The imprisonment of Imran Khan is now a subject occupying the ground and shifting the mood of Pakistan in reaction. With his party symbol taken away and being surrounded by hundreds of other lawsuits, Khan continues to dominate conversations at the market stalls, tea stalls, and social media feeds. For many, he is an icon of resistance against a system long branded as one that silences popular leaders—a picture that awakens echoes of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s fate. His supporters see him as a victim of political engineering and these very political constraints. An outright ban on visits to his family, detention of his allies, and exile of sympathetic journalists have only strengthened the very allegiance among his supporters. Far beneath the floods, economic hardships, and day-to-day life lingering in their heads is the name of Imran Khan, both as a grievance against the ruling elite and a rallying cry for hope. Hence, his incarceration metamorphosed into a reflection of Pakistan’s truncated democracy, where public sympathy came into conflict with establishment revenge.
Stolen Verdict
The general elections exposed deep cracks in the democracy of Pakistan on February 8, 2024. Independent candidates joined Imran Khan’s PTI who won the most seats, leaving PML-N and PPP behind. However, not a single party managed to carry the clear majority, further escalating political uncertainty. Allegations regarding the vote rigging and other irregularities occupied the whole post-election scenario. PTI leaders accused the Election Commission of manipulating the result by delaying the announcement while reports of interference in vote counting identified the denial of PTI’s election symbol and thus painted in a picture of pre-election suppression.
This controversy deepened when a divisional commissioner came up and confessed to fraud under duress from superiors before walking it back. These forces have manipulated the results of the elections but the findings have largely shown that the public is up against rejection of Pakistan’s dynastic parties, coupled with the public’s resentment of military interference in politics.
Trials of Power
The demise of Imran Khan is linked to a series of prominent cases. The leaked “cipher” which was published by The Intercept, suggested that there was pressure from the U.S. for his ouster over his Russia-Ukraine policy, which subsequently landed him a 10-year sentence under the Official Secrets Act. Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi were also sentenced to seven years in the controversial Iddat case, which questioned the validity of their 2018 marriage, before they were acquitted on appeal in July 2024. He was also given a 14-year sentence on the Toshakhana wristwatch case involving gifts from foreign states. In a related inquiry, £190 million was allegedly diverted from property tycoon Malik Riaz to the Al-Qadir Trust linked to Khan and his wife, resulting in corruption charges. Such politically engineered cases, in the eyes of his supporters, have further exacerbated public grievances and reaffirmed his image as a persecuted leader.
Pakistan’s Hybrid Power Structure
Pakistan manifests a hybrid power system of political order where a military establishment converges with dynastic families, capitalist elites, and technocrats, who would all be working together to keep control. The ex-army officers occupy such lofty positions in civilian offices and institutions like NADRA, PTA, and WAPDA. This certainly indicates that there is a lot of military penetration in civilian governance and policy-making.
Major parties being politically dominated by families like the Sharifs and Bhuttos who together exert family connections to establish the political monopoly and hinder political competition in an ongoing rivalry. Meanwhile, bureaucrats and business elites align with military and political families, thus fortifying a resistant-to-change ecosystem. Such commodification of power produces civilian-military brackets, institutionalises elite capture, and perpetuates the fragile democratic order in Pakistan.
Exodus of Talent and Capital
Emigration from Pakistan continues at a very brisk rate till now after regime change involving Imran Khan. For instance, in 2023, 862,625 people migrated, a slight improvement over the figure of 832,339 in 2022; hence, a gradual outflow instead of a sudden spike (PIDE BEOE). The net migration figure is clearly negative, at -1.6 million for 2023 and -1.3 million for 2022; thus, it is more people going out than coming in Macrotrends.
While remittances have continued to show resilience, even during the pandemic period, future growth remains uncertain because of a possible slowdown in migration or diversion away from conventional labour destinations GIDS Report. This consistent outflow of professionals, labour, and capital represents one of the most grievous long-term losses for Pakistan and represents a debilitating drain on both talent and economic potential.
Deep State: Old Patterns, New Confrontations
Imran Khan’s four-year tenure indeed signified a drastic shift away from decades-old deep state patterns in Pakistan, especially when it came to an absolute rejection of U.S. drone strikes. For two reasons: One, in Khan’s government, there was no use of a drone on Pakistani soil, the first time since 2004. Unprecedented in its overt rejection of sovereignty, this act was Khan’s attempt to often evidently show that he rejected any imposition on sovereignty. For years, Khan had been mobilising protests against drones, condemning civilian deaths and secret pacts by past governments.
Khan condemned Pakistan’s military as having aided U.S. operations in Afghanistan, calling it a “slave war” that cost Pakistan 70,000 lives and billions of dollars in damages, openly shunning military establishment strategy to pursue Washington’s objectives.
In the past, however, accusations on Pakistan’s deep state have been persistent, accusing it of using non-state actors as instruments of proxy warfare in Afghanistan and Kashmir IDSA. It also facilitated the proliferation of Saudi-funded madrassas, from the 1970s onward, embedding puritanical ideologies which have altered Pakistan’s educational system and sectarian landscape.
Another dark shadow hung over the drug trade. The heroin trafficking routes during the Afghan jihad in the 1980s were reportedly protected by intelligence networks to finance their covert wars, as claimed by GISF. Reportedly, these networks then became modern-day militancy financed by narcotics connected to groups like the Taliban and the Haqqani’s Global Initiative.
Perhaps this level of opacity still exists today. During $364 million worth of defence contracts between the U.S. firms and Pakistan, it was suggested that arms be redirected to Ukraine alone. At the same time, claims by President Zelensky in 2025 that mercenaries from Pakistan had fought in favour of Russia were firmly rejected by Islamabad as false and politically motivated.
For Khan supporters, this entire proxy warfare, ideological manipulation, illicit trades, and foreign appeasement went soberly against Khan’s policy that placed sovereignty first. His open defiance of deep state’s traditional alliances, coupled with his own zero-drone-strike record, is understood as an immediate trigger for his downfall, that is, being punished in prison for going against deep-rooted interests.
Conclusion
The jailing of Imran Khan is all about much more than one man; it is the ultimate proof that the politics of Pakistan are hostages to a hybrid deep state—military overlords, dynastic families, capitalist cronies, and generals turned bureaucrats. For this reason, Khan was punished for refusing to bow down to the system: ending military drone strikes, opposing proxy wars, and exposing elite corruption. An insatiable addiction to foreign dictates, drug money, and Saudi influence has sustained a system whose output is a broken democracy, mass exodus of youth and captivity of the nation between sovereignty and servitude. Until this nexus is broken, every elected leader will remain disposable, and every citizen will remain expendable.
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