Aboard The Democracy Train

A rare Communist to survive and win, Wazir refused a seat from Imran Khan, who later didn’t put up a candidate against him.

Ali Wazir, a central committee member of The Struggle, has won a seat in the national parliament of Pakistan from NA-50 (Tribal Area–XI) with 23,530 votes and his closest rival from a religious parties alliance, MMA got 7,515. Thus winning the seat with a majority of 16,015.

Ali Wazir is one of the main leaders of the Pashtun Tahafaz Movement (PTM). This year, mass meetings were organised in major cities of Pakistan to raise voices for fair compensation to the victims of the “war on terror” and to demand the release of all ‘missing’ persons or to bring them to the courts if they are guilty.

Two other leaders of the PTM also contested for the national parliament and one of them, Muhsin Dawer also won the seat after a close competition. Mohsin Javed Dawer got 16,526 votes while Aurangzeb of Imran Khan’s PTI got 10,422. However, the MMA candidate Mufti Misbahudin got a close 15,363 votes.

These two PTM leaders contested from Waziristan, an area dominated by religious fanatics. However, a strong movement for civil rights of Pashtuns had cut across the influence of the fanatics and Pashtuns voted despite all the threats to them.

Two main leaders of the PTM present in parliament has given hope to many in Pakistan that at least there would be peoples voices in a parliament dominated by feudal lords, corrupt capitalists and stooges of the military and judicial establishment.

Who is Ali Wazir?
Ali Wazir is a very special person. His personal ordeal best illustrates what prompted his demands. Ali Wazir was pursuing a degree in law at the turn of the century when his hometown, Wana, the headquarters of the south Waziristan agency, became the epicenter of global terrorism after a host of Taliban-allied groups sought shelter in the communities.

No doubt the terrorists had some individual local facilitators, but ultimately it was the state that failed to prevent them from using the territory. When his father, the chief of the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe, and other local leaders complained of their presence, government officials ignored and silenced them. Instead, Islamabad spent years denying the presence of any Afghan, Arab, or Central Asian militants.

By 2003, the militants had established a foothold in south and north Waziristan tribal agencies and were attempting to build a local emirate. Ali Wazir’s elder brother Farooq Wazir, a local political activist and youth leader, became the first victim of a long campaign in which thousands of Pashtun tribal leaders, activists, politicians, and clerics were killed with near absolute impunity. Their only crime was to question or oppose the presence of dangerous terrorists in their homeland.

In 2005, Ali Wazir was in prison when his father, brothers, cousins, and an uncle were killed in a single ambush. He was behind the bars because of the draconian colonial-era Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) law, that holds an entire tribe or region responsible for the crimes of an individual for any alleged crime committed in the territory.

Ali Wazir had committed no crime, never got a fair trial, and was not sentenced, yet he was prevented even from participating in the funerals for his family.

In the subsequent years, six more members of his extended family were assassinated. The authorities have not even investigated these crimes let alone held anyone responsible.

Ali Wazir and his family faced economic ruin after all of the notable men in his family were eliminated. The government failed to prevent the militants from demolishing his family owned gas stations. They later used those bricks to build bathrooms, claiming they were munafiqin (hypocrites) so even the inanimate materials from his businesses were not appropriate to build proper buildings.

His family-owned apple and peach orchards in Wana were sprayed with poisonous chemicals, and tube wells were filled with dirt to force them to surrender to the forces of darkness.

In 2016, his family-owned market in Wana was dynamited after a bomb blast killed an army officer, which was an accident. They nevertheless destroyed their livelihoods under the FCR. After the demolition, the government prevented the local community — mostly members of Ahmadzai Wazir tribe — from collecting donations to help them. They were told it would set an unacceptable precedent because the government cannot let anyone help those it punishes.

So all together 16 members of his family, including his father, two brothers were killed by Taliban during these years.

Ali Wazir was one of the main leaders of Pashtun Tahafaz Movement. He recently toured the country and organised mass rallies in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Swat. Lahore Left Front was the host of Lahore public meeting which was formally not permitted by the authorities. We were not allowed to campaign, no posters or stickers were allowed to be put up in the city.

