Imran Khan

Imran Khan, whose full name is Imran Ahmad Khan Niazi, was born on October 5, 1952, in Lahore, Pakistan. He is a Pakistani cricket player, politician, philanthropist, and prime minister of Pakistan from 2018 to 22. He became a national hero after leading Pakistan's national team to a victory at the Cricket World Cup in 1992. Later, he entered politics as a critic of Pakistan's corrupt government.

Khan was born in Lahore to an affluent Pashtun family. He attended prestigious schools in Pakistan and the United Kingdom, including Aitchison College in Lahore and the Royal Grammar School in Worcester. His family had several accomplished cricket players, including Javed Burki and Majid Khan, his older cousins who were both captains of the Pakistani national team. When Imran Khan was in his teens, he played cricket in Pakistan and the United Kingdom. He continued to play while attending the University of Oxford to study philosophy, politics, and economics. Khan made his debut as a member of Pakistan's national team in 1971, but it wasn't until after he graduated from Oxford University that he was offered a permanent spot on the team.

Khan was named captain of the Pakistani team in 1982 after establishing himself as an outstanding bowler and all-rounder by the beginning of the 1980s. Khan became famous in Pakistan and England due to his athletic ability and good looks, and the British tabloid press used his frequent appearances at fashionable London nightclubs as material. When he led Pakistan's team to its first World Cup title in 1992, Khan achieved his greatest athletic success by defeating England in the final. After earning a reputation as one of the greatest cricket players in history, he retired the same year.

Khan remained a philanthropist in the public eye after 1992. He had a religious epiphany, accepting Sufi mysticism and shedding his playboy persona. Khan was the primary fundraiser for the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital, a specialized cancer hospital in Lahore that opened in 1994. This was one of his charitable endeavors. Khan's mother, who had passed away from cancer in 1985, was the name of the hospital.

After retiring from cricket, Khan entered politics and became an outspoken critic of Pakistan's corrupt government. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, also known as the Pakistan Justice Movement, was his own political organization. PTI), in 1996. The newly formed party received less than one percent of the vote in the national elections that were held the following year, but it did not win any seats in the National Assembly. On the other hand, it did slightly better in the elections that were held in 2002, winning a single seat that Khan held. Khan kept up with that vote fixing was at fault for his party's low vote aggregates. Khan was one of a group of politicians who quit the National Assembly in protest of President Pervez Musharraf's bid in the forthcoming official political decision. During a crackdown on critics of Musharraf who had declared a state of emergency in November, Khan was briefly detained. In protest of Musharraf's rule, the PTI boycotted the 2008 national elections and condemned the emergency that ended in mid-December.

Khan's populist positions gained support, particularly among young people, despite the PTI's struggles in elections. He opposed the Pakistani government's cooperation with the United States in fighting militants near the Afghan border and continued to criticize Pakistan's economic inequality and corruption. In addition, he launched attacks on Pakistan's political and economic elite, accusing them of being Westernized and out of touch with Pakistan's religious and cultural norms.

Access exclusive content with a subscription to Britannica Premium. Subscribe Now Among Khan's works are Warrior Race: Pakistan and A Journey Through the Land of the Tribal Pathans (1993): A Biography of My Life (2011)

Ascension in politics In the months leading up to the legislative elections that were scheduled for the beginning of 2013, Khan and his party held a lot of rallies that drew large crowds. They also got the support of a few old politicians from Pakistan's established parties. Additional proof of Khan's rising political fortunes came as an assessment of public sentiment in 2012 that viewed him as the most well known political figure in Pakistan.

Khan fell from a platform at a campaign rally just days before May 2013's legislative elections, injuring his head and back. He made a final plea to voters when he appeared on television hours later from his hospital bed. The races delivered the PTI's most elevated aggregates yet, however the party actually won not exactly around 50% of the quantity of seats won by the Pakistan Muslim Association Nawaz (PML-N), drove by Nawaz Sharif. Khan said that the PML-N had tampered with the elections. In late 2014, he and other opposition leaders led four months of protests to pressure Sharif to resign after his requests for an investigation were ignored.

