What happened

A police officer was shot dead and dozens of people were injured as clashes between Pakistani authorities and protesters demanding the release of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan intensified Monday. Pakistan's capital city of Islamabad has been placed on lockdown for a second day in a row as thousands took to the streets to demand Khan's release and new elections.

Who said what

Khan has been in prison for more than a year and faces a host of charges ranging from corruption to leaking state secrets that he alleges are politically motivated. He "remains hugely popular despite attempts by the military-backed civilian government to suppress his support," The New York Times said. Police have detained more than 4,000 Khan supporters, and government officials have threatened more arrests if protesters reach Islamabad's "red zone," which has been "sealed off to protect government buildings," Al Jazeera said.

What next?

The ongoing clashes may signal that Pakistan is "nearing a breaking point," the Times said. Khan's wife, Bushra Bibi, told supporters Monday that the marches would continue until her husband was freed.

A cricketing powerhouse for decades, Pakistan's national team have suddenly found themselves on a sticky wicket. This month Pakistan suffered a shocking 2-0 home Test series defeat to Bangladesh, a country they have beaten in every previous Test encounter.

And that outcome is far more than an unlucky fluke. The Pakistani men's side have not won a Test match at home since February 2021: "a winless streak of 10 games", said Al Jazeera.

Following their defeat to Bangladesh, Pakistan fell to number eight in the ICC Test rankings: their worst position in nearly six decades. Their recent performances have "nosedived across all formats" of cricket, with poor management, political instability and the chaotic churn in coaches and captains all blamed for the downfall.

Just not cricket

Among Pakistan's nearly 240 million people, cricket is by far the most popular sport. It "cuts across all divides in society", which gives it "enormous cultural and political cachet", said Eastern Eye. Players are "celebrated as national heroes" – some, like former captain and now jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, even ascend to the top levels of political power off the back of their sporting glory.

But this year, Pakistan failed to qualify for the Super 8 round of the T20 World Cup after losing the group stage matches to rivals India and the non-Test playing USA. They also failed to get out of the group stages at the 50-over World Cup. Perhaps their last notable run was during the T20 World Cup in 2022, when they eventually lost a one-sided final to England.

In the past two years alone, Pakistani cricket has "ploughed through four coaches, three board heads, three captains and numerous formats of the domestic competition", said Agence France-Presse. Regional analysts have said the repeated upheaval is due to a system that "rides on the whims of politicians" rather than the best interests of the game.

Khan recently issued a statement from prison, describing the country's cricketing woes as a result of the same political forces he alleges are behind his conviction. "Favourites have been imposed to run a technical sport like cricket. What are Mohsin Naqvi's qualifications?" he said, referring to the current chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), who has a second full-time job as interior minister.

The "incongruity" of Naqvi's dual roles was highlighted when he hosted a recent press conference, discussing both a deadly militant attack and a cricket game.

The PCB has also been accused of "favouring" certain players, said the Hindustan Times, and Shan Masood's "lacklustre captaincy" has failed to turn things around for the Test team.

Decades in the making

The "Pakistan team's rapid downward spiral has been alarming, to say the least", said the Express Tribune. The recent series of high-profile losses "makes the mind boggle". But for critics of the game, "the pattern has been all too obvious for nearly two decades".

"Ad hocism has taken root" in the PCB – little surprise in a nation "increasingly shorn of democratic values", said the Karachi-based English language newspaper. The ruling regime has "hand-picked" favourites to lead the PCB, to "run the game in their own clueless manner, only to ruin it".

This politically motivated interference in the sport "has a knock-on effect on team performance", said Ahsan Iftikhar Nagi, cricket journalist and former media manager of the PCB, the governing body. "When we have chaos and chronic instability within the management of the board it will reflect in the on-field performances," he said on France 24.

Chaos is "prevalent" both on and off the field, said the Express Tribune, and domestic cricket pitches are in a "poor state", which leaves batsmen and bowlers unprepared for competitive international cricket. More and more leading players choose to head off to international T20 leagues because the money is better. Their "continuous absence" has taken its toll on the PCB's "much-trumpeted flagship project", the Pakistan Super League.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's cricket bosses are "sitting pretty in their cushy jobs, handed to them in a platter by the respective regimes". They have no time nor inclination to "set things right", said the Express Tribune; they are "busy working on their own respective agendas": saving "their own skin and seat, or making good money at the expense of the country's cricket".

The government of Pakistan is "throttling the internet" with a China-style firewall to "crush dissent" – and "gaslighting" citizens about it, activists and business leaders claim. 

Internet connectivity has been up to 40% slower than normal since July, according to one IT expert quoted on the Karachi-based online newspaper Dawn, disrupting businesses and affecting millions. For weeks the government "refused to comment". Pakistan's all-powerful military said it was battling so-called "digital terrorism". 

But a digital rights specialist blames the installation of a national firewall, aimed at "increasing surveillance and at censoring political dissent", which the government denies. Activists say the "target" of the disruption is the party of jailed opposition leader and former prime minister Imran Khan, who is still "wildly popular and boosted by a young, tech-savvy voter base".

Pakistan's digital censorship playbook

Last week the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) described the "hastily" implemented firewall as a "sacrifice" of the nation's IT industry "at the altar of misplaced priorities".

