The Chaser Report - The Wrath of Khan | Sami Shah

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

Dom Knight and Sami Shah talk Pakistan's political history and how they elected a cricket player for president which somehow didn't go well. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is the Chaser Report. Welcome to The Chaser Report. We've upgraded things here, really. I'm Dom Knight and Sammy Shah is with us for a couple of episodes, while Charles Galevance off to America for various projects, which knowing Charles may not come to fruition, let's be honest, but he'll have fun going and talking to people and having power meetings. Hey, listen, I think you're being all vague about the projects thing on purpose. I think the real thing is he has something to do with the Mar-a-Lago FBI raid,

and Charles is the guy that Donald Trump was slipping all of the classified information to, and now he's gone there to get everything he can. That would be amazing if that were true. Would it be great if Charles was the person to whom the FBI apparently said, oh, just put a padlock on it, it'll be fine. I love that guy, whoever that was. But look, last time we talked about the floods in Pakistan and just the sheer awfulness of climate change coming home to roost,

in your homeland and indeed in so many other parts of the world. But Pakistani politics is something I've always thought we should get into because, I don't know, Australia has made many poor decisions over the years, but we haven't yet elected a cricket captain to run the country. Yet. Shane Warren's body is not yet fully cold. Yeah, I mean, look, Steve War, I think we'll probably do a better job than some recent incumbents of that high office. But I just want to know,

what's happening with Imran Khan and essentially with Pakistani politics in general, because it's always been a fairly major hotbed of contested elections, bombings, drama, you know, religious groups competing against more secular groups. Where are we? And as the country tries to, I guess, respond to this appalling tragedy, who's in charge and what's the deal with Imran? So what's the deal with Imran? Let's start with Imran Khan.

All right. So everyone knows Imran Khan as the playboy cricket legend, right? Like the guy who used to be back in the 70s and 80s, he would walk through the opposing team's locker room shirtless to make them feel less masculine and frighten them a little bit. He also basically, you know, banged his way through half of Europe. And, you know, was this sexy god who made Pakistanis, you know, know, who gave a lot of Pakistani men an undue sense of self-confidence when it came to

our sexual prowess. Let me put it that way. We've all been, we've all been shagging in Imran Khan's wake. But Imran Khan, too, the world was that. To Pakistan, he was more than that. For starters, he won us the World Cup, right? So he, Pakistan, the only time Pakistan ever won the cricket world cup was under Imran Khan stewardship. It was an iconic moment. It was a legendary moment. But for him, that was the start of things. It was the end of things. For most cricketers after you win the World Cup, you retire and you're done. That's it. Yeah, yeah, you're a hero forever.

Yeah, exactly. But then Imran Khan did another thing where he, his mother had cancer and she died of cancer. And Pakistan had very poor cancer resources, cancer prevention, cancer curing, et cetera, like that. And so, cancer treatment or curing. And so he set up a thing called the Shokat Khanam Memorial Hospital. His mother's name was Shokat Khanam. And it is a cancer hospital. Right. But to fund the hospital, he basically took donations from the whole country.

He said, 100% transparency. This is a donation based. He went to all the schools. All of our school kids were given a little booklet where we'd go and we'd sell pages from the booklet, you know, vouchers to people. And the money would then go towards the hospital. And he was Imran Khan. So you were happy to do it. He was Imran Khan. So you were happy to do it. He was happy to do it. Yeah. We were called the Young Tigers. And Imran Khan, you know, was the tiger king, I guess. But we were all young tigers. And

I was a young tiger and I went like, earned money. I went, you know, knocking door to door, strangers' houses, going into strangers' homes, getting money from them. Never getting molested once, which makes me think I wasn't a hot kid. But anyway, that's a separate topic. And then once that was done and he built

the hospital and it was, there was not a single whiff of corruption around him, which is very rare in place like Pakistan. A lot of people told him you should get into politics. You know, people love you, people respect you. Pakistan needs a good person like you and blah, blah, blah. So he started a political party called Pakistan Theriki Ensafe. Insaf means justice, right?

And the idea was basically that he will create a political party that has no corruption around it. The biggest problem in Pakistan, in developing nations, isn't rising religious extremism. It isn't any of those things. It is corruption always. That's what the public sees. That's what everyone agrees on is the biggest problem that no one ever can do anything about. So he created this political party and he surrounded himself with all of these, you know, tech leaders and industry leaders and stuff like that. The problem is when you have a lot of people telling you, you're the best, you're the best, you're the best, you're the best, you really start believing you are the best.

And there's that old Bill Burr comedy line, which was, you know, Bill Burr, the comedian was talking about Arnold Scholesnigger. and he goes Arnold Schrodsniger has shot nothing but net for his entire life. Like, why would he doubt him his own achievements? And the same thing is true of Imran Khan. You know, everything, he went everything from winning the World Cup to marrying a Jewish billionaire's daughter to, you know, setting up this hospital. How did that guy, how do you marry a Jewish billionaire's daughter in Pakistan and still be popular enough to get elected prime minister someday?

