Net harmfulFormula-derived score
A conviction is a court instrument. An allegation is not. The largest negative contribution to the formula-derived score is “Khan advises dissolution of the National Assembly to block a no-confidence vote” (2022).
Biggest harms and offsets: signed contributions to the formula-derived score, ranked by size.
via Democratic Resilience → Having a say in government
3 April 2022
via Vaccine Accessibility → First-dose measles vaccination coverage (global, MCV1)
2 February 2021
via Democratic Resilience → Having a say in government
20 December 2025
20 more ranked below in Timeline and Related.
The file is not a civic saint and not a single-issue political-prisoner footnote. The heaviest documented costs from his own hand are the 3 April 2022 attempt to dissolve the Assembly to block a no-confidence vote, the inflation-and-reserves spell of 2021–22, and the 9 May 2023 street-and-military-installation violence that followed his arrest — violence he denies ordering. The heaviest documented costs inflicted on him are a stack of Toshakhana and Al-Qadir sentences and three years in Adiala. Those rest on court texts, gazettes, PBS prints, and wires. A sentence is not a unique confession.
The offsets are dated. Shaukat Khanum, the 2018 oath, Ehsaas, Kartarpur, tree-planting, NCOC, and the 2019 EFF are completed instruments. The army, provinces, IMF staff, and Indian counterparts share several.
He does not sit as a NAB judge and he does not vote in the National Assembly from Adiala. Confidence is high on the 2018 oath, the 2022 dissolution advice, IMF letters, and named judgments, and medium where GHQ, FIA, and later CPI prints sit between a signature and a welfare indicator.
Sorted by the size of this person’s signed contribution. The observed state is the indicator’s own reading, not this person’s doing.
−181 pts to the score
Observed
29.8% of population aged 16-65 years · 8.13 below the normal line (2023)
Worse than normalTwo readings: 30.2% of population aged 16-65 years (2021) and 29.8% of population aged 16-65 years (2023).
Above normal = better · 2022–2026 · 11 facts, full confidence · formula deviation factor −3
−55 pts to the score
Observed
56.1 Score · 13.7 below the normal line (2024)
Worse than normal26 readings, 1996–2024: fell from 57 Score to 56.1 Score.
Above normal = better · 2020–2025 · 4 facts, full confidence · formula deviation factor −3
−52 pts to the score
Observed
43.9 Score · 43.9 above the normal line (2024)
Worse than normal26 readings, 1996–2024: rose from 43 Score to 43.9 Score.
Normal is zero · any amount = worse · 2019–2024 · 8 facts, full confidence · formula deviation factor −3
−43 pts to the score
Observed
84% of one-year-olds · 11 below the normal line (Dec 2024)
Worse than normal7 readings, 2018–2024: fell from 86.4% of one-year-olds to 84% of one-year-olds.
Above normal = better · 2021 · 1 fact, full confidence · formula deviation factor −3
−43 pts to the score
Observed
10.4% · 10.2 above the normal line (2024)
Worse than normal7 readings, 2018–2024: fell from 11.1% to 10.4%.
Above normal = worse · 2020–2022 · 4 facts, full confidence · formula deviation factor −3
−23 pts to the score
Observed
18.4% of population aged 16 years or over · 8.35 above the normal line (2025)
Worse than normal8 readings, 2018–2025: fell from 21.5% of population aged 16 years or over to 18.4% of population aged 16 years or over.
Above normal = worse · 2022 · 1 fact, full confidence · formula deviation factor −3
Claims against the record, the type of responsibility, and what is disputed.
Responsibility
responsibility level 0.8
responsibility level 0.5
responsibility level 0.6
responsibility level 0.65
What could change this assessment
Person → Fact → Driver → Indicator. Select a path to inspect its factors; the full network opens on demand.
Contribution size 0.85 · Responsibility 0.8 · Fact impact −0.7 · Driver weight 0.56 · Driver → indicator 0.7 · Indicator importance 0.8 · Deviation factor −3 · Confidence 1
Contribution size 0.55 · Responsibility 0.5 · Fact impact 0.5 · Driver weight 0.82 · Driver → indicator 0.86 · Indicator importance 0.85 · Deviation factor −3 · Confidence 1
The most relevant dated facts, newest first.
