Home › Current Affairs › A General’s Idea Of A “Hard State”: A Recipe For Suicide And Disaster

A General’s Idea Of A “Hard State”: A Recipe For Suicide And Disaster

By Editor on 20th March 2025 • ( 0 )

A General’s Idea Of A “Hard State”: A Recipe For Suicide And Disaster

The choices are not easy but it is now just a question of some hope or total disaster. The time to decide between hope and disaster is almost over!

WASHINGTON: Pakistan Army Chief, General Asim Munir has finally told the world what he wants, whether you like it or not.

At a gathering of compromised hand-picked politicians, from a GHQ bunker-manufactured Parliament which he handcrafted by massively rigging the Feb 24 elections, he abused them to their faces, saying their governance had failed, terrorism had increased and he wanted to make Pakistan a “Hard State.”

What he meant was not explained but his three years of total dominance, ever since the army toppled the duly elected government of Imran Khan in early 2022, a masterly-scripted political and economic power grab plan, is evidently written all over the place.

Bullet points of this Master Plan will connect most of the dots leading to March 18 when he announced he wanted to change the country into a “Hard State.”

Particular events may not be mentioned here, though relevant:

Generals Qamar Bajwa/Asim Munir trashed the Constitution by refusing to hold elections in three months after Imran Khan dissolved the Parliament before he was overthrown March/April 2022.
Asim Munir picked up a purely unnecessary personal fight, as an article of faith, to seek revenge, destroy and eliminate Pakistan’s ex-prime minister Imran Khan, as if it was either Khan or him, going into one grave aka Bhutto or Gen. Zia ul Haq. Analysts describe this one decision as the mother of all conflicts and disasters in Pakistan in the last 30 months, just because Khan had removed him as the ISI Chief.
Systematically, he put Khan in jail stupidly trying to shut him away from the world, though in vain, arresting thousands of Khan supporters, breaking into homes of innocent civilians, torturing and making media persons disappear for months and unleashing a reign of terror, not even seen in military regimes.
Gaining in confidence, he bludgeoned his way through every legal, constitutional and democratic practice and norm, while in the process decimating the freedoms of Press, expression, political dissent and protest (insignificant but still of some relevance), the freedoms of the Judiciary, Executive and the Parliament.
He identified and expelled, rightly or wrongly, hundreds of army officers, known or even unknown dissenters and jailed former generals and forced them from expressing their views, threatening to rip off their ranks, privileges and even personal security at home, ironically setting an example of what he may face later.
After levelling them to the ground, he forced his hand-picked legislators to amend the Constitution, disregarding all established international practices, to subdue the judiciary, turning it into an harem of naked belly dancers, ready to serve their Master at will, day or midnight.
During all the above authoritarian decisions, delusional but put into effect, dozens of violations of personal and human rights, registering fake and filthy cases, denial to Khan of sunlight or meetings with family etc etc, were taken to silence, coerce and frighten the political leaders and specially Khan supporters.
While these tough repressive measures continued, he took over the economy by forming an illegal super body where generals would call the shots, the so-called SIFC. It promised hundreds of billions of dollars in investments but got zero, zilch, nil, nada in his 30 months.

Having tried everything, including suspicious attempts by mercenaries to kill Khan, General Asim Munir has reached the final decision – Make Pakistan a One-Man-State, a “Hard State” that he calls it – A North Korea, an Idi Amin’s Uganda, Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, or autocrats and killers of Belarus (Lukashenko since 1994), Eritrea’s Afwerki (since 1993), Saddam Hussain, Gaddafi, Pol Pot, or dictators of Cameroon, Burundi, Brunei, Chad, Central African Republic, Kabila of Congo, or the choicest, Sisi of Egypt.

His Hard State means more of what he has tried in 30 months, which has already failed. He has realized, or just about, that Pakistan is not Egypt or the countries named above.

But now I come to my final analysis: After all his nefarious and atrocious attempts to curb Khan and his popularity, which has in fact doubled and tripled as Gen Asim tries to cut him down, the reality has sunk in.

Recent “pulse” reports of the army and its intelligence agencies have shown that Khan is now a larger-than-life politician.

One report says: “If Khan is eliminated now, the first reaction of the top Army brass, forced by the cadres, would be to remove, arrest or eliminate Asim Munir.” But Pakistan will become ungovernable, uncontrollable.

That makes Asim Munir a hostage to Khan’s survival which keeps him away from the wrath of the youth.

If Khan lives, he lingers on. If Khan goes, he will be the first casualty. That means Khan has actually become a safe life guarantee for Asim Munir. “He cannot afford to eliminate khan,” says a source now in Turkiye where ISI has created its second most important station after Aabpara in Islamabad.

The argument behind this analysis is that every dictator has to reach a point where he becomes an unbearable baggage for the Army. Gen Asim is close, but if he tries to hit Khan, he is gone.

When Ayub Khan was called a dog, he still had some moral courage to resign; when Yahya lost East Pakistan, he was just told to go and drink; when Bhutto acted like a dictator, Zia ul Haq just eased him out with the help of the judiciary; when Zia became intolerable mangoes got into his plane; when Musharraf became a baggage, he was told by Kiyani to take off his uniform and after Benazir was killed Musharraf had to quit the army and then got sacked as the burden was too heavy to handle.

If Asim Munir eliminates Khan, as he has wished from day one but has not been brave, or lucky enough to achieve it, he will become the first casualty as the country will explode in such a way that entire top military leadership will have to get rid of him for their own survival, just like in 1971 when the army surrendered to Bhutto. How Bhutto revived it is another matter.

The Asim-Imran Khan duel can be related to the most famous one-on-one duel in history – the Burr-Hamilton shoot out – where Aaron Burr, the then Vice President, fatally wounded Alexander Hamilton, a prominent founding father and former Secretary of the Treasury. The duel was the culmination of a long-standing political and personal rivalry between Burr and Hamilton. It took place in Weehawken, New Jersey, at dawn on July 11, 1804. Burr shot Hamilton, who died the following day. Hamilton’s death caused widespread outrage, and Burr’s political career was effectively ruined. Both sunk in oblivion.

But in Pakistan there are three obvious options:

Asim eliminates Khan in jail, as he so desperately wants.
Khan survives, though in jail and under severe persecution, and Asim cannot handle the country and then “mangoes in plane” timeline arrives for him.
Khan is forced out of jail and Asim has to surrender.

The first option: Discussed above as Khan is the guarantee for Asim to live and rule as long as he can. The country, nevertheless, goes down the drain. How deep is anyone’s guess.

If Khan and Asim are also gone, no one knows how and who will stabilize Pakistan. International actors will become key players and Pakistan will reach the breaking point.

With 60 per cent and more young Pakistanis who live and work for Khan, their only hope would be gone. Most will turn to extremists and separatists, as Punjab fails to shed off a corrupt family, KPK and Balochistan ready to break off, and the army having lost control in vital areas. Who can handle that scenario?

It means Khan becomes the lone hope and tries to pick up the broken pieces. Asim is forced out of office or the country, not killed but exiled. Khan may have a shot to control separatism and terrorism. But the army will have to surrender, like 1971 to Bhutto in Pakistan or more recently in Bangladesh.

Third option is that Khan lives and some saner minds like General Kiyani vs Musharraf, use Khan’s immense power of public support to stop Pakistan’s decline.

The choices are not easy but it is now just a question of some hope or total disaster.

The time to decide between hope and disaster is almost over!

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Voice of East.