On the Pakistani State: The Present
The apex decision-making body in both India and Pakistan is the Cabinet Committee on Security. In India, the CCS comprises the Prime Minister, Home Minister, External Affairs Minister, Defence Minister and Finance Minister as permanent members, while there may also be temporary members and observers, such as the National Security Advisor (a senior IAS, IFS or IPS officer), the secretaries of the concerned ministries, and sometimes even the Chief of Defence Staff, who may be invited, especially during a conflict. In Pakistan, however, the CCS comprises not just the aforementioned ministers and secretaries, but also the chiefs of the army, navy and air force, the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, and the Director-General of ISI as permanent members. Thus, the Pakistani CCS has a 50–50 split between civilian and military leaders. That itself is a big giveaway of how power is distributed in Pakistan.
It is not just the CCS. The military has its men embedded in the Cabinet of Pakistan too. The Defence Secretary and the Defence Production Secretary of Pakistan have almost always been serving or retired army generals, and the current ones are no exception. In India, these posts are always held by senior IAS officers. Apart from the Cabinet, there is more wardi (uniform) elsewhere in the various government departments.
In Pakistan, the current chairmen of the National Database & Registration Authority, National Disaster Management Authority, and Water & Power Development Authority, and the Directors General of the Anti-Narcotics Force and Airport Security Force, are all either serving or retired generals or brigadiers. Equivalent posts in India are almost always held by either senior IAS or IPS officers.
The apex strategic (read: nuclear-related) decision-making body in both India and Pakistan is the National Command Authority. While in India the NCA is headed by the PM and NSA, with the CDS serving as an adviser, in Pakistan the NCA is headed by two serving army generals who ‘advise’ the Pakistani PM. Until recently, the chairman of Pakistan’s Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) had been a serving or retired army general. In contrast, the chairman of ISRO has always been a senior astrophysicist, space scientist or aerospace engineer.
If one moves away from these government departments, one will find more khaki in the various government agencies. The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is Pakistan’s equivalent of India’s Central Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement Directorate fused into one agency, making it doubly powerful and thus prone to abuse. This is further accentuated by the fact that while the CBI and ED are headed by senior IPS and IRS officers respectively under their corresponding ministries, the Pakistani NAB is headed by retired army generals. This is the primary agency the Pakistani army uses to harass civilian politicians. NAB is the same agency that arrested former PM Imran Khan, and had even arrested, in the past, the current PM Shahbaz Sharif, current President Asif Ali Zardari, and current Defence Minister Khawaja Asif when they were out of power.
The military’s footprints and fingerprints can also be found in Pakistan’s paramilitary organisations or gendarmeries, including the Pakistan Rangers, Frontier Corps and Gilgit Scouts. Although dubbed the Civil Armed Forces, the DGs of these organisations are, ironically, serving army generals. This gives the Pakistan Army overarching control over the civilian paramilitary forces. In contrast, India’s equivalent organisations, such as the Border Security Force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Sashastra Seema Bal, Central Reserve Police Force, and Central Industrial Security Force, are all headed by senior IPS officers under the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Even the Pakistan Civil Services has a 10 per cent reservation for military personnel. This might look similar to the Indian system, wherein military personnel are provided similar reservations in government examinations, except that in Pakistan military personnel can bypass the civil services entrance examinations altogether and be directly appointed to the civilian bureaucracy.
This entire discussion would be futile if one did not bring forth the Inter-Services Intelligence. The ISI was originally envisioned as a military intelligence agency, akin to India’s Directorate of Military Intelligence. However, over time, the ISI gained immense powers under successive military dictators. While Ayub expanded its powers to engage in domestic intelligence in 1958, Mr Bhutto established a political cell within the ISI in 1975, and finally, Zia expanded its powers further in 1980 to also engage in foreign intelligence following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Thus, the ISI amalgamated into itself powers equivalent to those of such Indian agencies as the Intelligence Bureau, Research & Analysis Wing and National Investigation Agency, thus making it extraordinarily powerful, with unparalleled jurisdiction. The ISI actively recruits its agents from other Pakistani agencies such as Military Intelligence, Intelligence Bureau, Foreign Intelligence Agency and Counter-Terrorism Department. And while all these equivalent agencies in India are headed by senior IAS or IPS officers and report directly to the PM or Home Minister, the Director General of ISI is always a serving army general. The current army chief, Asim Munir, is also a former DG ISI.
