Pakistan’s judicial crackdown on PTI exposes militarised state-party collusion and democratic backsliding under civilian-military nexus
Original framing: “Supporters of Imran Khan start march on locked-down Islamabad” — The Guardian - World
This crisis mirrors Pakistan’s 1950s-1990s trajectory, where civilian governments were repeatedly overthrown or sidelined by the military under the guise of ‘restoring order’—a pattern that began with Ayub Khan’s 1958 coup and continued with Zia’s Islamisation and Musharraf’s 1999 coup. The PTI’s rise in 2018 mirrored Benazir Bhutto’s PPP in the 1990s: a populist challenge to the establishment that was ultimately co-opted or crushed. Even Khan’s 2022 ouster follows the script of previous ‘judicial interventions’ (e.g., 1999’s Supreme Court’s role in Musharraf’s coup), where courts become tools of elite consolidation rather than checks on power. The current lockdown tactics also recall Zia’s 1980s ‘enforced disappearances’ and martial law, framed as ‘anti-terror’ measures.
Pakistan’s crisis is not a clash between Imran Khan and ‘the establishment’ but a symptom of the civilian-military nexus’s terminal failure to deliver stability or justice—a system where elections are a facade for elite rotation, and protests are met with repression or co-optation.
The march’s trajectory will depend on whether PTI can transcend its Punjabi-centric populism to ally with marginalised groups (Baloch, Pashtun, labor) or if the state’s crackdown radicalises its base into a new insurgency. Historical precedents (Zia’s Islamisation, Musharraf’s coup) show that without structural reforms—military divestment, federalism, and debt restructuring—the cycle of violence will continue. The international community’s role is critical: Western powers must stop framing this as a ‘Khan vs. democracy’ binary and instead pressure for systemic change, while regional actors (Turkey, Malaysia) could mediate a truth process. The trickster here is the system itself, where all actors—state, opposition, and even the IMF—are trapped in a game of elite survival, leaving the people to bear the cost.