Ali Wazir and seven more were arrested a night before the public meeting and after a massive immediate response, they were released before the rally. Yet, over 10,000 participated in this public meeting.

In June this year, dozens of Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) supporters were injured and 10 were killed as a result of an attack on Ali Wazir by the “pro-government militants”, also known as the Peace Committee. However, the PTM sympathisers gathered to welcome Ali retaliated, upon which the militants fled, leaving Ali’s cousin and a Voice of America (VOA) journalist injured among others.

In an interview in April 2018, Ali Wazir said, “The past few months have transformed my life. Amid the agonies I have endured and the threats, suspicion, and accusations I face, the love, support, and respect I receive is overwhelming.

Since February, when we began protesting to draw attention to the suffering of ethnic Pashtuns — among the worst victims of terrorism — I have learned a lot about the potential of ordinary Pakistanis. Their thirst for change is inspiring and heralds a peaceful, prosperous future we must build for generations to come”.

During those difficult years, he didn’t lose faith in the mass movement and remained committed to politics of class struggle. He ran in parliamentary elections in 2008 and 2013.

In the 2013 general elections, his victory was changed to a defeat at gunpoint. He lost the election for just over 300 votes after the Taliban intimidated voters and tortured his supporters and campaign volunteers.

Amid the volcano of violence, thousands of civilians have disappeared, and thousands have fallen victim to extrajudicial killings. The leaders of PTM are profiled as suspected terrorists across the country, face humiliation at security check posts, and innocent civilians have to face violence during security sweeps and operations. As the world’s largest tribal society, the Pashtuns are known for their hospitality, commitment, and valour, yet they were falsely reduced to terrorist sympathisers despite the fact that they are their worst victims.

Ali Wazir belongs to The Struggle, a Pakistani Marxist organization that has joined the Lahore Left Front, a united platform of several Left groups and parties. However, the Lahore Left Front has organised some mass activities where Ali Wazir participated.

The general election of 2018 was the most rigged elections in the history of Pakistan. The society has pushed further to the right with Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek e Insaaf (PTI) coming to power. Imran Khan called Ali Wazir prior to the elections and offered him PTI nomination from the area which Ali politely refused. However, such respect for Ali Wazir Imran Khan had that that he told him that in any case, “we will not put up our candidate against you”.

Prior to the general elections, a wholesale rigging took place on the behest of the establishment. PML(N) candidates were threatened, forced to change loyalties and so on. The PTI had open support from most of the state institutions.

In this background when a more Right-wing party PTI, than the previous ruling party PML(N), has come to power, a Marxist in parliament would be a breath of fresh air.

Although other Left groups also contested including Awami Workers Party (AWP) and had launched tremendous election campaigns, however, the election campaign of Ali Wazir had some special characteristics. He addressed few public meetings every day, went door to door with his meagre resources. Thousands cheered him at all times. We were all sure that he will win but were afraid of any incident that could cancel the elections from his constituency.

Ali Wazir has opened the gates for the entire Left. He is loved by most of the social activists, a sober person who is always down to earth in his presentation in workers meeting but speaks like a lion when he is addressing the ruling class. A fearless class fighter who has emerged as one of the most respected Left leaders in recent working-class history.

This article was originally published in the Asian Marxist Review

LAHORE, Pakistan — Imran Khan, a charismatic cricket star who has fiercely criticized American counterterrorism policy in a region plagued by extremism, appeared poised on Thursday to become Pakistan’s next prime minister.

After preliminary results showed his party decisively ahead in an election that critics say was deeply marred, Mr. Khan addressed the nation on television, outlining what he would do as prime minister.

He said he would fight corruption at the highest levels, improve relations with China, seek a “mutually beneficial” relationship with the United States and create a just welfare state along the lines of what the Prophet Muhammad did centuries ago.

“We’re going to run Pakistan in a way it’s never been run before,” he said.

He also said he would never live in the prime minister’s mansion. In a country of so many poor people, he said, “I would be embarrassed” to stay in such a house.

