Asian lives:

Imran Khan on Guantanamo, Pakistan and life after Jemima

BY DANNY Kemp

EVEN for a man who prides himself on having nothing to hide, Imran Khan makes a rather surprising entrance.

"I'm sorry, I thought we were meeting at the hotel," the 52-year-old, dripping wet and wearing nothing but a blue towel around his waist, says politely as he strides through his apartment overlooking Islamabad's diplomatic compound.

In security-obsessed Pakistan, where the President and Prime Minister have both escaped assassination attempts, it is rare to get anywhere near the home of a top politician, let alone to catch one unawares as he steps out of the shower.

Khan, however, is completely unfazed, asking the housekeeper who allowed the now embarrassed intruder into his home to get some tea, then disappearing into his bedroom to dress in the traditional local outfit of a tunic and baggy trousers, known here as shalwar kameez.

After more than three decades in the spotlight - first as Pakistan's national sporting hero and then for his glamorous marriage to British heiress Jemima Goldsmith - Khan is used to living his private life in public.

But he is now making it work for him, capitalizing on his popularity to forge an image as an open, accountable politician and a campaigner against corruption and injustice in Pakistan's labyrinthine political world.

That's why, he says, that people approached him last month about a short story in Newsweek magazine. The subject: claims that interrogators at the US military jail in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had defiled Islam's holy book, the Koran.

Until Khan got involved, there were a few grumbles from Muslim countries about the allegations but little else.

On May 6, five days after the article was published, Khan gave a press conference in Islamabad and waved a copy of the offending issue. Protests from Muslim clerics and the Pakistani government followed and the next week unrest flared across neighbouring Afghanistan, leaving at least 15 people dead.

Thousands also took to the streets in Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Palestinian territories, while the leaders of almost every Muslim nation took turns to vent their fury.

"There was no question of me feeling apologetic about it," says Khan when asked if he feels responsible for stirring up the violence, particularly as Newsweek itself retracted the story.

"If that's the case then with any human rights or international rights crusade, you should tell them to shut up!" he adds.

'If it happens again I will speak out against it'

On Khan's agenda today is a tour of his hometown and constituency of Mianwali, in a dusty part of Punjab province, not far from the Afghan border. But it is Guantanamo on his mind as he jumps in his Land Cruiser to begin the three-hour journey.

"I didn't read it in Newsweek, people were calling me up ... Everyone now approaches me in Pakistan, they don't approach the political parties, because they are afraid to deal with such issues," he says.

"Whatever kind of Muslim you are, it's the most hurtful thing you can do and to make it out as if it's the reaction of extremists is wrong," he adds. "The US are losing the war for hearts and minds.

Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, desecration of the Koran. They will create more terrorists."

Khan sternly rejects suggestions that he brought up the Koran allegations to further his career. "I think that for people like me who understand both the west and Islam, it's very important for me to speak out.

"If it happens again I will speak out against it."

His reaction to the Guantanamo allegations cemented his reputation as a sort of Islamic Democrat and emphasised his increasing distance from one-time coup leader and now president General Pervez Musharraf.

Khan has lived several different lives since he was born into an upper-middle class family belonging to Pakistan's fiery ethnic Pashtun community in 1952.

His father was a professional engineer who set up his own consultancy, allowing him to send the young Imran to Pakistan's top school, leafy Aitchison College in Lahore.

Imran then went on to study politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University's Keble College.

On his return to Pakistan he joined Pakistan's dejected cricket team and turned its fortunes around - playing 82 Tests between 1971 and 1992, when he captained Pakistan to World Cup glory and then finally laid down his bat.

He devoted himself to charity work and opened Pakistan's first cancer hospital in the eastern city of Lahore in 1994, the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust Cancer Hospital, named after his mother. A plan for another clinic to treat the disease in Karachi is underway.

Khan, who had a reputation as a playboy, then turned round his personal life when he married British heiress Jemima Goldsmith, daughter of the late Anglo-Jewish financier James Goldsmith, in 1995.

In the meantime, he had become not only increasingly devout but also more politically aware, and in 1996, he founded his own party: Tehreek-e-Insaf, or Movement for Justice.

But it was not until October 2002 that he finally won a parliamentary seat representing Mianwali, which is also his hometown.

