By accident or design, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan is seemingly going through a rough patch days before the no-confidence motion is put to vote. In addition to desertions from his ruling party, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, the fort of the Frontier Corps in the PM’s constituency of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been attacked by suspected terrorists.
The ferocity of the strike is obvious from the fact that the exchange of fire began on Tuesday and is said to have continued on Wednesday. Among the casualties were three security personnel and an equal number of terrorists. An emergency has been declared and additional forces have been sent to the restive region. Terrorists, it would appear, are active yet again in a sensitive swathe of the country.
In another incident, four Pakistani soldiers were killed as they countered a plan by a group of terrorists who had attempted to infiltrate into Pakistan from Afghanistan, going by the version advanced by the Inter-Services Intelligence. The terrorists fled with severe injuries. They had reportedly tried to infiltrate into Pakistan at midnight of March 23-24 via the North Waziristan district. The ISI has let it be known that the Pakistan army is determined to “eliminate the menace of terrorism and such sacrifices of our brave soldiers further strengthen our resolve”.
Suffice it to register that “such sacrifices” at the cost of the omnipotent military are happening in what could turn out to be the twilight phase of Mr Khan’s dispensation.
An unrelated tragedy was the death of six Pakistani peacekeepers for the UN when their helicopter crashed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There have of late been clashes between the M23 armed group and Congolese forces.
The M23 is a rebel organization that has regrouped after being routed nearly a decade ago by troops of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The fine print of the serial disasters must be that the military, helmed technically by the Prime Minister, has increasingly been at the receiving end.
It was rather presumptuous, therefore, for the Pakistan People’s Party chairman, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, to declare in the immediate aftermath of the disasters that Imran “has now lost majority” in the National Assembly and that Shahbaz Sharif, currently the leader of the Opposition, will become the country’s next Prime Minister.
“Imran has no option. He can either resign or get dismissed via no-confidence,” he said before the vote was cast. The PM’s position is decidedly precarious, with the voting on the no-confidence motion expected on 3 April. In the interim, the ruling PTI suffered yet another shock as the MQM-P, an ally of the government, resolved on Tuesday to side with the Opposition and even lend its support to the no-confidence motion. The plot has thickened to the west of the Radcliffe Line over the past 48 hours.