It "triggered a perfect storm of challenges" that threatened a "complete meltdown of business operations", said the group in a press release. It was a "direct and aggressive assault on the industry’s viability". A "mass exodus of IT companies is not just a possibility but an imminent reality if immediate and decisive action is not taken", it warned.

It predicted financial losses of up to $300 million for the economy – about a month's worth of the country's IT exports, said The Register. Whatever Pakistan is doing seems similar to the impact of China's Great Firewall abroad, said the tech website, but different from the domestic impact. Within China, access speeds "remain generally high".

Given Pakistan's "history of censorship", however, it would "hardly be surprising" if it were implementing such a system. Activists have long criticised Pakistan's attempted control of the digital sphere. 

The country blocked internet access last year when protests erupted over the arrest of Khan. X (formerly Twitter) has been banned since February due to "security threats", after it was used to share allegations of poll rigging against Khan's party during the election. 

Pakistan has also blocked access to Wikipedia and TikTok in recent years, to restrict content deemed "inappropriate on religious grounds".

The government's defence

After "weeks of hue and cry from internet users", the Pakistani government claimed that it was upgrading its "web management system" to combat cybersecurity threats, said The Times of India.

On Sunday, Pakistan's minister for IT and telecommunications denied that the government was responsible for the anaemic speeds. She said claims the government was "throttling the internet to suppress dissent" were "completely false". 

The "frequent, unannounced degradations" in connectivity were due to the widespread use of secure connections, or virtual private networks (VPNs), Shaza Fatima Khawaja said.

"I can say under oath that the government neither shut down nor slowed down the internet," she told a press conference in Islamabad. A meeting has been set up with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) this week to "ensure that users in the country do not face similar problems again".

But the Lahore High Court summoned representatives from the government and the PTA to answer for the disruption. Activists have filed a petition before the Islamabad High Court, calling for the internet to be "declared a fundamental right under Pakistan's constitution", said the BBC. The court is due to hear the case on Monday.

After all, if the issue was more people using VPNs, said Dawn, "why was there a need to get the PTA involved?" What are the authorities hoping to achieve? What is the timeline for the rollout of the new system? What can ordinary users expect from it? How can the state expect people to respect restrictions when the state itself uses VPNs to get around them? Even Pakistan's prime minister and other state officials appear to be using VPNs to continue to access and post on X.

There is still "very little" in the way of answers. And it is this "opacity" that keeps people "deeply suspicious". "The people deserve more than clueless representatives gaslighting them for suffering poor internet connectivity."

A six-way coalition will form the next government in Pakistan, ensuring the party of former prime minister Imran Khan will not take power despite getting the most votes in last week's election.

The announcement followed "days of wrangling and political horse-trading", said The Guardian, after Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) won the most votes – but not enough for a majority – "despite military opposition and a state-led crackdown".

The election may have featured "state-of-the-art avatars and TikTok videos, but the question it poses evokes an old theme", said The Economist. That is: "How long can the country's relentless decline continue before it triggers a revolution, outside intervention or – hope against hope – political renewal?"

What did the commentators say?

The people of Pakistan "spoke clearly" on 8 February, wrote Mosharraf Zaidi in The News International. PTI loyalists, who were forced to stand as independents after the party lost its electoral symbol days before the vote, won 93 seats out of 266. In the circumstances, said Zaidi, this is "nothing short of a political miracle".

Amid allegations of widespread vote-rigging and manipulation, "there is no escaping the party's arrival as the big, immovable object in Pakistani politics". But despite registering the most votes of any party, and boasting the most popular politician in Pakistan as its figurehead, it finds itself shut out of power.

PTI has described the new ruling alliance – led by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which had been predicted to win the election comfortably – as "mandate thieves". 

In truth, the election had been a "fiasco before any votes were cast", said The Economist. "For decades the generals have ruled nuclear-armed Pakistan directly or via a stage-managed democracy featuring a recurring cast of corrupt dynastic parties," said the newspaper, and they will welcome this "shabby outcome".

It was an election "arranged by the Generals and the Judges", agreed Dr Mahboob A. Khawaja on Counter Currents.

Yet despite the seemingly iron grip of the military, judiciary and historic political clans on the levers of power, last week's result shows that Khan continues to loom large. If the army and opposition thought his sentencing to more than a decade in prison would weaken his influence then they have been sorely mistaken. On Friday, Khan, the former national cricket captain in a country where the sport is wildly popular, used an AI-generated video to deliver a victory speech from his cell.

PTI's success "against the odds" in this "deeply flawed" election sends "an emphatic message from Pakistani citizens: they are tired of being led by self-serving political elites and the military's arbitration", said the Financial Times (FT).

What next?

Pakistan is "mired in an economic crisis" that has seen annual inflation hit 28%, said the FT. The country's debt burden has risen sharply and it narrowly avoided defaulting last year thanks to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout.

Incoming prime minister Shehbaz Sharif has pledged "revolutionary steps" to bring the country out of its economic malaise, but the new coalition government will take power "under a cloud of public distrust and questions of legitimacy", said The Guardian.

One scenario forecast by The Economist is that Khan's "young, often urban and now-enraged supporters rise up" as they did after his arrest in May 2023 when they stormed military buildings in Lahore. "Another is that the Pakistani Taliban, a local variant of the militant movement, takes advantage of the political turmoil and stirs up further violence."

