Pakistan's Cricket Player Still Has Star Power to Spare

Friday's speech by Imran Khan at the [Asia Society ]proved his celeb power remains. At first glance, Khan, the former Pakistani cricket player who once led his team to victory as captain at the World Cup, is what you would expect of a successful, retired athlete.  Still slender, handsome and tanned, his once-high society personal life—his ex-wife [heiress Jemima](http://www.hellomagazine.com/profiles/jemimakhan/), a British heiress, dated Hugh Grant for three years—is unsurprising.

What is surprising for those who do not closely follow Pakistan's internal politics is the force with which he railed against President Pervez Musharraf's administration, American's foreign policy and Pakistan's insular political parties in his speech in Manhattan.  Khan is the chairman of the [Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf], or Movement for Justice, a small minority party.

If his comment that "terrorism threatens the existence of the country," sounded similar to rhetoric espoused by US politicians (and one former [NY mayor in particular]) his assertion that this terrorism began when Pakistan "started fighting the American war on terror" did not.

Khan was in Washington [on Thursday] to try to convince lawmakers to cease support to Musharraf, whose administration Khan said is undemocratic and cannot handle the violence-prone tribal areas. 

"Fundamentalism exists everywhere.  You have it in the US," he explained to the audience of about 250, many of them members of the city's sizable South Asian population.  He argued that the restive tribal areas turned violent only after they are oppressed.

Khan's cricket fame has allowed him to distance himself from the current political party system while still remaining in the public eye.  His party is boycotting the upcoming elections, which he said will be illegitimate. 

Audience members seemed just as nostalgic for Khan's cricket days as they did interested in his politics.  "I took your autograph in 1990 in Chowdra," a young man who introduced himself as the founding member of his school's PTI said, before asking a question about micro-finance.