The rise and rise of Gen. Asim Munir

India Today

21-05-2025

(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated May 12, 2025)The Pakistan army chief General Asim Munir is not just in the eye of the storm clouding the subcontinent, he is the storm himself. It is no coincidence that he was the head of the notorious Pakistani spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence or the ISI, when it orchestrated the vicious Pulwama terror attack that saw the deaths of 40 personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force on February 14, 2019. Six years on, Munir, now de facto supremo of Pakistan, is once again in India's crosshairs as the alleged mastermind of the Pahalgam terror attack in which 25 tourists and one local were gunned down in Kashmir's alpine haven on April 22. As the Modi government readies a military riposte to the worst civilian massacre in the Valley in two decades, it must not underestimate the guile of Asim Munir.advertisementThose who have done so in the past have learnt their lesson the hard way. Among them was Imran Khan who, as Pakistan's prime minister, cleared Munir's appointment as ISI chief in 2018, only to sack him nine months later, apparently because Munir was bold enough to brief him about the alleged corrupt dealings of his wife, Bushra Bibi. Munir never forgave Imran for the humiliation of being possibly the shortest-serving ISI chief and bided his time to hit back. The opportunity came after Imran was deposed in an army-engineered 'parliamentary coup' in April 2022, and Munir, backed by a ruling coalition opposed to Imran, became the army chief that November. Months later, Munir had Imran jailed on multiple charges of corruption that saw the former prime minister sentenced to 14 years in prison early this year.advertisement
DECODING ASIM MUNIR
Studying Munir's personality traits, psychological make-up, strengths and weaknesses has become central to India's strategy to deliver a fitting riposte to Pakistan for the carnage it instigated in Pahalgam. Munir heads a formidable, half-million-strong, Pakistan army—the sixth largest in the world—which also has nuclear weapons and is evenly matched with Indian troops on the Line of Control. As a top expert, who does not wish to be named, puts it, 'This is not an asymmetric war like Israel vs Hamas or Azerbaijan vs Armenia. This is between two of the most professional armies who are equally matched and have nuclear capabilities. Anything we do, we should expect him to retaliate. Controlling the escalation ladder of conflict will not be easy. Judging by Munir's recent actions, we should be prepared for unpredictability and surprises, including him initiating something and blaming us for it.'With Munir being the rare Pakistani general to have been chief of ISI as well as the Director General of Military Intelligence, he is expected to have thought through his strategy well. It was evident in Pakistan's instantaneous suspension of the 1972 Simla agreement in response to India's decision to hold the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance. Another strategist familiar with the process of war gaming points out, 'Munir would have gamed all options beforehand and is moving with greater caution than normal. We need to carefully gauge him, as he has extensive intelligence and operational exposure. It's like a game of chess in which we need to think 10 steps ahead of him along with our own contingency plans and punches. So, we have to keep second-guessing his moves till we have some tentative answers at least. Specialists also need to do a detailed psychological profiling based on his behaviour and statements.'advertisement
There are enough clues in Munir's 17-month tenure that showcase his ability to take calculated and calibrated risks. In the beginning, he was on the back foot given the unprecedented internal dissent in the ranks over Imran's arrest. But Munir ruthlessly consolidated his hold over the army, purging even the corps commanders who opposed him and replacing them with loyalists. Since then, he has gone beyond being just the security czar of Pakistan, and now controls all levers of political power, including tackling Pakistan's distressed economy through the army-manned Special Investment Facilitation Council. Munir has also adroitly 'cleansed' the Supreme Court of Imran backers by getting an amendment passed in Parliament that allows the supersession of judges. In one more unprecedented move, he got another amendment passed in Parliament that extended his three-year tenure to five. This has ensured he will be in the driver's seat till 2027, with no age limit for another extension.advertisementIt's pretty telling the way Munir has handled the polycrisis he confronted after he became chief,' says Michael Kugelman, a South Asian analyst based in the US. 'There was severe political instability, the economy was on the verge of collapse, there was resurgent terrorism and a marked internal dissent in the army. He has addressed those problems better than others and has kept things under control. He has his failures, but in terms of his actions, Munir is resolute and exhibits a supreme level of confidence in the way he has inserted himself in so many different aspects of public policy.' But even as the army chief has consolidated his position in the institutional space, there have been real-world setbacks on the security front, particularly the recent hijacking of Jaffar Express by Baloch rebels, which have dented his and the army's credibility. There is also growing discontent among Pakistan's youth, who are unhappy with the way the country is being run.advertisementThe Pakistan army has always played an outsize role in running the country—in the 77 years of its existence, the country has been under martial law for 33 years, in three different phases. Munir, though, has emerged as one of the most powerful army chiefs in recent times without having to topple the civilian dispensation. He is the first army chief after General Zia-ul-Haq to invoke Islamist nationalism and even wear it as a badge of honour. In fact, he holds the rare distinction of being a Hafiz-e-Quran, or someone who has memorised the holy book by heart, passing the test when he was posted as the army's attach in Saudi Arabia. It was a trait he picked up from his father, Syed Sarwar, who had migrated from Jalandhar after Partition. A schoolteacher in Rawalpindi, Sarwar also delivered the Friday sermon at a local mosque.advertisementMunir himself studied in a madrassa in the garrison town before winning a commission in the army through the Officers Training School (OTS) route rather than the more prestigious Pakistan Military Academy. But that didn't stop his meteoric if turbulent rise to the top echelons of the army. Rana Banerjee, a former special secretary of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India's external intelligence agency, and an expert on Pakistan, says, 'Munir's first name, Asim, means the great saviour, and the army chief seems driven by a deep sense of religious piety and purpose. He is meticulous, especially in bringing his rivals to book, but is not a visionary and seems hackneyed, even straitjacketed, in his thinking. Of late, he has adopted a deliberately insulting anti-India tone.'
