Those Bani Gala days | The Express Tribune

There is more to the Mr & Mrs Khan story than the Economist’s latest report describes. But does a layered narrative of the former First Couple’s days in power strengthen or soil their reputation?

Titled “The mystic, the cricketer and the spy: Pakistan’s game of thrones” the Economist story dropped like a bombshell on an unsuspecting Pakistani public this weekend. Based on conversations with multiple people close to Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi, the story delves into how the relationship between the two blossomed over time and ultimately reached a point where she became the dominant influence on his life. The reporters narrate numerous anecdotes that paint a vivid picture of a complicated, collaborative – and often conspiratorial – relationship between the prime minister, his wife and his spy chief.

For those of us who covered the PTI years in power from close proximity, there is hardly anything new or groundbreaking in the Economist story. Many of the tales narrated were well-known in Islamabad circles in those times. Every anecdote was sourced to someone who had heard it from someone who had claimed he had been told by the person who was actually there when it happened. Some details were more credible and reported by actual witnesses themselves. The Economist story banks heavily on a mixture of hearsay and authenticated narrations. Smart journalism allows first-person, on-the-record quotes to substitute for evidence-based and triply authenticated facts. In this context, the story covers its weak spots well.

What it does not do that well is to situate this triangular relationship inside the broader power matrix of the time. PTI’s transition from a side player to a popular party and finally into the government of the day was anything but smooth. In the process, the internal power dynamics of the party also went through numerous convulsions. People changed, relationships soured, and power often felt like holding burning embers in bare hands.

By the time Imran Khan took oath as the prime minister, some of his closest aides and advisers had already been ejected from his inside circle. The Economist story mentions two of them – Jehangir Tareen and Awn Chaudhry – but there were others too who found themselves barred from opening closed doors in power corridors. Inside the Red Zone, access is the real currency. It even trumps loyalty, as many PTI insiders found out to their shock and dismay.

To be fair to him, it is unlikely that Khan planned to play the access game the way it panned out. He was a newbie in Islamabad’s power corridors, as were nearly all of his party loyalists. Six months into his government, a new architecture of power and access had manifested itself in the PM House and Bani Gala. What was once Khan’s core group was now fragmented into various high offices across the centre and provinces.

Arif Alvi had been sent to the Presidency, Shah Mehmood Qureshi to the Foreign Office, Asad Umar to Finance, Imran Ismail to the Karachi Governor’s mansion, Asad Qaisar to the Speaker’s office at the National Assembly. Tareen and Awn were already out of the inner circle and Pervaiz Khattak had fallen from grace. Aleem Khan too was shunted aside after having been told that he would be made the chief minister of Punjab. Only Zulfi Bukhari retained his place in the inner most circle.

Except for Shah Mehmood, all others were new to their offices and struggled to settle into these roles. Once focused solely on gaining Khan’s ear, now they had to fulfil official responsibilities that required time, commitment and – above all – dealing with the pressure of unrealistic expectations.

So, in this transformed scenario, who had Khan’s ear? Who held the real currency of access to the Prime Minister of Pakistan?

In Khan’s case, there were three channels of access. People who controlled these channels, or avenues, had the PM’s ear. When they had his ear, they had influence on him. Bushra Bibi was one of them.

What made access to him even tighter was his new routine. Once thriving in public appearances, Khan the PM now spent almost all his time either in the PM House, or the PM Secretariat, or at Bani Gala. At the PM House, his gatekeeper – the man who controlled his schedule – was Secretary to the PM, or SPM, Azam Khan. Khan’s dependency on him was explained by the fact that he did not understand the workings of the government. Azam Khan, for the most part, decided who met the PM, or spoke with him, or attended a meeting with him. The bureaucratic and official system built a steel ring around the new PM. Loyalists used to being in touch with Khan constantly now found themselves outside this steel ring.

The second channel of access was through Rawalpindi and Aabpara. Three men had the PM’s ear via this channel: Army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, DG ISI Lt Gen Faiz Hameed and DG ISPR Lt Gen Asif Ghafoor. These three had facilitated his ascent to power and were now his principal advisers on most matters of the state. The third channel – arguably the most powerful – was Bushra Bibi. While Azam Khan, the SPM, controlled the PM House, she controlled Bani Gala. From the day that Khan became the PM in August 2019 till about the middle of 2021 when differences began to crop up between him and the army chief, these four men and one woman wielded overwhelming influence on what Khan thought, said and did. It was not Bushra Bibi alone.

But when Khan’s break with Gen Bajwa came, she had a major role in it. By this time, tales of strange rituals mentioned in the Economist story had started circulating in Islamabad. Whispers about Gen Faiz sharing inside information with Bushra Bibi, who would relay it to Khan as her mystic knowledge, were also reverberating across the capital. The evening that Gen Bajwa drove up to Bani Gala for what later was described as a tense meeting over the transfer of Lt Gen Faiz Hameed from ISI, news filtered out about the army chief’s discomfort over Bushra Bibi’s strange behaviour, some of which is mentioned in the Economist story. From then onwards, it was downhill.

Today, three years later, Bushra Bibi is the only one from among Khan’s closest circle that still – presumably – has his ear. But is she a changed person? And is he? The answer to these questions may determine, to a great extent, how the story of Mr & Mrs Khan unfolds from here on.