Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan expects U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to back his bid for freedom based on their past relationship and perceived parallels in their respective political and legal struggles, an aide to the jailed ex-premier told Newsweek.
As nationwide protests staged by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party subsided Wednesday after clashes with security forces that left at least six dead, Zulfikar Bukhari, Khan’s media adviser, accused the Biden administration of being “nothing but weak” on the issue and expressed confidence that the situation would change under Trump.
“We expect it to be very different with the Republican regime, with having President Trump back as president,” Zulfikar told Newsweek. “I know we’ve seen lots of tweets from certain ambassadors of the Trump administration, so we expect much more support.”
“When I say support, it’s not of just Imran Khan or PTI, but support of 250 million people,” he added. “It’s support for democracy. It’s support for rule of law and the supremacy of the judiciary. That’s all we’re asking.
And given Trump’s own battle with the U.S. legal system under the Biden administration, Zulfikar asserted that “no one knows better than President Trump” the impact of “cooked-up, frivolous cases” and “what it means when the public is behind you, because, like Imran Khan, he’s experienced both those things the same way.”
Newsweek reached out to representatives of the Pakistani government, the Trump transition team and X for comment.
Khan, a former cricket superstar who founded the PTI in 1996 as a populist challenge to establishment Pakistani politics, defeated the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) Shehbaz Sharif and the People’s Pakistan Party’s (PPP) Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to secure the premiership for the first time in the 2018 general elections.
Khan initially faced a challenging position vis-a-vis Trump, who assumed office a year earlier after overcoming Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. The Republican leader accused Islamabad of harboring militant groups while receiving billions of dollars in foreign aid, sparking a fiery defense from Khan.
However, their dynamic shifted in 2019 when Khan traveled to Washington to meet with Trump. Khan sought to channel his fellow political outsider status to forge a new bond with Trump, who referred to the Pakistani leader as “very popular” and a “great athlete—one of the greatest.”
After Trump lost his 2020 reelection bid to Joe Biden, Khan’s tenure was cut short in April 2022 when he was ousted in a no-confidence vote, ultimately bringing Sharif to power.
As Khan told Newsweek in an interview last year, the former premier believes the Biden administration had a direct role in his removal from power despite repeated denials from the U.S. State Department.
Khan’s unceremonious ouster was quickly followed by a slew of charges being levied against him by the new administration. These ranged from a high-scale corruption case to allegations of blasphemy and terrorism, all of which Khan and his supporters vehemently rejected.
During this same period, Trump, too, happened to face a growing list of legal troubles under his rival’s administration, including accusations of paying hush money to an adult film actress, deliberately mishandling classified documents and interfering in the results of the 2020 election that his supporters sought to overturn by violently storming the U.S. Capitol in January 2021.
While Trump was found guilty in the hush money case in May, much of his most serious legal troubles have begun to dissipate after he emerged victorious against Vice President Kamala Harris in this month’s presidential election.
Khan, on the other hand, was barred from running in Pakistan’s election this year. While members of his PTI secured the largest share of votes despite being forced to run as independents, the PML-N and PPP formed a majority-winning coalition alongside other factions.
In response to the latest turmoil surrounding the protests demanding Khan’s release in Pakistan, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters, “In Pakistan and around the world, we support freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association.”
“We call on protesters to demonstrate peacefully and refrain from violence, and at the same time, we call on Pakistani authorities to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms and to ensure respect for Pakistan’s laws and constitution as they work to maintain law and order,” Miller said.
But Zulfikar felt that the Biden administration had fallen far short of its potential to affect the issue and had instead “made 101 excuses not to address the issues of 250 million people” over the past four years.
Now, with Khan’s fate still uncertain as he wades through various trials, Zulfikar hoped Trump would tap into his past positive views of the fellow celebrity leader to make a U-turn on U.S. policy.
“I think, without a doubt, both are extremely popular leaders,” Zulfikar said.
“Both are brave in what they want to say and do, regardless of if you agree with them or not, and both had an exceptionally close working relationship.”
“They’re friends,” he added. “So naturally, it’s only human to expect a friend to show support in these difficult times.”
Zulfikar said he has been in touch with members of the incoming Trump administration to raise the issue. Thus far, Trump himself has said little about the situation in Pakistan, but some of his former officials have been more vocal.
“Release Imran Khan!” wrote Richard Grenell, who served as Trump’s director of national intelligence and is reportedly being considered to lead Russia-Ukraine peace talks in the next administration, in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday. He shared a Bloomberg report on the PTI protests.
Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as U.S. envoy on Afghanistan peace talks under Trump and under Biden for a time as well, referred to reported “shoot-at-sight” orders given to Pakistani security forces against demonstrators as a “catastrophic mistake” in another X post that day.
X, which is owned by Trump’s choice to head the newly established Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, has also played a role in the divisive narratives surrounding the political unrest in Pakistan. The Pakistani Interior Ministry acknowledged blocking X during the national elections in February and PTI supporters say access has again been cut amid the recent protests.
Several recent X posts by Sharif’s official account were accompanied by crowdsourced Community Notes that pointed out how the current Pakistani prime minister has “banned” the site and “is using a VPN to access X, which is illegal according to Pakistani law.”
Zulfikar argued that Musk, who has adopted more vocal political views in recent years, could also serve as a key ally to reshape the U.S. approach to Pakistan in the upcoming administration.
“Elon Musk must play a role because here he is tweeting about other countries not having the freedom of expression and X not being allowed and so on, or X is being allowed, but even being somewhat hinged in what you’re allowed to say or not to say,” Zulfikar said. “But here in Pakistan, for the last more than six months, you’re not allowed to use X anymore. You actually have to go into VPNs and use it.”
“And the last week or so, it’s been completely off,” he added. “You’re struggling to even download videos or pictures or voice notes. And so, people in Pakistan are struggling to even tweet. When they get a tweet out, it means a lot.”
As such, he argued that “Musk has to take notice of this.”
Beyond the political instability in Pakistan, growing insecurity marked by a deadly uptick in militant activity has threatened to spark a crisis that extends beyond the nuclear-armed nation and spread across the region.
Pakistan has faced a record number of attacks by the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Baloch separatists and the Islamic State militant group’s Khorasan province (ISIS-K). Meanwhile, the once-warm relationship between Islamabad and the Afghan Taliban ruling in Kabul since the U.S. military withdrawal in August 2021 has become rife with mistrust.
Tensions also continue to dominate the disputed Kashmir region between India and Pakistan, which regularly accuse one another of sponsoring militant groups, further narrowing areas of regional cooperation.
Last week, Sharif approved a “comprehensive military operation” to tackle militants in the country’s southwest. But Zulfikar argued that the government had devoted much of the resources needed for counterinsurgency to suppressing political dissent, and only a major change could bring about the stability required to address the insecurity issue properly.
“A stable Pakistan is in the benefit of not only the region, but the globe, and no stability in Pakistan can come until there is political stability,” Zulfikar said. “And you cannot have political stability in Pakistan unless you address the stolen mandate, and Imran Khan is free.”
He called on Trump and his upcoming administration “to look at Pakistan as a democracy and make sure that it’s a collective global responsibility that in a democratic country, democracy prevails.”
“We want the U.S., ideally, President Trump’s regime, to take the lead in that,” he added.
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