The Saturday interview: Imran Khan
 

Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester

Two days after Sri Lanka's cricketers were ambushed by terrorists in Pakistan, Imran Khan is standing on a wooden box in the North West Frontier Province addressing a crowd of 7,000 in his cotton kameez.

The retired international cricketer and exhusband of Jemima Khan could be living comfortably as a sports commentator in Fulham, near his young sons, or he could have retreated behind the brass-latticed wooden door of his home outside Islamabad.

Instead, he has spent recent days crisscrossing the frontiers on the campaign trail for his political party, refusing a bodyguard or even a bullet-proof vest. There is an intensity to the way Mr Khan speaks. The determination that the former Pakistan captain applied to his bowling has now been turned to politics. Critics accuse him of naivety; he describes himself as idealistic and passionate about change.

"Since Benazir Bhutto's assassination hardly any leader ventures out. I'm probably the only one who's roaming the country," he says. "The reason is that I'm not a target for the extremists because from day one I opposed the War on Terror. The terrorists don't consider me one of the American puppet politicians in Pakistan."

 
From the moment Mr Khan heard the news about this week's attack in Lahore, he was convinced that Pakistani extremists were being made the scapegoats. "Almost all the terrorism taking place here since 2004 when Pakistan sent its army into the tribal areas has been suicide attacks. Last year there were over 100 suicide attacks "“ but they have a pattern. They are always in retaliation."

This week's ambush by 12 gunmen was, he says, different. "They had an escape route "“ it was well planned. I certainly don't think this was done by ideological terrorists, motivated to blow themselves up."

In his view a "foreign element" was almost certainly involved. "It could be India, Afghanistan, the Tamil Tigers. The motive is to damage the state of Pakistan and end cricket here. The shocking thing is that there was so little security for the players."

His fear is that his country will now be treated as a pariah by the rest of the world. Already, it is routinely described as a "failed state", and a breeding ground for terrorists. "This attack was guaranteed front-page news everywhere in the world," Mr Khan says. "The perpetrators wanted to portray Pakistan as a chaotic state in the Dark Ages. Yesterday the stock market took a nosedive. Pakistan is a resilient country but we have gone from crisis to crisis."

The former playboy of the Western world, who was educated at Oxford and married a Goldsmith heiress, Mr Khan, 56, slips comfortably between London and Lahore. He is as relaxed in a suit as in a shalwar kameez, as happy discussing Game Boys with his sons as tending the cows on his farm in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Some think his political career in Pakistan has suffered because he is seen as an outsider. He didn't even stand at the last election, arguing that there could be no democracy while the judges were still controlled by the ruling party. But he says that his party, Tehreek-e-Insaf (the Movement for Justice) is growing, with more than 400,000 members, most of them aged between 18 and 30.

It may be no coincidence that he is campaigning ever more vociferously for his country to become independent of the West. "The leadership should say to the Americans: thank you very much but we are now going to stop our country going under. The War on Terror is radicalising the youth; we need to cut our losses and stabilise our country."

Pakistan, he insists, should never have allowed itself to become a "front-line state" in the battle against al-Qaeda. "The decision to send the Pakistani Army into the tribal areas simply fuelled extremism. They were like a bull in a china shop, fighting one or two guerrillas with aerial bombing of villages. That turned people against the army and a new phenomenon was created: the Pakistan Taleban."

Western intelligence agences are convinced that Osama bin Laden is hiding in the "badlands" around the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"No one knows where Osama bin Laden is hiding," says Mr Khan. "But you must understand the tribal areas. They have the most decentralised, democratic system ever "“ every village has its own parliament, its own jury system." Is it one that is fair to women? "Ah that is a cultural issue," he says.

H e denies that Pakistan is now a breeding ground for terrorists. "The madrassas may be producing fundamentalists but there is a difference between fundamentalists and militant extremists."

The War on Terror has, he says, made Britain and America open to attack. "George Bush's policies were a disaster. In Afghanistan he did not take into account the character of the people. These people have fought every invader from Alexander downwards."

In any case, he says, Afghanistan was the wrong target. "The Taleban were never a threat to the Western world. These were semi-literate medieval people with a fundamentalist rudimentary understanding of Islam mixed with Afghan culture. If anything they were a bit of an embarrassment to educated Muslims. It was a fundamental mistake to make them the enemy."

Even though they were harbouring bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the terrorists who killed 3,000 on September 11?