As Khan lowers the car's tinted windows to shake hands with a crowd that has gathered at a motorway toll booth, it's not hard to see why many observers, particularly foreigners, thought his sporting and charitable achievements would sweep him to power.

Reality proved rather different for two reasons - his marriage to Jemima and the quicksands of political life in Pakistan.

'I felt really guilty about Jemima'

The cross-cultural love affair between the handsome sports star and the glamorous friend of Princess Diana who was half his age captivated the international media and produced two sons, Suleman, eight, and Qasim, six.

But her Jewish background attracted suspicion and hatred in Pakistan, an Islamic republic which still does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

Jemima and Imran divorced in June 2004 after nine years, prompting a tabloid frenzy centering on her relationship with the British actor Hugh Grant.

Wistfully, Khan admits that the breakdown of his marriage may further his political ambitions.

"Yes, from that point of view, now I can concentrate ... not only that, my social work as well, leading my party."

The split was announced after months of rumours about Jemima's lonely life in Pakistan, where she wore the local dress, learned the Urdu language and apparently made every effort to fit in.

Khan blames personal attacks on Jemima by Musharraf's regime and a clash of cultures for the divorce, announced on June 22 last year, which has left him in Pakistan and his ex-wife in London with their sons.

"It was a very difficult balancing act. In fact it was almost impossible the last two years because my ex-wife had moved to London with the children," he says as the 4X4 bumps through mile after mile of arid scrub.

"It becomes difficult anywhere when you live in a different culture. She might have coped with that but it was the political life she gave up on."

He adds: "They would attack her rather than me. It is very difficult for political forces to attack me because what do they attack me on? So they went for her, the anti-Jewish lobby started raising this.

"Being a very private and shy person ... I think that coupled with the political life, I think she thought it was just a no-win situation."

He pauses, adjusting his sunglasses.

"Really... I felt really guilty about her. But in a way now at least you are not putting someone else through it. I am fighting my own battle."

Khan, who scorns reports that there was a third party involved in his split from Jemima, says he does not mind her relationship with Grant.

"It's her life," he says. "You would expect her to get married again."

The saddest thing is only being able to see his sons in the holidays, muses Khan, who keeps an open box of their toys waiting in the sitting room of his flat.

"The only void in my life - as a Muslim once we have tried our best we resign ourselves, there are no such thing as regrets - but it's a void, you know, not having your children all the time".

Khan is tightlipped about his own chances of remarrying, venturing only: "I much prefer married life. There is nothing quite like married life and having children."

'If there was a presidential election I would win it'

As far as politics is concerned, the question remains why Khan's popularity in Pakistan has not yet swept him to power. It's not for lack of effort.

During his day-long trip to Mianwali, Khan criss-crosses the vast constituency of around 500,000 people to attend a dozen functions.

But navigating the murky waters of Pakistani politics involves compromises and ancient allegiance has proved much tougher than the more straightforward job of skippering a cricket team.

His opponents - and some of his supporters - have criticised him for lacking vision about whether he wants Pakistan to be secular or Islamic, pro or anti-West, conservative or liberal. They say Khan has also wavered in his political dealings, backing Musharraf before turning on him as an American stooge, and then aligning himself with the religious right.

Rubbish, says Khan, insisting his ideals are "completely coherent", focusing on the rule of law, democracy and education in a country that is conspicuously short of all three.

He says he twice rejected offers to become Prime Minister because he would not compromise his values by joining forces with the military and a handful of powerful but corrupt families. Huge amounts of money are needed to win power and the system remains stacked against his young party, he says.

"Who has ever been offered the prime ministership twice and refused it?" he says.

"If there was a presidential election in this country, I would win it." His own efforts to change the system are embodied by his latest project, a university teaching vocational skills nestled beneath a line of jagged hills in Mianwali.

As the sun beats down, Khan shows off the future campus which is aimed at tackling the lack of education in the deprived area. Khan says he wants to attract funding and even teaching staff from Britain's Bradford University, which recently made him its chancellor.

He says spirituality and the conviction he is doing the right thing are more important than winning power, although he is confident that one day he will. "Despite what appears to be everything stacked against me, I must say I am enjoying it," he says, getting back in the car and gazing out of the windscreen at the desert ahead.

(AFP)