For years, Mr. Khan had tried but failed to take the reins of this nuclear-armed Islamic republic, which has struggled with poverty, economic stagnation and instability and which is increasingly torn between its two biggest allies: China and the United States. But this time around, he found a powerful ally in Pakistan’s military.

In recent months, army and intelligence officers pressured, threatened and blackmailed politicians from rival parties, human rights groups have said, steadily thinning out Mr. Khan’s competition.

Members of rival parties said unfair practices continued during the vote, with some ballot counting done in secret, guarded by soldiers. But Pakistan’s election authorities said the vote, on Wednesday, had been fair.

“The way this stage has been set, it would have been a surprise if he didn’t win,” said Nighat Dad, the executive director of Digital Rights Foundation, an advocacy group.

Mr. Khan’s ascendance injects a volatile element into relations with the United States under President Trump, who has accused Pakistan of lying about the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other militants embedded in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Mr. Khan has denied that and accused the United States of recklessness and murder in its use of drone strikes on suspected extremists in his country, signaling he wants them to stop.

Friends and foes describe Mr. Khan, 65, as relentless, charming, swaggering and highly unpredictable.

As a young man, his good looks, prowess on the cricket pitch and success with women made him something of a fascination in England, where he lived for a time. In 1982, he posed for a London newspaper lounging on a bed, wearing only briefs.

“Imran Khan is worried in case I portray him as a sex symbol,” wrote the London newspaper journalist sent to interview him.

“This is possibly why Imran is stretched across his hotel bed wearing only a petulant expression and a pair of tiny, black satin shorts.”

But a complex, mysterious transformation would begin soon after. In 1992, Mr. Khan captained Pakistan’s cricket team to a World Cup victory over England, the country’s former colonial ruler. It was a moment of immense Pakistani pride, and Mr. Khan was at the center of it.

But looking back on it, he told interviewers, he felt empty.

He began to stay away from the clubs, the partying, the girlfriends. He began a quest to build a cancer hospital in Pakistan for the poor; his mother had died of cancer, and the two had been close.

He turned to Islam and the Sufi sect, which he said helped lend purpose to his life.
Then he entered politics. Pakistan in the late 1990s was a mess: Its Machiavellian spy services were working with the United States and, at the same time, supporting the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. The country was poor, troubled and divided — which could still be said today.

Mr. Khan seized on a single issue: governance.

“In Pakistan, the main problem is not extremism,” he said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “We are a governance failure. And in any third world country, the moment the governance collapses, mafias appear.”

He focused on corruption, repeatedly stating that a few political dynasties had shamelessly enriched themselves while governance weakened and the country grew poorer.
But Mr. Khan’s shouts for reform were not taken seriously at first.

The Justice Movement he founded in 1996 initially won only one seat in Parliament — his — and a Pakistani newspaper ridiculed him as “Im the Dim.”

His personal life also careened back and forth, always attracting enormous attention, especially after he married a wealthy British heiress, Jemima Goldsmith. She converted to Islam, they had two children, and tried living in Pakistan together. But it did not last, and they divorced. Mr. Khan married twice more, the last time to his spiritual healer, which again raised eyebrows across Pakistan.

But he seemed adept at not letting the gossip pages distract him, and he kept hammering on about corruption. And two years ago, he received a gift from the Panama Papers.

Those files, an avalanche of millions of leaked confidential documents from a law firm in Panama, included several pieces of information that incriminated Pakistan’s prime minister at the time, Nawaz Sharif. Evidence began to build that Mr. Sharif had stolen millions of dollars from public coffers in Pakistan to buy expensive apartments in London, under the names of his children.

Mr. Khan capitalized on this and called for Mr. Sharif to resign. The Supreme Court removed Mr. Sharif from office, and just two weeks ago, right before the election, Mr. Sharif and his daughter were imprisoned.

Few would disagree that corruption is out of control in Pakistan. But many observers here saw something in Mr. Sharif’s downfall that was more selective, possibly more sinister.