Because he, not just that, he then divorced and married and divorced and married. He's been married four times, you know. He's my hero, as you know, I'm racking up the divorces just in his wake as well. That's actually a great title for your autobiography, like Imran by so many show. No, well, this is an interesting illustration of the Peter Principle, isn't it? Schwarzenegger and Imran Khan. And I guess you'd have to even say Donald Trump to some degree as well. People we've had enormous success in life.

The Peter Principle is that we all rise to the level of our relative incompetence. So for Imran Khan, who is a genuinely incredibly talented person, you have to try something as big as politics to make a massive fall of yourself, maybe even Boris Johnson to some degree as well. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, look, so the thing about him, it was, his cult of personality is...

And Pakistan is a place that's prone to cult of personality. You know, Benazir Bhutto had a cult of personality. She was a feudal landlord's daughter, and she went through a great deal of suffering and a great deal of misery, but she was also wildly insanely wealthy had repeatedly been given opportunities and squandered them with corruption

and still had that cult of personality about her and Imran Khan's no different people worship him my family worships him if I say anything if my parents hear this podcast and me bad-mouthing Imran Khan I will be disowned

right now and so it is a thing where there's that so he basically kind of it's entirely possible it's entirely possible that Imran Khan is your father. Imran Khan is all our fathers. He is, he's, you know, there's a thing in genealogy where they say most of Asia can trace its, um, its lineage back to Genghis Khan because he just had, he basically raped and pillaged his way through Asia at that scale. We all have some Genghis Khan DNA

in us. Everyone in Pakistan has some, and probably Europe, let's be honest here, has some Imran Khan DNA in them at some point. None of the medical advice contained in the Chaser report should legally be considered medical advice. The Chaser report. In Pakistan, there's a bunch of mainstream political parties and then there's the smaller ones on the outside, right? And so he's one of the outside for decade and a half, for two decades, it's kind of working his way, trying to building up popularity, also becoming more and more right-wing, aligning himself with the religious parties, aligning himself with the military, which is the real power broker in Pakistan. You know, you can't do anything or the military say so. If the military lifts his hand

from your shoulder, then you're done for. And ends. up becoming the prime minister of the country after a great deal of struggle and strife. Does some good things, does some bad things like any prime minister, the good and the bad, which outweighs the other is entirely up to the person you ask. I will give him credit for one thing. Helped Pakistan through COVID way better than any other prime minister could have and way better than Modi did with India. Pakistan fared much, much better under his stewardship, also provide Medicare and all of these things. So that did a lot of good things as well. But the one fuck up he did was he decided that he had more power and authority

because of his popularity than the army, than the chief of the army. Oh. You don't do that. Every Pakistani prime minister who's ever thought they were bigger than the army fucks up. And the moment he did that, the army orchestrated things, orchestrated a coup basically by making all his opposition parties joined together. All his allies leave his side and join the opposition parties through we threw a combination of threats and cajoling and bribery and all these things. And they created a massive block which voted his party out of parliament and, you know, instituted a new prime minister and all that stuff, which are the same old faces we've had failing us for like 50 years at this point.

So, you know, welcome the new king, same as the old king. And now Imran Khan is on the outside trying to get back in, but he is beloved. So the rallies he's having in the country, the protest marches to support him are at a scale and the size no one's ever seen and if there's an election tomorrow, he'll easily win it. He'll easily win the election. There's no challenge. Just in terms of asking for money, he raised billions of rupees personally just by asking for flood relief money at a scale that no one else, no other politician could ever hope to do. And so they're trying to keep him out. And so there's a massive corruption to kind of keep him out as well. I don't like Imran Khan. I don't trust populists. also think his alignment with the right-wing religious extremists is not a good thing. I was one of those journalists who used to criticize him way back in the day and get shit for it, and I would do so again today. But the way that they treated him was wrong as well, and so it was an unconstitutional act that was done to him. And so, yeah, I'm not against him coming back through proper free and fair elections,

which he probably, hopefully will. And so is it likely that he'll be, I mean, because I'm thinking back to the days of Musharraf and so on, all these basically military puppet leaders of Pakistan. I mean, have the military met the one person they can't beat, basically, because Imran's that popular? Basically. One of the things that you have to know about Pakistani military, and me saying this is basically going to, it's considered up there with blasphemy in Pakistan, the Pakistani

military is shit. They are absolutely terrible. You really don't want to go home, do you? They have, they are bad. at fighting. They are bad at strategizing. They are bad. The military leadership, all right. The average soldier, this is, you can never blame an average soldier for anything because the average soldier's job is to go where they're told to go and do what they're told to do. It is the military leadership who are absolutely shockingly bad. And they have once again, there's a moment, there's a thing

that I always think about. There's a crisis called the Cargill crisis in between Pakistan and India in, I think it was 1998 or 1999. One of the, there's a place called the Seachin Glacier. It's a massive glacier really high up in Pakistan and India and it's the coldest and highest

military flashpoint in the world where the soldiers there have to be rotated constantly because otherwise the die of frostbite. And the Pakistani army came up with a plan where they would, under Musharraf, they would dig a hole under the glacier and go into Indian territory and attack India from there. And they did

and then they didn't have a follow-through plan. Like once they were there, they were like, well, now what do we do? So they were here. We're in India, amazing. So they invaded India. They invaded India. They got into India.

