By Junaid S. Ahmad
There is a familiar joke in political salons that if generals truly believed in their own righteousness, they would govern in daylight and retire in dignity. They would not require lifetime immunity, constitutional rewrites, foreign photo-ops, or late-night briefings with nervous parliamentarians. When military power dresses itself in legal language, something is almost always being concealed. The real question is: who taught them that concealment was necessary?
In Pakistan today, that question applies most immediately to one man — Field Marshal Asim Munir — but behind him lies something larger and infinitely more consequential. The post-2022 order in Pakistan was on the verge of delivering something that empire and Zionism had tried to achieve for decades: a pacified Muslim-majority nuclear state, not through invasion or sanctions, but through internal silencing. It was a victory so pervasive, so quiet, that most of the region did not recognize it until the machinery began to show signs of strain.
The standard framing of Pakistan’s crisis — corrupt political dynasties, military overreach, populist upheaval — misses the deeper story. The dangerous brilliance of the last three years lay in replacing external coercion with domestic resignation. It was not tanks in the streets, but citizens in queues outside courts and detention centers, lawyers whispering rather than arguing, journalists praying their phones would stop vibrating at midnight. This was pacification by exhaustion.
To understand how close this project came to success, consider what unfolded after Imran Khan was removed in April 2022. A popular leader was erased using procedure rather than bullets; his supporters were detained in batches, quietly, as if processing paperwork. Civil society was told it was just another “hybrid regime,” as though that phrase alone rendered repression legitimate. Universities replaced political debate with professional caution. Hospital accounts were frozen without embarrassment. Newspapers treated disappearances as if they were administrative tasks.
Israel did not ask Pakistan to suppress its own dissenters. Washington did not request the freezing of hospital funds simply because a political prisoner’s sister sat on its board. Pakistan’s leadership did that without instruction. That voluntary repression was the quiet victory — the normalization of authoritarian reflex disguised as patriotism. Empire did not force Pakistan to conform; Pakistan conformed preemptively.
Then came Munir, not as a visionary but as a consolidator. His creation of a new “Chief of Defence Forces” position, his extended tenure, and the frantic drive to constitutionalize military authority were not acts of confidence but of anxiety. These maneuvers signaled that the regime understood precisely how fragile its victory was. In a move typical of late authoritarianism, legal coercion was dressed up as reform. Munir’s strategy was simple: make temporary power structures permanent before dissent regained its vocabulary.
The myth of being “Trump’s favorite Field Marshal” was part of the same illusion — borrowed relevance imported from distant capitals in hopes that borrowed legitimacy could substitute for vanishing consent. Pakistan was to be the indispensable client, the reliable subcontractor, the stable military bulwark with all domestic complexity conveniently suppressed. It was the dream blueprint for those who believe regional order must be built on obedient states and quiet populations: another West Asian ally without the messy business of genuine public will.
What made this project possible was not simply military force. It was the acquiescence of Pakistan’s intelligentsia. Over the past three years, the silence was stunning. A generation that once filled symposium halls with theoretical critiques of Empire suddenly discovered a delicate sense of restraint when faced with domestic repression. Academics who could write entire volumes on settler colonialism in faraway regions found themselves unable — or unwilling — to draft a single statement condemning disappearances at home. This was not neutrality. It was collaboration by omission.
The intellectual class did not need to be bribed, threatened, or silenced. Many simply avoided discomfort. And discomfort, when shared by enough people with influence, becomes political anesthesia. That moral failure was as decisive as any constitutional amendment. Empire does not always conquer by force; sometimes it wins by encouraging self-censorship among those who might have said no.
Yet silence rarely lasts forever. In late 2025, the pacification narrative began to face challenges, not from political elites but from unpredictable moments of defiance. A son demanding “proof of life” for his imprisoned father pierced the national facade of stoic acceptance. A prominent member of one of Pakistan’s oldest political families spoke publicly against constitutional manipulation. A veteran leftist intellectual finally acknowledged publicly what many whispered privately. Diaspora journalists began naming harassment from regime networks rather than hinting at “pressure.” Student organizers quietly built networks outside the established campus channels designed to neutralize dissent.
These gestures were small but consequential. They marked the return of something that empire never wants to see in Pakistan: memory. A society only remains pacified as long as it forgets. Once it remembers, repression becomes visible again, not normalized background noise.
This is where the question of international solidarity becomes urgent. Pakistan may or not be in the midst of a popular uprising, may or may not be entering a revolutionary moment. It is in a pre-solidarity phase — a period when global networks, if they actually choose to care, have leverage. For three years, human rights groups treated Pakistan as an awkward afterthought. Diaspora organizations were quicker to raise funds for conflicts oceans away than to challenge constitutional authoritarianism at home. But that calculus is changing. The growing social movements in Pakistan need precisely what Zionism has always known how to build: transnational alliances.
Documentation matters. Archiving testimonies matters. Exposing judicial manipulation matters. Treating Pakistan’s political crisis as part of a global authoritarian pattern matters. None of this requires dramatic heroism. It requires consistency, professionalism, and attention — the same tools Western supremacists used to build their rapidly eroding hegemony.
What was almost the greatest triumph of Zionism and empire in the Muslim world was not political recognition or diplomatic alignment. It was internal discipline: the willingness of a state to police its own dissenters, neutralize its own press, evict its own activists, and rewrite its own laws in service of stability defined far beyond its borders. That victory was close. But interruptions have a way of rewriting outcomes.
Munir may still sign decrees and pose for cameras. Parliament may still pretend that constitutional immunities are a sign of national confidence rather than insecurity. Quiet academics may still hope the crisis passes without demanding their participation. But borrowed time is just that — borrowed. It comes due.
Empire’s dream was a Pakistan that feared itself more than it feared external domination. It nearly got what it wanted. What remains now is a choice, not for generals or dynasties, but for those who can speak across borders. Whether this moment becomes a turning point or a footnote depends on something deceptively simple: the refusal to normalize silence any longer.
Borrowed time always runs out. Borrowed victories often collapse. But interruptions, if sustained and supported, can become history.
Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID), Islamabad, Pakistan. He is a member of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST – https://just-international.org/), Movement for Liberation from Nakba (MLNhttps://nakbaliberation.com/), and Saving Humanity and Planet Earth (SHAPE – https://www.theshapeproject.com/).
8 December 2025
Junaid S. Ahmad
Professor of Law, Religion, and Global Politics
Director, Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID)
Islamabad, Pakistan
@Academicatarms