The election's outcome ultimately "makes the country even less governable", said the FT. It predicted that the new government may need to pursue unpopular austerity policies in order to secure new IMF loans in the spring, all against the backdrop of mass protests by Khan's supporters.

There are "no easy fixes for Pakistan's long-standing economic and security troubles, regardless of who is in power", the paper said. The first step would be to empower voters to hold leaders to account with fair elections.

"With this stunning election result, a long-term reckoning over how Pakistan ought to be governed has begun."

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Pakistan's army was ranked the seventh most powerful in the world last year, but its political power is now under the spotlight amid claims the military has turned the country's upcoming elections "into a farce". 

Former prime minister Imran Khan, once a star cricketer and later known as the "blue-eyed boy" of the country's military, was sentenced yesterday to 14 years in prison on charges of illegally profiting from state gifts. His sentencing comes days  before the (delayed) 8 February general election, in which Khan had been barred from standing as the candidate for his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). 

Khan was already serving a three-year jail term, after being ousted in April 2022 following a no-confidence vote, and hit with more than 180 charges ranging from rioting to terrorism. His supporters claim the charges were politically motivated – and coordinated by the army. 

His arrest last year triggered "unprecedented" anti-military riots, said The Diplomat, but  the government and army have since cracked down on his supporters and PTI workers, with dozens of party leaders going into hiding.

A long-standing foe of Khan, three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, is now "tipped to win" next week's election, after recently returning from a four-year self-imposed exile in the UK, reported BBC News from Islamabad. Sharif was long "a thorn in the side of the powerful military", and was jailed days before Khan claimed victory in the 2018 election. But many now believe Sharif is "preferred" by the Pakistan military, while Khan "has fallen out of favour".  

Sharif's daughter, Maryam Nawaz, the organiser for his party Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), said last week that Pakistan's military establishment was responsible for ousting her father – and also for bringing him back.

What did the commentators say?

Although Pakistan has an interim government based in Islamabad, said Arun Anand on Indian news site Firstpost, "in reality it is playing with a lifeless remote as the affairs are effectively managed from Rawalpindi, which houses the General Headquarters (GHQ) of its powerful army".

The governing parties will "pull out all the stops" to prevent the PTI from winning the election, said historian Francis Pike in The Spectator – helped by the Pakistani army, "which laughably claims political impartiality". It is, however, "common knowledge that the army is the ultimate source of power in Pakistan". 

Since the country gained independence in 1947, out of the Partition of India, it has had three periods of martial law: a total of 33 years. Even when not under martial law, politicians "rule under licence" from the army, said Pike. 

Its "supremacy" over Pakistan's institutions was also born out of the war against India in 1948, former federal minister Asad Umar told Al Jazeera, and has since been shored up by multiple wars with its neighbour, and the perceived threat of more. The military has "consistently received more budgetary resources than any other government department", said Abid Hussain, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad. 

Despite Pakistan being "on the verge of an economic meltdown", with an extravagant national debt, the army's assets grew by 78% between 2011 and 2015, Ayesha Jehangir, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Technology Sydney, wrote in an article on The Conversation. Today, the army's commercial assets are worth more than £20.6 billion. 

And an estimated 12% of Pakistan's total land is owned by the army, according to Ayesha Siddiqa, a former researcher with the country’s naval forces.

"It should be noted", said Pike in The Spectator, "that Khan's political downfall coincided with his falling out with army head General Qamar Javed Bajwa, who retired recently with an estimated fortune of $33 million (£26 million)."

In his farewell speech, Bajwa conceded "in a rare admission" that Pakistan's military "had meddled in politics for decades", said Hussain. He promised that, in future, the army would "steer clear of interfering in Pakistan's democratic functioning". Now, "that assurance appears to have evaporated".

What next?

The military's influence goes far beyond politics, said Jehangir in The Conversation. It also controls information dissemination via censorship, and uses "vaguely worded draconian laws" to prosecute its enemies. "As a nuclear state, Pakistan's military is much like Voltaire's description of Frederick II of Prussia: it is a state within itself, benefiting from its sheer size, a great deal of money, and an advantageous geopolitical positioning."

Khan's team have promised to challenge "this ridiculous decision" of his conviction, but his experiences – and that of his rival Sharif – "underline why politicians in Pakistan often feel compelled to comply with the military's wishes", said Hussain for Al Jazeera.

But "one question above all lingers", he added – "can the country of 241 million people rectify the civilian-military imbalance, which has, to many critics, turned the latest vote into a farce?"

“Kaha tha Imran Khan ko na chhedna.” If there’s a single slogan that captures the “profound crisis” of the Pakistani state, it is this, said Avinash Paliwal in The Indian Express (Delhi): “We told you, don’t touch Imran Khan.”

Last Tuesday, Khan, the former PM and leader of the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, was attending court in the capital Islamabad when he was unexpectedly arrested on corruption charges, and dragged into custody by paramilitary police.

The arrest escalated a constitutional crisis that has dragged on since Khan was removed from power in a no-confidence vote in April last year, which he has never accepted. His PTI party reacted by calling for protests, which duly erupted across the nation.