The widespread suspicion was that Pakistan’s powerful military and intelligence services had pressured the judiciary to take out Mr. Sharif, clearing a path for Mr. Khan to take over. Mr. Sharif had clashed with the army chiefs, even some of those he had chosen, many times. He was a thorn in their side.

Mr. Khan, on the other hand, was someone the military bosses seemed to think they could work with. Analysts said he shared their worldview, in which Pakistan would kowtow less to the United States and talk more with the Taliban and other extremist groups.

In the prelude to the election, the military seemed to push even harder for Mr. Khan. Human rights groups, academics and members of other political parties said security officers threatened politicians to defect to Mr. Khan’s side. Several did.

That does not mean that Mr. Khan was not genuinely popular. He was, especially among young men who lionized him as a sports hero. As elections loomed, a Khan wave swept Pakistan. His face was everywhere — on banners, lampposts and torn flags flying from the sputtering rickshaws that flit in and out of traffic. His supporters were the most energized and confident. His party’s symbol: a cricket bat.

Votes were still being tabulated on Thursday, but Mr. Khan’s party was far ahead, though still falling short of an outright majority in Parliament. According to results on state television, Mr. Khan’s party had 120 seats, Mr. Sharif’s party 61 and a party run by the Bhuttos, one of Pakistan’s most storied political families, 40.

Even with some vote rigging allegations unsettled, it is widely expected that Mr. Khan will entice politicians from several smaller parties to join a coalition government, with him as prime minister. Depending on how many smaller parties he woos, his government could be strong or weak.

What will Mr. Khan face?
Domestically, the challenges will be overwhelming. Pakistan’s electricity grid is disintegrated, its infant mortality rate is among the most distressing in Asia, its currency is sliding, and its debt — especially to China — is ballooning. So many Pakistanis are unable to find jobs that every year, countless young men set off on a desperate exodus to the Middle East to work as street cleaners, luggage handlers, anything.

Internationally, Pakistan is in a pinch. China has extended it billions to build roads and other infrastructure, which at the current rate will be impossible to repay.
At the same time, President Trump has cut hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid. “They have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools,” Mr. Trump said of Pakistan in a tweet in January. “They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”

Mr. Khan deeply disagrees.

“To blame Pakistan for that disaster is extremely unfair,” he said in the recent Times interview. “The moment the U.S. went into Afghanistan, everyone knew what was going to happen.”

“It was the history of Afghanistan,” he added, citing the defeat of occupying Soviet troops in the 1980s. Just as with the Soviets, he said, the longer the Americans stayed, the more resistance would grow.

Pakistan, he says, has borne “the brunt of the war on terror,” and he lamented what he called a misguided strategy that has killed thousands of people in his country and deprived Pakistan of billions of dollars in lost business. For years, he has been a particularly vocal critic of American drone strikes.

All these positions play well with many Pakistanis. So does Mr. Khan’s recent support for the country’s strict blasphemy laws. Pakistan is socially conservative, and about 96 percent of citizens are Muslim.

Mr. Khan’s positions on religion have tacked like a sailboat over the years. But as the election drew closer, he seemed to set his course for the Islamists. In the past, he expressed support for the application of strict Islamic law, including hand amputations for thieves.

Mr. Khan has successfully rebranded himself as a populist alternative to Pakistan’s political elite, whom voters seemed more than ready to jettison.
But his life, in many ways, could not have been more different from that of most Pakistanis.

Born to a rich family in Lahore, Mr. Khan went to the best schools in Pakistan and in England, including Keble College, Oxford. He is independently wealthy, still travels abroad regularly and remains close to Ms. Goldsmith, despite their divorce.

Though many acquaintances credit him with being charming, he can also come across as remote and desultory. His attendance record as an elected member of the National Assembly, Pakistan’s Parliament, was one of the worst.

Many analysts wonder how long Mr. Khan’s friendship with the military will last.
“He is known to have erratic behavior and a very unpredictable personality,” said Taha Siddiqui, a journalist and critic of the military who recently moved to France, saying he feared for his safety.

Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan; and Meher Ahmad and Daniyal Hassan from Lahore.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/world/asia/imran-khan-pakistan-election.html

In its 70-year history, Pakistan has alternated between quasi-democracy and pure military rule. In the process it has become embroiled in international conflicts and morphed into a home base for Islamist militancy.

Over the past decade, Pakistanis have witnessed democracy at its most undiluted thus far, but it’s now under threat from what some say appears to be a “democratic coup” of sorts.

And just as in the past, the country’s powerful military establishment remains the chief suspect behind the fresh round of political manipulation.

In the past, the military used to either stage a direct coup or use special powers to sack an elected government and then manipulate elections to ensure it wasn’t re-elected.

In 2008, those special powers were done away with, leading to a first in 2013: an elected government completing its five-year term.

But since then the tide appears to have reversed, and critics say the establishment is resorting to more primitive tactics to recover its edge.

A three-pronged approach is in evidence.
First, as some legal experts have observed, the courts have selectively applied the law to clip the wings of the outgoing government, thereby creating an advantage for its rivals.

On Sunday, Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad High Court said that the ISI intelligence service was interfering in the judiciary, and had pressured judges not to release convicted ex-PM Nawaz Sharif ahead of the vote.

Mr Sharif was disqualified from office by the Supreme Court on questionable grounds last year, and has since been sentenced to 10 years in jail by a trial court, in a ruling which one legal expert described as an embarrassment to his community.

According to the Dawn newspaper, Justice Siddiqui told the Rawalpindi Bar Association he was not afraid of speaking out against the powerful ISI, saying: “I am not afraid even if I am assassinated.”

Second, authorities have either looked the other way as banned militant groups have joined the election process, or have actively helped them to do so.

And third, the military has been given what many call an obscenely large role in administering the voting process on election day.

More on Pakistan’s election
 Why the election matters
 Viewpoint: Pakistan’s dirtiest election in years
 The acid attack survivor running for parliament
 The assault on Pakistan’s media

The first two stages have already unfolded enough for one to see their preliminary results.

Many candidates from Mr Sharif’s PML-N have been lured to leave the party and either join the PTI party of rival and former cricketer Imran Khan, or stand as independents.

There is evidence that those who have resisted such demands have faced physical violence, had their businesses attacked or have been disqualified from office.

Other parties with a stake in undiluted democracy, such as the PPP party of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, are also under threat. The party is now led by her widower, former President Asif Zardari, and fronted by their son, Bilawal Zardari Bhutto.

Some PPP leaders have been named in renewed money-laundering allegations, while authorities in the field have been accused of disrupting its election campaign.

The party, as well as other secular groups, also faces the prospect of militant attacks.

One such party, the leftist Awami National Party, lost a prime candidate in a suicide attack in Peshawar last week. Two more candidates, including one from the PTI, have since been killed in similar attacks.

In Balochistan, a secular candidate, Gizen Marri, has been battling travel restrictions and house arrest, while a man linked by many to sectarian militancy, Shafiq Mengal, is free to stand for election in a neighbouring constituency.

Mr Marri is being stopped probably because of his strong views on provincial rights, an idea which runs contrary to the military’s strictly centrist approach.

But Mr Mengal’s reported links to the sectarian Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) militant group and his alleged involvement in several attacks in Balochistan are being ignored, secular parties say, apparently because he has been acting as the military’s proxy against Baloch nationalists.

n June, Pakistan removed another leader with LeJ links, Maulana Mohammad Ahmad Ludhianvi, from its terror watch list, apparently to free him up to lead his group in the election campaign, which it is contesting under a different name.

The Jamatud Dawa (JuD) group, whose leader Hafiz Saeed is on a UN terror blacklist, has also been allowed to field candidates under the banner of a different party.

Mr Saeed is accused of being behind co-ordinated attacks in Mumbai, India, that killed 166 people in November 2008.

More recently, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, the founder of the Harkatul Mujahideen (HuM) militant group, ended his long hibernation to announce his support for Imran Khan’s PTI party. He is on a US terrorism black list.

Taken together, all of these moves point to a scenario where left-wing or pro-democracy parties are being squeezed by legal or physical threats.

