By Akbar Jamal
In any serious and law-governed society, the difference between the state and a particular institution is clear. The state is a permanent and all-encompassing entity. From an Islamic perspective, ultimate ownership and sovereignty belong to Allah Almighty, while in the administration of public affairs, the ruler, the judiciary, the military, and law-enforcement bodies are all servants of the state’s order and governance.
But the greatest tragedy of Pakistan’s seventy-five-year history is that the line between the state and one powerful institution was gradually erased. Through a carefully constructed narrative, the military presented itself as a substitute for the state. To keep that deception going, a mixture of religion and nationalism was brewed that pushed Pakistan into a deep hole, intellectually, politically, and economically.
The foundation of this problem was laid when the military ruling circles wrapped the ideas of Islam and patriotism around itself and built a protected fortress. The biggest flaw in this security model is that any legitimate constitutional criticism of the military’s policies, budget, or political interference is not treated as criticism of an institution. It is immediately labeled as treason, rejection of Pakistan’s ideology, or betrayal of the nation.
This can be seen clearly from Fatima Jinnah all the way to today’s well-known political leaders, brave journalists, and human rights activists. Whenever any independent voice raised questions about Rawalpindi’s priorities or its illegal interference in political engineering, the entire state machinery under military control moved to silence that voice.
The result was that the door of accountability for a powerful institution was deliberately shut. That is the dangerous weakness that lets any institution consider itself above the law and then make one serious mistake after another, because it knows no one can question it. And if anyone dares to ask, guns and cannons are considered sufficient tools of silencing.
The military’s construction of this security state in Pakistan has narrowed and distorted the universally accepted meaning of patriotism. Under this narrative, patriotism has been reduced to weapons, uniforms, and border protection. The greatest damage of this mindset is that the ordinary citizen working under the scorching heat and paying taxes, the teacher building the intellectual foundations of a nation in a classroom, the doctor saving lives in difficult conditions, the politician fighting for the rights of the people, their patriotism has always been treated as second-class and suspicious compared to the military elite.
To keep the people under pressure, the fear of a permanent and manufactured enemy on the eastern and western borders has been used as fuel. The military’s goal was to make sure the people never found the courage to demand basic rights like affordable electricity, quality education, proper healthcare, and personal safety. Instead, they should always live in siege mentality, believing that if the military weakens, the country will fall apart.
That fear kept people reduced to survival level and confined their lives under the banner of peace and order, while that same peace and order was never fully delivered to them. The Pakistani military’s greatest strategic mistake was treating the country’s geographic position as a sellable commodity while treating its 240 million people as a burden and a problem.
History shows that the countries which invested in welfare and human development instead of security states are today in the front ranks of the world. Southeast Asian countries and China itself are clear examples. They built their economies first and then strengthened their defense foundations. Pakistan’s ruling circles, by contrast, gave priority to defense spending, military elite housing schemes, and commercial empires instead of building productive economic capacity.
Today, with Pakistan trapped in economic collapse, unprecedented inflation, and the debt net of the IMF, all of this is the direct result of that old and failed military doctrine.
As long as the gun has priority, the pen and the factory will stay behind. And as long as that continues, this wretched situation will remain the military model’s greatest strategic failure. The wheel of history does not stay in one place. For Rawalpindi, it is becoming harder by the day to keep selling the old certificates of patriotism and betrayal and to keep that deception alive.
Two important factors are behind this change.
The first is economic reality. When hunger, poverty, and inflation go beyond what people can bear, the fear of a hypothetical enemy across the border loses its effect. An ordinary Pakistani today understands that the greater threat to his life is not foreign invasion but lawbreaking inside the country, violation of the constitution, and economic incompetence.
The second is the spread of technology and information. The time is gone when state censorship had tight control over information and narratives were shaped through a single state television channel or a few selected newspapers. Social media and the digital age have broken the monopoly on information. Today’s young people are raising serious and logical questions about Rawalpindi’s policies that would once have been counted as treason.
Now they know where the budget goes and why civilian sovereignty matters. Pakistan is at one of the most sensitive and dangerous moments in its history. The military and establishment’s insistence that GHQ must remain the only source of power is pushing the country further toward chaos and ruin. The only logical and peaceful way out of this crisis is to completely dismantle this old and worn-out security state framework and lay the foundations of a real welfare state.
A state where the military is confined to its legal mandate, the judiciary is independent, and the ultimate and real source of authority according to the constitution is the Quran and Sunnah. Pakistan’s survival is no longer found in the shadow of the gun. It lies in the rule of law and the economic well-being of the people.
