With protests breaking out across Pakistan, it has become clear that the Pakistan Army’s power over the people is eroding
The old tricks are no longer working. The fear, terror, and dread of the deep state and the Pakistan Army appear to be evaporating. The instrument of brute force used to capture and control Pakistan is proving ineffective. People’s protests are increasingly becoming prominent. Protestors are displaying a level of fearlessness that is unusual in Pakistan. Not very long back all that an army officer needed to do was to wag his finger to force compliance. No longer. The Pakistan Army is at its wits’ end. It does not know how to contain the million mutinies that are confronting it. Worse, it is no longer shaping, and even less controlling, the public discourse or the public narrative. Something has shifted in Pakistan with people refusing to silently kowtow to the Pakistan Army which has no clue on how to readjust, recalibrate, and reconcile to the new, emerging reality.
The sheer geographical spread of these protests tells its own story of the level of alienation and disaffection with the Pakistani state and how it is functioning.
The defiance of the military-dominated Pakistani state that started as a trickle has turned into a torrent. Protests are breaking out everywhere. The sheer geographical spread of these protests tells its own story of the level of alienation and disaffection with the Pakistani state and how it is functioning. Broadly, two discernible and distinguishable trends of resistance are emerging. The first is the violent resistance which is embodied not just by the Islamist terror groups like Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) but also by ethnic separatist militant groups from Balochistan and, to a much smaller extent, in Sindh. The second and more disturbing trend (from the point of view of the Pakistani deep state) is peaceful, non-violent resistance, and defiance of the injustices being inflicted by the Pakistani state. This latter trend includes both civil disobedience and more traditional forms of protest—demonstrations, shutter-down strikes, and sit-ins.
For the Pakistan Army, the latter trend—peaceful protests—is more concerning because they seem to have no idea how to handle it. A violent movement is bloodier but also easy to handle. No group can really match the state of Pakistan in terms of firepower and resources. Violence also gives legitimacy to the Pakistani state to use its superior force to crush the insurrectionists. It doesn’t require any political sophistication or accommodation to control. But the same is not the case with peaceful protests that have huge political undertones and the potential to snowball into political movements that raise the spectre of the Awami League-led movement in erstwhile East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.
The Baloch protestors have scaled up their protests and are now communicating and sending their message to the rest of the world.
Over the last couple of years, the contagion of defiance has started becoming viral. Not only the number of protests, but their longevity and their magnitude as well as their resonance has been growing. Take, for example, the Baloch Yakjheti Committee (BYC) march to Islamabad to protest against ‘Baloch’s ‘genocide’. Despite efforts to stop the marchers led by Baloch women activists, the Pakistan Army and its dirty tricks department failed. For nearly two months, these Baloch protestors have been camping in the heart of Islamabad, in full view of the entire diplomatic community which is watching this crisis more closely than ever before. The Baloch protestors have scaled up their protests and are now communicating and sending their message to the rest of the world. The UN Special Rapporteurs have been speaking to them and the international media has started covering these protests and giving them publicity that was missing for the last 20 years since the fifth Baloch uprising against Pakistan started. Efforts of the Pakistani state to break the will of the protestors by denying them even basic facilities like warm bedding, tents, etc. in the biting cold of Islamabad haven’t deterred them. The Pakistani intelligence agencies tried to intimidate the protestors by getting members of the notorious death squads to set up a camp opposite the protestors. That too didn’t work. In fact, every trick of the Pakistan establishment has riled up public sentiment in Balochistan where protests in solidarity with the BYC protestors are escalating.
Among other things, the local people are agitating over the Chinese fishing boats and the trawler mafia that is poaching and denuding the sea around Gwadar of fish with their predatory fishing practices.
In the Pashtun belt of Balochistan, thousands of people have been protesting in the border town of Chaman for the last 90 days. They are demanding a rollback of the draconian steps taken by the Pakistani authorities that impinge on the traditional easement rights of tribesmen in the region to travel to and from Afghanistan. The longer these protests continue, the more the resentment in the Pashtun populace against the insensitivity of the Pakistani authorities grows. Similarly, in Gwadar, a massive movement is underway against the denial of basic rights to local inhabitants. Among other things, the local people are agitating over the Chinese fishing boats and the trawler mafia that is poaching and denuding the sea around Gwadar of fish with their predatory fishing practices.