‘Reservoir of rage’

“It was as if a reservoir of rage had burst open,” said Zarrar Khuhro on Al Jazeera (Doha). Public buildings, buses and schools were set ablaze. Protesters attacked the residence of the current PM, Shehbaz Sharif. Even the “strongholds of the powerful military establishment”, usually off-limits to even the angriest of mobs, were targeted. PTI supporters ransacked the official residence of the Lahore army commander, looting everything – furniture, paintings, strawberries, even a peacock – before setting it on fire. In total, more than ten protesters were killed. On Friday, the supreme court ordered Khan’s release, on the grounds that his arrest had been unlawful. He arrived at his home in Lahore in the early hours of Saturday morning and was greeted by thousands of supporters, who danced, set off fireworks and showered his car with rose petals in celebration.

“There should be no doubt that Khan’s arrest had little to do with upholding the constitution and everything to do with fear and intimidation,” said Sarah Eleazar in Dawn (Karachi). Since his removal, Khan has been charged in more than 100 cases – including corruption, terrorism and blasphemy.

It’s “a well-established tradition”, said Farzana Shaikh in The Guardian: “the incarceration of political leaders who fall foul of the country’s all-powerful military”. During his rise to power, Khan had the full support of the military. But that “cosy relationship” fell apart in 2021, because Khan tried to foist his leader of choice on the ISI, Pakistan’s influential military spy agency. The military then turned against him and allowed him to be ousted; Khan became a trenchant critic of the army. On 6 May, he claimed at a rally that the current head of the ISI, Major-General Faisal Naseer, whom he nicknames “Dirty Harry”, was plotting to murder him. He also blames Shehbaz Sharif for an assassination attempt in November, when he was shot in the leg. The problem for Khan’s opponents is that, since last April, his popularity has “soared”. “Few doubt that he would return to power, when or if elections were held.”

‘Irresponsibile and incendiary populist rhetoric’

The way that Khan’s arrest was carried out was “extremely concerning”, said The Nation (Lahore). But he does have a case to answer: he is alleged to have obtained billions of rupees from a real estate firm that laundered the proceeds of crime. And with his “irresponsible and incendiary” populist rhetoric, Khan is only increasing “polarisation across the country and bringing disrepute to the country’s institutions” at a time when it desperately needs stability.

Pakistan’s insitutions were already deep in disrepute, said Shaheer M. Ashraf in The Express Tribune (Lahore). Indeed Khan’s popularity derives directly from the public’s “hatred” for them, exacerbated by a profound economic crisis. Once again, Pakistan’s unstable political system has failed. Its political leaders “have never been strong enough to exert their authority over the military”. But the military is also not powerful enough to rule on its own, and has “required political leaders to provide itself with legitimacy”. Never before, though, has the establishment been challenged as it is now. Many believe that Pakistan is on the brink of revolution. It is certainly “stepping into uncharted territory”.

Violent clashes and protests have erupted across Pakistan after Imran Khan, the country’s legendary cricketer turned populist politician, was arrested on his way to court to face charges of corruption.

The former prime minister, who was ousted last year after falling out with Pakistan’s powerful military, was bundled into a van by dozens of paramilitary troops outside a court hearing in the capital, Islamabad, on Tuesday.

On the streets of Islamabad, “hundreds of protesters blocked one of the main highways in and out of the capital”, said the BBC. Speaking to the broadcaster, Khan’s spokesman, Raoof Hasan, said he expected “the worst” and that the arrest could plunge the country “into chaos and anarchy”.

Khan was released on bail three days later after the country’s Supreme Court ruled his detention unlawful. “He has emerged as the country’s most popular leader,” said Al Jazeera and Khan has called on his supporters to hold “freedom” protests to continue across Pakistan.

“The transformation of Khan from a dashing cricketer, whose private life provided the British tabloids with endless fodder, to a philanthropist who built one of Pakistan’s best-equipped cancer hospitals, to a politician who became the prime minister and is now the most popular man in the country is a dramatic tale,” said Outlook India.

Who is Imran Khan?

Born into a wealthy Pashtun family in Lahore in 1952, Khan attended the exclusive Aitchison College and Cathedral School in Lahore, followed by the Royal Grammar School Worcester in England.

He made his cricket debut for Pakistan in 1971 aged just 18, before studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Keble College, Oxford, graduating in 1975.

It was while pursuing his education abroad that Khan “developed a reputation as something of an aristocratic playboy who chased supermodels around the London nightclub circuit and posed lounging on a bed in nothing but a pair of satin shorts”, said The Times of India. He was romantically linked to a number of Bollywood stars as well as the Hollywood actress Goldie Hawn, and later said of his youth: “The playboy image is exaggerated, but I’m not a saint either”.

The high point of his cricketing career came in 1992 when, while nursing a shoulder injury, he cemented his status as a national icon by captaining Pakistan to a win at the Cricket World Cup.

In 1995, three years after retiring, the 42-year-old Khan married the 21-year-old British socialite Jemima Goldsmith, who converted to Islam. The marriage lasted nine years. His second marriage, to a British TV presenter, Reham Ramzan, ended in 2015 after just nine months. He later married his spiritual mentor, Bushra Bibi.

As well as his two acknowledged children with his first wife, he is believed to have fathered at least five other children out of wedlock, although the exact number is not known.

Political wilderness to prime minister

Long recognised as one of Pakistan’s best-known faces internationally, “Khan struggled for years to turn popular support into electoral gains”, said BBC News’s Simon Fraser.