20 December 2025 · Institutional Corruption
Court sentences Khan in the Toshakhana-II gifts case17 January 2025 · Institutional Corruption
Accountability court sentences Khan to 14 years in the Al-Qadir Trust case5 August 2023 · Institutional Corruption
Sessions court sentences Khan to three years in the Toshakhana gifts case; he is arrested9 May 2023 · Political Polarization
Khan’s 9 May 2023 arrest is followed by attacks on military installations3 April 2022 · Democratic Resilience
Khan advises dissolution of the National Assembly to block a no-confidence vote2 February 2021 · Vaccine Accessibility
Pakistan begins COVID-19 vaccination with Chinese-supplied dosesHow the record is sourced and how the score is derived.
36 of 36 linked facts verified, drawing on 24 distinct sources (1992–2026).
Sources include Supreme Court of Pakistan, National Accountability Bureau, Islamabad judiciary, Election Commission of Pakistan, Inter-Services Public Relations, Ministry of Interior Pakistan, National Assembly of Pakistan, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
Sources (showing 8 of 24)
The score is formula-derived (Factrail formula v1, version 1.0.0), not an editorial verdict. Read the methodology.
By the Factrail desk · Method: how we source and score · Last reviewed · Sources: 24
An excerpt; the full analysis opens on request.
Imran Khan was prime minister of Pakistan from 18 August 2018 to 10 April 2022. Article 91 made him chief executive. It did not make him the author of an IMF board minute or of a Rangers arrest warrant. As of August 2026 he is a prisoner at Adiala, briefly moved to a public hospital on a Supreme Court order and sent back when doctors declared him fit. A prisoner is not a shadow prime minister.
That limit is the first fact about his power. The second is that the army’s extra-constitutional weight set what he could pass in office and what he could not stop later. A politician who delivered Ehsaas and Kartarpur, then tried to dissolve the House to keep it, is not a commentator.
The October march sharpens the distinction between formal and political power. Khan remained incarcerated and did not hold federal executive authority. Shehbaz Sharif headed the government whose security apparatus controlled access to Islamabad, while PTI governed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and used that provincial base for the march. Reuters reported that Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said protesters would not be allowed into the capital and that the government was considering legal action against the PTI-led provincial government over its handling of federal counter-terrorism demands. Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/thousands-of-imran-khan-supporters-start-march-pakistani-capital-party-says-2026-10-05/ (opens in a new tab)
The military remains part of the power context but attribution must stay evidentiary. Khan says his 2022 removal and later prosecution reflect persecution after his break with the military; the army denies engineering his ouster. The October march itself does not prove that disputed claim. It does show an elected provincial government mobilising around a jailed former prime minister while the federal state prepares coercive barriers to prevent entry into the capital.
The sharpest institutional cost from his own hand is the 3 April 2022 dissolution advice. He advised President Arif Alvi to dissolve the National Assembly to block a no-confidence vote. The Supreme Court restored the House. A constitutional crisis is a completed act. It is not a finding that the United States wrote the no-confidence.
Inflation and a reserves squeeze in his last year, and a stalled IMF programme, are dated macroeconomic costs. 9 May 2023 followed his Rangers arrest: military installations were attacked. He denies incitement. The riot is a completed event. Incitement as his personal order is not stored as a completed fact without a finished judgment that says so.
The cost inflicted on him is also official. 5 August 2023 a sessions court sentenced him to three years in the first Toshakhana gifts case and he was arrested from Zaman Park. 17 January 2025 an accountability court at Adiala sentenced him to 14 years in the £190 million Al-Qadir Trust case; he denies theft and has appealed. December 2025 added a Toshakhana-II term. Some earlier cipher and iddat convictions were later acquitted. A conviction is a court instrument. An acquittal is another.
Continued detention into 2026, including a hospital visit that ended with a return to Adiala, is a completed custody path. Medical access fights are not a finding that every charge is a fake.
Shaukat Khanum is a completed cancer hospital he raised money for and opened. PTI’s founding is a completed party launch. The 2018 election and oath are completed democratic rotation.
Ehsaas is a completed social-protection architecture. Kartarpur is a completed visa-free Sikh corridor with India. The 10-billion-tree campaign is a completed afforestation drive, with survival rates as a leak. NCOC is a completed COVID coordination body. The 2019 EFF is a completed Fund programme he later let stall. KP 2013 is a completed first provincial government.
Shehbaz Sharif, GHQ, NAB judges, Narendra Modi on Kartarpur, IMF staff, and Donald Trump are not extras. Treating Khan as sole author of 2021–22 inflation, or as a bystander on the 2022 dissolution, would be the same error in opposite directions.
The score does not say he stole Toshakhana watches as a unique personal confession beyond the judgment. It does not say 9 May was his radioed order. It does not say Ehsaas rebates a 14-year sentence. Confidence is high on the oath, the dissolution advice, hospital openings, and named court texts, and medium where FIA, GHQ, and later CPI sit between a signature and a welfare series.
