On the 14th of November, the Pakistani public was subjected to a bombshell in the form of a newspaper article published in The Economist of London, authored by Owen Bennett Jones, titled “The mystic, the cricketer and the spy: Pakistan’s game of thrones.” The story, right or wrong, is based on information provided by many people close to the former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his third wife, Bushra Bibi. It is a vivid account of the complicated and, in many ways, mysterious relationship between Imran Khan, Bushra Bibi, and the former ISI chief Faez Hameed.
The main character, or the heroine of this sordid saga, is the former First Lady, the wife of Imran Khan. The completely veiled wife of the former prime minister played a major role in all the important decisions from the Prime Minister’s Office, including political appointments and postings or transfers. According to one insider quoted in the article, “nothing major happened without her approval, not even the prime minister’s plane taking off.”
The First Lady of Pakistan during the Imran regime became well known for her spiritual powers and as a modern-day seer with some mysterious supernatural abilities that could do wonders. According to the report in The Economist, many sources from Imran Khan’s inner circle have denied that she was just a housewife and have claimed that her role was far more sinister and insidious than merely ceremonial.
Khan’s driver, Safeer, talked about getting beef from the market that was waved around the head of Imran Khan while the First Lady chanted some holy verses. The meat was then thrown onto the roof of the Bani Gala house to be eaten by birds of prey. After that, red chillies were waved around his head to ward off the evil influence of some perceived spirits supposedly let loose by his second wife, Reham Khan.
According to the article, some officials of a sensitive agency were complicit in passing on intelligence to Bushra Bibi, which she then presented to Imran Khan, claiming that she had gathered these facts through her spiritual or supernatural powers. Bushra was not only a faith healer but also a spiritual guide and mentor who had told Imran Khan that he would become prime minister if he married her, a prediction that became true after their marriage in 2018.
Many senior members of the PTI became disgusted when they saw that the government was being run through mysticism and that merit had no place in an environment controlled by Bushra Bibi. Appointments and even political strategy were all based on her will. The magazine portrays her influence as one of the defining and most controversial features of Imran Khan’s time in office, with one source telling The Economist: “She became the final word on almost everything.”
The most influential and powerful adviser was definitely Bushra Bibi, who had complete control over all the activities and orders of the Prime Minister
All the stories and anecdotes narrated in The Economist article are, in fact, neither surprising nor startling at all, because most of these things were quite well known in the political and social circles of Islamabad and Lahore. Even the appointment of Usman Buzdar as Chief Minister of Punjab was done on the instructions of the First Lady, based on her mystical powers.
Every story has been credited to someone who claims to have heard it from someone who was present when it happened. The article is based on a mix of hearsay and authentic eyewitness accounts. Serious journalism is grounded in first-person accounts, eyewitness accounts, or documentary evidence, but the story manages to cover its weak spots and makes for very interesting and informative reading for the Pakistani public.
After coming into office, Imran Khan was quick to get rid of some of his old and faithful friends and workers. Owen Bennett Jones has specifically mentioned Jahangir Khan Tareen and Awn Choudhry, who were removed on the advice of the First Lady. Many others, too, were pushed out of the inner circle because they were supposedly the wrong people according to her spiritual instructions.
The spiritual message had sent Arif Alvi to the Presidency and Shah Mahmood Qureshi to the Foreign Office. Aleem Khan was axed, and Pervez Khattak also lost his position. It was only Zulfi Bukhari who managed to stay in the good graces of the First Lady and remained a member of the inner circle at Bani Gala.
Shah Mahmood was the only experienced hand, while all others were totally new and inexperienced in their respective roles, and all owed their positions to the spiritual messages of the First Lady. Nobody knew who actually enjoyed the full confidence of the Prime Minister.
The persons who had made Imran’s entry to the office of the prime minister possible were the army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, DG ISI Lieutenant General Faez Hameed, and DG ISPR Lieutenant General Asif Ghafoor. These three had complete access to the prime minister and were his main advisers, but the most influential and powerful adviser was definitely Bushra Bibi, who had complete control over all the activities and orders of the Prime Minister.
By mid-2021, differences became visible between the Chief of Army Staff and the Prime Minister, and when the break finally came, it was all the work of Bushra Bibi. The day Bajwa had his tense meeting with Imran Khan in Bani Gala about the transfer of Faez Hameed from the ISI and the army chief’s discomfort over Bushra Bibi has been covered in The Economist article.
Since the publication of the article about the doings of the First Lady during Imran Khan’s regime, the PTI and the government have been engaged in a war of words. Punjab Information Minister Azma Bokhari believes the report is “completely accurate and fully aligned with the facts.” PTI spokesperson Sheikh Waqqas Akram, however, has asked the PPP and the PML-N to refrain from the “agenda-driven” campaign against ex-PM Imran Khan and his spouse.
He said the campaign through “concocted stories” was nothing but an effort to divert public attention from disastrous policies that had devastated the country “politically, morally, socially and economically.” The Punjab minister retorted that, after the revelations about the PTI founder, Bushra Bibi’s doings were now making headlines in the international media.