“Pakistan’s Generals and Their Eternal Delusions of Grandeur”, India Narrative, October 24, 2025
“Asim Munir’s rise to Field Marshal and his enduring dominance over Pakistan’s political and institutional landscape mark not a renaissance of national strength but a deepening of a historic pathology — the military’s delusion of grandeur that has repeatedly sabotaged the country’s potential for stability and progress. Like Ayub Khan, Zia-ul-Haq, and Pervez Musharraf before him, Munir embodies the army’s conviction that salvation lies not in democracy or developmental reform, but in a militarised nationalism that exalts the soldier above the citizen and paranoia above pragmatism.
For seventy-five years, Pakistan’s generals have fashioned themselves as guardian angels of a fragile state, swooping in to “rescue” it from civilian incompetence. From Ayub Khan’s coup and Zia’s Islamisation to Musharraf’s “Enlightened Moderation,” each intervention was justified as a patriotic necessity — and each left the country weaker, poorer, and angrier. Asim Munir’s accession to the rank of Field Marshal in 2025, following a brief border conflict with India, continues that tradition. Cloaked in rhetoric about national pride and Islamic fortitude, his ascendance was a theatrical assertion that the real seat of power in Islamabad remains behind the khaki curtain of Rawalpindi’s GHQ.
Munir’s self-styled image as the devout general — a Qur’an memoriser and moral guardian — plays well in a society steeped in religio-military nationalism. Yet it obscures the essential truth: that Pakistan’s generals, intoxicated by their perceived divine destiny, have repeatedly mistaken personal authority for state strength. The result has been an endless cycle of authoritarianism wrapped in ideology, breeding both political stagnation and economic ruin…..”
Read full article at indianarrative.com
