Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf

Government of Imran Khan

The PTI government, in power from August 2018 to April 2022 under Khan’s premiership, faced formidable domestic challenges. It inherited a balance-of-payments crisis, spurred by enormous debt commitments, such as those imposed by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) initiative. The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in early 2020, added to the financial stress as the PTI remained hesitant to implement lockdowns and soaring infections placed tremendous strain on the health care system. Meanwhile, after India launched a brief air assault on Pakistan in February 2019 over the latter’s alleged provision of safe havens for militants seeking to end Indian administration in parts of Kashmir, Khan stirred controversy by carrying out a crackdown on suspected militants and closing religious schools for alleged indoctrination.

Khan attempted to reorient Pakistan’s foreign policy. He tried to court foreign aid and investment from an increasingly wide range of countries and under favourable conditions, hoping to reduce Pakistan’s reliance on any particular foreign entity. Meanwhile, he became an arbiter between the Taliban and the United States, which helped bring about the 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan as well as improved relations between Pakistan and the Taliban. Controversially, just hours after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Khan attended a long-planned meeting with Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin as much of the world was seeking to isolate the bellicose leader.

Pakistan’s ailing economy and the government’s crackdown on militants polarized the PTI’s supporters and critics, while the government’s attempt to steer foreign policy independently of the country’s armed forces unsettled its relationship with the military establishment. To make matters worse for the party, in October 2021 Khan attempted to influence the appointment of the chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) directorate, stoking additional animosity from the armed forces. In March 2022 the political opposition in the National Assembly moved to hold a vote of confidence in Khan’s government. On April 10 he was removed from office after a handful of Assembly members from the PTI refused to vote in his favour.

Crackdown on the PTI

Pakistan remained polarized even after the opposition took the reins. In July—only months after Khan had been ousted from the premiership—the PTI won most of the contested seats in an election in Punjab, the country’s largest province and traditionally a stronghold for the ruling PML-N party. As the PTI gained renewed momentum, however, Khan began facing a slew of legal challenges. In October he was barred from holding public office for several years after the election commission found that he sold state gifts and concealed assets while prime minister. In November, as emotions in the country mounted, he was shot in the leg in an assassination attempt.

Khan repeatedly asserted that a military officer was responsible for November’s assassination attempt, an accusation that the military publicly dismissed as “highly irresponsible and baseless” on May 8 after Khan had made the claim at a recent rally. As Khan appeared for court hearings in Islamabad on May 9, he was taken into custody by dozens of paramilitary officers for lack of cooperation in ongoing corruption investigations. The dramatic arrest prompted demonstrations and violence directed toward military installations and government buildings by Khan’s supporters. The PTI was subsequently subjected to a crackdown, media coverage and Internet access were temporarily restricted, and dozens of prominent members of the party defected.

In January 2024, just a month before elections were set to take place, the Supreme Court upheld an earlier decision by the electoral commission to prohibit the PTI from appearing formally on the ballot, claiming that there were irregularities in internal elections for the party. When elections were held in February, the PTI’s candidates ran as independents and the party again gained the largest share of the National Assembly’s directly elected seats. It fell short of the number of seats needed to form a government on its own, however, and the PML-N was able to form a government with the support of the PPP. The PTI also attempted to gain seats proportionally allocated to political parties by having its independent parliamentarians register with a small party, Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), but the electoral commission determined that the SIC had not submitted a list of candidates in time to claim seats. After all the seats were allocated, representatives from the PML-N outnumbered those from the PTI in the National Assembly, despite the PTI winning a larger number of elections.

With Khan’s seemingly indefinite imprisonment, his once reclusive wife Bushra Khan (often called Bushra Bibi) assumed her first public role in the PTI in November 2024. She led a march of PTI supporters in Islamabad to demand Khan’s release from prison, although the protest was quickly suppressed after the capital went into lockdown. Bushra escaped the chaos, but in December both she and Khan were charged with murder for the death of a law enforcement officer who was killed during the confrontation.