident, he went on to the University of Oxford where he graduated with a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

As his cricket career flourished, he developed a playboy reputation in London in the late 1970s. In 1995, he married Jemima Goldsmith, daughter of business tycoon James Goldsmith. The couple, who had two sons together, divorced in 2004. A second brief marriage to TV journalist Reham Nayyar Khan also ended in divorce.

He met his third wife, Bushra Bibi, a spiritual leader, during his visits to a 13th century shrine in Pakistan.

Once in power, Khan embarked on his plan of building a "welfare" state modeled on what he said was an ideal system dating back to the heyday of Islam, some 14 centuries earlier.

His government made a number of key appointments based on qualifications and not political favors and sought to reform hiring in the bureaucracy and civil service.

Other measures included making it easier for citizens to lodge complaints and the introduction of universal healthcare for the poor in one province with plans to expand the program nationally. The government also began a project to plant 10 billion trees to reverse decades of deforestation.

To bolster a long-crippled economy, Khan made a significant u-turn in policy and secured an IMF bailout for Pakistan and set lofty, albeit unmet goals, to expand tax collection.

But his anti-corruption drive was also heavily criticized as a tool for sidelining political opponents - many of whom were imprisoned on charges of graft.

Pakistan's generals remained extremely powerful and military officers were placed in charge of more than a dozen civilian institutions, including Pakistan´s flagship Belt and Road initiative with China, a national taskforce to combat COVID-19 and the Civil Aviation Authority.



Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
TT
20

Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)

The Iran-Israel war has helped strengthen Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu domestically and overseas, just as his grip on power looked vulnerable.

On the eve of launching strikes on Iran, his government looked to be on the verge of collapse, with a drive to conscript ultra-Orthodox Jews threatening to scupper his fragile coalition.

Nearly two years on from Hamas's unprecedented attack in 2023, Netanyahu was under growing domestic criticism for his handling of the war in Gaza, where dozens of hostages remain unaccounted for, said AFP.

Internationally too, he was coming under pressure including from longstanding allies, who since the war with Iran began have gone back to expressing support.

Just days ago, polls were predicting Netanyahu would lose his majority if new elections were held, but now, his fortunes appear to have reversed, and Israelis are seeing in "Bibi" the man of the moment.

– 'Reshape the Middle East' –

For decades, Netanyahu has warned of the risk of a nuclear attack on Israel by Iran -- a fear shared by most Israelis.

Yonatan Freeman, a geopolitics expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said Netanyahu's argument that the pre-emptive strike on Iran was necessary draws "a lot of public support" and that the prime minister has been "greatly strengthened".

Even the opposition has rallied behind him.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is my political rival, but his decision to strike Iran at this moment in time is the right one," opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote in a Jerusalem Post op-ed.

A poll published Saturday by a conservative Israeli channel showed that 54 percent of respondents expressed confidence in the prime minister.

The public had had time to prepare for the possibility of an offensive against Iran, with Netanyahu repeatedly warning that Israel was fighting for its survival and had an opportunity to "reshape the Middle East."

During tit-for-tat military exchanges last year, Israel launched air raids on targets in Iran in October that are thought to have severely damaged Iranian air defenses.

Israel's then-defense minister Yoav Gallant said the strikes had shifted "the balance of power" and had "weakened" Iran.

"In fact, for the past 20 months, Israelis have been thinking about this (a war with Iran)," said Denis Charbit, a political scientist at Israel's Open University.

Since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Netanyahu has ordered military action in Gaza, against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as targets in Syria where long-time leader Bashar al-Assad fell in December last year.

"Netanyahu always wants to dominate the agenda, to be the one who reshuffles the deck himself -- not the one who reacts -- and here he is clearly asserting his Churchillian side, which is, incidentally, his model," Charbit said.

"But depending on the outcome and the duration (of the war), everything could change, and Israelis might turn against Bibi and demand answers."

– Silencing critics –

For now, however, people in Israel see the conflict with Iran as a "necessary war," according to Nitzan Perelman, a researcher specialized in Israel at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France.

"Public opinion supports this war, just as it has supported previous ones," she added.

"It's very useful for Netanyahu because it silences criticism, both inside the country and abroad."

In the weeks ahead of the Iran strikes, international criticism of Netanyahu and Israel's military had reached unprecedented levels.

After more than 55,000 deaths in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, and a blockade that has produced famine-like conditions there, Israel has faced growing isolation and the risk of sanctions, while Netanyahu himself is the subject of an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes.

But on Sunday, two days into the war with Iran, the Israeli leader received a phone call from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, while Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has held talks with numerous counterparts.

"There's more consensus in Europe in how they see Iran, which is more equal to how Israel sees Iran," explained Freeman from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that Israel was doing "the dirty work... for all of us."

The idea that a weakened Iran could lead to regional peace and the emergence of a new Middle East is appealing to the United States and some European countries, according to Freeman.

But for Perelman, "Netanyahu is exploiting the Iranian threat, as he always has."