Imran Khan’s arrest shows power and influence of Pakistan’s military

Centuries later, a similar line is trotted out for the South Asian nation: Most states have armies, but, in Pakistan, the army has a state. That’s proven to be the case not just in the periodic coups that Pakistani generals engineered over decades, but in the vast array of economic interests maintained by the military and the overweening influence exercised by the top brass at virtually every turn of Pakistan’s fitful struggle for civilian-led democracy.

A decade ago, Pakistan observed its first peaceful transfer of democratic governments, and there was a degree of hope among some analysts that the military was slowly receding into the background of the country’s political landscape. But that proved short-lived and the drama of recent weeks has underscored how the generals still appear to be calling many, if not all, the shots. They’re the prime movers in a civil-military establishment that has repeatedly turned on elected officials who fall out of its favor.

On Saturday, Pakistani authorities arrested former prime minister Imran Khan after a court sentenced him to three years in prison on corruption charges, which centered on concealing assets after selling state gifts acquired during his time in office. His lawyers protested that he was being held in a remote, dingy facility that did not befit a figure of his stature. Khan and his supporters see his conviction and jailing as naked political interference, intended to thwart his candidacy in elections slated for later this year. Anticipating those polls, Pakistan’s Parliament is set to be dissolved later this week.

Imran Khan arrested after receiving jail sentence for corruption

The military looms large over these developments. Khan, a national cricket hero turned populist rabble-rouser, operated in the fringes of the country’s political scene until he and his Movement for Justice, known by its Urdu acronym PTI, managed to break into the mainstream in the first half of the decade. It’s widely believed that his rise was enabled by elements of the military, which Khan lionized while denouncing the venality and decadence of the country’s entrenched civilian political elites.

That eventually changed after PTI narrowly won elections in 2018 and Khan took office. His lofty visions of building an Islamic welfare state in the country collided with the difficult realities of the state, politically divided and perennially teetering on the brink of a public debt crisis. Though a cult figure for his supporters, Khan was seen by critics as a demagogue and would-be authoritarian, who demonized political opponents and mismanaged the country’s affairs.

In April 2022, he was forced out of power by a no-confidence vote in Parliament that likely had the tacit backing of the military, which had lost faith in Khan’s governance. Leading up to his ouster, “Khan clashed with the military leadership over the selection of nominees for key army positions and criticism that his government was failing to address soaring inflation and debt,” explained my colleague Rick Noack. “Khan and the military also appeared increasingly divided on foreign policy. In March last year, Khan accused the U.S. government and Pakistani opposition of conspiring against him, prompting U.S. denials and dismaying the military leadership that was seeking to maintain a working relationship with the United States.”

Thereafter, Khan was beset by an avalanche of dozens of legal cases against him. In May, after an initial arrest of Khan, PTI supporters angrily attacked multiple military installations, seeing in the dominant institution the source of their hero’s travails.

Imran Khan increasingly isolated as Pakistan’s army pressures allies

The military’s backlash has been merciless. Thousands of PTI supporters have been arrested, with some facing prosecution in military courts. Dozens of PTI politicians, fearing arrest, have quit the party, while others have defected to different factions and denounced Khan’s behavior. Sympathetic voices in the media have gone silent or been silenced.

“The Pakistani Army is yet again engaged in political engineering by forcing resignations from Khan’s party and steering together new political forces,” political analyst Arif Rafiq told the New York Times in June. “The primary aim here is to remove Khan from the political process, as he’s no longer reliably obedient and has amassed popular support that gives him political capital independent of the military.”

Khan’s distinct brand of politics — and popularity — may make him a unique threat to the top brass. “Once the army’s proxy, he has now gone rogue with a vengeance and is trying to tear apart the military’s institutional integrity by sowing dissension in its ranks against the army chief,” wrote Aqil Shah in Foreign Affairs. “The army is also probably concerned that Khan finds his main support base among the traditionally pro-military urban middle classes in Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province and the heartland of army recruitment.”

The former prime minister has snarled defiance for months. Just days before his recent arrest, he went on BBC’s HARDtalk program and specifically decried the military. “The country has been taken over by fascists, and they are petrified of elections,” he said. “The reason why I’m suffering is because they know that [in the] elections, we would win hands down. And because of that, they’re … dismantling a democracy.”

Many of his critics would scoff at that suggestion, and point to the similar ways that top politicians he used to decry — including former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto — fell afoul of the military establishment and into a morass of legal travails. A Sunday editorial in Dawn, a Pakistani daily, suggested that military-backed lawfare may not defeat Khan, but certainly will do harm to Pakistan’s fitful democracy.

“The fact is that Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto were not, and Imran Khan will not be rendered irrelevant to Pakistanis over some technical knockout,” it noted. “The fate of a politician rests in the hands of their constituency, and no amount of external interference can change this simple relationship. The experiment was tried in the earlier two cases and failed, and the state seems to be repeating the same mistake, only to weaken a fraying social contract further.”

Other analysts argue that Khan has to shoulder blame for a shambolic stint in office and the dangerous demagoguery that preceded and followed it. “After his ouster in 2022, he did not retreat to lick his wounds and reassess his strategy,” Nadeem Farooq Paracha, a Pakistani commentator, told the Hindu, an Indian newspaper. “Instead, the slow-motion trainwreck that was his regime gained pace after his ouster, until crashing his party and his political career at the hands of the military.”