In Pakistan, new script, old actors

Nawaz Sharifs homecoming seems to be part of a structured script that underwrites the country’s politics and the fluid nature of its civil-military relations

- TCA Raghavan

Being exiled, and then returning home to retake power is a template in Pakistan that has steadily consolidated over the past four decades. The pattern was established by the late Benazir Bhutto when she returned from exile in London in April 1986 - almost exactly seven years after her father's execution. Two and half years later in December 1988, she became the first female prime minister (PM) of a Muslim country. Less than two decades later, she was to end another exile and return to Pakistan in October 2007, only to be killed in a terrorist attack before the year was over.

But her party went on to win the election and form the next government.

Nawaz Sharif was deposed as PM by a military coup in October 1999, then imprisoned and went into exile before returning to Pakistan in November 2007. He became PM for the third time in 2013, before being deposed and imprisoned again, and finally forced into exile again. All this seems part of a structured script that underwrites Pakistan's politics and the very fluid nature of its civil-military relations.

With Sharif's latest return, there is the obvious irony of the unthinkable having happened. Imran Khan, the Pakistan army's chosen one since at least 2014, is now in jail with his party in tatters. He has been displaced as the army's favourite by Sharif who, for the last 25 years, has been the politician the army has had the greatest reservations about and with whom it has a history of bitter conflict.