Why Jemima Goldsmith rescued Imran Khan?

It may be due to love or affection for her ex-husband Imran Khan or it may be due to hate and loathing for former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. 

For whatever reason, journalist Jemima Goldsmith recently came to the rescue of her former spouse in a case that could have seriously dented his political career.

It is no secret that Goldsmith has some bad memories associated with the Sharifs.

In 1998, Nawaz Sharif’s government tried to throw her behind bars for allegedly smuggling hundreds of antique tiles out of Pakistan. A charge that Goldsmith — then Jemima Khan — denied for being politically motivated. The tiles were brought from a shop in Islamabad, she insisted. Goldsmith even produced a receipt of purchase at the customs counter. But nothing helped. Khan was forced to send his pregnant wife and child packing to London to keep them away from the slander.

While in London, Goldsmith took the “antiques” to three museums to further contest the charge.

Khan described the incident in his book, Pakistan: A Personal History (2011): “…just as we were working to make our cross-cultural marriage succeed, external forces were attempting to sabotage our family life. We discovered how truly vicious the political mafia in Pakistan could be. In 1998, just to embarrass me politically, an antique smuggling accusation was slapped on Jemima by the Sharif government.”

The accusations finally ended in 1999, after General Pervez Musharraf overthrew Nawaz Sharif’s government.

With that background, it is no wonder then that Jemima Goldsmith helped her ex-husband trace out a forgotten money trail in a case petitioned by a member of Sharif’s party.

Imran Khan should be thankful. The lingering case in the Supreme Court probing Khan for not disclosing his assets and owning offshore companies is likely to conclude this week. And if Khan gets a clean chit, his first call of gratitude should be to his ex-wife.

Khan married the British heiress in 1995. They first meet by chance at a dinner party in London. At that time, Khan was Pakistan’s most glamorous cricketer.

During her time in Pakistan, Goldsmith was constantly under attack due to her Jewish family background, although she embraced Islam at the time of the marriage. The propaganda and vicious campaign against her, during Sharif’s second tenure, forced her to leave the country. Eventually, the couple divorced in 2004.

The “six months leading to the divorce and the six months after were the hardest times of my life,” Khan has admitted in his book.

Goldsmith was under no compulsion to help out her former husband in legal troubles. But she did nonetheless. In fact, even after their parting, Goldsmith has constantly supported Khan’s political activities. And he has supported her family’s. “My drive,” Khan has often stated in interviews, “was one of the things which attracted her to me. I would have been diminished in her eyes if I had lost that drive.”

Khan and Goldsmith’s marriage may have been doomed from the day they landed in Pakistan.

A year after the wedding, in April 1996, he formed the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf. His British wife was targeted by all quarters — by political parties and religious leaders.

For Khan’s newly-formed party, Punjab was central to politics. This made the Sharifs nervous. But then in 1997, when he contested the general elections, he did not manage to win a single seat. But what alerted the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz was the rather large crowd that he attracted, which was why they went after Jemima.

“The election loss had a devastating effect on Jemima, my sisters and close friends,” noted Khan in his book, “Poor Jemima, as well as putting up with the whole Zionist plot story, had to see endless articles criticizing, mocking and ridiculing her husband. And I have to say I was roasted by the media. I was attacked by the right, the left and the powerful lobby of crooked politicians.”

Which was why Jemima Goldsmith celebrated the dismissal of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from office, for a third time, earlier this year. She wrote on Twitter: “Good riddance to the man who tried to get me jailed when I was pregnant with my 2nd child on trumped up (non bailable) charges of smuggling.” (sic)

When leaving for England, at the age of 18, Imran Khan remembers his mother’s last words: “Don’t bring home an English wife, as it would be difficult for her to adjust to our religion and culture.”

But had his mother been alive today she would have been proud of Jemima Goldsmith, who raised Khan’s two sons and saved him from a political and legal crisis, even after they divorced.

Abbas is a senior columnist and analyst of Geo TV, The News and Jang. 

He tweets @MazharAbbasGeo