PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has introduced a new element in the national debate by claiming that the USA was backing the release of jailed PTI founder Imran Khan so as to bring to office someone who would help reverse Pakistan’s nuclear technology. It does provide an anti-PTI explanation of why the USA might wish to get Mr Khan, though it raises a number of other questions. Mr Bhutto Zardari referred, while speaking at the commemoration of the 17th death anniversary of his mother Benazir Bhutto at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, to the role of both his grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and mother Benazir in building Pakistan’s nuclear weapon. He made no mention of the actual test of the weapon, in 1998, when the present PM’s elder brother was PM. The supposed enmity of Mr Khan towards the country’s interests, including the nuclear and missile programmes, is assumed by his opponents, but there has been no real response, until now, of why elements in the USA, including incoming members of the Trump Administration, were speaking up about how Mr Khan should be released.
It appears that it was not enough for the PTI to be accused of spending vast sums on lobbyists, but that it was necessary to provide a reason for Mr Khan’s release. Mr Bhutto Zardari has obliged, with a reason in addition to the one about Mr Khan being complicit in the Indian abolition through a combination of Mr Trump and Indian PM Narendra Modi. Mr Bhutto Zardari and other Pakistani politicians, including Mr Khan himself, must be wary of flinging around this charge so casually that its currency becomes debased, much as it is no longer believed if any politician is accused by an opponent of treason.
While what Mr Bhutto Zardari said requires a great deal of evidence to be believed, the tale he tells hangs together, and Mr Khan’s supporters cannot dismiss it as beyond belief. It also provides a motive for his driving the economy into the ground, because that would provide the reason for abandoning the nuclear and weapons programme. Mr Bhutto Zardari also has an uphill task, and must produce the evidence for his charge, which is a serious one. If he does not, he will be guilty of the kind of casual flinging out of accusations without basis that he and so many others accuse the PTI of doing.
