The Unbroken Grip of Pakistan’s Military Establishment

In Pakistan’s fraught political history, there is a recurring specter that haunts every democratic aspiration: the unyielding dominance of the military establishment, a “mercenary cartel” that has, for seventy-eight years, held civilian leadership and national potential hostage. The ongoing Minus-One Plan Pakistan once again exposes how the establishment seeks to silence popular civilian leadership. Today, as Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan remains isolated behind bars and his sister Aleema Khan faces mounting threats, the echoes of the past—the struggles of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his sister Fatima Jinnah—resound with an eerie familiarity.

Following the arrest and continued incarceration of Imran Khan, voices of resistance have grown louder, none more poignant than that of his sister Aleema Khan. After a recent meeting at Adiala Jail, her account was both intimate and defiant. “It doesn’t matter to me where I am shifted; I stand for an ideology, and I will do whatever it takes for it,” Imran Khan told her when she relayed that a transfer to another facility was being prepared. This is not simply personal fortitude; it is a reaffirmation of belief that transcends physical confines.

Aleema Khan’s Defiance and Imran Khan’s Resolve

Aleema echoed this resilience—“Even if they give me a sentence of ten, twelve, or fifty years, it won’t make a difference because the public has now seen their true face.” Her words are a testament not just to a family’s courage but to the will of millions who have witnessed Pakistan’s democratic promise repeatedly betrayed. “The bigger the theft, the higher the position one gets,” she observed, summarizing a justice system now widely viewed as a tool for political engineering rather than legitimacy.

This predicament is not new. In 1965, Fatima Jinnah, the sister of Pakistan’s founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah, dared to challenge the military dictator General Ayub Khan. She faced a campaign of vilification, state harassment, and character assassination—tactics strikingly similar to those wielded today against Aleema Khan and other family members of Imran Khan. The Minus-One Plan Pakistan has, over the decades, evolved into a recurring strategy to eliminate any civilian leader who refuses submission.

For nearly eight decades, Pakistan’s military and intelligence institutions have defined the boundaries of permissible politics, thwarting every reformist surge and branding independent civilian leaders as existential threats to the “garrison state.” Those who refuse to submit are marked for erasure. The late Dina Wadia, Jinnah’s own daughter, understood this malaise all too well. She spent her entire life outside of Pakistan, visiting only once for family reasons, acutely aware that the establishment’s paranoia would never see her as anything but a threat.

Echoes of Fatima Jinnah – The Origin of the Minus-One Plan in Pakistan

Aleema Khan’s willingness to risk jail—“If they want to put me in jail, let them do it. It is my responsibility to convey Imran Khan’s message to the people without distorting its meaning”—bears striking resemblance to the resistance offered by Fatima Jinnah. Aleema, like Fatima, refuses silence or exile; instead, she insists on transmitting the message of justice and civilian rule, whatever the personal cost.

The Moral Struggle: Faith, Justice, and Pakistan’s Soul

At the heart of this struggle is a deeper moral question. Imran Khan himself often cites the saying of Hazrat Ali: “The system of disbelief can survive, but the system of oppression cannot.” He frames his political struggle as a crusade not merely for office but against the persistence of oppression and injustice. Aleema Khan, too, recasts his imprisonment not as a personal or familial defeat, but as a clarion call for collective reckoning—a battle between truth and tyranny.
What is at stake now is not simply the fate of Imran Khan nor even that of his family, but the very soul of Pakistan’s republic.

The judiciary’s ongoing capture, the intimidation of voices of conscience, and the normalization of political vendetta have brought the country to its sharpest civil-military standoff since 1971. As Aleema Khan darkly predicted, “Either the judge will fall ill or flee—this is my prediction,” exposing the extent to which manipulation of due process has become institutionalized.

Minus-One Plan Pakistan: A Warning for Democracy

Global audiences must understand: Pakistan sits at a dangerous crossroads. The fate of its most popular civilian leader, the persistence of the “Minus-One Plan Pakistan,” and the systematic intimidation of women who refuse to be cowered—these are not only stories of national trauma, but also a warning. Wherever power is unaccountable and dissent is criminalized, democracy withers.

The world watched as Fatima Jinnah’s challenge was crushed by generals, reshaping Pakistan’s trajectory for decades. Today, history threatens to repeat—unless the legacy of silenced voices inspires a reversal. Aleema Khan’s and Imran Khan’s stand is more than an act of defiance. It is the enduring promise that the arc of history, bent repeatedly by tyranny, still aspires towards justice.