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Tuesday, June 03, 2025

Pakistan’s Deep State, Imran Khan, and the Illusion of Democracy

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Pakistan’s Deep State, Imran Khan, and the Illusion of Democracy

On 11 September 2024, Amnesty International issued a statement that ripped through the illusion of democratic process in Pakistan. Their assessment was blunt and damning: the former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, remains in arbitrary detention—not due to the rule of law, but because of its subversion.

A year after Khan’s conviction, Amnesty noted "several fair trial violations under international human rights standards", directly linking these violations to the weaponization of the legal system. This is not a metaphor. It is a clinical description of a system hollowed out by political coercion, where due process exists only as theater, and justice is reserved for the powerful—or those serving them.

The Military’s Grip on Pakistan

The real power in Pakistan lies not in parliament, nor in the courts, nor with elected leaders. It lies with the military and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Together, they form what can only be described as a deep state oligarchy—an entity that controls not just national security, but the judiciary, media, economy, and now, politics. Pakistan today is not a democracy with military influence; it is a military regime with a democratic disguise.

Imran Khan’s fall from power—and his subsequent imprisonment—was not an organic legal process. It was engineered. Each court date, each charge, and each denial of bail or hearing was orchestrated with one goal: to remove him from the political equation. Why? Because Khan, for all his populist flaws, posed a challenge to the military’s absolute control. He galvanized street support. He questioned the military’s behind-the-scenes puppeteering. And he did what no civilian in decades dared to do—he made Pakistanis imagine civilian supremacy.

That, for the generals, was unforgivable.

Amnesty’s Warning, the World’s Silence

Amnesty International’s language is unusually clear. It calls for immediate release. It outlines a pattern of abuses. And it places the blame not just on legal institutions but on the system behind them. But international response has been tepid. Governments who claim to champion democracy continue to arm and engage Pakistan’s military elite under the guise of strategic stability. In effect, they are enabling the repression they publicly lament.

This silence is not neutrality; it is complicity.

The Need for a New Beginning

Pakistan does not need another election under the current constitution. Elections held under military tutelage are elections in name only. What Pakistan needs is a Constituent Assembly—freely elected, free from military interference, and mandated to write a new constitution that ensures civilian supremacy, judicial independence, and press freedom.

This is not a radical proposition. It is a necessity for survival. Because if the current trajectory continues, Pakistan will not evolve into a flawed democracy. It will regress further into military feudalism—a state owned not by its people, but by an army that answers to no one but itself.

The Final Verdict

Imran Khan’s imprisonment is not just about one man. It is a litmus test for the soul of a nation. If Pakistanis—civil society, journalists, students, workers—do not demand a new social contract, one not underwritten by generals, then the dream of democracy in Pakistan will remain exactly that: a dream.

And dreams, under military regimes, are often crimes.

Sources:

  • Amnesty International (11 Sept 2024): “Pakistan: One Year on from Conviction of Imran Khan, Fair Trial Concerns Persist”

  • Ongoing reporting by Pakistani human rights organizations and international observers

  • PTIofficial on X: https://x.com/PTIofficial/status/1929945072621195432


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