Pakistan’s generals should let politicians run the country for once

WHEN PAKISTAN’SNAB top brass helped install Imran Khan as prime minister in 2018, the former cricket champion seemed like the perfect front man. He was a sporting hero, dashing and cosmopolitan. Even so, he had cultivated a folksy, pious air, along with a streak of indignant nationalism that could fire up a rally. His party looked different from the tiresome old lot, which are run as fiefs by political dynasties. His attack on the entire political class as irretrievably corrupt dovetailed helpfully with the work of the aptly named , or National Accountability Bureau, which was trying to put an end to one of those dynasties by prosecuting Nawaz Sharif, the outgoing prime minister.Most important, Mr Khan cheerfully did what the armed forces wanted, be it cosying up to China and rich Arab states or playing the West as the army quietly helped the Taliban return to power in Afghanistan. The “miltablishment”, as Pakistani wags call it, seemed to have landed on exactly what it was looking for: a plausible yet pliable manager, who would give the army the final say on anything it cared about, but could still take the blame for whatever went wrong.