Bushra Bibi influenced Imran Khan on governance, key decision-making: report

Aleema urging Imran to resist doing a deal, while Bushra Bibi is more “inclined towards talks”, says The Economist

ISLAMABAD, NOV 15 (DNA): Imran Khan’s marriage to his spiritual adviser shocked the country. Now she could help decide whether he returns to office or stays in prison.

Former prime minister Khan, according to the UK publication report, was introduced to Bushra Bibi by her older sister, Maryam. At some point in her conversations with Khan, who was prone to fretting about religion and the meaning of life, Maryam suggested he talk to her sister. Bushra Bibi was reluctant to talk to Khan at first, saying she did not meet men outside of the family, but eventually agreed to a telephone consultation. And that was when it began. The calls went on for hours through the night.

Eventually, the calls became visits. Bushra Bibi’s husband, Khawar Manika, was pleased at first. He liked having such a famous person at his home. But as his wife’s intimacy with Khan grew, he became concerned. “She wanted to sit alone and talk to him. I would say, as a husband, ‘Why can’t we sit together?’” he said.

The report reads that sometimes Manika would walk in on them but, “every time I stepped in, there was a hush”. According to Manika, his wife explained to Khan that she had seen the future: if the two of them were married, his election as prime minister would follow (Bushra Bibi has denied this story).

At the end of 2017, she divorced her husband, and on January 1, 2018, she married Khan in a secret ceremony. Khan claims not even to have seen his bride’s face before they were married.

Once in office, Khan struggled to fulfil lofty campaign promises of creating an Islamic welfare state and 10 million jobs. His relations with the political and military elite quickly soured. His wife upset crucial friends and allies. Ministers and household staff grumbled about the eccentric First Lady being given too much power. “Her interference”, one member of his cabinet said, “was absolute”.

Khan now faces a dilemma: stick to his principles and stay behind bars or say something obliging about the ‘authorities’ and be released, with a chance of his party returning to government in due course.

Bushra Bibi is also in prison (she too faces corruption charges), and some in the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) are hoping she will persuade Khan to compromise and get the party back into power. How a housewife from the backwaters of Punjab came to play such a prominent role on the national stage is a topic of endless speculation in Pakistan — one often coloured by misogyny, misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Friends of Khan say his naivety allowed Bushra Bibi to become so powerful. Others point to the treacherous undercurrents and hidden agendas that shape Pakistani politics. Both have a point. Interviews with more than a dozen close associates of the Khans, as well as prominent figures in the establishment, make one thing clear: the story of Bushra Bibi, like so much in Pakistan, is more complex than it seems.

According to Maryam, Bushra Bibi’s marriage was not a happy one. She seems to have found an escape in the philosophy of Sufi Islam. As the years passed and her children became more independent, she spent more and more time at the shrine of one of Pakistan’s most famous saints, Baba Farid. Bushra Bibi, meanwhile, “became more and more religious”, said her sister, Maryam.

“Increasingly, people turned to her for advice.” Khan, frustrated with his life, became one of them.

“Imran says she is the best thing that has ever happened to him,” said Masood Chishti, who has known Khan since childhood and remains close to him. “He’s so naive, and he’s a very bad judge of character.” Salman Ahmad, a Sufi musician and another old friend of Khan’s, said. “He cannot see beyond that Sufi halo that she carries around with her. That’s a big blind spot for him.”

The family of Bushra’s first husband, Khawar Manika, also issued warnings about her. One relative went so far as to approach Jahangir Tareen, a political ally of Khan, to tell him that Bushra Bibi was dabbling in black magic. “I told him she was doing all these activities and practices to acquire some holy powers so that she could cast spells on people,” he later said.

Officials from Khan’s political party insist stories of her spell-casting are unsubstantiated gossip spread by disgruntled ex-employees.

“These are people who have been disgraced and belong to the other political camp. They have no credibility at all,” said Raoof Hassan, a PTI spokesman. It is true that many of the details of Bushra Bibi’s occultsounding activities come from members of the Khan household who lost their positions after she arrived. But the picture they paint is detailed.

Safeer, Khan’s driver, said that soon after she moved into Khan’s house, he was told to buy 1.25kg of beef, which was passed around her husband’s head three times while she chanted incantations. The flesh, according to Safeer, was then thrown on the roof to be eaten by the birds. Next, red chillies were circled around the former cricketer’s head.

Azim Rana, a butcher near Khan’s home, also recalled getting odd orders from the household — each morning he would be asked for beef, black animal heads and, from time to time, live black goats which he claimed he would personally deliver and dispatch with a special knife provided by Bushra Bibi.

Accepting his wife’s claim that she could read faces, Khan would ask for photographs of potential candidates, which would be sent to Bushra Bibi for a decision. She also got involved in pettier matters.

One of Khan’s relatives recalled an occasion when she advised Khan it was not a propitious time to travel: “So for four hours, the plane sat on the tarmac until Bushra Bibi decided it was time to fly.”

Faisal Vawda, who was an admirer of Khan’s patriotism and determination to combat corruption, said he was and still is fond of Khan, but as a minister was frustrated to find that Bushra Bibi seemed to be involved in every discussion. He heard about one meeting between Khan and the then head of the army, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, in which Bushra Bibi “spoke more than either of them”.

The PTI firmly denies these accounts. “I saw some decisions being taken which the media said she took, but I was there,” said a former spokesperson for Khan. “She was not involved.”

According to a story circulating in Pakistan, and picked up by the media, Gen Faiz Hameed, then the head of counterintelligence at the ISI, used Bushra Bibi to pull off something more subtle and effective. The story goes that the ISI sent one of its officers to convey intelligence to one of Bushra Bibi’s pirs, who would relay it to her, and she would relay it to Khan.

“That’s how Khan started to get blinded,” Faisal Vawda said. It’s unclear from these accounts whether Bushra Bibi would have known she was being used in this way; it’s quite possible that she didn’t. When asked about reports of an ISI influence operation using Bushra Bibi, Hasan, the PTI spokesman, said dismissively: “Reminds me of Agatha Christie.”

“General Bajwa was always ranting about her, saying she does black magic,” said one of Khan’s former cabinet ministers. “Bajwa was pissed off because he felt that Khan listened to her more than him.” Khan also raised eyebrows by sacking the head of the ISI in 2019, just eight months into his tenure. The rumour, widely reported in Pakistani media, was that the general had come to Khan with evidence that Bushra Bibi was corruptly helping her friends. (Khan has strongly denied this and accused the ISI chief of pursuing a “vindictive” campaign against his wife after being dismissed.)

Some of Khan’s closest advisers, including his sister, Aleema, are said to be urging him to hold fast and resist doing a deal with the ‘authorities’ to secure his release. Bushra Bibi, according to a former member of his cabinet, is more inclined towards talks.

For many ordinary Pakistanis, who see Khan as the only person who can save Pakistan from the sclerotic grip of its elites, the stakes could hardly be higher. Khan seems determined not to give in, but he has also spoken about the enduring influence of his wife. “Bushra Bibi has not made herself my weakness,” he said in a recent statement from his cell. “Her bravery has made me stronger.”