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,........

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