Imran Khan and Gen Bajwa fight in Pakistan getting dirtier by the day
Imran Khan has said that General Bajwa is behind the viral audio leaks which have hit his image. Photo: Twitter/AFP
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and former Pakistan Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa have been at loggerheads with each other for a while. In the latest attack, Khan has said that the former Army Chief had once called him a 'playboy'. Khan has been a playboy in his youth, especially when he was a national cricket player. The Bajwa group says Imran Khan had offered him a lifetime Army chief position in return for his return to power. This apparently happened in the presence of Gen. Bajwa's junior colleagues. This, however, fight is only the tip of the iceberg for Imran Khan and General Bajwa, who share a long history.
Imran Khan's audio leaks: The PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf) chairman, Imran Khan, got miffed when his audio leaks, of alleged sex chats, dealt a strong blow to his pure and pious image in front of his supporters. While the Opposition raised a hue and cry over this, Khan didn't take this lightly and blamed the former Army Chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, of orchestrating it all.
The audio leaks were followed by threats of video leaks, featuring Imran Khan in questionable states of undress with people he showered benefits on. On Tuesday, a video of General Bajwa was leaked with an actor, hinting at a tit-for-tat leak war in the offing.
Khan, who was on very good terms with former COAS Qamar Javed Bajwa, has strained his relations so severely that the two are insulting each other publicly. The two once shared a great equation but after Khan's ouster from office in April 2022, he has been vocal against General Bajwa.
What happened between the two: The first cracks in the relationship between the two appeared in 2021, over the next chief of ISI, Pakistan's Intelligence agency.
It was the appointment of Lt General Nadeem Ahmed Anjum as the new director-general of ISI. While Bajwa wanted Anjum to take over as the chief of ISI, Khan wanted the retention of Lt Gen Faiz Hameed.
The two stuck to their guns, but it was Bajwa who won it and got Anjum to take over as Chief of ISI on November 20, 2021. Khan had to swallow a bitter pill.
The US connection: Things got murkier towards early 2022, when Khan made a visit to Russia on the same day that Russia attacked Ukraine. This made the US frown, and US is an important ally of Pakistan.
By early April, there was a no-confidence motion passed in the Pakistani Assembly by the coalition of opposition parties with Shehbaz Sharif leading it. Imran Khan was voted out of power.
Khan had claimed that there was a foreign power (referring to US) behind the dismantling of his fort in Pakistan. In the recent claim, Imran Khan has said that General Bajwa had hired former Pakistani ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani against him there.
Khan said that there were concerted efforts by Haqqani to portray an anti-American view of Imran Khan in Pakistan which ultimately led him to be ousted from power.
Bajwa behind CEC: Imran Khan has also laid allegations on Bajwa that the former army chief still enjoys control over the army and also has good relations with Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikander Sultan. Khan said that Bajwa was controlling the issue of voting machines. Khan wants a free-and-fair election and he wants it now. The establishment is refusing to give it to him lest he win.
A brief history: In 2018, Imran Khan was sworn-in Prime Minister of Pakistan in a move which was well-engineered by the Army. The former army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa was instrumental in the ascension of Khan as the Prime Minister of Pakistan. In return, then Prime Minister Imran Khan gave an extension to General Bajwa. But, the two fell out during the course of their tenures and eventually, Bajwa wanted Khan to leave the office and got him out of the office by engineering a political coup.