Former Prime Minister and Chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-insaf (PTI), Imran Khan, in an exclusive interview to Dawn, talked about his relationship with Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Qamar General Javed Bajwa.
“The army chief wanted me to appoint Aleem Khan [as CM Punjab] and I wouldn’t. Because not only were there NAB cases against him, he had occupied and sold land worth millions belonging to the government,” Imran Khan said while discussing how his infamously close relationship with the Chief went sour.
“We always thought they were just allegations. And he defended himself. But when I asked the vice chairman of the LDA [about Aleem], he showed me on a map how Aleem Khan had occupied government land. This was around the end of my second year, and beginning of the third of my government, said Khan while answering a question why did he include Aleem in his party.
“They were organised, you could get their help, we were on the same page regarding foreign policy. It was just the last six months, the issue of them making deals with these crooks when they should be behind bars,” he added.
Imran Khan talked about former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who also had a falling out with the establishment. “The army was going after these people before I came to power. 95 per cent of these cases preceded my government. The Nawaz Sharif case, the Avenfield case… he would not have got convicted had the army not provided the two brigadiers in the JITs — that was before me.”
Admitting that he doesn’t know about the internal politics of the army, Imran emphasized that his relationship with them was “going well”, however, “Later, I discovered there was a big issue going on about the next army chief. I had never ever thought about who the army chief would be in November — why would I care, if it’s on merit? It should be the best person. It matters to the Sharifs and Zardari… but not to me.”
Imran further said that he was hopeful that the Army would help him when he will try to bring rule of law in the country, adding “NAB was controlled by the army. I couldn’t do anything. They would say, ‘yes there are cases, we are working on it’. But nothing would happen. I discovered that, actually, the establishment controlled NAB and proceeded as it wanted… It was to control politicians by having files about their corruption. They would squeeze someone, but then he would be out on bail.”
Talking about the allegations that General Faiz Hamid is his man, Khan said, “General Faiz was the only general I knew, because he was working with me as the ISI chief… and I didn’t know anyone else. I told Gen Bajwa ‘I will take your recommendations because I don’t know the other guys’, but at the time my worry was Afghanistan. I feared it would go into civil war. And I felt Americans would blame us and we would be sanctioned. Ashraf Ghani told me there are 300,000 Afghan soldiers and they will be outnumbered. Not just Ashraf Ghani, ISI was telling us there will be civil war [in Afghanistan]. I wanted Gen Faiz to stay till the winter till the transition happened,” he stated.