A STUDY IN CONTRASTSAll this is in sharp contrast to his mentor and immediate predecessor, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, the army chief between 2016 and 2022. Bajwa was a powerful behind-the-scenes player in Pakistani politics when the mercurial Imran was PM and asserted the military's dominance over public policy. It was under his tenure that the Pulwama attacks were authorised, and India responded with air force strikes on terror camps inside Pakistani territory. The first such air attack by India since the 1971 war, it was a move that set a new paradigm of deterrence, signalling to Pakistan that such cross-border terror attacks would not go unpunished.However, toward the end of his tenure, Bajwa called for a dramatic shift in Pakistan's focus from geopolitics to geoeconomics, arguing that his country must put its own house in order economically by pursing regional connectivity, trade and development partnerships, even with India. As a sign of his earnestness, he entered into a ceasefire agreement on the LoC in February 2021, which held for four years before Munir engineered the Pahalgam massacre and destroyed the tenuous truce. As Ajay Bisaria, a former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, explains, 'Bajwa was cut from a different cloth because he believed that the whole jihadi complex that the army had created had stopped serving Pakistan well and wanted to shift the focus to economic development. He wanted changes, but was a gradualist. Meanwhile, the marriage between him and Imran soured and he lost his nerve.'Discarding the Bajwa doctrine, Munir's vision of Pakistan is of a 'hard state', one that is strong and unyielding against both internal and external threats and ever ready for a robust military response. Internally, Banerjee says, Munir unsparingly quashed dissent in the army and across the political spectrum. Externally, he adopted a tough, no-nonsense approach, especially towards the Taliban government in Afghanistan when it continued to shelter and fund the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a rebel group pushing for an Islamic emirate in Pakistan. In late 2023, Munir expelled more than 150,000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan, putting him in direct confrontation with the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan.And while maintaining a pragmatic relationship with Iran, Munir did not hesitate to fire a missile into Iranian territory following Teheran's drone strike on an Iranian resistance group operating out of Pakistan. Munir has also cracked down severely on the Baloch rebel groups clamouring for an independent Balochistan. It's a different matter that they have regrouped and recently struck back with vengeance, undermining the Pakistani army's take-no-prisoners strategy. Munir has repeatedly blamed India for instigating and/or backing both the Baloch and the TTP rebels. Many experts in Pakistan offer it as the rationale for the Pahalgam attack. For India, these are clear signs that Munir is an unrelenting foe, one who is not afraid to retaliate even when the cards seem stacked against him.
THE JIHADI TURNThere are other causes for concern for India. Since Munir took over as army chief, he has become more strident with his brand of religious nationalism. He has recast the army's role not just as defender of Pakistan's territorial integrity and sovereignty but also as the guardian of its ideological frontiers. Addressing a tribal jirga (council) in Peshawar in August 2023, Munir had declared, 'No power in the world can harm Pakistan. We are waging jihad (holy war) in the path of Allah and success will be ours. The Pakistan army's objective and principle is to be shahid (martyr) or ghazi (one who takes part in jihad).' His proclamation earned him the sobriquet of 'Jihadi General'.What spooked Indian experts, however, was Munir's comments at an Overseas Pakistanis Convention on April 16, six days before the Pahalgam outrage, where he reiterated the two-nation theory but more crudely, highlighting the 'stark difference between Hindus and Muslims' in a tone more extreme than even Zia's declamations. As T.C.A. Raghavan, a former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, points out, 'Munir's ideological position on India remains the standard two-nation theory and he believes it is the Pakistan army that stands between the nation and its total domination by India. He thinks Kashmir is the unfinished agenda of the creation of Pakistan and that Pakistan is the victim of great injustice and it is the responsibility of the Pakistan army to correct that.'Experts believe that there are several reasons why Munir greenlit the Pahalgam attacks. Among them is domestic turmoil, including the failure to manage internal divisions and rebellions that have dented the army's image. Feeling the heat, Munir brought India into the equation in order to rally the masses behind him.