This has left the field open for Imran Khan’s PTI party and the religious extremists.

If this is any guide to the probable outcome, the aim appears to be to ensure no clear mandate for any one party, a result which the establishment can then manipulate to determine who the next prime minister will be.

And since all of this is being done in plain sight, the media has been put under pressure – by unidentified authorities – to offer only selective coverage of events.

So while on the surface the country still seems to be going through the motions of democracy, many say that what is actually happening is far from democratic.

A former senator and columnist, Afrasiab Khattak, has called it a “creeping coup.”
This alleged effort has been “conceived by the deep state [meaning the military] and midwifed by the judiciary”, he wrote in a recent newspaper column.

And this has led, he said, to a “fascist-like strangulation of democratic freedoms and the media”.

Pakistan’s former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was arrested in Lahore airport on Friday as he returned to face a 10-year prison sentence which he claimed was part of a wide-ranging, military-backed conspiracy to deny his party a second term in an election due on 25 July.

Military police boarded Sharif’s flight as it landed from a stop in Abu Dhabi after taking off in London. Paramilitary Rangers linked arms and battled against Sharif’s supporters to escort the 68-year-old off the aircraft, into a waiting car and then across the 200 yards to another small aircraft.

The Rangers also arrested Maryam, his daughter, who on 6 July was sentenced with her father to seven years in the trial over how the family came to own four luxury flats in London’s Park Lane, a story that resurfaced in the 2016 leak of the Panama Papers.

As the political drama unfolded in Lahore, fears of violence also surged ahead of the polls as 132 people were killed by a suicide bomber at a political rally in southwestern Balochistan province.

“Who wants to go to jail?”, Sharif told the Guardian from the Etihad airlines flight on which supporters yelled pro-Sharif slogans while in the air.

“But it is a very small price to pay for my mission, which is to establish the sanctity of the vote in Pakistan.”

The arrests ignited an otherwise lacklustre election campaign beset by allegations that the powerful military was “engineering” the vote to promote the main opposition party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by the former cricketer Imran Khan.

The military has denied the allegations.

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Pakistan’s anti-graft court, ruled earlier this month that Sharif and his family laundered money in the 1990s to pay for the Park Lane apartments, drawing on allegations that resurfaced in the Panama Papers leak.

Before Sharif’s return, his brother Shahbaz, the former chief minister of Punjab, led tens of thousands of supporters in a welcome rally but the caravan had to negotiate a city turned into a warren of roadblocks.

Police arrested more than 500 Pakistani Muslim League (Nawaz) party (PML-N) workers in the hours before Sharif’s arrival, banned public gatherings of more than five people and cut mobile phone signals across Lahore.

The media regulator banned mentions of “convicted persons”, thwarting local journalists from broadcasting much of Sharif’s response.

“What credibility will the election have if the government is taking such action against our people?,” said Sharif.

“Somebody is forcing the caretaker government to take these actions,” he said, hinting at the role of the so-called “establishment”, whose influence Sharif attempted to limit until he was ousted in a controversial supreme court ruling last July.

A battle with the deep state, which began when the military ousted Sharif in a bloodless coup in 1999, reached its peak this week.

Sharif openly named a general at Pakistan’s intelligence service, ISI, as behind the attempts to push PML-N politicians to join the PTI, splintering the taboo by which civil leaders only refer to the armed forces in vague code; “angels” in the case of intelligence agents.

Sharif planned to appeal against his conviction on landing but analysts doubt he would receive bail before the election.

The leadership hopes that instead his sentence of “rigorous imprisonment” – which could include physical labour – will play to the party’s favour in the elections, turning him into a martyr for civilian supremacy.

Sympathy for Sharif has risen during the illness of his wife, Kulsoom, who is in a coma in a London hospital after treatment for throat cancer. In a parting photograph shared widely on social media, Sharif leans over her sickbed and touches her brow with a gloved hand, while Maryam wipes her eyes.

The latest poll shows that Khan’s party, the PTI, is marginally in front of the PML-N. On Friday, European election monitors were granted permission to deploy across the country.

