Imran Khan, Pakistan’s former prime minister, was arrested by paramilitary troops Tuesday on corruption charges, escalating the country’s political crisis ahead of national elections later this year.
Troops entered a courthouse in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad to detain Khan, who has contested the charges as politically motivated as he seeks reelection. Pakistani officials have accused him of illegally buying land from a business tycoon while serving as prime minister, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to the country’s treasury. Khan has called for protests in response to his arrest, and his many supporters answered by showing up at the corps commander’s residence in Lahore and at the army general headquarters in Rawalpindi.
Khan’s arrest contributes to several crises currently threatening Pakistan’s stability. The country is currently seeing record-high inflation and teetering on the edge of default. And there has been a recent spike in terrorist activity. But the political crisis has so far overshadowed those issues, and could lead to mass protests, experts said.
“Khan has a large, growing, and impassioned support base that has long identified his arrest as a red line. His supporters are already out in the streets and likely will stay there for some time,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center. “The longer Khan is detained, the greater the chance for prolonged unrest in urban centers.”
Khan, the populist leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), one of the country’s largest political parties, was the first prime minister in the country’s history to be ousted in an April 2022 vote of no-confidence after losing favor with the political establishment and Pakistan’s military. He was voted out on grounds that he failed to deliver on his pledge to root out corruption and to lift the country’s economy out of its Covid-19 downturn.
But the former international cricket…
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