Pakistan’s military struggles to solve ‘Imran Khan problem’

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Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan has spent over a year in jail and faces more than 100 charges ranging from corruption to terrorism.

But even locked up, the military-backed government’s so-called Khan problem — seen as the biggest threat to the armed forces in half a century — refuses to go away.

More than 10,000 loyalists answered his call to march on the capital Islamabad in late November and demand his and other incarcerated party members’ freedom and the dissolution of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government.

“Khan remains deeply popular and capable of mobilising the public on a great scale, even from his jail cell,” said Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington. “This gives him leverage by enabling him to maintain pressure on the state.”

His Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party alleges 12 protesters were killed in a crackdown after last month’s march, further inflaming tensions that have deepened since February’s elections, in which candidates loyal to Khan won the most seats but were blocked from power.

Khan is a “martyr” for a Pakistani public that has been battered by two years of falling purchasing power and an ever-rising tax burden as Sharif’s government tries to handle a chronic debt crisis, said Adeel Malik, a professor of political economy at the University of Oxford. 

The military-backed government came to power in February, hoping the repression of the popular PTI-led opposition could buy enough time for Sharif to turn around one of Asia’s most troubled economies, according to analysts, government officials and diplomats.

The government secured a $7bn IMF package in September, inflation fell to 4.9 per cent last month after hitting 38 per cent in May last year, foreign exchange reserves have risen to $12bn and the Pakistan Stock Exchange is on a historic bull run.

At the same time, authorities have sought to break the PTI’s ability to mobilise, stepping up a broad-based crackdown against its leadership and workers that began after rioters in May 2023 targeted military installations.

Authorities have also rounded up thousands of people, and lawyers estimate that about 1,900 of them are being dragged before anti-terrorism courts. The government has also targeted Bushra Bibi, Khan’s wife and leader of the November march.

“There is no legal system left any more,” said Imaan Mazari-Hazir, a human rights lawyer who regularly defends PTI activists. “What I’ve seen since last year is complete capture of every arm of the state by the military.”

Economic anxiety, along with a pervasive feeling that the army and traditional political parties are working against their interests, has created a deep reservoir of anger, analysts said, one further fuelled by the killings in the capital.

Senior officials in the Sharif government have variously claimed security personnel were unarmed, that between zero and five protesters died in the clashes and that the PTI engaged in “terrorism” against the state.

The interior ministry said at least five security personnel were killed during the three-day protest, and Islamabad police said more than 70 officers were injured in clashes. The Pakistan Armed Forces did not reply to a request for comment.

“Opening fire in the centre of Islamabad is a massive, massive escalation in what is probably the largest legitimacy crisis the army has faced since 1971,” said Malik at Oxford, referencing the outbreak of civil war that led to the independence of Bangladesh. “To much of the public, the army has really crossed a Rubicon in dealing with its Imran Khan problem.”

Since the protest, the government has floated banning Khan’s party and suspending the PTI government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province of 40mn people where Khan’s party rules a coalition with a two-thirds majority and a deadly Taliban insurgency is raging.

The government also intends to amend an electronic crimes law to criminalise the spread of “fake news and negative propaganda” on social media, Aqeel Malik, an adviser to the prime minister, wrote on X on December 2. X has been banned in Pakistan since the February elections and can only be accessed through a virtual private network.

Inter-Services Public Relations, the military’s public relations wing, said in a press release this month that “the government should . . . implement stringent laws and regulations to check unfettered . . . use of freedom of expression to spew venom, lies and sow the seeds of polarisation”.

The state’s handling of the “Khan problem” could backfire economically by throttling the internet — which affects the masses and could cause a loss of income for many — and by implementing lockdowns that damage the confidence of foreign investors, said analysts.

“Imran Khan is a conduit for public grievance and disaffection with the economic status quo, degradation of democracy and security,” said Azeema Cheema, a director at Verso Consulting in Islamabad. “He is also a scorched-earth politician who amplifies the anxieties of his political opponents and disrupts the every day business of the state.”