Features | Politics | South Asia

With the Military Ascendant, Is This the End for Imran Khan?

The rapid consolidation of power by Field Marshal Asim Munir has the PTI reconsidering its options – and the controversial “charter of democracy.”

Former Pakistani Prime Minister and chief of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan, who has been in prison since 2023.

On June 19, the Election Commission Gilgit-Baltistan (ECGB) announced the final results of the June 7 polls, with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) bagging nine out of 21 seats to emerge victorious. The delay in finalizing the result of the elections in Gilgit-Baltistan, a territory that is a part of the Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India, was largely due to widespread allegations of misappropriation leveled by Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

The PTI insisted that, like the 2024 general elections, the Gilgit-Baltistan polls too were rigged by the military establishment to sideline the party. Eyewitnesses confirmed discrepancies in voting patterns and final results across polling stations, in addition to the pre-poll alterations in constituency boundaries and voters lists. On top of that, the PTI is being forced to field independent candidates, with its leaders frequently barred from campaigning.

The state’s marginalization of the PTI from the electoral process is a continuation of the military establishment’s clampdown on the party following Imran Khan’s removal as the prime minister in April 2022. Since then the party leadership has faced incarceration. Khan has been in prison since August 2023, in addition to thousands of PTI workers being jailed over “anti-state” actions – most notably the riots of May 9, 2023, when Khan was first arrested. Last year, 75 PTI leaders were jailed in a mass conviction over the 2023 protests. 

Khan’s health is deteriorating in jail, as both the PTI founder and his wife Bushra Bibi – also imprisoned over corruption allegations – suffer from a loss of vision. Meanwhile, the media blackout of the party – especially Khan, whose name was unofficially barred from being spoken on TV channels – has continued over the past four years, including in the lead up to the Gilgit-Baltistan polls.

While anti-army sentiments exploded in Pakistan in the immediate aftermath of Khan’s removal as the premier, and garnered global attention amid large-scale election manipulation in 2024, the military leadership has witnessed a stark turnaround over the past 12 months. The ceasefire following the May 2025 India-Pakistan clashes allowed Islamabad to claim victory, especially amid confirmation that multiple Indian jets were downed. 

Since then, as Pakistan has continued to woo U.S. President Donald Trump, Islamabad has become the chief broker in the ongoing Iran-U.S. negotiations, even hosting the talks between the two sides in April. The all-powerful army chief, Asim Munir, who became the country’s second field marshal and the very first chief of defense forces (CDF), was described by U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance as “one of two most important people in my life” during the Lake Lucerne talks in Switzerland over the weekend. Trump has repeatedly called Munir “my favorite field marshal.”

Munir, who had been dubbed “hardline” within the military ranks even before his ascension to the army chief position, also has a bone to pick with Imran Khan. While prime minister, Khan had removed Munir as the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in 2019. Munir is now spearheading the crackdown on Khan and his party as not just the most powerful man in Pakistan, but now also one of the most influential figures in the region.

This turnaround has pushed a rethink in the PTI, The Diplomat has learned through conversations with the party leadership. Party leaders are now open to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)-led government’s longstanding proposition of a “charter of democracy,” originally designed to strengthen parliamentary supremacy, but now largely considered the army leadership’s ploy to reaffirm its authority. Many in the PTI ranks believe that a compromise with the military leadership is the only way forward to maintain any political relevance in the country. 

“The military establishment has now become so powerful that it has become impossible to uphold democracy in Pakistan,” a PTI leader told The Diplomat. “Politicians can now only function in the space allowed to them. The hybrid regime is permanent – so Pakistani politics is all about competing for the shrinking civilian space in the hybrid system.” The........

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