The ISI does not simply engage in all sorts of intelligence, though. It also has a media-facing arm, the ISPR, which engages in regular press conferences, as is expected. What is not expected, however, is that the ISPR also owns a media production company that produces everything from blockbuster war films (Waar, Parwaaz Hay Junoon and Sherdil), popular TV dramas (Alpha Bravo Charlie, Ehd-e-Wafa, Sinf-e-Aahan and Ek Thi Marium) and reality shows (60 Hours to Glory), to patriotic songs (‘Bara Dushman Bana Phirta Hai’, ‘Aik Qaum, Aik Manzil’), documentaries (Through Storms and Sacrifice), film festivals (National Amateur Short Film Festival), and even cartoons (Team Muhafiz) and video games (The Glorious Resolve). These are merely tools the Pakistani army uses to shape the narrative within the country in its favour. This author ends the comparative analysis with India here itself, because there is no Indian equivalent to whatever the ISPR’s media production arm is, and all that is yet to come.
If making films, series and video games sounds bizarre, one ought to hold one’s breath for a while. The tendrils of the Pakistani military do not just creep into the Pakistani state or the media, but also spread into the economy. The Fauji Foundation is the epitome of this phenomenon. Created under the leadership of Governor-General Malik and PM Bogra in 1954 as a charitable trust, the foundation’s original purpose was to relieve the budget of Pakistan by providing for the perks (housing, education and healthcare) of the Pakistani army from the foundation’s own commercial profits. This left only salaries and pensions to be provided by Pakistan’s budget, while all the perks came from whatever profits the foundation made from its initial grant of a textile mill and a hospital.
The Fauji Foundation gradually expanded dramatically into many other sectors, including fertilisers (Fauji Fertilizer Company), urea (Fauji Fertilizer Bin Qasim), phosphorus (Pakistan Maroc Phosphore), banking (Askari Bank), finance (Foundation Securities), insurance (Askari General Insurance, Askari Life Insurance), currency exchange (Askari Exchange), petroleum (Mari Petroleum Company), natural gas (Foundation Gas), green energy (FFC Energy), thermal power (Fauji Kabirwala Power Company), wind power (Foundation Wind Energy), dairy (Fauji Foods), fresh and frozen foods (Fauji Fresh n Freeze), meat (Fauji Meat), cornflakes (Fauji Cereals), cement (Fauji Cement), and logistics (Fauji Akbar Portia Marine Terminals, Fauji Oil Terminal & Distribution Company). The boards of directors of all these companies are stacked with retired army officers. Apart from these companies, it also runs many schools and hospitals where army officers and their families receive free or subsidised education and healthcare. As of today, the Fauji Foundation is, by far, the largest business group and conglomerate in Pakistan.
The ‘fauj’, or the army, is not the only branch of the military that does business. How can the air force and navy stay behind? The air force runs the Shaheen Foundation, named after its nickname, the eagle. Conceived as a charitable trust, the Shaheen Foundation now operates schools, colleges and hospitals and also runs businesses such as cargo handling at airports (Shaheen Airport Services), aeroplane parts trading (Shaheen Aerotraders), real estate (Shaheen Complex, Fazaia Housing, Shaheen Welfare Housing), defence manufacturing (SAMTEC), textiles (Shaheen Knitwear), radio stations (FM 100 Pakistan), advertising (Hawk Advertising), bodyguard services (Shaheen Foundation Security Services), and employment in the Gulf (Overseas Employment Agency). The Shaheen foundation even operated a commercial airline, Shaheen Air, before its liquidation in 2019.
The navy runs the Bahria Foundation, originally envisioned as a charitable trust. It too operates many schools and colleges, engages in the construction of ports and shipbuilding (Maritime Works Organization), real estate (Bahria Estates), travel agencies (Bahria Travels), securities (Bahria Security Systems & Services), medicines (Bahria Pharmacy), confectionery and catering (Bahria Bakery & Catering), paints (Bahria Paints), petrol pumps (Bahria Filling Stations), import-export (Al-Falah Trading Agency), government employment (Bahria Recruiting Agency), and even IT services (Bahria Enterprise Systems and Technologies).
