Over nearly five decades, Pakistan has lost three members of one political family to what is believed to be state-supported violence or coercion. The country’s first democratically elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was executed after a military coup and a deeply contested trial.
His son, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, was killed in a police operation under circumstances that were never credibly resolved. His daughter, Pakistan’s first woman prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated after the state refused to do anything about her repeated warnings that she was being hunted.
Today, in a modern variation on an older pattern that now goes beyond the Bhuttos, former prime minister Imran Khan sits in prolonged solitary detention, politically neutralised.
The methods have changed. The logic has not.
A pattern, not a series of accidents
Individually, each case is explained away. Zulfikar Bhutto’s execution is framed as a judicial outcome. Murtaza’s killing is described as an encounter gone wrong. Benazir’s assassination is blamed on militants. Imran Khan’s detention is defended as a legal process.
But taken together, these episodes reveal a consistent outcome: the removal of popular leaders who threatened to operate independently of Pakistan’s military-dominated power structure.
Zulfikar Bhutto sought to subordinate the military to civilian authority. He was eliminated through a judicial trial widely criticised as biased and unjust.
Mir Murtaza Bhutto represented a radical, unpredictable challenge to both the state and a carefully managed political order; his death destabilised Benazir’s government and provided the pretext for its dismissal, too.
Benazir Bhutto herself returned in 2007 at a moment when the military was attempting a controlled transition. Her popularity, international legitimacy, and insistence on civilian primacy made her an obstacle. Her assassination removed that obstacle without requiring another coup.
The utility of fear
Violence against political leadership goes beyond simply eliminating individuals. It disciplines institutions. The Pakistan Peoples Party absorbed the lesson across generations.
After Benazir’s death, the party survived, but only by abandoning its historic role as a challenger to military dominance. Under late Benazir Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, and their son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the PPP recalibrated itself as a cooperative actor within the system rather than an oppositional force.
Confrontation gave way to accommodation; ideology to survival. That transformation was not accidental. It was an internalized fear. Imran Khan’s case shows the same logic applied with different tools. Instead of assassination, the state has relied on arrests, convictions, disqualifications, and prolonged isolation. Khan’s detention, marked by restricted access and repeated legal pressure, has kept Pakistan military’s most popular political figure out of the public arena without creating a martyr. For the system, this is really quite efficient.
Who gains from this cycle?
The primary beneficiary of this cycle of violence-born fear is not any single government or party, but the establishment itself, particularly the military leadership that retains veto power over politics without formal accountability.
Each elimination or neutralization reinforces several advantages:
Civilian compliance is at the top of the list. Political parties learn that survival depends on alignment, and resistance only causes damage. The fate of the Bhuttos, and now Imran Khan, serves as a warning to future leaders contemplating independent power bases.
Over time, this narrows the spectrum of acceptable politics.
Moreover, by shaping who can govern and under what conditions, the military preserves its central role in security, foreign policy, and increasingly, economic management.
The broader political class also adapts. Leaders moderate their rhetoric, avoid naming the military directly, and frame loyalty as patriotism. In doing so, they legitimise a system that has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to remove those who step outside its bounds.
The long-term cost
What is lost in this cycle goes beyond individual eliminations. The possibility of civilian supremacy as a durable principle is also a casualty.
When popular leaders are eliminated or incapacitated, politics becomes risk-averse and transactional. Parties focus on negotiating space rather than expanding it.
Elections matter, but only within limits set elsewhere. The state grows more stable on the surface, more brittle underneath. The Bhuttos’ story is not unique. Imran Khan’s detention suggests the same lesson is still being taught.
The question Pakistan continues to avoid is not whether these leaders were flawed (they were), but whether a system that eliminates or cages its most popular figures can ever produce stable, accountable governance. So far, the answer appears to be no.
Aritra Banerjee
Aritra Banerjee is a columnist specialising in Defence, Strategic Affairs, and Indo-Pacific geopolitics. He is the co-author of The Indian Navy @75: Reminiscing the Voyage. Having spent his formative years in the United States before returning to India, he brings a global outlook and first-hand insight to his reporting from foreign assignments and internal security environments such as Kashmir. He holds a Master’s in International Relations, Security & Strategy from O.P. Jindal Global University, a Bachelor’s in Mass Media from the University of Mumbai, and Professional Education in Strategic Communications from King’s College London (King’s Institute for Applied Security Studies.
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