He launched his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in 1996 but it did not emerge as a serious player nationally until the 2013 general election. Five years later, making huge gains in the Punjab province which holds more than half of the 272 directly elected National Assembly seats, a massive swing propelled him to power.

“Khan was seen as a ‘change’ candidate, whose promise to raise a whole new class of clean politicians chimed with voters disillusioned with the old political order,” said Fraser.

Hopes were initially high. The International Centre for Investigative Reporting said in 2018 after he came to power that his government hoped to build “an egalitarian, non-exploitative state based on the principles of the first Islamic state of Medina”. Khan “promises a new society in which all will be equal before the law, political opponents will not be victimised, the judiciary will be independent, the police and military will be re-oriented based on democratic values”, the website added. Additionally, his government promised ten million new jobs and the construction of five million low-cost housing units within five years.

However, many of those pledges went unmet and Khan was charged with tanking the country’s financial system. “To be fair, Khan has tried everything in his playbook to revive Pakistan’s economy,” said the Times of India, in 2020, but his “obsession with media optics has become more important than delivery in office”.

What next?

Khan’s arrest on Tuesday “underscored how far relations have deteriorated with the powerful military, which backed his rise to power in 2018 but withdrew its support ahead of a parliamentary vote of no confidence that ousted him last year”, reported The Economic Times.

In the 12 months since he was ousted the political crisis gripping Pakistan has only worsened, coming to a head in November when Khan was wounded during a political rally after an unidentified man opened fire on his convoy in what many believed was an assassination attempt.

The New York Times described his arrest as a “major escalation” that has “intensified a showdown between the current government and Khan” and “raises the prospect of mass unrest by his supporters”.

“The drama surrounding Khan seems only to have buoyed his popularity,” the paper said, “underscoring his unique ability to outmanoeuvre Pakistan’s typical playbook for sidelining political leaders who have fallen out of favour with the country’s powerful military”.

With his support growing amid ever-intensifying calls for fresh elections few would bet against the former playboy defying the odds to make a dramatic return.

Imran Khan is fighting for his political survival as he attempts to rally supporters while facing a no-confidence vote triggered by mass demonstrations.

Pakistan’s “political temperature” has reached “boiling point” in the wake of the move by opposition parties, said The Times of India. A string of defections has also stripped Khan of his parliamentary majority amid corruption and mismanagement allegations.

The no-confidence vote will be tabled within seven days, setting up the prime minister for the “toughest challenge” of his political life, Al Jazeera reported.

Hit for six

Khan was a sporting hero in Pakistan after captaining the country’s cricket team to victory in the 1992 World Cup. He subsequently gained political power “on a promise to sweep away the entrenched corruption and cronyism of two-party dynastic politics that had dogged the country since independence” in 1947, The Times said.

But “he has struggled to turn around the stagnant, debt-laden economy” since becoming PM in 2018. During his time in office, “inflation has soared to record highs, with the cost of basic items such as food and fuel climbing by up to 16%.

“Unemployment is rising, the country’s foreign reserves are depleted and the national deficit has spiralled,” the paper added, leaving the “handsome, charismatic hero on the field” facing increasing criticism.

Opposition figures have suggested that Khan has “fallen out with the powerful military, which mostly determines who will rule, a charge Khan and the military deny”, Al Jazeera reported. Khan has publicly blamed the threat to his leadership on “foreign powers”.

Appearing at a rally of his ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party on Monday, he told the crowd that “funding was being channelled into Pakistan from abroad” in an effort to dislodge his government, adding: “We will not compromise on national interests.”

Khan has provided “​​no details of the conspiracy”, said The Telegraph, and analysts claim his problems stem from “mismanaging the economy and failing to curb soaring inflation, which is causing deep economic pain to many of his supporters”.

His situation has been worsened by a number of defections that have left him without a majority in the nation’s parliament.

The opposition is now “confident that they can get the support of 172 members in the house of 342 to dislodge the government”, The Times of India said. Khan claims he has “support in the house to foil the attempt”.

Khan stumped?

With days to go until the no-confidence vote, the embattled PM still has “plenty of time for frantic horse-trading” in an effort to win enough support, The Telegraph said.

Sumedha Dasgupta, senior Asia analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told the paper that he believes Khan will survive, but warned that “there are significant risks surrounding the outcome, including the possible involvement of the military”.

“The ousting of Mr Khan would be likely to lead to some form of caretaker government, ahead of the national elections in 2023, and potential military involvement,” Dasgupta added.

Should the vote succeed, Khan will “become the first Pakistani prime minister to be ousted by a vote of confidence”, The Times reported. But true to his flamboyant style on the cricket field, he “is not going down without a fight”.

He has “turned his fire on old enemies”, accusing opposition figures of “bribing his MPs to ward off corruption investigations against themselves”. Once known for appearing alongside “models and actresses” in “London’s best nightclubs”, his “politics and religion have grown increasingly conservative” in an effort to secure his base.

In recent months he has “denounced political opponents as devils”, the paper added. Khan also prompted “outrage last year for comments blaming declining standards of modesty among women for a surge of rape cases in Pakistan”.

Khan has also criticised Western nations. At the rally earlier this week, he accused his opponents of being “slaves of America”, telling his supporters that “we won’t accept being slaves of anyone. Pakistani people have to decide whether they will allow conspirators to succeed with foreign money.”

