Asim Munir has won, Pakistanis have lost, again

India Today

14-05-2025

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?advertisementOn 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 REVENGETwo 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.advertisementGeneral 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.FROM VILLAN TO DARLINGadvertisementMunir has turned this military drubbing into a public relations coup. The Pakistani Army, battered and bruised, is once again the nation's darling. The same public that was burning effigies of generals two years ago is now rallying behind Munir, including Imran Khan's supporters.War is the great unifier, and Munir has played it like a virtuoso. The propaganda about shooting down Indian jets, however dubious, has worked wonders domestically. With a media firmly under control and a chorus of paid "foreign analysts" singing his praises, Munir has convinced the masses that Pakistan emerged victorious, and it's all thanks to his steely leadership.The sins of the past -- rigging elections, jailing Khan, strangling democracy -- have been washed away in the blood of soldiers killed in action. The civil society that once dared to question him is now grovelling at his feet. Munir, a hafiz who never misses a chance to recite Quranic verses, has positioned himself not just as an Army chief but as a religious beacon for a nation, high on piety and low on intellect.advertisementThe official military spokesman, in a press conference, declared Islam and jihad as the Army's inspirations. Munir, with his cold, cunning calculus, has tapped into Pakistan's religious fervour to cement his status as the country's saviour.And what of Pakistan itself? The economy is more battered than the Markaz Subhanallah in Bahawalpur, the polity more fractured than the hangar at Shahbaz Airbase. Yet, Munir stands taller than ever, a colossus astride a nation that remains lost in the fog of its own contradictions. Every time Pakistan's democratic forces grasp the rope of hope, the military, with a scimitar sharpened by war and religion, cuts it clean.The Sindoor ceasefire of May 2025 has given Munir what he craved: a lifeline to his "supreme leadership". The tragedy of Pakistan is not that it lost a war; it's that its people, time and again, lose their future to men like him. Democracy was a far cry and it's farther now. Their political future is in the hands of a hafiz. Hafiz Khuda Tumhara.Tune InMust Watch