This week’s story from Pakistan is not about who might win the national and provincial assembly elections there; it centres on army chief General Asim Munir, who is trying to consolidate his power. It does not really matter who Munir “selects” to run the front office (as the prime minister of the government). The fact is that Munir has put himself fully in charge of Pakistan.
Having gambled big to put down the immensely popular Imran Khan, rearrange the political field, and push for major economic reform, Munir does not look like a man who will walk into the sunset when his term ends in late 2025. Like many of the previous chiefs, General Munir would want to stick around. Pakistan’s near-term fortunes, then, appear tied inextricably to Asim Munir’s. Although Munir seems to be following the familiar path of his predecessors at the GHQ in Rawalpindi in punishing civilian political leaders that come in their way, his task is complicated by the multiple crises buffeting the nation at home and the incredible shrinking of Pakistan in the region and the world.
India has dealt with Pakistan’s generals who took charge of the country before. But General Munir’s quest for greater control may not be the movie we have seen before. To be sure, the dominant assumption in Delhi is that nothing ever changes in Pakistan. And that Pakistan’s generals will muddle along as they retain hold over Pakistan. Munir, however, is taking control amid the growing prospect that the old order in Pakistan is becoming unsustainable.
After a tentative start in November 2022, Munir has been moving full tilt to consolidate his power in the last few months. While his predecessor, Qamar Jawed Bajwa, installed Imran Khan as Prime Minister of Pakistan in 2018 and dethroned him in April 2022, it is Asim Munir who has had to pick up the burden of destroying Imran Khan personally and politically. Few political leaders have so threatened the Army’s dominance over Pakistan. Munir was prepared to go low to discredit Imran Khan. There is no other way of explaining the use of Islamic personal law to declare Khan’s marriage to Bushra Bibi illegal and punish him for it. This was General Munir’s last stab at puncturing Imran Khan’s political balloon, who had turned himself from a playboy into a pious Islamic leader. Recall Imran’s promise in 2018 to bring the “Riyasat-e-Medina” — a just welfare state — to Pakistan.
It is right to argue that Imran Khan brought it upon himself. That few in Pakistan’s political class at home or its friends abroad are willing to speak up for Imran Khan points to his “lone wolf” politics. At home, Imran demonised his political opponents, let alone bothering to cultivate them. He was quite happy to rely on the Army’s backing to destroy potential rivals. On the external front, Imran Khan alienated all of Pakistan’s traditional friends. He accused Washington of plotting to overthrow him, celebrated the return of the Taliban to Kabul, and showed up in Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin as he invaded Ukraine. He sought to undermine the Saudi leadership of the Islamic world by aligning with Turkey and Malaysia. Imran also alienated Beijing by raising uncomfortable questions about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
Critics would say Imran Khan deluded himself into thinking that his relationship with the Army was one of equals. He believed that Rawalpindi needed him as much as he needed the Army. But his supporters will say the story is not over. Despite the best efforts to malign him, Imran remains immensely popular with the younger generation in Pakistan. Will they show up in large numbers to elect Imran’s candidates, contesting as independents, and overturn General Munir’s apple cart? Can Munir really stamp out Imran’s spell over Pakistan?
The betting will be that Munir will win for now and pick up a prime minister of his choice. But that is when his problems will begin. For one, Imran Khan has shown that the Army’s perch at the top of Pakistan’s political heap is no longer sacrosanct. He has emboldened the expanding urban classes at home and the diaspora abroad to challenge its authority. Munir has presented himself as the champion of long overdue but painful economic reforms that the political class has been unwilling to touch. There is no guarantee that the planned reforms can be effectively implemented. Nor is it certain that they will deliver the desired positive results soon. As the owner of economic reform, Munir will also have to bear the political costs.
The Army’s hands are also full dealing with growing security challenges on the volatile western borderlands in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The resurgence of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militancy in the Pashtun tribal areas and growing problems with the Taliban government in Kabul are major security challenges for the Army. Munir has his task cut out in rejuvenating frayed relations with the US, navigating the rivalry between Washington and Beijing, and restoring productive relationships with Saudi Arabia.
All these tasks have become so much harder for a Pakistan that has fallen from the frontlines of global politics at the turn of the 21st century. Two decades ago, Pakistan’s army chief, Pervez Musharraf, was serenaded around the world as the great gendarme against Islamic terror, showered with Western economic gifts as a “major non-NATO ally” and celebrated as the all-weather partner of China. General Munir has none of those luxuries.
For long, Pakistan was best friends with the world’s two largest economies — the US and China — but it has so little to show for it now. The scale of Pakistan’s strategic economic failure is breathtaking. Its economy today is smaller than that of Bangladesh by more than $100 billion and is less than a tenth of India’s.
Given the multiple problems that Pakistan confronts, relations with India can’t be at the top of General Munir’s mind. The questions for Delhi are no longer whether to engage Pakistan and on what terms. Pakistan’s rapid relative decline in the last few years has made those issues easier for Delhi to deal with. The challenge for India lies in assessing the pathways in which Pakistan might evolve under General Munir. After all, Gen Zia-ul-Haq’s Pakistan was very different from that of General Ayub Khan’s, and Munir’s dilemmas are not the same as Musharraf’s. The internal and external conditions confronting Munir are far more demanding than those that tested his predecessors.
The writer is a contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express
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Internal and external conditions confronting Pakistan Army General are far more demanding than those that tested his predecessors
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07.02.2024
This week’s story from Pakistan is not about who might win the national and provincial assembly elections there; it centres on army chief General Asim Munir, who is trying to consolidate his power. It does not really matter who Munir “selects” to run the front office (as the prime minister of the government). The fact is that Munir has put himself fully in charge of Pakistan.
Having gambled big to put down the immensely popular Imran Khan, rearrange the political field, and push for major economic reform, Munir does not look like a man who will walk into the sunset when his term ends in late 2025. Like many of the previous chiefs, General Munir would want to stick around. Pakistan’s near-term fortunes, then, appear tied inextricably to Asim Munir’s. Although Munir seems to be following the familiar path of his predecessors at the GHQ in Rawalpindi in punishing civilian political leaders that come in their way, his task is complicated by the multiple crises buffeting the nation at home and the incredible shrinking of Pakistan in the region and the world.
India has dealt with Pakistan’s generals who took charge of the country before. But General Munir’s quest for greater control may not be the movie we have seen before. To be sure, the dominant assumption in Delhi is that nothing ever changes in Pakistan. And that Pakistan’s generals will muddle along as they retain hold over Pakistan. Munir, however, is taking control amid the growing prospect that the old order in Pakistan is becoming unsustainable.
After a tentative start in November 2022, Munir has been moving full tilt to consolidate his power in the last few months. While his predecessor, Qamar Jawed Bajwa, installed Imran Khan as Prime Minister of Pakistan in 2018 and dethroned him in April 2022, it is Asim Munir who has had to pick up the........
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