In an effort to save his government, he has pledged to hand “the post of chief minister of the country’s largest province, Punjab, to one of its coalition partners”, Al Jazeera said. But the effort seems to have failed, with Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party, stating that he has the numbers to “oust” Khan.

“Imran Khan is on a ventilator, fighting for his government’s survival,” Najam Sethi, a political commentator and former chief minister of Punjab, told The Times.

Despite his bullishness about the no-confidence vote, it appears that the PM “has lost the confidence of a majority of the members of parliament”, Sethi added.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have arrived in Pakistan for a five-day visit aimed at strengthening ties between Britain and the South Asian country.

The royal couple arrived last night at the Nur Khan airbase, near capital Islamabad, where they were greeted by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, says The Telegraph.

Details of the visit have been kept secret owing to security concerns, and more than 1,000 Pakistani police officers have been deployed to keep Prince William and Kate safe as they travel around the Commonwealth country.

Kensington Palace said security issues and political uncertainty meant that the tour was the couple’s “most complex” to date.

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In his first official engagement in Pakistan, the Prince met pupils at a government-run college in Islamabad and spoke about the importance of young people learning about mental health, reports the BBC.

One girl told the Royal that she and her classmates were “big fans of your mother”, to which he replied: “You were, really? Oh, that’s very sweet of you. I was a big fan of my mother too.”

The Duke and Duchess later met Prime Minister Imran Khan for lunch, during which they discussed the Pakistani leader’s former sporting career.

“William recalled how everyone laughed at a gathering in Richmond-upon-Thames in 1996 when the former Sussex and Worcestershire cricketer announced his political ambition to the then teenage Prince William and Diana,” according to the Daily Mail.

The Duke and Duchess will go on to visit Lahore in eastern Pakistan, as well as the north and west of the country.

They are the first British royals to officially visit the country since the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall toured the region in 2006.

Pakistan has accused India's military of violating its airspace, and says its air force has scrambled jets in response.

Major General Asif Ghafoor tweeted: “Indian Air Force violated Line of Control. Pakistan Air Force immediately scrambled. Indian aircrafts gone back. Details to follow.”

He said that the “intrusion" had come three to four miles across the border which divides India-administered Kashmir from Pakistan-administered Kashmir. “No infrastructure got hit, no casualties,” he added.

The move comes after an Indian minister said that air force jets had hit “terror camps” across the ceasefire line in Kashmir. Sources told an Indian news agency that 12 fighter jets had crossed into Pakistani territory and destroyed a “major terrorist camp”.

However, Pakistani military said the Indian jets had dropped their payload early while fleeing from defending forces.

This was the first aerial bombing over the disputed border since the two countries went to war in 1971.

Tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours are at their “highest in years”, The Guardian says, after a suicide bomber drove an explosive-filled vehicle into a convoy of Indian troops on 14 February.

At least 40 soldiers were killed in the deadliest attack in the region in decades, which India blamed on Pakistan, an allegation the country denies.

According to the New York Times, tensions between the two nations are “unlikely” to erupt into full-scale war but The Times of India points out that the Indian Air Force remains “on high alert” today.

India and Pakistan both claim all of Kashmir. The nations have fought three wars and a limited conflict since they seized independence from Britain in 1947.

On Sunday, Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan said his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi should "give peace a chance”.

Pakistan and India have each claimed attacks on the other’s fighter jets as tensions reach a peak in the two nuclear powers’ dispute over Kashmir.

A Pakistan army spokesperson said the country's air force shot down two Indian jets after they crossed the Line of Control dividing Indian and Pakistani territory in the border region.

Major General Asif Ghafoor said one plane went down in Indian-controlled Kashmir, while the other crashed in Pakistan’s territory, where troops arrested the pilots.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan confirmed the attack and said the “pilots are with Pakistan”.

Meanwhile, India that its own forces had shot down a Pakistani jet over the heavily militarised border.

The skirmishes - just a day after India flew sorties into Pakistan for the first time in nearly 50 years - “are steep escalations in the most serious military crisis in south Asia since the pair fought a brief war in the Himalayas in 1999”, says The Guardian.

The dogfights are the first publicly acknowledged such clashes between the two countries since they were last officially at war, in 1971. Commercial flights across Pakistan and north India have been cancelled as a result.

Khan has called for talks with India and said he hoped that “better sense” would prevail to de-escalate the dispute.

“History tells us that wars are full of miscalculation. My question is that given the weapons we have, can we afford miscalculation. We should sit down and talk,” he said during a short televised address to his nation.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi “has not yet made any comment”, reports the BBC, but his foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj, said her country would act “with responsibility and restraint”.

"India does not wish to see further escalation of the situation," she said.

Tensions have been high since Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Indian-administered Kashmir last Thursday that claimed the lives of more than 40 members of India's security forces. It was the deadliest militant attack in the disputed region in decades.

India has said there was “incontrovertible evidence” that Pakistan had a “direct hand” in the attack, a claim which drew a stinging rebuke from Khan.

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, subsequently appealed to the UN secretary general to help ease tensions with India that, as Reuters reports, have “escalated sharply”.

Both India and Pakistan “are believed to possess more than 100 nuclear warheads each and have conducted atomic weapon tests”, says The Independent.