All this might sound overwhelming, but hold tight for one final ride, this time with the Defence Housing Authority. The DHA was initially an entity that was tasked with securing land for the development of defence housing localities for serving and retired military personnel. Over time, the DHA expanded to sell plots commercially and to build and construct villas, apartment complexes, retail shops, banks, corporate office towers, shopping malls, boulevards, roads, hospitals, medical colleges, clinics, schools, colleges, universities, mosques, golf clubs, cricket stadiums, gymnasiums, sports complexes, man-made lakes, theme parks, public green spaces, power grid stations, water filtration plants and underground wiring. The magnificent bungalows and sprawling localities built by DHA have transformed into posh residential areas, cocoons where the Pakistani elite reside, completely detached from the everyday realities of the rest of Pakistan.
With this, it is abundantly clear that the Pakistani military has had enormous control over the country’s state, government, politics, media and economy. Yet these are not new phenomena, and the military has been this powerful for a very long time now. However, the changes that we are witnessing now under the current army chief, General Asim Munir, are both foreseen and unforeseen simultaneously.
Asim Munir is unlike army chiefs of yore. While almost all of his predecessors graduated from the Pakistan Military Academy (equivalent to India’s NDA and IMA) or the colonial-era Sandhurst Academy, Munir graduated from the Officers’ Training School (equivalent to India’s OTS, which recruits cadets for short-service commissions). His father was a local imam (cleric) and a Syed (religious scholar) who taught in a madrasa. Munir received his early education in that madrasa. This is again in direct contrast with previous army chiefs, all of whom had a rather secular and British-style public-school education. Even Zia, whose father was also an imam, attended the elite St Stephen’s College in Delhi before Partition.
Munir could not attend such elite institutes, as he was from a family of modest means, unlike his predecessors, who all came from either well-established military families, landed dynasties (zamindars) or upper-middle-class households. Munir’s religious upbringing during his formative years seems to have had a huge impact on him, as he later went on to become a Hafiz-e-Quran (one who has memorised the Quran) during a military assignment to Saudi Arabia.
This also reflects in the fact that he does not drink, at least not publicly, as it is considered haram (sinful) in Islam. This again is in contrast with older army chiefs, almost all of whom drank whisky. Ayub Khan drank whisky, Yahya Khan was notorious as a heavy drinker, Musharraf drank whisky, but Zia did not drink whisky, though he did let people around him drink. Asim Munir has followed in Zia’s footsteps in this regard. This should not be surprising, as Munir is what is sometimes called a ‘Zia recruit’. This is a generation of Pakistani army officers who were recruited after Zia had taken power and enacted his Islamisation policies in the military.
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These policies included the replacement of the army’s motto from the secular ‘Unity, Faith, and Discipline’ to the highly religious ‘Iman, Taqwa, Jihad fi Sabilillah’ (‘Faith, Piety, and Jihad for the sake of Allah’); the institutionalisation of mandatory prayer sessions for all army units; encouragement for officers and soldiers to keep long beards; making piety a factor in promotions; prohibition of alcohol across all military messes and clubs; and routine sermons from maulavis (chaplains) of such organisations as the Tablighi Jamaat. Munir is a product of this batch of recruits from the 1980s. Therefore, his early life and early career are essential to understanding the psyche of the man.
After serving in the military for over 40 years, Munir was promoted to the rank of DG ISI in 2017. This is another departure from his predecessors, as none of them served as the head of intelligence. He was later promoted to the rank of corps commander in 2019, a crucial stepping stone on the path to becoming army chief. By 2022, he was about to retire, when the then army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, orchestrated the deposition of then PM Imran Khan through a no-confidence motion. PM Khan wanted then DG ISI Faiz Hameed to become the next army chief, an affront to the authority of the army that could not tolerate a mere civilian politician interfering in its internal affairs. Khan’s removal paved the way for Munir to succeed Bajwa as army chief following the latter’s retirement the same year.
Now at the helm of the military, Munir acted quickly to consolidate power. He first went after Imran Khan, embroiling him in a corruption case conjured up by NAB. In 2023, Khan was subjected to a show trial in a kangaroo court and sentenced to imprisonment in solitary confinement for over a dozen years. A similar fate was handed to his accomplice, General Faiz Hameed, a few years later. Khan’s imprisonment led to massive unrest, protests, violence and vandalism against the military. Munir cracked down on the unrest and then proceeded to weaken Khan’s political party, arresting hundreds of its politicians and disbarring it from contesting the next elections.