In the Pakistani-occupied territory of Gilgit-Baltistan, huge protests have been breaking out against terrorism by state-sponsored Sunni sectarian groups. The people of Gilgit-Baltistan have also been out on the streets demanding that a wheat subsidy that was guaranteed to them be restored. For a couple of years now, the people of Gilgit-Baltistan have started raising slogans that they be allowed to rejoin India. The same sentiment is also being expressed in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir where protests against government authorities are now a new normal. In the erstwhile tribal areas which are now amalgamated in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) province, the Kurram agency is in ferment because of the killings by Sunni terrorists. In other tribal districts, protests are becoming a norm demanding action against the TTP and sundry Islamist groups. The most common slogan of protests in the Tribal districts is “Yeh jo dehshatgardi hai, iss ke peeche vardi hai” (Behind this terrorism is the uniform), i.e. the Pakistan Army and its intelligence agencies.
The people of Gilgit-Baltistan have also been out on the streets demanding that a wheat subsidy that was guaranteed to them be restored.
The anti-Pakistan Army sentiment in K-P has also been fuelled by the crackdown on the most popular political party in the province—Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI). Despite all efforts of the Pakistan Army to demolish the PTI, its support base remains strong. The strong-arm tactics of the military have resulted in many people questioning the democratic process if it is going to be rigged to deny people their right to choose their government. While the eruption of protests and civil disobedience movements against the Pakistan Army in K-P, Balochistan, GB, Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, and Sindh are not entirely unexpected, the real surprise has come from Pakistan’s most obedient, obsequious, and subservient province—Punjab. The resentment against the Pakistan Army in Punjab is quite alarming for the military brass. There has always been an undercurrent of anti-establishment sentiment in Punjab. But Imran Khan has harnessed it and brought it to the fore. The brutal crackdown on anti-Army activists might have sent the protestors scurrying for cover, but they are continuing to resist. The resistance is, however, not visible on the streets. It manifests more in cyberspace. A massive anti-establishment campaign is being waged which the Army has no idea how to control or contain.
The Pakistan Army is in a funk because its traditional methods of dealing with dissent and handling these kinds of protests are no longer working. In the past, the Pakistani state would use a combination of means to infiltrate and sabotage the protest movements before they grew too big. The operatives of the ‘establishment’ would browbeat and intimidate protestors. They would also resort to bribing the leaders of protests. If nothing worked, they would use brute force and subject the protestors to enforced disappearances and even kill some of the kidnapped activists. These numbers currently run in thousands and yet the protests have only grown. Clearly, instead of deflating and smothering the protests, the use of old instruments of bullying, bribing, and bludgeoning has only fuelled the anger against the state and led to the metastasising of the protests.
The Pakistan Army is in a funk because its traditional methods of dealing with dissent and handling these kinds of protests are no longer working.
What has further degraded the ability of the Pakistan Army to clamp down and snuff out the spiralling protests are two things: One, the state is weakening by the day and struggling to stay afloat; two, the state has lost its monopoly over shaping the narrative because traditional media—newspapers, TV, and radio—have been overtaken by social media which is chaotic, uncontrollable, unrestrained, uncensored, irreverent and defiant, and because it is not under the control of any gatekeeper, it is seen as more credible, reliable, and truthful than the traditional media. The protestors are using this tool to great effect and exposing the high-handed and ham-handed tactics of the Pakistani state, which are only adding to the anger against the state. What is more, social media has become a tool for mobilising supporters within the blink of an eye, not just locally but also globally. The Pakistan Army can certainly monitor what is happening on social media but has no way to stop it because doing any such thing will end its grandiose dreams of moving in the direction of a digital economy.
One of the most important lessons that armies around the world are taught is to never reinforce failure. But the Pakistan Army is doubling down on its failure to manage the upsurge of sentiment against it. Instead of changing course, it has decided to keep using the failed tactics and tools which in turn is only taking resentment against the Army to dangerous new levels. With the 2024 elections all set to be stolen, something is going to give. When the tipping point is reached, the million mutinies could coalesce and sound the death knell for the Pakistan Army’s dominance and interference in politics.
Sushant Sareen is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation
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Sushant Sareen is Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation. His published works include: Balochistan: Forgotten War, Forsaken People (Monograph, 2017) Corridor Calculus: China-Pakistan Economic Corridor & China’s comprador ...
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