And Pakistan “has refused to renounce a first-strike option with its atomic bombs should it feel outgunned in a conventional war”, the newspaper adds.

According to The Washington Post, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists organisation warns that “computer models have predicted that the physical impacts of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, or even a single strike on a large city, would be devastating and would reverberate throughout the world”.

Separatist violence in Kashmir has killed at least 47,000 people since 1989, although “some human rights groups and nongovernmental organisations put the death toll at twice that amount”, reports CNN.

An armed attack on the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi has put tensions over Beijing’s expansionist foreign policy in the spotlight.

Three suicide bombers killed two policemen and a Pakistani father and son applying for visas during the attempted raid on Friday morning, according to reports in local media. Police said the three attackers were killed before they were able to penetrate the compound.

No Chinese citizens were harmed in the attack. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has vowed to launch a “complete inquiry” into the incident, which he suggested was “part of a conspiracy aimed at undermining economic and strategic cooperation between the two nations”, Reuters reports.

As the news site notes, China “is Pakistan’s closest ally, ploughing billions of dollars in loans and infrastructure investments into the South Asian nation as part of Beijing’s vast Belt and Road initiative”.

That investment is critical for Pakistan’s ailing economy. Earlier this week, bailout talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) broke down, with the US-led organisation unconvinced that Islamabad had taken sufficient steps to control the country’s fiscal deficit, says the Nikkei Asian Review.

However, not all Pakistanis welcome China’s growing involvement in the country. The attempted storming of the Karachi consulate appears to have been the work of the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist insurgent group believed to be responsible for multiple acts of terror against the Pakistani state.

In a statement to Reuters, the BLA said it had ordered the assault because “China is exploiting our resources”.

The miliants’ main political objective is to establish an independent homeland for the ten million-strong Baloch ethnic group, around half of whom live in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan.

However, in recent years the group has also turned its attention to Chinese-funded construction projects in the province.

Balochistan “has rich mineral and natural gas reserves but remains Pakistan’s poorest province”, making Chinese encroachment in the region a delicate subject, says CNBC.

In August, a BLA suicide bomber blew up a van packed with explosives alongside a bus transporting Chinese engineers to a mining site near the provincial capital of Quetta, injuring six passengers.

The group’s spokesman said the attack on the consulate was intended as a warning to Beijing that “we will not tolerate any Chinese military expansionist endeavours on Baloch soil”.

China’s embassy in Islamabad has struck a defiant note in response to the attack, insisting that “any attempt to undermine the China-Pakistan relationship is doomed to fail”.

But even in more moderate quarters, China’s growing influence in Pakistan has been a cause for concern.

Part of the reason for the breakdown of the latest bailout talks was “the IMF’s insistence that Pakistan fully disclose the terms of loans extended under China’s Belt and Road Initiative”, the Nikkei Asian Review reports.

Washington has accused Beijing of engaging in “debt-trap diplomacy”, flooding poorer countries in Asia, Africa and Central America with much-needed capital in order to establish Chinese influence.

Imran Khan looks set to become Pakistan’s prime minister, with nearly half the votes counted from yesterday’s election.

His PTI party is currently in the lead and has shrugged off accusations of vote-rigging.

Yet Khan is “famous less for his political acumen” than for leading Pakistan to victory in the Cricket World Cup in 1992, says The Observer.

“In British terms, this is the equivalent of the late, much-missed Bobby Moore running for prime minister,” says the newspaper.

Khan was “a favourite with women during his cricketing career”, says the London Evening Standard, and “his tall, dark and handsome image led to him being dubbed cricket’s greatest playboy”.

He finally bowed out from the party scene in 1995, when he married Jemima Goldsmith. He has since remarried twice.

Here is everything you need to know about his three wives.

Jemima Goldsmith

The daughter of business tycoon Sir James Goldsmith and Lady Annabel Vane Tempest Stewart, Goldsmith studied English at Bristol University but quit before she could graduate in order to marry Khan. Goldsmith first met her future husband at a nightclub in London when she was 21 and he was 42.

After marrying, she converted to Islam and they set up home in Pakistan, so that Khan could pursue politics. A budding entrepreneur, Goldsmith launched her own fashion label and developed her own brand of ketchup. The couple had two sons, Sulaiman and Qasim, but in June 2004 it was announced that their marriage was over.

Reham Khan

Khan married former BBC weather presenter Reham Ramzan in 2015, but the couple divorced less than a year later. Now 45, she recently published a tell-all memoir about their marriage that has caused uproar in Pakistan.

Ramzan was born in Libya to Pakistani parents and has three children from a previous marriage. She was a weather girl and presenter on the BBC regional news programme South Today.

Bushra Maneka

Khan had a very different courtship with his third wife, he tells the Daily Mail, and did not see her face until after they were married.

“Bushra Maneka, 39, is a leading scholar and spiritual guide in the mystic Sufi branch of Islam and she will not meet men other than her husband with her face uncovered, nor venture unveiled outside her house, which she rarely leaves,” explains the newspaper.

Maneka is a mother of five and was still married to another man when she met Khan three years ago. She wed the former cricket star in February this year.

The party led by former international cricketer Imran Khan has taken an early lead in Pakistan’s general election, which has been marred by violence and claims of cheating.

