It was an ugly way of placing a political leader under arrest.
The men of the Pakistan Rangers gave the impression of being commandos out on a mission to nab a terrorist when it was a former prime minister they were after. Imran Khan was hustled by all those men, pushed and pulled, and placed in an armoured vehicle and whisked away.
And whisked away from where? Right from the premises of the Islamabad High Court, where Khan had gone to answer to the law. That the Rangers saw nothing wrong in breaking down the doors and windows of the court was shocking, even by Pakistani political standards. Khan's lawyer was later to inform the media that his client had been hit on the head and the leg before he was rudely seized and driven away.
But that was not the end of the story. For the very first time in Pakistan's history, irate followers of a political party -- in this instance the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Istiqlal -- went for unprecedented demonstrations of violence as soon as news came in of Khan's arrest. They stormed the cantonment in Lahore, losing no time in torching the home of the army corps commander. Nothing of the kind has happened earlier, for cantonments in Pakistan have always been no-go areas for civilians and certainly for mobs.
If Lahore was a surprise, Rawalpindi was a revelation. A PTI mob broke into the headquarters of the Pakistan army and moved around the place in an unchecked manner. In Karachi, tires were burned by Khan's followers. In Quetta, a band of PTI fans approached the well-fortified cantonment but stayed well out of it.
For its part, a clearly rattled government -- led by Shehbaz Sharif -- nervously went into clamping a ban on the internet in the expectation that the move would prevent a proliferation of the violence already at work. On Pakistan's television networks, arguments raged between defenders and detractors of Imran Khan.
Now sit back and reflect, somewhat, on how Pakistan has come to such a pass. The first point to be made here is the refusal of the army to take a backseat to civilian rule in the country, a historical truth Pakistanis have been unable to shake themselves free of. The second point is the adventurism which Imran Khan has been indulging in since he lost power through a vote of no-confidence in parliament in April last year.
Of course it was the army which played a pivotal role in engineering Khan's ouster, an irony given that a few years earlier it was this very army which had made his rise to power possible through helping to manipulate the results of the election in his favour.
So where does Pakistan go from here? Imran Khan has generated discontent against the army to an extent where his followers are convinced that it is the soldiers they must beat back into the barracks if their leader is to return to high office.
The difficulty for the PTI is that it has let the genie out of the bottle through its leader's insistent accusations, in so many words and gestures, that it was the army which pushed him from office. One does not quite disagree with Khan. And perhaps there is some grain of truth in his repeated statements that a serving general in the army has been behind a plot to eliminate him physically.
That has not pleased the soldiers, who have since the late 1950s grown habituated to ruling Pakistan despite the cosmetic democracy that has been there, on and off.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, that other politician who was raised to the heights by the army and then unceremoniously dumped and marched to the gallows, thought (when he took over a rump Pakistan in December 1971) that he had the soldiers operating under his full authority.
Bhutto's fall, following an interregnum of the nearly six years between late 1971 and mid-1977, was the moment for the military to reclaim the state after the drubbing it went through in the Bangladesh liberation war.
And the army has been there ever since. In 1988, General Aslam Beg would not permit Benazir Bhutto to take charge as prime minister without first squeezing out concessions from her. It left Ms Bhutto in a state of emasculation, as it would subsequently leave Nawaz Sharif vulnerable to the whims of the military. Politicians in Pakistan have over the decades been careful not to upset the army or demand that it subsume itself to civilian rule.
The Pakistan army, alongside the façade of elected or selected governments operating in Islamabad, has had a powerful presence as an alternative and more influential source of political authority. In recent years, an eyesore has been one of visiting foreign government representatives making it a point to call on the prime minister before making a dash to army headquarters for a meeting with the chief of staff.
Given such a tradition, and despite the storming of cantonments by Imran Khan's supporters in the aftermath of his arrest, the Pakistan army will reassert its authority. History remains proof -- and one must go back to the pre-1971 years -- that the soldiers have been loath to take their hands off politics.
Iskandar Mirza and Ayub Khan, inaugurating the bad tradition of rule by martial law, were followed by Yahya Khan. Pakistan's best opportunity to evolve into a functioning, well-intentioned democracy came through the general elections of 1970. That opportunity was ruined by an ambitious army bitterly opposed to a transfer of power to the victorious Awami League.
The consequences are part of history.
The preponderance of the army in Pakistan's politics has led to a curious situation where the media and civil society and indeed the broad citizenry are psychologically attuned to singing praises of the soldiers. The theme is uniform, unalterable: the army is regarded as the defender of the state against its enemies, real or imagined, and as such remains beyond question or criticism.
Condemn politicians to perdition, blame all the ills of society on the civilians in government, but be sure not to touch the military. In simple terms, any criticism of the army is tantamount to blasphemy. The soldiers are the arbiters of Pakistan's destiny.
The conclusion is therefore out there. For all the public anger directed at the Pakistan army in light of Imran Khan's arrest, despite all that ransacking of cantonments, the soldiers will not go gently into the night. The army is the empire; and the empire will strike back.
With nearly two hundred cases stashed against him, Imran Khan will have a difficult job, if at all, getting back to the centre of the political stage. It may well be that he will be charged with high treason and put away for good. It could be that his PTI, with all the violence resorted to by its activists and supporters, will be put in the dock as a terrorist organisation and proscribed.
There will be no end to the excuses the soldiers as also the men who today are in office but not in power will find or invent to harass Khan and his followers. Meanwhile, with the economy tanking, with the population at a whopping 200 million, it will be Pakistan's people who will lose sight of the future.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Consultant Editor, Dhaka Tribune.