Related people on this page are the successor who now holds the House, Indian and Chinese counterparts, Gulf and Western principals, and the UN secretary-general who shared flood weather after Khan had already left office.
A former prime minister is powerful enough to have owned those gazettes. He is not powerful enough, from Adiala, to be the unique author of a 2026 Finance Act, and the catalog keeps that line visible.
The state's response generated costs beyond the PTI-government confrontation itself. Ahead of the march, authorities placed shipping containers on approaches to Islamabad and around the Red Zone, which contains major government buildings and embassies. AP reported that the barriers disrupted ordinary travel and that some routes from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were blocked. Source: https://apnews.com/article/91abf67725b6e3e82a44514378ae99e6 (opens in a new tab)
Reuters separately reported on 2 October that authorities had requisitioned more than 2,000 vehicles in September for use as road barriers. Freight operators said the seizures caused cargo backlogs, demurrage costs and reluctance among truckers to drive north because their trucks or containers could be taken. Those are state-security externalities and should not be attributed to Khan as if he ordered the seizures. Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/cargo-stacks-up-pakistan-seizes-containers-block-capital-routes-2026-10-02/ (opens in a new tab)
The accountability chain is therefore split: PTI chose mass mobilisation; the federal and Islamabad authorities chose large-scale route denial and container requisition; ordinary commuters and freight operators absorbed part of the resulting disruption.
The march was not the first step. PTI initially scheduled the mobilisation for 27 September, then postponed it to 4 October while negotiations continued. On 1 October PTI publicly accepted another government offer for talks. Reuters reported after the march began that the negotiations had failed, with both sides accusing the other of bad faith, including over cooperation on a counter-terrorism plan in militancy-hit Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Sources: https://www.dawn.com/news/2032588/pti-defers-islamabad-long-march-to-oct-4 (opens in a new tab) ; https://www.thenews.pk/story/1440486-pti-agrees-to-govt-meeting-ahead-of-islamabad-long-march (opens in a new tab) ; https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/thousands-of-imran-khan-supporters-start-march-pakistani-capital-party-says-2026-10-05/ (opens in a new tab)
This sequencing matters for responsibility. The completed fact is that negotiations preceded the march and collapsed. It is not supported to state that either side alone deliberately sabotaged them unless a sourced finding establishes that.
The sourced official China visit available for this dossier occurred from 23 to 26 May 2026. During that visit Sharif met Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang and discussed CPEC, trade, investment, industrial cooperation and regional security. Sources: https://mofa.gov.pk/press-releases/joint-statement-between-the-peoples-republic-of-china-and-the-islamic-republic-of-pakistan-may-26-2026 (opens in a new tab) ; https://mofa.gov.pk/press-releases/curtain-raiserprime-minister-muhammad-shehbaz-sharif-to-undertake-official-visit-to-china (opens in a new tab)
That May visit is useful only as broader governing context: Sharif's administration simultaneously manages a strategic China relationship, economic policy, militancy and a domestic legitimacy conflict around Khan. It must not be presented as a contemporaneous absence from Pakistan during the 4–5 October march without new evidence.
October 2026 adds a new accountability episode without changing Khan's formal status: he remained jailed while his party converted his detention into a mass-mobilisation campaign. On 4 October more than 5,000 PTI supporters began moving from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa toward Islamabad under provincial Chief Minister Sohail Afridi, demanding Khan's release and improved access to him. Reuters reported on 5 October that thousands were taking part and that the march was being led from the PTI-governed province rather than by Khan personally from prison. Sources: https://apnews.com/article/dbda0a9ed4829e522bd650e7e50133bd (opens in a new tab) ; https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/thousands-of-imran-khan-supporters-start-march-pakistani-capital-party-says-2026-10-05/ (opens in a new tab)
Keep attribution disciplined. Khan is the political centre and intended beneficiary of the mobilisation, but the operational march leadership belongs to Afridi and PTI's current organisation. A jailed former prime minister should not be encoded as physically directing every road movement, security confrontation or local mobilisation unless a source establishes a specific instruction.
Yes. 27 June 2018: Pakistan is placed on the FATF grey list as Khan prepares to take office (Financial Action Task Force).
13 July 2024: Courts later acquit Khan and Bushra Bibi on the iddat/unlawful-marriage file. 3 June 2024: Islamabad High Court acquits Khan on the cipher Official Secrets case.
Dispute a fact on this pageNamed here, or represent someone who is? Request a right of reply.