Successfully. They decided bombing India. And then they're like, and then Indian army came to push them back. And they had no second stage of the plan. The victory was almost childish. Like, oh, I'll put my foot in your territory. And that's enough of victory for me. And then they got pushed back.

That's what they like with Imran Khan, where they thought, oh, you know, we'd kick him out. And it's fine, not realizing how popular. is and now not realizing that they're looking bad and for the first time the Pakistani public is turning against them as well so it's been quite an unprecedented time this is all very boring I know for most jaser listeners who are like what the fuck is this where the dig jokes um and you're right with imran khan i should have made more dick jokes we're mixing it up we're mixing it up now I'm interested in this I mean I admittedly I realize I'm being a bit more of my kind of ABC presenter

as I used to be person and I that's okay because it's enormously interesting to me so where does this leave let's just completely lean into this because if If anyone's listening by this point of podcast, I'm interested in Pakistan. So where does this leave Kashmir and all the tensions on the border? If you say that the Pakistani military isn't very good, if Imran Khan might sweep through and kind of defy them, I mean, that is, while we're listing crises, yes, climate change is up there, but the India-Pakistan tension, both being nuclear powers, also pretty stress-inducing, globally speaking, how do you think that's going to play out? I mean, how worried should we be about the line of control? I mean, look, here's the thing. Neither country will...

Have you ever read World War Z, the book? World War Zed, I guess. No. The pun doesn't work if it's said, though. Sorry? The pun doesn't work if you say Zed. Yeah, I know, it does. It has been World War Z.

So Max Brooks, who is Mel Brooks's son, wrote a really good zombie book, which is a terrible movie. It's a Brad Pitt movie. Don't ever watch it. The book is amazing. in World War Z, World War Z, they do the thing of, like, what would actually happen to the world in terms of geopolitics and stuff if zombies came out.

And one of the fun things they do is they say India and Pakistan don't go to nuclear war. Pakistan and Iran end up going to war and Pakistan ends up nuking Iran. And the reason being, where Indian Pakistan don't go to war is because all the mechanisms and fail-safs are there. When you have two nuclear powers so physically close to each other, nowhere else in the world is that the case? So literally rubbing shoulders with one another, they've done everything possible to make sure

that no accidental war happens and that this is a last resort thing because if you bomb Lahore, that will, you know, irradiated winds will blow over near Delhi. There's no way to save either country. It's mutually assured destruction. I don't know that. That's actually somewhat reassuring. It is literally mutually

assured destruction. I mean, my relatives in the south of India might have a chance, but anyone you know, sort of north of Mumbai is screwed either way. Yeah, exactly. So there's that whole aspect as well, which is really interesting. And so they've got, that's not, I'm not worried about nuclear war. I don't think anyone who has a reasonable understanding of the region is worried about nuclear war. Also, Kashmir, which is a flashpoint where both countries, you know, are fighting there, they needed to stay that way. India and Pakistan, like, you know, India spends billions and billions of dollars on military

expenditure on military budgets and things like that. They need an active enemy to justify those. Pakistan's entire military ruling class needs India to remain a threat to justify its earnings. And so as a result, both countries are happy to sacrifice

Kashmir and Kashmiris, who would probably be happy to be rid of both India and Pakistan and become an independent state. Both countries would much rather use that as a motivating factor to justify their excesses than solve the problem at all ever.

It's, we used to call it Garrison nationalism, I remember, in politics class. Yeah, that's right. You actually need an external enemy to keep the regime. That's somehow reassuring. That's actually probably the most upbeat thing that I've ever heard. Yeah. About the India-Pakistan conflict that both countries need it and don't want to escalate to the point where it's, well, I feel happy, except, fortunately, I'm not at Kashmiri. Yeah, I mean, it's just that.

They're basically Kashmir's, because Kashmiri, Pakistan's approach to the whole thing. has been to flood Kashmir with religious extremists who are proxy fighters for the Pakistan army can't have a presence there but you know jihad motivated Islamists can and we didn't tell them to go there and they went there on their own but they have an impact and it affected that they have Islamized

Kashmir way more than it ever wanted to be and on the other side Indian army and Indian military and Indian government is always cracking down Kashmiris arresting them torturing them shutting off the internet and electricity for long periods of time things like that And so both countries are kind of using Kashmir as a front for their cold war against each other. And sometimes that war turns hot in Kashmir as well.

And the Kashmiris are the ones who get kind of squeezed in the middle and turn to paste. Thank you for joining us for the serious politics episode of the Chaser Report. That was very interesting, Sammy. Yeah, you know. And so Imran Khan might be back. You heard it here first at least. Yeah, I think so. I think if there's a free and fair election, which there will have to be at some point,

but basically early next year, most likely, they, Imran Khan will easily sweep the election. Then what happens is a different thing. I'm also worried that if they try assassinating him, which they've done in the past, with populist leaders, then shit will really hit the fan. So who knows?

Okay, now I'm depressed again. All right. Now, give me some road with part of the ACAST. Create a network. We'll catch you next time. Bye.