Pakistan

Hibatullah Akhundzada is a secretive man who is only occasionally heard and seldom seen. But on May 1, the Taliban’s supreme leader was delivering a sermon in Kandahar’s central mosque, bragging about his organization’s supposed successes. “Congratulations on this victory, freedom and success,” said the reclusive Akhundzada, surrounded by armed bodyguards. Nine months after the Taliban captured Afghanistan and forced the hapless Ashraf Ghani to flee the country in a helicopter, its chief official remains content with relishing the past. But truth be told, the Taliban has nothing to brag about.

On Sunday, Imran Khan became the first prime minister in Pakistan’s history to be ousted by a no-confidence vote. Followers of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party naturally took to the streets; much of their anger has been directed at the generals who engineered their leader’s downfall. It was a clash with the all-powerful military that, like so many of his predecessors, finally ended Khan’s prime ministership. The former cricketer had attempted to oust one of the country’s all-powerful spy chiefs, a move that finally ended the uneasy relationship between the PM and the military. Attempting to save his own politician skin, Khan tried to block a no-confidence vote by dissolving the assembly last week but this was deemed illegal by the Supreme Court.

Imran Khan’s innings as the Pakistani Prime Minister may be coming to an end. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement, one of his coalition partners, has split from the government. Khan has now lost his majority in the National Assembly, which is set to meet for a no-confidence vote on Sunday. And while all this falls perfectly in line with parliamentary norms, in the context of the country’s tumultuous political history, Khan’s premature exit would be another blow to democracy. Not a single Pakistani prime minister has completed their five-year term in the country’s 75-year history, almost half of which has seen direct military rule.

The security services in Britain have been concerned about the rise of the Taliban for many months. In government briefings they have been telling ministers that it was almost inevitable the Taliban would gain some role in the government of Afghanistan once Western forces withdrew – it was just a question of how much. It is easy to ignore, after the sudden collapse of Afghan forces, the fact that the national army had been losing ground to the Taliban over several years and bloody attacks have remained a constant in the centre of major cities in the country. The Taliban killed 16 people and injured 119 in a suicide bomb attack on a residential compound in the capital just days before the leadership was due to meet President Trump at Camp David in September 2019.

Taliban flags are already flying in Islamabad. Among those hoisting the white flag of the group is the women’s madrassa Jamia Hafsa, affiliated with the adjoining Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), which has also released a song celebrating the Taliban as ‘the symbol of Islam’. Lal Masjid, a few miles from Pakistan’s military headquarters and parliament, has been an emblem of terror and factory of jihad in Pakistan since its formation in the 1960s. The Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Aziz has in the past pledged allegiance to Isis and appeared to defend the 2014 Peshawar school attack which killed 141, mostly schoolchildren. When the army moved against Lal Masjid in 2007 it led to a nationwide explosion of terror attacks.

An eight-year-old Hindu boy is currently in custody in the southern Punjab. He is the youngest person in Pakistan to be charged with blasphemy. The boy, accused of urinating in a local madrassa, was released last week on bail — in retaliation, a Muslim mob vandalised a local Hindu temple. Meanwhile, on Thursday, a day after the temple attack, a transgender person was arrested on blasphemy charges in Abbottabad, around 100 miles north of the capital Islamabad, for allegedly burning the Quran. These are but the latest in an unrelenting spree of blasphemy cases, a victimless crime that carries the death penalty in Pakistan.

Nine Chinese engineers were killed in an explosion near Pakistan’s Dasu hydroelectric dam last Wednesday. The government initially said that their bus suffered a ‘mechanical failure’ after it plunged into a ravine, but officials eventually admitted that the incident was a terror attack after Beijing decided to send its own investigators. China has now postponed work on the $65 billion (£47 billion) China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a network of roads and infrastructure projects. The programme represents Beijing’s largest overseas investment and is a critical part of its Belt and Road Initiative.

Imran Khan appears to want to impose Islamic blasphemy laws across the world. ‘I want the Muslim countries to devise a joint line of action over the blasphemy issue with a warning of trade boycott of countries where such incidents will happen,’ Khan said in an address on Monday. Last week, talking up his plan to launch a global movement, and his love for Islam’s prophet, Khan warned, ‘There will come a time when people in the West as well will be scared of blaspheming against our prophet (peace be upon him)’. The Pakistani premier’s rejuvenated bid to outlaw blasphemy against Islam came after he succumbed to the demands of proscribed radical Islamist group, Tehrik-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), which Khan’s own government had banned.

Pakistan's prime minister Imran Khan has once again blamed women for an appalling rise in rape cases. Khan used a televised question and answer session this week to say that sexual violence was a result of 'increasing obscenity'. Women in Pakistan should remove 'temptation' because 'not everyone has willpower', he added, urging females to cover up to help reduce the sexual violence which has plagued our country. Khan pointed the finger of blame at Bollywood and Hollywood, for spreading ‘vulgarity’. He also repeated the growing divorce tally of the UK as evidence of the ‘ethical plunge’ of the West, which he said is messing up the moral compass of the Muslim world and Pakistan.

The perpetually fractious relationship between India and Pakistan reached a particularly low point two years ago, after dozens of Indian paramilitary personnel were killed in a suicide attack in Pulwama in the mountainous terrain of Kashmir. India blamed the attack on Pakistan and bombed what it believed was a terrorist training camp in Balakot across the border. The Pakistani air force retaliated by shooting down an Indian air force plane in a dog-fight, with the pilot having to eject on enemy soil. The airman was returned; but the downward spiral in ties accelerated with the two countries withdrawing their high commissioners and suspending bilateral trade altogether.

Last week, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered the release of UK born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh who was accused of kidnapping and beheading the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The verdict came after Sindh High Court overturned the death penalty for Sheikh and three alleged abettors last year, ruling that there was insufficient evidence to find them guilty of murder and stating that they had served their sentence for their role in the kidnapping. The decision has outraged Washington, with Joe Biden’s new State Department chief Antony Blinken dubbing it an ‘affront to terrorism victims everywhere’ and announcing his readiness to prosecute Sheikh in the US.

Well, now that we’re all fired up about Britain’s moral role in the world courtesy of Theresa May, who is indignant about cuts to the overseas aid budget, how about moving on to Pakistan? This week a Pakistani court has ruled that a 12-year-old Christian girl, Farah Shaheen, consented to her marriage with an alleged abductor over twice her age and consented freely to convert to Islam. When the girl was recovered from the household of Khisar Ahmed Ali in December, she was reportedly too traumatised to speak about what happened to her over the five months since she, ah, consented to marry a 29-year-old and convert to Islam.