Speculation is mounting that the Pakistani government is planning to murder former prime minister-turned-opposition leader Imran Khan in prison—with disastrous implications for Pakistan’s stability.
Imran Khan is a lightning-rod figure in Pakistani politics. A celebrity-turned-politician, he rode a populist wave to power in 2018, only to lose power four years later in a very Pakistani fashion—a putsch by a coalition of his opponents, including both civilian and military leaders. Today, one of Khan’s leading opponents, Shehbaz Sharif, leads the government as prime minister, with the all-important backing of the Pakistan Army and its Svengali-esque chief of staff Asim Munir.
After the coup, Khan was arrested and imprisoned, and his ultimate fate has been a constant question on the minds not only of his supporters but also on the minds of concerned observers the world over. Because of Khan’s personal celebrity as a successful cricketer playing for the Pakistani national team, he has legions of supporters around the world. And even non-cricketers can see that Pakistani politics today resembles an elaborate morality play, in which the jailed former leader has the support of the people and a shadowy cabal of his enemies is working to exclude him and his allies from power.
Imran Khan Is Still Alive—Barely
Despite no longer being in power and having been placed in a Pakistani jail, Khan remains a threat to the new government in Islamabad notably because his popularity is as strong as ever—a fact that puzzles Munir and the Sharif administration.
The new government, enduring an economic decline in the already financially strapped Pakistan, and having endured a withering conflict with neighboring India, does not want to give any maneuvering room to their political opponents—notably Khan and his party. And although Khan was prosecuted and ultimately jailed for highly suspect charges of corruption, his ouster has hardly solved this problem; Al Jazeera reports that Pakistan is losing 6 percent of its total GDP to corruption.
A grave controversy surrounding Imran Khan’s imprisonment was kicked up these last few weeks that came to a head just a few days ago. Images began circulating on social media showing Imran Khan’s dead body. It looked as though he had been brutalized.
There was zero confirmation about the images. Indeed, many on social media insisted that the images were AI-generated. But things ratcheted up when the family of Imran Khan—notably his sister—demanded to see the deposed Pakistani leader to confirm that he was still alive. The Pakistani government refused her, then refused a similar request from Khan’s legal counsel.
That’s where things started going downhill.
At that point, the centrifugal forces inside Pakistan’s society began taking hold, and the various factions within the nuclear-armed south Asian state began circling each other.
Finally, after much back-and-forth, the Pakistani government relented. Islamabad understood that it needed to calm things down and end any rumors of the death of Imran Khan. So it allowed Khan’s sister to visit the iconoclastic Pakistani leader in his prison. The rumors were just that: Khan was alive.
He was not, however, well.
Is the Pakistani Government Preparing to Murder Imran Khan?
After her visit, Uzma Khan, the former Pakistani leader’s sister, told The Independent in an exclusive interview that he was being psychologically tortured. She explained that Khan was being kept in solitary confinement for extended periods of time and refused contact with the outside world.
Another sister of Khan’s, Aleema, explained in an interview to the Independent Urdu her belief that the entire ordeal was essentially a psychological operation conducted by the Pakistani government. In Aleema’s summation, the Pakistani government was testing to see how the world—and the people of Pakistan—would react to the possibility of Imran Khan dying while in prison.
Aleema Khan suspects that the Pakistani government is planning to kill Khan “[with]in two months.”
Which brings us to the next dangerous element of this very explosive story. Supposing Khan were to mysteriously die in prison, would Pakistan descend into civil war? Look at how unstable the situation in the entire South Asian region has been ever since the Americans’ shambolic pullout from Afghanistan. Ever since then, the entire region has been in geopolitical flux. And Pakistan has been a powder keg since its inception. The Imran Khan situation is just the perfect spark for that particular fire.
The fact of the matter is that the situation with Khan is not going away. If his family is to be believed, the early reports of his death were merely a trial balloon by the ruling regime in Islamabad designed to numb the world to the idea of his passing while in custody.
President Trump Must Help Resolve This Crisis
Avoiding a civil war in nuclear-armed Pakistan must be the priority for all involved in international affairs.
Given President Donald Trump’s friendliness toward Islamabad, and the fact that he has a personal connection with Imran Khan (who has been styled in the Pakistani press as the sort of Pakistani analogue of Trump, a freewheeling celebrity turned populist political leader), Trump should pressure the ruling Pakistani government to release Khan from his imprisonment.
That’s the first step toward deescalating the situation in Pakistan. From there, real negotiations about how best to share power with Khan’s party and the current ruling party must take place. Khan and his party were unduly ousted from power in 2022. The current regime in Islamabad has striven to stop Khan from returning to power by waging what amounts to a brutal lawfare campaign against him. Yet neither Khan nor his party are surrendering. The logical next step for the ruling party is to do exactly what Aleema ruminated they would do, and let the chips fall where they may.
It is up to the United States and its partners to pressure the Pakistanis to not fall prey to the siren song of civil war. Such a war will not remain confined to Pakistan.
A scenario where loose nukes are proliferated throughout that conflict and the region is very likely once civil war initiates. It is therefore incumbent upon US leaders to intervene and prevent such a nightmare scenario from occurring.