How General Asim Munir sparked and used the recent India-Pakistan conflict to solidify his leadership and his Army’s stature even as the country struggles with political and economic challenges.
The latest India-Pakistan conflagration ended in a ceasefire and Donald Trump ran away with the trophy, leaving the contestants confused. The curtains have fallen, the smoke has cleared, and the scorecards are in. India has delivered a knockout in a clear win, reasserting its dominance and resetting the deterrence.
But Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif declared “he won” before the marks were fully counted. The streets from Peshawar to Chichawatni erupted in celebrations, blissfully unaware that their airfields now resemble Swiss cheese and their military sites have been given a rather aggressive facelift by Indian strikes. Who needs facts when you have a PR machine that could make Lollywood blush?
On this side, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Adampur Airbase to debunk Pakistan’s much-touted claim of reducing it to rubble. Modi’s photo-op was the diplomatic equivalent of a mic drop.
There are no winners or losers in 21st-Century wars, only parties left with more damage or less. This four-day war had a winner: Asim Munir.
While Pakistan’s military licked its wounds, Munir has spun this debacle into a personal coronation. The man who recently stood on a stage, invoking the two-nation theory and vowing to “crush the enemy, inshallah,” has delivered not victory, but something far more valuable: relevance.
THE ARMY’S REVENGE
Two years ago, on May 9, 2023, the unthinkable had happened. Supporters of the jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan turned against the army. They rioted with such ferocity that they desecrated military symbols and stormed the homes of top officers. For the first time, the Army, once revered as the nation’s saviour, was the villain in the public’s eyes.
General Asim Munir is his predecessor General Bajwa’s revenge on Pakistan and Imran Khan. The Bajwa doctrine was a shift from Pakistan’s rigid “bleed India with thousand cuts” as he realised Pakistan was reduced in stature after every skirmish with India. He wanted a moratorium till Pakistan was economically strong enough to stand on its own feet. But Khan, the most popular, and Bajwa, the most powerful, fell out and, on his way out, Bajwa installed Asim Munir in his seat.
As the saying goes, the Pakistani Army has never won a war and never lost an election. True to form, Munir’s Army orchestrated a compromised election, banned Khan’s party, and installed Shahbaz Sharif as Prime Minister. The people grumbled, but the Army marched on.
Munir, addressing a meeting of overseas Pakistanis, suggested that he had a surprise for India and the Hindus. The Pahalgam terrorist attack in Kashmir followed. No direct link. Yet all intelligence suggests somebody in the ISI, Pakistan’s subversive spy agency, greenlit the operation.
The gruesome massacre of 26 tourists set the stage for this latest flare-up. India vowed retaliation and launched pinpointed strikes on terrorist hideouts in Pakistan, carefully avoiding civilian and military targets. Pakistan promised escalation and tried to attack India’s military installations and cities with drone swarms and missiles. Nearly all of them were thwarted. India followed up with a devastating pummelling of Pakistan’s military assets, so bad that the US stepped in and brokered a pause.