Despite the fact that Sharif's family was linked to offshore holdings in the Panama Papers, suspicions of corruption increased after the protests failed to remove him. At the end of 2016, Khan organized a new set of protests, but the Supreme Court agreed to open an investigation, so he called them off at the last minute. In 2017, the investigation disqualified Sharif from holding public office and forced him to resign. Khan, on the other hand, was found to have offshore holdings as well, but the Supreme Court did not disqualify him in a separate case.

In July of the following year, elections were held. Khan ran on a foundation of battling debasement and neediness, even as he needed to fend off allegations that he was excessively comfortable with the tactical foundation. Khan was able to pursue a coalition with independent members of the legislature after the PTI won a majority of seats in the National Assembly. On August 18, he became the prime minister.

Premiership Khan faced an increasing balance-of-payments crisis while serving as prime minister. Despite the expansion of the economy, imports and debt obligations from prior to his term have increased dramatically in recent years, particularly as a result of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) initiative. The crisis got worse just a few weeks into his tenure as prime minister when the United States withdrew $300 million in promised military aid, claiming that Pakistan had not done enough to stop terrorism. Khan endeavored to look for unfamiliar guide from "well disposed nations" first; His decision not to accept a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reflected public dissatisfaction with the IMF due to the fact that a dozen previous IMF packages had failed to address Pakistan's macroeconomic issues. After he couldn't get unfamiliar guide on positive circumstances from different nations, in any case, Pakistan presented a solicitation for crisis loaning from the IMF. He kept looking for aid from other countries and eventually got promises of investments from China, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

Khan oversaw a number of significant developments in Pakistan's foreign relations in addition to soliciting aid from abroad. The country brought the Taliban to negotiations with the United States with success, resulting in improved relations with the United States and Afghanistan. India launched an air assault on Pakistan for the first time in fifty years in February 2019 as a show of force against militants in Kashmir who had recently staged a suicide attack that killed 40 Indian security personnel, raising concerns of a new conflict between the two countries. Pakistan appeared to avoid escalating the situation and downplayed the impact. Pakistan captured a pilot and shot down two fighter jets when India again entered Pakistani airspace, but the pilot was soon returned to India. Khan launched a campaign of repression against militants following the incident, making a number of arrests, closing a large number of religious schools, and promising to adapt existing laws to international standards.

The country's economic woes were made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, which began at the beginning of 2020. Khan was more reticent than his critics to support a lockdown. In contrast, the opposition-controlled Sindh provincial government quickly imposed a strict lockdown in March. In April, Khan ultimately imposed a nationwide lockdown; His government started limiting lockdowns to areas with high infection rates in May.

In the meantime, Khan continued to face opposition for his close relationship with the military establishment, his crackdown on militants, and the fragile state of the economy. This led to his removal from office and subsequent political activity. The Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) was formed in late 2020 by the major opposition parties with the stated objective of increasing civilian government independence from the military establishment. The PDM's rallies and protests demanded Khan's resignation and accused him of being a puppet of the army. These parties boycotted Khan's government's vote of confidence in March 2021, which he narrowly won with the support of his coalition partners. After Khan tried unsuccessfully to influence the military's highest positions, he had a falling out with the establishment later that year. In March 2022, the opposition took the initiative to hold its own vote of confidence as dissatisfaction with persistent inflation grew; A number of PTI members defected, as did key allies who left the government coalition. The vote was held, and on April 10 Khan turned into the principal head of the state in Pakistan's set of experiences to be eliminated by a no-certainty measure.

The economy only got worse under the new PML-N government led by Shehbaz Sharif, paving the way for the PTI's remarkable comeback months after it was ousted. In an unexpected avalanche triumph, the PTI won 15 of 20 seats in the July 2022 regulative appointment of Punjab territory, Pakistan's biggest area and a conventional fortification for the PML-N.

In any case, as Khan looked to ride his energy in conventions held around the country, he ran into huge difficulties. In August, he faced criticism for a speech in which he threatened to sue a judge and police officers in Islamabad. He was later indicted for that speech, the first of a series of charges that would follow in the months to come. After the election commission stated that he was responsible for corrupt practices, he was temporarily prohibited from holding public office in October. He was shot in the leg in an apparent assassination attempt in November while leading a protest convoy from Lahore to Islamabad.