For months, there have been speculations about Imran Khan’s fate behind the high walls of Adiala Jail in the garrison town of Rawalpindi where he remains imprisoned since 2023. But the question took a darker turn when the military establishment abruptly shifted its rhetoric as well as actions. After keeping Khan incommunicado for weeks by denying even routine family visitations, the Army has now begun portraying him as a security threat of unprecedented scale.

On December 5, in a sharply worded press conference, Director General of the Inter-Services Public Relations (DG ISPR) Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry delivered something far more political than any uniformed official should be comfortable pronouncing: he accused the former prime minister of being a “matter of national security,” a “delusional” leader working in “deep collusion” with foreign actors.

For an institution whose leadership has spent decades insisting on its political neutrality, not that there appeared any given their actions, this was something extraordinary. The Army did not merely criticize a political figure, but declared Imran Khan a national security threat. It is difficult to read such language as anything other than a preparation to shape public opinion before the state contemplates something irreversible. Pakistan’s military spokesmen have long been prone to sweeping condemnations of adversaries, but the intensity, timing, and vocabulary now being deployed against prime minister feels ominously different.

The accusation that Mr. Khan wrote to the International Monetary Fund urging it to halt financial engagement with Pakistan, the insinuation that he encouraged “civil disobedience” and non-payment of electricity bills, and, most seriously, the claim that he directed supporters to “target” the Army’s leadership constitute a narrative engineered to portray him not simply as a political rival, but an existential enemy of the state. What is striking is not whether Army’s allegations against Khan are objectively provable given Pakistanis know well that truth has rarely constrained the military’s political ambitions, but rather why the establishment feels compelled to publicly build a case right now. The last time something like this happened was under Gen. Ziaul Haq against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and everyone knows how that turned into.

Part of the answer lies in timing. Pakistan is no longer simply managing dissent; it is reordering the very architecture of the state. As the military centralizes power, constitutional checks have been amputated one amendment at a time. Judicial independence has been hollowed out. Other political parties, often willing accomplices, have little incentive to resist. In such an environment, the figure who refuses to bow becomes not merely inconvenient but intolerable.

To understand why the military felt the need to drop even the pretence of impartiality, one must look at the dramatic transformation underway within Pakistan’s political and constitutional architecture. Under Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, the military has embarked on the most ambitious power consolidation project in decades in the last three years. What began after the May 9, 2023 protests with the expansion of military courts to try civilians has now morphed into a full-blown restructuring of the state itself. The 26th Constitutional Amendment (October 2024) extended the tenures of the service chiefs across the Army, Navy, and Air Force, eliminating uncertainty around leadership renewal and enhancing institutional continuity in the Army’s favour. But it was the 27th Amendment, passed in November 2025, that fundamentally reconfigured Pakistan’s civil–military equation. It abolished the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, replaced it with the position of Chief of Defence Forces, to be concurrently held by the Army Chief, and effectively subordinated the other services under one office. In a nuclear-armed state with a history of military rule, that consolidation is not merely bureaucratic; it is structural.

Simultaneously, the judiciary, which for long was touted as a democratic bulwark against creeping political entrenchment of the military has been reshaped. First, its governance mechanisms were refashioned (26th Amendment). Then, Supreme Court powers were diluted by the recent creation of a Federal Constitutional Court (27th Amendment). This is not mere influence. It is systemic absorption.

Despite these transformations, one obstacle has stubbornly endured: Imran Khan. He remains, by most accounts, the most popular political figure in Pakistan. His party, which has been repressed, splintered, and blocked electorally, still retains vast grassroots following. For a military trying to secure lifetime authority, a leader with mass legitimacy is a direct threat.

Other political parties have chosen a more convenient path. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Pakistan People’s Party, historically adversaries of military dominance, have now become facilitators of constitutional engineering, trading democratic principle for short-term political advantage. Their acquiescence clears the path for the Army. Only Mr. Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) stands outside this arrangement.

Which brings us back to the recent press conference. By designating Mr. Khan a national security threat, the military is not merely attacking his reputation; rather, it is constructing a moral and political foundation upon which the state could justify extreme measures, including the possibility of execution. Such rhetoric helps contain public outrage before it erupts. It tells citizens that the state is acting reluctantly, compelled by a danger that only it fully understands. Because, in countries with fragile institutions like Pakistan, executions are rarely announced but prepared through such manoeuvrings.

For decades, Pakistan’s generals have governed from behind a curtain of denial when not in power through direct coup d’états. They intervened, but insisted they were not intervening. They shaped governments but claimed they were merely “facilitating democracy.” Now, that performance has ended. The uniform seems to be stepping onto the political stage without disguise.

The significance of this shift should not be underestimated. When a military stops pretending, it stops needing permission. When it openly criminalizes popular political leaders, it removes the final brake on its power. Pakistan is now at that precipice. And the most alarming part of the Army’s latest messaging is how carefully choreographed it seems: foreign collusion, national betrayal, internal threat, economic sabotage. These are not random allegations. They are elements of a legal and psychological template historically used to eliminate political enemies. As such, this campaign against Mr. Khan is no spontaneous outburst. It is calculated, sequential, and increasingly extreme. It aims not only to discredit him, but to normalize the idea that removing him, through legal pretexts or through execution, will be a matter of national necessity.

Pakistanis have seen this logic before, and they know where it leads. The difference is that today, the military is not acting in the shadows but speaking in the language of open justification. That should terrify anyone who still believes Pakistan’s future lies in civilian rule. The Army may not yet have decided what it will ultimately do with Imran Khan. But one thing is clear that it is preparing the public emotionally, politically, and morally for a step it once would have feared to take. And if that step comes, no one will be able to say they were not warned.

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Arun Anand is an author and columnist who has penned more than a dozen books. He contributes columns on geopolitics to leading Indian and international publications and research journals. Follow him on ‘X’ @ArunAnandLive