Former foreign media head of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and a close aide of Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan, Anila Khawaja, has been called out for showing up at a private New Year’s Eve party “without being invited to it”.
Khawaja was called out by the host, Islamabad-based American blogger and former goodwill ambassador to Pakistan, Cynthia D Ritchie, after she trained guns at the latter for being “a foreigner who broke traditions of good grace and hospitality, and behaved rudely”.
“When will we learn to stand together and be respected on r [sic] own soil let alone abroad,” Khawaja tweeted.
Reacting to Khawaja’s claim, Ritchie didn’t go easy on her and pointed out how the ex-PTI foreign media head hadn’t even been invited to the party.
“I know who you really are as a person: you’re threatening to write a tell-all about IK [Imran Khan] if certain things don’t go your way,” she said in a subsequent tweet.
The tweet was followed by:
While Cynthia has now also tweeted about how “fabulous” her New Year’s celebration was, Khawaja is yet to react to the developments.
Anila Khawaja, who had been appointed as part of PTI’s decision to extend the media team of the party, started supporting Imran Khan’s politics when only a couple of people supported his political cause.
She was educated, bred and born in West London’s Ealing area.
Khawaja received her post graduate degree in education from Brunel University and became a British qualified teacher. She took a year out in 2005 to help out the victims in Pakistan during its worst natural disaster, leaving her family and a well-paid job behind.
She got involved in relief work during the 2005 earthquake that hit Pakistan, causing the death of more than 70,000 people. She worked with Imran Khan Earthquake Relief Fund (IKERF) for a year when Khan’s party was turned into an NGO for a year.
She was all set to return to London but was approached by the British High Commission to help start a British school in Islamabad.
It was around 2008 that she formally joined the PTI. Soon after joining the party, she was given the responsibility to deal with international media – a role she successfully performed till last year when there were shuffles within the party.