Mr Khan moves on. Britain is, he says involved in an unwinnable war. "You are wasting British soldiers' lives. This is just converting more and more people [into extremists]. It's in the blood of the Pashtun to seek revenge "“ anyone who loses loved ones ends up picking up arms and joining the other side."

He says he does not condone suicide bombing. "Suicide bombing is a result of extreme desperation where you have such hatred and anger that you are willing to use your body as a weapon. God forbid anything happened to my family but I can understand that if something happens to your dear ones then in anger . . . "

For Mr Khan it is Britain and America who have lost the moral high ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. "After 9/11 Bush and Blair became as barbaric as the people who carried out the attacks on the World Trade Centre," he says.

"They have killed over a million people, there are five million people displaced, they have spent almost a trillion dollars and they have created nurseries for future terrorists. All they have done is to make the world much less safe. And they have totally destabilised Pakistan."

Mr Khan will not say whether he thinks he is a better cricketer or politician. "You should only ask me that question once I have finished. In cricket I achieved most of my ambitions; in politics I will only get there once I win the elections and form a government."

His party, set up in 1996, been fairly marginal has until recently. But he says: "I'm going to win the next election. My party is now the fastest-growing party "“ I started my grass-roots campaign long

The lesson I learnt from cricket is that you only lose when you give up. A setback is only a way of analysing your mistakes, picking yourself up and getting better. If ever there was a preparation for politics it is sport."
Mr Khan admits that his marriage suffered as a result of his devotion to politics. "I always assumed that my wife fell in love with me because of my passions and ambitions. I was never going to be a 9 to 5 job kind of guy, I was never interested in money. I was always an idealist, a dreamer who believed in things that others thought were impossible.

"Your family becomes part of that. You have your highs and lows, you laugh together, you cry together. My politics probably did have an impact on our marriage "“ but there are no guarantees in marriage. There are marriages that can survive anything and you can have the perfect situation but they don't survive."

He does not want to remarry. "It's certainly not on the radar "“ these are turbulent times in Pakistan, I do not want to put any woman at risk."

 
It was not, he admits, easy for Jemima to move to Pakistan. "Cross-cultural marriages are always more difficult. In the Western countries, marriages are difficult, full-stop "“ all my friends have got divorced, some of them twice.

"Here, marriage has much more chance of success because the society is very family-orientated." His ex-wife is an excellent mother because she is an Eastern mother, he says. "She is a proper hands-on mother, like my mother. My mother was a complete mother, a full-time mother, and so I wanted to succeed for her."

The pressure on women to work has, he believes, contributed to the breakdown of society in the West. "Women's emancipation should never have been confused with the idea that motherhood is an impediment. When I was at Oxford, feminism was at its peak. The devaluation of the mother has had a big impact. No one can replace the mother. There is nothing in my life I love more than fatherhood, but the need for a mother is greater when children are growing up than the need for a father."

He doesn't regret gaining a reputation as a playboy. "Everything is part of the evolutionary process. I have no regrets "“ I was never decadent. Decadent people have no passion in life, they are hedonists. I played international cricket for 21 years, longer than anyone else. I was extremely disciplined."

Mr Khan clearly intends to be a veteran politician too. "Jemima used to say, "you know the problem is you will go on and on and on and you will never make it". But for me the whole purpose of existence is to make a difference. I am probably the most famous man in my country. I have great ability and respect. I should try my best to change society. The idea of failure doesn't enter my mind." The enemy within, page 43

IMRAN'S INNINGS

Name Imran Khan

Age 56

Family Married Jemima Goldsmith in 1995. Two sons, Sulaiman and Kasim. Divorced 2004

Education Educated Lahore, Royal Grammar School, Worcester, and Keble College, Oxford

Career Member of the Pakistan cricket team 1971 to 1992. Captained team when they won the World Cup in 1992. In 1996, founded Movement for Justice political party, for which he is the only member to be elected to Parliament (2002 to 2007)

Notable Two of Imran's cousins, Javed Burki and Majid Khan, also captained the Pakistani cricket team. Imran now lives on a farm on the edge of Lahore, where he has built his sons a mini cricket ground. He has auctioned every bit of his cricket memorabilia to fund the cancer hospital he established in Lahore in memory of his mother

QUICK FIRE

London or Islamabad? Islamabad

Cities or mountains? Always mountains

Bollywood or Hollywood? Lollywood, the Lahore film industry

Batting or bowling? At my peak I loved bowling but at the end of my career I loved batting

 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/men/article5860736.ece