About the Book Born only five years after Pakistan was created in 1947, Imran Khan has lived his country's history. Undermined by a ruling elite hungry for money and power, Pakistan now stands alone as the only Islamic country with a nuclear bomb, yet it is unable to protect its people from the carnage of regular bombings from terrorists and its own ally, America. Now with the revelation that Pakistan has been the hiding place of Osama bin Laden for several years, that relationship can only grow more strained. How did it reach this flashpoint of instability and injustice with such potentially catastrophic results for Pakistan? Recounting his country's history through the prism of his own memories, Imran Khan starts from its foundation, ripped out of the dying British Raj . He guides us through and comments on subsequent historical developments which shook the Muslim world - the wars with India in 1965 and 1971, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the 9/1 1 terrorist attacks and America's retribution ten years later with the assassination of bin Laden - to the current controversial and intractable war in Afghanistan. We see these events viewed not only through the eyes of Westerners, but through those of ordinary Pakistanis. Drawing on the experiences of his own family and his wide travels within his homeland, Pakistan: A Personal History provides a unique insider's view of a country unfamiliar to a western audience. Woven into this history we see how Imran Khan's personal life - his happy childhood in Lahore, his Oxford education, his extraordinary cricketing career, his marriage to Jemima Goldsmith, his mother's influence and that of his Islamic faith - inform both the historical narrative and his current philanthropic and political activities. It is at once absorbing and insightful. casting fresh light upon a country whose culture he believes is largely misunderstood by the West. A Personal History Imran Khan BANT... AlVI PRESS U»IDO N • 'fOIl.(1N1'O • .� NBY • A � • JOHANNPSBURG TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS 61-63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA A Random House Group Company www .transworldbooks.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Bantam Press an imprint of Transworld Publishers Copyright © Imran Khan 2011 Imran Khan has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and recollections of the author. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446438244 ISBN 9780593067741 (hb) 9780593067758 (tpb) This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009 24681097531 Contents Cover About the Book Title Page Dedication Map of Pakistan Prologue: A Coalition of the Crooked, November 2007 Chapter 1: Can I Still Play Cricket in Heaven? 1947-1979 Chapter 2: Revolution, 1979-1987 Chapter 3: Death, and Pakistan's Spiritual Life, 1987-1989 Chapter 4: Our Failed Democracy, 1988-1993 Chapter 5: 'Angels in Disguise': Building a Hospital, 1984-1995 Chapter 6: My Marriage, 1995-2004 Chapter 7: The General, 1999-2001 Chapter 8: Pakistan Since 9/11 Chapter 9: The Tribal Areas: Civil War? My Solution Chapter 10: Rediscovering Iqbal: Pakistan's Symbol and a Template for Our Future Epilogue Picture Section Acknowledgements Picture Acknowledgements Index About the Author Copyright This book is dedicated to Sulaiman, Kasim, and the youth of Pakistan. Prologue A Coalition of the Crooked, November 2007 BLANK FACES. FACES with no expressions. That's what I remember. About twenty of them had surrounded me and a few were pushing me. I asked them, 'What is it you want? Do you know what you are doing?' I could see some had pistols. Beyond the locked gates of the courtyard, people were shoving and shouting. More crowds of students peered down at me from the windows of the floors that ran round the quadrangle as they tried to see what was happening. I was furious. My political party, Tehreek-e-Insaf ('Movement for Justice'), was allied to this group, as the students that had surrounded me were in the Islamic Jamiat-e-Tuleba (UT), the students' wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan's oldest and most organized religious party. Both Jamaat-e­ Islami and Tehreek-e-Insaf were part of the All Parties Democratic Movement campaigning for an end to General Pervez Musharraf's military dictatorship and the restoration of Pakistan's chief justice. Yet here these students were working for a dictator who had issued orders to arrest me and behaving just like a gang of street thugs. Although I had heard tales about the UT, I had not fully realized the kind of people they were. Everyone on the campus of the university is scared of them. Once known for their ideological views and great discipline, they appear to have degenerated into a kind of mafia or fascist group operating inside the university, bearing guns and beating people up. They stifle debate in an educational establishment that has in its time produced two Nobel laureates - the University of the Punjab was established in the late nineteenth century by the British, in the country's second city, Lahore. No government dares tackle them, ordinary students at the university are petrified of them and even the party they belong to, the Jamaat -e-Islami, does not seem to be able to control them. Much later I heard the Jamiat activists had been paid large sums of money to turn on me - allegedly by the government. I knew the police would probably arrest me when I arrived at the university, so I sneaked in the evening before and spent the night in the rooms of one of the professors. The UT had expected me to walk through the main gate the following day with my party supporters. Later on I discovered the plan had been to beat us all up. Two things saved me: I surprised them by appearing alone, and from inside the university; and the international media was there with their cameras all lined up. As soon as I appeared, other students in the university gathered around me and hoisted me up on to their shoulders. But then came this group of Jamiat students, about twenty or thirty of them. They began pushing me, but they did not know what to do because they had not expected me to come alone and there were hundreds of them watching this spectacle. They shoved me into a quadrangle and locked the gates. That is when I kept saying, 'What is it you want? ' They asked why I had come without their permission and I told them the university did not belong to them. I asked them if they realized their party's policy was to oppose the state of emergency Musharraf had declared and yet here they were supporting it. 'Do you know what you are doing?' I said. There was no response. I saw the head of the UT standing about twenty yards away and speaking on his mobile. He was looking at me and clearly talking about me. I don't think he knew what to do. Some professors arrived and the Jamiat youths shoved them around too and I could see the professors were scared of them. At this point I had been eluding arrest for almost two weeks. The country was undergoing yet another period of turmoil and President Musharraf had declared a state of emergency. On the evening of 3 November 2007, I had been giving a talk at the Lahore University of Management Sciences when someone passed me a note saying that the heads of all the political parties opposed to Musharraf were to be put under house arrest, including me. I had already been held under house arrest the previous year when President Bush visited Pakistan. That was aimed at stopping me staging a protest against the US president because of his hypocrisy in supporting Musharraf, a military dictator, while invading Iraq with the justification of installing democracy. So initially I was not too worried. Even under house arrest, I could still manage my political party. I finished my speech, held various meetings and returned some time after midnight to my oid family home in Lahore's Zaman Park, where my father and younger sister lived with her family. It was only when the police barged into our house that I began to sense a difference. Normally the police were very polite with me. This time their manner was more aggressive. There was no mention of house arrest, but rather of 'orders' for my 'detention'. I insisted they show me a warrant and while they went off to get it, a journalist called me on my mobile. 'Imran, I'm sitting with the superintendent of police here,' he said. 'All of the other political leaders have been put under house arrest, but you are going to jail. Your orders are for jail.' With barely minutes to spare I asked my nephew to check outside to see whether there was any possibility of escape.