The Pakistani general may have already succeeded in that endeavour, especially after India announced the suspension of the IWT, an act that threatens to impact water supply to the most populous and politically powerful provinces of Punjab and Sindh. 'Munir wants to consolidate his power and emerge as the Supreme Leader,' says Bisaria. 'With the liberal and urban guys turning against him, he wants to win over the bulk of the right-wing establishment.' A Pakistani expert, who does not want to be named, agrees. 'There are two Pakistans,' he says. 'There is a Jihadi Pakistan which is all about creating a Pakistani identity based on an irreconcilable antipathy towards India. And there is a non-Jihadi Pakistan that believes it can exist as a federation and have normal relations with Afghanistan, Iran, India and China to do trade. Munir is appealing to the Jihadi Pakistan, which is around 60 per cent of the population. So, India needs to win over the non-Jihadi constituency.'Strategists outline another reason for Munir to strike now—the perception that India was running away with the ball on Kashmir. With Article 370 abrogated, an elected government in place, and the return of tourists to the Valley, there was a fear that the situation in Kashmir would turn irrevocably in New Delhi's favour. Hence a Mumbai 2008 kind of attack on civilians became necessary to blow the illusion of peace and stability in the Valley. Experts also see the Pahalgam attacks as part of a concerted plan by the ISI to launch what is known as the K2 operation—unleash both Kashmir and Khalistan terrorists to destabilise the two frontier states. The terrorists in Kashmir are well-trained and equipped with the latest weapons. They are also using sophisticated communication technology, of Chinese origin perhaps, which India has found difficult to intercept and decrypt. With better command, control and coordination with each other, they first struck the Jammu region last year just before the assembly election in October, and have subsequently targeted the Valley. In Punjab, terrorists are pushing heavy amounts of drugs and also encouraging gang wars to unleash mayhem in the state.
PRIMED FOR ACTION: Prime Minister Narendra Modi with defence minister Rajnath Singh, NSA Ajit Doval, CDS Gen Anil Chauhan and the three service chiefs at a meeting in New Delhi, April 29. (Photo: ANI)
DRUMMING UP INTERNATIONAL SUPPORTKugelman points out how Munir has been preparing the ground for international support for the jihad he is waging against India. When Donald Trump took over as US President, he cosied up to him by getting ISIS-K commander Mohammad Sharifullah, who was hiding in Pakistan, arrested and deported to the US. Sharifullah had plotted the deadly Abbey Gate bombing that killed 13 US service members while they were being evacuated from Afghanistan. Trump thanked Pakistan for helping the US out. Just a week before the arrest was made public, the US had released $397 million to Pakistan for the maintenance of its F-16s. After Pahalgam, Trump condemned the terror attack, but did not blame Pakistan. He maintained that the conflict with India was 'on for thousands of years' and the two countries should sort it out together. China and Turkey were anyway toeing the Pakistani line for an independent investigation into the terror attack. Over the past two years, Pakistan has been purchasing state-of-the-art military equipment from both these countries, in addition to sophisticated electronic warfare items from China. Despite his country's financial crunch, Munir embarked on a modernisation programme of the army that now seems to have given him the confidence to take on India.But Munir may just have overreached with his most recent provocation. Targeting tourists in Pahalgam has damaged Pakistan's prospects in Kashmir because, for the first time, the Valley has risen unitedly in protest and condemned the attacks. These directly impacted tourism, which had been booming for the past two years, affecting their livelihood. Experts in Pakistan are despairing over Munir's actions, saying a military conflict with India is the last thing the country can afford, especially as it has far from recovered from the economic crisis. They believe Munir's ISI past has made him reckless, pointing out that rarely does someone who heads the spy agency become the chief. As one expert put it, 'When it comes to lighting fires, Munir may have been very good. But the Pakistan army has historically understood that if you let somebody with the matchbox be in charge, then you need to keep an eye on them to avoid a conflagration.'With no one capable of restraining Munir in Pakistan, it falls on the Modi government to punish the errant general. As Bisaria says, 'Pakistan knows it will have a heavy cost to pay and must be prepared for war with India. That is the only deterrent to prevent such misadventures in future.'Subscribe to India Today MagazineTune InMust Watch