With arguably Pakistan’s most popular leader by far behind bars and its most popular political party in tatters, Munir presided over a not-so-free and not-so-fair general election. The result was a hung parliament, with Shahbaz Sharif’s Muslim League and Asif Ali Zardari’s People’s Party gaining seats and forming the government with some other smaller parties, while a significant number of former PTI politicians won seats as independents. This was the perfect outcome for the army, which quickly stitched together a coalition government, with Sharif as PM and Zardari as President, with the blessings of the army chief, of course.
Success in politics did not automatically transform into success in economics. Pakistan found itself defaulting yet again and sought another bailout from the IMF. Munir then decided to take matters into his own hands, and thus was formed the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), a one-stop body for deregulating the investment regime. Except that this body also had a rather peculiar member: the army chief himself. Munir now had a say in macroeconomic policy.
Why stop at the economy when there is so much opportunity in other areas? In 2024, army loyalists in parliament passed the 26th Amendment, which limited the tenure of the Chief Justice of Pakistan to three years or until the age of 65, whichever came first. It also changed the procedure for the appointment of judges from an independent collegium to a mixed collegium of parliamentarians. This was curiously done against the backdrop of increasing cases of the Pakistani Supreme Court overturning draconian laws passed by parliament.
Beginning in 2025, Munir adopted increasingly vitriolic and provocative rhetoric against India. His infamous speech in April 2025 justified the Two-Nation Theory by claiming that Hindus and Muslims cannot coexist. He even compared Pakistan with the first Islamic state of Prophet Mohammad, Riyasat-e-Madina (the State of Medina), as the second state formed on the basis of the kalma (words of God). This was just weeks before the even more triggering and obviously rage-baiting terror attack in Pahalgam. Survivors recounted that the victims, exclusively and deliberately male, were segregated on the basis of religion, stripped and checked for circumcision, and forced to recite the kalma, failing which they were shot dead, with their wives and girlfriends spared to tell the tale.
The attack was carried out by an organisation that goes by the name of ‘The Resistance Front’. Indian government officials are convinced it is a rebranded version of Lashkar-e-Taiba, just as they fathom that the ‘People’s Anti-Fascist Front’ is a similar repackaging of Jaish-e-Mohammad. These obviously secular-sounding names have replaced their too on-your-face Islamist names of yesteryears. This rebranding exercise was carried out under Munir’s predecessor, General Bajwa, following India’s revocation of Jammu & Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status via the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. Yet, the nature of the attack left nothing to the imagination as to what these organisations really were. There was no hiding behind the seemingly secular names of these organisations, for their true face was as jihadist as it gets.
The motive of the attack was shamelessly obvious: to elicit an aggressive response from India, which came a couple of weeks later in the form of Operation Sindoor. Notwithstanding the losses incurred by India on the first day, there was absolutely no denying that Pakistan had been hammered. The ample amount of independently verified satellite imagery, including from American companies such as Maxar, laid bare, in front of the whole wide world, the Pakistani airstrips, army bases and jihadist madrasas struck cleanly by Indian missiles and drones. No such comparable damage was done to India.
Yet Munir, cunning as he is, sensed an opportunity in the crisis. What should have been a total embarrassment for the Pakistani military was quickly turned into a PR exercise. First, PM Sharif quickly acknowledged US President Donald Trump’s claim of brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan with a lot of enthusiasm. Then, he even went so far as to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. This brought Munir into Trump’s good books, and he was invited to have a private luncheon at the White House, completely sidestepping PM Sharif.
As Mr Sharif continued singing the praises of Mr Trump anywhere and everywhere, Mr Munir was promoted to the rank of Field Marshal, only the second since Ayub Khan promoted himself back in 1959. He was also awarded the Hilal-i-Jurat, Pakistan’s second-highest gallantry award, for his actions during the skirmish against India. If all of this was not enough, army loyalists in parliament steamrolled another amendment to the Constitution later that year.