“Leaders of almost every political party except Khan's have alleged vote rigging, with some claiming their monitors did not receive final tallies or were asked to leave polling stations before tallying was finished,” reports CNN. “They also raised questions over why the results had been delayed.”

With about a third of the votes counted, Khan’s Pakistan-Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party looks set to topple the incumbent Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN). Its candidates lead in 110 seats, while the PMLN leads in 68.

Most projections suggest that the PTI could secure as many as 120 seats in the 272-seat lower house, The Guardian reports, “exceeding expectations and delivering the role of prime minister to Khan for the first time”.

However, Shehbaz Sharif, leader of the PMLN and brother of disgraced former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, has vowed to reject the election result, claiming widespread vote-rigging and manipulation in favour of the PTI.

“We will use all political and legal options for redressal of these glaring excesses,” he said. “This is an outright rigging and the results based on massive rigging will cause irreparable damage to the country.”

Delays in reporting the official results have been blamed on “technical failures in the electronic reporting system”, says the BBC, meaning many ballots have had to be counted manually.

The vote followed a campaign scarred by unrest and violence, including a suicide bombing at a rally in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and another blast that claimed 145 lives, including that of a parliamentary candidate, in Baluchistan.

Citizens of Pakistan headed to polling stations today to determine the country’s next leader.

Voting began at 8am local time (4am BST) and closed at 6pm (2pm BST).

Opinion polls indicate that the vote will come down to the wire between the parties of ex-cricket star Imran Khan and disgraced former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

Here’s what you need to know:

Who is in the running?

“Outspoken cricketer-turned-politician” Khan is seeking to lead Pakistan, having “appealed to the masses, especially the younger generation”, with promises of “rooting out corruption” to create a “new Pakistan”, says Al Jazeera. The candidate of the centre-right PTI, Khan has vowed to create an Islamic welfare state.

His main challenger is Sharif, whose conservative PLM-N party is currently run by his brother Shehbaz. Nawaz was recently jailed for ten years following a corruption scandal uncovered by the Panama Papers in 2016.

Why is it important?

Since gaining independence in 1947, Pakistan has “oscillated between civilian and military rule”, the BBC says, adding: “This election will mark the second time that one civilian government has handed power to another after serving a full term - a historic landmark.”

However, the PML-N claims there has been a targeted crackdown of its activities by the intelligence services, with the help of the courts.

Has it been peaceful?

No. At least 31 people were killed in a bombing near a polling station in the western city of Quetta today, with other attacks reported across the country.

On 16 July, at least 149 people were killed in a suicide bombing targeting a candidate in the southwestern city of Mastung.

Army officials said that up to 370,000 troops had been deployed to ensure a “fair and free” election, while police estimate that the total security force at 800,000, CNN reports.

The imminent release of a tell-all memoir by the ex-wife of prospective Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan has rocked the country’s political establishment.

The autobiography by Reham Khan, the second wife of the former Pakistan cricket captain, “claims to lift the lid on their relationship, with salacious allegations about their private life, including accusations of infidelity”, says The Times.

The sports star-turned-politician’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI), or Pakistan Movement for Justice, has been viewed as the main challenger to the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). However, “the buzz created by the book and the sensational allegations by Reham could effectively derail Imran Khan’s chances for any success in the upcoming general election in July”, says news website DNA India.

Reham, a former BBC weather presenter, recently told Pakistan’s Geo TV channel that she was being bullied by her former husband’s supporters. “[They] have chosen the wrong woman to go after,” she said. “I will not tolerate baseless allegations by PTI. I challenge PTI to prove a single allegation against me.”

Reham claims copies of her manuscript was stolen by hackers, on the orders of the PTI, days before the anticipated publication date. Alleged extracts from the book were leaked to Pakistani broadcasters, prompting her to seek an injunction to prevent further publication. PTI has flatly denied the hacking claim.

According to The Guardian, Reham told India’s CNN18 television network that the book focused on “sexual coercion and how it is used, how sexual favours are used for political positions, for media positions, and some of them are directly related to PTI”.

She also said that if Khan were to become PM, it would be very dangerous for Pakistan.

However, in a separate interview with German newspaper Deutsche Welle, Khan’s ex said the memoir was not exclusively focused on the politician. She explained: “The book tells the story of my life, my experiences, and my journey through different continents, different cultures. My marriages are a part of my life and so have been included in the book. It is an honest account.”

She also denied that the timing of the book release has anything to do with the upcoming elections. “Firstly, we do not know if the elections will take place at all this year. Secondly, it took me a while to put down painful memories on paper,” she told the newspaper in March, prior to the announcement that the vote would be held on 25 July.

“It was like scratching a wound. I think that the people in Pakistan, policymakers and [foreign] investors should learn from my experiences. If there are to be elections this year, I think the book will be very helpful to all those who want an insight [into Pakistan],” Reham added this week.

The PTI is calling for the memoir to be banned in Pakistan, and has threatened to sue Reham in Britain on defamation charges. A number of legal notices against her have already been filed in Pakistani courts.

“His supporters allege the book falsely maligns him as a liar and hypocrite”, and fear that the allegations “could hurt Imran’s appeal among Pakistan’s conservative urban middle-class”, says The Guardian.

With the election race thought to be one of the closest in years, “the PTI is convinced that Ms Khan and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz aimed to publish just before polling day to torpedo Mr Khan’s challenge”, adds The Times.