File photo of PTI chief Imran Khan
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan has claimed that his remarks about the Taliban returning to power in Kabul in 2021 were “deliberately taken out of context” and he was actually seeking to ‘tell people’ that “mental slavery” is worse than “physical slavery.”
In an interview with The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, published on Sunday under the heading ‘Imran Khan’s Double Game,’ Khan delved into both his policy on the Taliban, as well as controversial remarks about women and media freedoms during his time as Prime Minister of Pakistan. On stating that the Taliban had “broken the shackles of slavery” after they returned to power in Afghanistan after the U.S. exit, he claimed it had sounded “jarring” when it was translated from Urdu into English.
“All I was saying was that we had just made a revolutionary change in our system of education in Pakistan. We inherited this colonial system where the tiny elite in Pakistan would be taught in the English-medium, and the rest would be taught in Urdu. So, we synthesized the education system,” he said, adding that he was merely pointing out that physical slavery is “nothing compared with mental slavery, which is what we are suffering from.”
Conducted via Zoom, the interview—which took place before last week’s suicide bombing in Peshawar that killed nearly 100 people—delved into Khan’s reasons for entering politics, which he claimed was because he wanted Pakistan to have “rule of law” after spending life in the U.K. He also justified the military’s outsized role in Pakistan by noting that “reliance on security became paramount because there was fear that our existence was threatened.”
Stressing that he wanted a “balance” between a “strong military establishment and a democratic government,” he admitted that this was not immediately possible “because our security apparatus has gotten very entrenched.” Rebutting his own claims of not having much authority while prime minister, however, he said that three of his three-and-a-half years in power relied solely on his own policies. However, he claimed, in the last six months this had changed because “the Army chief just did not consider corruption to be bad.”
Khan also rubbished a claim forwarded by several PTI leaders that the 2018 general elections had been rigged against his party, stating: “We actually don’t think that the election was rigged. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have offered to open it.” He also rejected repeated questions about the Army facilitating his rise to power, while claiming his tenure in government was “the most liberal in Pakistan’s history” for journalists despite him being declared a “predator of press freedom” by Reporters Without Borders.
Taliban and Afghanistan
Declaring him an “expert” on the subject of the Taliban and Afghanistan, Khan claimed this was a result of the PTI ruling in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, which has a majority Pashtun population. “Remember, the Taliban were Pashtuns, and the fighting against the Soviets was mainly led by the Pashtuns. So I know the whole situation,” he said, stressing that Pakistan should always have remained “neutral” in the Afghan conflict.
To a question on a recent statement wherein Khan appeared to suggest that not educating girls was part of “Afghan culture,” the PTI chief said he “never said that,” adding that what he had said was that “rural culture of Afghanistan is totally different from the urban culture” and that “Pashtun areas” are very conservative.
He also defended his refusal to criticize the China’s treatment of its Muslim Uighur population while speaking against Islamophobia elsewhere, maintaining that such “moral statements” could impact Pakistan’s economy and endanger the country’s vulnerable population.
Social issues
On social issues, the former prime minister reiterated that he had been “misquoted” about blaming women’s clothing for rapes, stressing the “rapist is always” at fault. However, he reiterated claims that this required bringing “down the level of temptation in our society,” which he claimed was a result of social media. On a question about his wondering what journalist Gharida Farooqi expected to happen when she was harassed at a PTI event, Khan said that statement had not been taken out of context.
“It was just in one particular rally where they were all men, and she was right in the middle of this male crowd. It’s just that … I mean, anyone who knows Pakistani society, or most sorts of societies like India or Pakistan—if you put yourself in that position, you are going to be vulnerable. It’s just common sense,” he said, adding that women journalists didn’t need to put themselves in positions where they could attract harassment.
He also defended an earlier statement about differing cultural norms in Pakistan and Western nations, saying people’s reputations mattered. “In Pakistan, by far the bulk of the marriages are arranged. And arranged marriages are between families. So it’s not a question in this country of going to a night club or discos or whatever and girl meets boy. The families put the marriages together. And also the reputation of families matters here. So, when the families are looking to propose, they always look at the reputation of the family and the girl or the boy,” he said.
On questions about whether he was appreciative of the options that had allowed him to marry outside the conservative strictures of Pakistani society, Khan reiterated his claims of understanding contrasting cultures. “I’m probably better placed to understand and communicate about our culture to Western culture because I know how the West looks at our culture. And, to people here, I can communicate what the West is like,” he said, likening it to “evolution” because his “ideas kept changing” as he matured. “So, having challenged myself more than others, I have experienced and evolved more than other people,” he claimed.