Dubbed the 27th Amendment, it allowed Munir to retain the rank of Field Marshal for life and also provided him with lifelong legal immunity. The post of Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) was created as the equivalent of India’s CDS, with suzerainty over all branches of the military. The only difference is that Pakistan’s CDF can only be the army chief, unlike the Indian CDS. This automatically made Munir the first CDF and cemented the army’s dominance over the navy and air force. It also replaced the separate post of Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, meaning the CDF, in this case Munir, now answered to no one but the PM with respect to the strategic (read: nuclear) forces command. Finally, the amendment also restarted his tenure and increased it from three years to five years, with the option of an extension.
Another change the amendment brought in was the establishment of the Federal Constitutional Court as the new apex court to handle all constitutional interpretations, fundamental rights enforcement and federal-provincial disputes. Thus, the Supreme Court of Pakistan has been effectively stripped of its constitutional jurisdiction, reducing it to an appellate court for regular civil and criminal matters. To top it off, the ratio of judges was also lowered in the judicial collegium to ensure executive and political influence over judicial appointments and transfers.
In the spring of 2026, after the US found itself trapped in a quagmire in the war against Iran, Pakistan projected itself as the mediator. Ever the wily man, Munir became the face of this initiative, ditching his combat fatigues, ceremonial uniforms and muftis for bespoke, tailor-made business suits, acting the part of a statesman and negotiator, all the traits loved by fellow dealmaker Mr Trump. As Pakistan continues to curry more favour with the Americans and the Gulf Arabs, Mr Munir’s stature grows. The recent defence pacts with the Saudis, Turks and Kuwaitis, along with rumours of upcoming deals with the Egyptians and Malaysians, are not merely strategic decisions, but also exercises in public relations to cosmetically inflate Munir’s domestic image as a respected world leader.
Then there were also the shady cryptocurrency and critical-minerals deals done by Mr Munir with Trump and his family, complete with the former bringing the latter a suitcase full of cherry-picked critical minerals from Pakistan. One could not help but remember a similar performance put on by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1976 when he walked into a press conference with a bottle full of crude oil, announcing his plans to turn Pakistan into an oil-producing country. We know how that turned out.
This should not be viewed as contrary to the situation at home. Pakistan continues to face political and economic uncertainty; skirmishes with Afghanistan occur every now and then, insurgency in Balochistan has become even more audacious, protests rock Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and yet Mr Munir continues to play the peacemaker abroad even as his own house is sitting on a powder keg. As has been argued by this author, Munir’s dealmaking is as much directed at an international audience as it is at a domestic audience.
There are whispers and rumours of an upcoming 28th Amendment later this year by army loyalists. It would supposedly revive the Concurrent List, abolished after Musharraf’s ouster, and bring back ministries such as education, health, labour, environment and local development under the federal government. It would purportedly redistribute finances and resources to favour the federal government over the provinces.
The proposed amendment is rumoured to increase the voting age from 18 to 25, in light of the recent youth and student protests across the subcontinent and as a signal of the army’s fear of its own youth. It may reinstate military tribunals and may even reorganise the provinces by carving up the existing provinces into smaller administrative units, as proposed by the army insider and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi. This would spell disaster for regional parties such as Mr Sharif’s Muslim League and Asif Ali Zardari’s People’s Party, which draw their power from Punjab and Sindh respectively. It also explains their unease with and opposition to such proposals. If these proposals were to materialise, Mr Munir would have virtually no challengers left.
All this means that Asim Munir is now, for all practical purposes, the latest addition in the line of military dictators of Pakistan in all but name, and can remain so for the next ten years. By hook and by crook, he has tactfully institutionalised military control over Pakistan. The military is no more a state within a state or a parallel deep state. The military is the state. No matter where one looks, the khaki wardi is ubiquitous. the military has embedded its men in every upper strata and sector of Pakistani society and state respectively, barring the very lowest levels. Ergo, Pakistan has evolved from being a praetorian state to a quasi-stratocracy.
Mr Munir has laid bare his intentions to be the de facto ruler of Pakistan. From here, he is only poised to consolidate even more power. With the blessings of Mr Trump, he now has no incentive to democratise the country. Do not expect him to retire and play golf in a veterans’ club or voluntarily go to London for a permanent vacation any time soon. He is here to stay. And there is nothing stopping him from plotting another terrorist attack on India.