Friday’s suicide attack – which was claimed by Islamic State – killed Siraj Raisani, who was running for a provincial seat with the newly formed Balochistan Awami party, the provincial home minister, Agha Umar Bungalzai, told AFP.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/13/suicide-bomb-attack-kills-85-and-wounds-100-at-mastung-pakistan-election-rally

Ousted Pakistani leader Nawaz Sharif is returning to Pakistan despite facing a 10-year jail sentence for corruption.

Sharif and his daughter Maryam both face arrest when they arrive back in Lahore from London on Friday.

The three-term PM was ousted from office last year after a corruption investigation. He was sentenced in absentia to 10 years last week.

He has accused Pakistan’s security establishment of conspiring against him ahead of July 25 elections.

“There was a time when we used to say a state within a state, now it’s a state above the state,” he told supporters of his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party in London on Wednesday.

“Despite seeing the bars of prison in front of my eyes, I am going to Pakistan.”

Thousands of supporters are expected to flock to the airport to greet Mr Sharif, who was convicted by an anti-corruption court last week over his family’s ownership of four luxury flats in London.

Hundreds of party activists in Lahore are reported to have been detained ahead of his return.

He has called for a “mass gathering of the people”.

Sharif, 67, has been one of the country’s leading politicians for most of the past 30 years. His party has blamed the military for being behind his conviction, saying it is going after the PML-N for its criticism of the security establishment and the party’s policy to improve ties with India.

In May, the Dawn newspaper published an interview with Sharif in which he questioned the wisdom of “allowing” Pakistani militants to cross the border and kill 150 people in Mumbai, referring to attacks in the Indian business capital in 2008.

The military, which has ruled Pakistan for about half of its 70-year post-independence history, has denied it has any “direct role” in the elections or the political process.

Although he was disqualified from standing in the upcoming election by the Supreme Court, Sharif remains one of the most popular politicians in Pakistan, especially in Punjab, the most populous and electorally significant province.

Sharif walks into a jail cell

Analysis by the BBC’s M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad
The last time Nawaz Sharif was sentenced to a jail term after a military coup in 1999, he chose to accept a pardon and exile under a Saudi-brokered deal. But this time, he is walking into a jail cell.
Back then, it was thought that being the spoilt son of a wealthy father, he was too soft to face the various hardships that can befall a Pakistani politician.
But his moves this time underline that he is willing to traverse tougher territory.
Sharif may well be contemplating wider protests after the election, which many believe the military has already “engineered” enough to ensure his party doesn’t win.
And he may have made a huge personal sacrifice for this. Sharif has left behind his wife Kulsoom, who has cancer, on life support in a London hospital, knowing that he may not be able to return to be by her side.

Last week the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) court ordered Sharif to serve 10 years for owning assets beyond his income and one year for not co-operating with the NAB. The sentences are to be served concurrently.

His daughter, Maryam Nawaz Sharif, received seven years for abetting a crime and one year for not co-operating – again to run concurrently – while son-in-law Safdar Awan was given a one-year sentence for not co-operating.

Sharif and Maryam also received fines of £8m ($10.6m) and £2m respectively. Their lawyers say they will appeal against the verdict but the pair will have to surrender to the NAB before the appeal can be filed.

The case, known as the Avenfield Reference, relates to a number of properties in the UK capital.

The assault on Pakistan media ahead of vote
The Panama Papers leak in 2015 revealed several of Sharif’s children had links to offshore companies, which were allegedly used to channel funds and buy foreign assets – including luxury flats in Avenfield House, on London’s Park Lane.

His family, however, insist they legitimately acquired the four properties.

As part of the ruling, the court ordered they be confiscated for the federal government.

Pakistan’s general election
Voters will elect candidates for the 342-seat Pakistan National Assembly.

The main parties are Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N, former cricketer Imran Khan’s PTI and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s PPP

It will mark the second time that one civilian government has handed power to another after serving a full term.

The run-up to the vote has been marred by what observers say is a crackdown on political activists, journalists and critics of the powerful military.

More than 371,000 troops will be deployed to protect the election and ensure it is “free and fair”, the army says.