New Delhi, Dec 5 Pakistan is undergoing one of the consequential political transformations in its post-independence history. What once oscillated between praetorian rule and weak civilian governments is now sliding decisively toward a full-fledged military-authoritarian order.
At the center of this shift is Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, whose systematic consolidation of power is redrawing the country's institutional landscape. While Pakistan's political class has accommodated this new reality with remarkable compliance, one figure remains outside the military’s control, and therefore its greatest threat: the imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan.
Khan's political influence, despite his confinement, has not diminished enough to satisfy the military establishment. If anything, the state’s increasingly aggressive tactics suggest a fear that his persistence, his stubborn hold over public imagination, and his ability to command loyalty even from a jail cell, could upend the system that Munir is attempting to establish.
And so, in a pattern which is disturbingly familiar from the country’s history, it appears that the military establishment is testing how far it can go in cutting Khan off from the outside world.
The former premier remains imprisoned at Adiala Jail in the garrison city of Rawalpindi since 2023 having been charged in multiple graft charges and anti-state acts that critics hold are politically motivated.
As has been reported by media, Pakistani authorities have for months now denied Imran Khan routine access to family members and his legal team, despite explicit court orders authorizing weekly visits.
The courts may be issuing directives, but prison officials, who seem to be acting as frontline guardians of the military's political agenda, have recurrently overruled them. This is not bureaucratic dysfunction. It is a strategy.
Khan’s son, Qasim Khan, has publicly stated that the family has had “no verifiable information at all” about his father’s health or condition for months. Their worst fear, he said, is that “something irreversible is being hidden from us. Not knowing whether your father is safe, injured or even alive is a form of psychological torture".
When Khan’s three sisters, Aleema Khan, Noreen Niazi, and Dr Uzma Khan, pressed for the court mandated jail visitations last week by holding a protest outside the Adiala Jail, the authorities took little time to use violent force to remove them from the jail precincts, injuring his sisters. When videos of violent handling of Khan’s family flooded social media, it galvanized an already restless movement with millions of posts trending hashtag #WhereIsKhan on X (formerly twitter). With no credible information percolating from state quarters, Khan’s PTI party has called for mass protests to seek the whereabouts of their jailed leader.
Khan’s enduring political potency explains the state’s desperation. He has emerged as only political figure that the military establishment cannot replace, co-opt, or silence through conventional methods.
Despite being imprisoned, his party remains the country’s largest political force by popular vote. His name still inspires fervent support across urban and rural Pakistan. And unlike previous civilian leaders who bowed under the weight of establishment pressure, Khan continues to challenge the military’s dominance from within the jail, so far refusing to strike a deal or endorse the political arrangements crafted in Rawalpindi.
To Asim Munir and the political elite beholden to the military, this is intolerable.
Their problem is not merely that Khan is popular; it is that he remains the single unifying symbol of resistance to military rule. As long as he remains visible, communicative, and connected to the outside world, the legitimacy of Munir's emerging order remains in question.
Thus, the campaign to silence Khan should not be seen as merely incidental; rather, it is foundational to Munir’s power consolidation project. And herein, it appears that the miliary establishment has concluded that the denial of access to him was the most effective way to suffocate his political influence without incurring the international backlash of overt physical harm.
As such, Khan’s isolation is a symptom of a broader institutional redesign being undertaken by Munir-led military establishment that has reshaped the country’s civilian-military balance in unprecedented ways.
This gerrymandering started with Asim Munir pushing Shehbaz Sharif-led government, along with other parties including Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), to enact 26th Constitutional Amendment in October 2024. It extended the tenures of Army, Navy and Air Forces chiefs from three to five years with the possibility of renewal. It also introduced major changes in the governance structure of Pakistan’s judiciary by expanding executive discretion over judicial appointments and removals.
But the most consequential transformation arrived last month in the form of the 27th Constitutional Amendment. This legislation formally elevated the Army Chief to the position of Chief of Defence Forces (CDF), which grants Munir concurrent command over all three military services. No Pakistani military leader, not even Ayub Khan or General Zia-ul-Haq during their periods of martial law, held such sweeping unified control.
The amendment also handed Munir expanded authority over Pakistan’s nuclear command structure, bringing the country’s strategic assets more directly under the Army Chief’s purview. And perhaps most significantly, it divided the Supreme Court by creating a parallel Federal Constitutional Court, diluting the judiciary’s capacity to check executive or military actions.
In such a hybrid-system, as the government elite calls it, dissent is seen as intolerable not because it threatens stability, but because it exposes the fragile legitimacy of absolute power. Imran Khan has demonstrated that even in confinement he poses exactly that threat. His persistent popularity consistently undermines the establishment narrative that Pakistan’s new political order is stable, consensual, or democratic. And hence, such a stand signals to supporters that the military was not as infallible authority as the establishment wants Pakistanis to believe.
Thus, cutting him off from visitors is not merely punitive -- it is strategic. Isolation weakens his political voice, disrupts his communication network, and sows fear within his party. It also tests public tolerance: how far can the state go before people push back?
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