Islamabad: As Field Marshal Asim Munir wrapped up yet another high-profile visit to China, Pakistan’s indispensable “iron brother”, it carries an explicit message for both domestic and external audiences that Pakistan’s top General is not just the Chief of Army Staff. He is the country’s de facto head of state, foreign minister, and economic strategist rolled into one uniformed figure.
From Beijing to Washington, Asim Munir has emerged as Pakistan’s most visible face on the international stage. In a telling departure from past norms, where foreign policy and diplomacy were handled by civilian leaders, Munir now routinely engages heads of state and top ministers of the world’s major powers.
In June, he was received in Washington with a protocol typically reserved for Presidents, wherein he was hosted for a formal luncheon by US President Donald Trump. His July 25 visit to Beijing was similarly instructive. He met with China’s Vice President Han Zheng, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and the top brass of the People’s Liberation Army, covering everything from regional security to the future of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), as per the statement issued by Pakistan Army’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR).
This outreach to Washington and Beijing, Pakistan’s most significant external “allies”, seems to have effectively supplanted the civilian government of Shehbaz Sharif in both style and substance. In both capitals, Munir is treated as the true interlocutor, highlighting how far Pakistan’s military has overreached into domains traditionally managed by elected representatives.
Asim Munir’s aggressive diplomacy abroad is only one facet of a broader power consolidation at home that has pushed Pakistan into what can only be described as a military-led “hybrid authoritarianism”. Behind the civilian façade, the military establishment has pulled all institutional levers to dominate the judiciary, the economy, and the legislative process.
A glaring example is the military’s grabbing of vast tracts of agricultural land in Punjab and Sindh under the guise of “national development” in 2023. Under Munir’s watch, thousands of acres of government land have been allotted to serving and retired officers for agricultural purposes, all in the name of so-called food security of the country. This wholesale land grab, facilitated by pliant bureaucracies and rubber-stamp judicial processes, is in addition to over 12 million acres of land already in the possession of armed forces.
Meanwhile, the economic crisis that grips Pakistan has not spared the foreign exchange reserves, yet the military’s own financial apparatus remains untouched. The military-run business conglomerates, run under Fauji Foundation, Shaheen Foundation, Bahria Foundation and Army Welfare Trust (AWT), continue to thrive tax-free and without government oversight. At the same time, there has been a steep rise in the government defence budgetary allocations, with a 20 per cent hike in 2025, as announced in June. This has come even as social sectors like health and education face severe cuts in their annual allocations, all in the name of austerity.
All of this is made possible by legal tweaks and constitutional manipulation. Laws such as Pakistan Army Act and the Official Secrets Act have been weaponized through amendments to stifle dissent. This has allowed the government to try hundreds of civilians, including opposition activists and journalists, by military courts in the aftermath of May 9, 2023, violent anti-government protests.
Moreover, Asim Munir has furthered the strategic parachuting of military officers in civilian institutions like Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) and National Database and Registration Agency (NADRA), among dozens of others. Such encroachment in civilian affairs ensures that the military establishment influences every lever of the country’s governance structure. This increasing opacity and unchecked power have real-world consequences.
Perhaps the most damning indictment of Asim Munir’s tenure is not just the scope of his ambition, it is the cost at which it has come. Munir may go down in history as the army chief who has lost hundreds of soldiers to insurgent attacks in merely two years of his tenure. From Balochistan to the tribal hinterland of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Pakistani troops have come under relentless assault from a rejuvenated insurgency, especially by groups like Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
In June, over a dozen soldiers were killed in a single attack in North Waziristan, with TTP claiming responsibility. The environment in Pakistan has been made such that no one dares to raise the questions over why the army was caught so off guard as the answer lies in the misplaced priorities of its leadership. As such, intelligence failures and overstretched resources diverted toward political engineering have left national security more and more vulnerable.
Munir’s focus has clearly shifted from commanding the army to controlling the country. His preoccupation with political micromanagement, from managing elections, orchestrating defections, and installing compliant judges, has allowed militant groups to regroup and strike with impunity.
The consequences of this military overreach are not abstract. Pakistan today finds itself mired in economic stagnation, political instability, and social repression. The elected government of Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) serves little purpose beyond legitimizing decisions made in Rawalpindi. Even the civilian cabinet has admitted, as evidenced by Defence Minister Khwaja Asif’s recent statements, that policy decisions are taken in consultation with the military establishment.
This is not new in Pakistan, where the military has always been a shadow power. But under Asim Munir, the shadow has become the spotlight. Unlike his predecessors like General Qamar Bajwa, who preferred to rule from behind the scenes, Field Marshal Munir appears unashamed of his centrality. He has no qualms about attending investment conferences, briefing envoys, or commenting on fiscal policy, which are all duties that fall well outside the remit of a military officer.
This overt control is compounded by an ecosystem of surveillance, censorship, and intimidation. Herein media channels have been taken off air for airing dissenting views, with scores of journalists arrested or forced into exile in the last two years.
Asim Munir’s Pakistan is one where the constitution is interpreted through camouflage, where democracy is performed but not practiced, and where the price of questioning the army is, quite literally, one’s freedom. The military establishment’s institutional interests have expanded from national defense to national domination, and Munir is their most visible symbol. The erosion of civil institutions, the suppression of dissent, and the neglect of core military duties are not just signs of overreach, but that of a rot.
And as Pakistan’s soldiers continue to fall in the country’s hinterlands of Balochistan and KPK while their chief chases diplomatic photo-ops, the question must be asked: Who really rules Pakistan? And, for how long can a country survive when its Generals stop guarding the borders and start governing the state?
–IANS
scor/as
