I don’t think that was the only case. IK not only bit of more than he could chew he was biting off the wrong pieces.
For all his public religious invocations and I have “met” him at individuals( Rafiq Akhtar is an example… with his own critiques but looking at the Pakistani pool) i consider to be learned and somewhat balanced from a religious guide perspective - he clearly took no lessons from the prophet’s life.
If we take Hudaybiya as a distant analogy to the “deal with the devil” situation then clearly the years of peace during that time was focused on strengthening Medina and the Islamic state as an institution and not attacking the Quraysh. Instead house cleaning and institutionalizing the faith was key to why Islam walked into Makkah undeterred.
Meanwhile IK spent most of his time immediately attacking PMLN or PPPP whenever the slightest question arose on PTI own incompetent decisions and kept arbitrarily overruling attempts by good people within PTI to create an institution within it.
You could blame the Pakistani within it but his “buck stops here” overreach began in Cricket - somewhat was tempered due to Jemimah with SKMH - and then rose again with PTI with the peerni finally letting it loose completely.
To your point - you need institutions that recognize what type of leadership is needed at what stage. Neither the Pakistan Army is capable of understanding this due to their inherited and generally sluggish military mindset , and overall Pakistani society is unable to understand this wonderful concept by Frank Herbert:
“Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible”
Restating probably known common facts:
Bhutto didn’t need “encouragement” to start the PPP because he had a massive ego, deep pockets from his wadera landholdings, and a precise understanding of the political vacuum. He gathered socialists, leftists, and marginalized groups at a friend’s house in Lahore to officially form the party. Bhutto weaponized the mass anger he knew was brewing against Ayub, painted himself from an elitist regime insider into a populist savior. Any disagreement there?
Imran Khan’s path started with his frustration at what Zardari and Co were doing(reportedly based on massive extortion attempts for SKMH) but we also know Hamid Gul(another colorful figure in Pakistan’s messes) was the one who took him along for his soft coup attempt against Benazir until IK backs out and forms PTI on his own because of? Ego clash?
They are both however still elitist in their origins - so clearly a true “people’s leader” hasn’t really emerged here because of institutional failures.
Even Jinnah had an elitist background - but it took some 4 years for Iqbal to really convince him from his disillusionment and even more for him to embrace the populism as the vehicle instead of institutional methods to get Pakistan.
But if we then apply that metric from Herbert to the three of them - specifically because PTI supporters like to compare IK to Jinnah -
Bhutto is the classic example of someone already wired for absolute control who successfully magnetized the system to give it to him.
However, IKs own ego was his corruption. His insistence that he is the sole savior is a hallmark of the corruptible personality. While he may not have sought power for traditional financial fraud, he did argue constantly on his moral absolute power and use religion as the vehicle to deliver it.
The “anti-corruption” crusader actively allied with the military establishment (the architects of the very system he opposed) and welcomed dozens of notoriously corrupt “electables” into his party and once in power, he utilized state institutions to suppress the opposition.
Imran Khan wasn’t corrupted by the office but by his overriding belief in his own righteousness allowed him to justify engaging in the exact transactional, systemic corruption he swore to destroy.
Jinnah abhorred populism. His authority was not rooted in emotional manipulation or presenting himself as a messiah, but his lawyer background applied to constitutional logic, exhaustive legal prep and maneuvering(some say to his detriment that he kept fighting the case for Indian muslims but never stopped being a lawyer).
He did not seek power to enforce a personal moral vision onto the masses and was still in “court”. Because his end goal was institutional rather than personal.
That is the difference in why he succeeded while Imran Khan was BOUND to fail and his followers are in an illusionary pipe dream.
