Pakistan's battle with itself, from its own in power!

Raju Korti
Pakistan's present predicament is becoming increasingly difficult to conceal. Inflation remains painful, economic growth modest and the government heavily dependent on external support. At the same time, Balochistan remains troubled by separatist violence, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa faces persistent militancy, and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir has recently witnessed serious public unrest. Against this backdrop, unusually frank remarks from senior political figures have exposed an uncomfortable debate about where the country is headed.

(Sharif and Naqvi: At cross purposes (Insta grab)

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif's comparison with India is perhaps the most revealing. He pointed out that India and Pakistan became independent at virtually the same time, yet have travelled very different distances. “Look at how far apart the two countries have come,” he said, before referring to the difficulties in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The significance of the statement lies not merely in acknowledging India's progress, but in recognising Pakistan's own failure to convert its considerable human and strategic potential into sustained national development.

India's rise in technology, infrastructure, manufacturing, services and global influence has become an uncomfortable benchmark for Pakistan. This does not imply that India has solved all its problems. It has not. But the comparison is legitimate because both countries began their independent journeys in broadly comparable circumstances. Pakistan's difficulty is that the gap has widened considerably, particularly in economic scale, technological capacity and international influence.

Asif had also spoken more starkly some weeks ago about Pakistan's deteriorating position. Such remarks suggest that the country's leadership is becoming conscious that its traditional narrative of security and confrontation cannot indefinitely compensate for weaknesses in governance and economic performance. The India comparison, therefore, is best understood as an admission of relative decline rather than a sudden endorsement of India.

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi has gone even further in diagnosing the problem. Speaking at the Pakistan Economic Summit in July, he declared: “Whether you agree or not, the system we have been living under has collapsed.” He argued that Pakistan needed fundamental administrative reform, including consideration of new provinces or administrative units. He also said that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif could work 12 or even 18 hours a day, but that the government was essentially “firefighting”.

That is a remarkable admission from a serving interior minister. Naqvi was not necessarily indicting Shehbaz Sharif personally. His argument was that the inherited administrative structure itself had failed to deliver justice, jobs, public services and economic opportunity. But the political implication is unavoidable. If the system has collapsed, those running the system must inevitably face questions about their responsibility for its condition.

The proposal for new provinces is therefore more consequential than it may initially appear. Decentralisation could potentially bring government closer to citizens, but redrawing administrative boundaries cannot by itself cure corruption, fiscal weakness, political patronage or poor institutional capacity. Significantly, the military spokesman has subsequently supported the idea of new administrative units and called for a broader “reset”. That makes Naqvi's intervention particularly interesting because of his well-known proximity to the establishment.

The Army will inevitably view the Asif and Naqvi remarks through a different lens. For decades, India's perceived threat has been central to Pakistan's security doctrine and to the military's dominant role in national affairs. A senior defence minister publicly acknowledging India's superior trajectory inevitably raises an uncomfortable question: if Pakistan has devoted such enormous political and financial resources to security, why has it fallen so far behind its principal rival in economic and technological terms?

The likely military response is not necessarily to retreat from politics. It may instead conclude that Pakistan requires stronger administrative control and structural reform. That is precisely where the civilian and military interpretations could diverge. Civilian politicians may see the crisis as a reason for greater democratic accountability and institutional autonomy, while the establishment may see it as evidence that the existing political system requires firmer management.

Maulana Fazlur Rehman has challenged that proposition more directly. He has urged the military to stay out of politics and challenged Army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir to remove his uniform and contest elections if he wishes to participate in politics. More recently, he invoked the traumatic memory of 1971, reminding the military establishment that power has limits and that history can punish institutions that overestimate their strength.

Fazlur Rehman's intervention is important because he is an experienced political operator rather than an outsider to Pakistan's power structure. His message is essentially that the Army may remain the most powerful institution in the country, but political legitimacy cannot be acquired through military authority alone.

The regional situation reinforces his argument. Balochistan remains afflicted by a separatist insurgency, while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa continues to face attacks from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and other militant groups. The security challenge is therefore not confined to the conventional India-Pakistan frontier. The state is simultaneously confronting internal insurgencies and political discontent.

Pakistan-occupied Kashmir presents a different warning. Recent unrest there has demonstrated that dissatisfaction is no longer confined to traditionally volatile provinces. Complaints about economic hardship, governance and political interference have acquired sufficient intensity to produce serious confrontation. When discontent spreads into a territory that Islamabad has traditionally portrayed as central to its national narrative, the problem becomes political as much as administrative.

Economically, the picture remains fragile despite efforts at stabilisation. The central problem is that macroeconomic rescue does not immediately translate into prosperity for ordinary Pakistanis. Inflation, unemployment, debt and limited development spending continue to weigh heavily on households. Recent economic assessments have also highlighted Pakistan's low growth and continuing poverty, while development allocations have come under pressure from fiscal and security requirements.

Does all this mean that the Shehbaz Sharif government is about to fall? Not necessarily. Indeed, Naqvi himself subsequently said that Sharif would complete his five-year term, clarifying that his criticism of the “collapsed” system was not a chargesheet against the Prime Minister or his government.

The more realistic assessment is that the Sharif government is vulnerable but not immediately endangered. In Pakistan, the survival of a civilian government depends not merely on parliamentary arithmetic but also on its relationship with the military establishment. Unless the Army decides that the present arrangement has become a liability, there is little reason to assume that it will be abruptly removed.

The greater danger is therefore gradual erosion rather than sudden collapse. Inflation can undermine public confidence, regional unrest can weaken state legitimacy, militancy can expose administrative weakness and political rivalry can prevent the consensus required for difficult economic reform.

The common thread running through the remarks of Asif, Naqvi and Fazlur Rehman is that Pakistan's problem is no longer simply who governs it. It is how it is governed. Asif's comparison with India highlights the widening developmental gap. Naqvi's declaration that the system has “collapsed” highlights institutional failure. Fazlur Rehman's challenge to the military highlights the unresolved question of civilian authority.

Pakistan is not necessarily a country in irreversible decline. It retains substantial human resources, strategic importance, natural wealth and institutional capabilities. But its present crisis cannot be solved by changing governments alone, creating new provinces alone or relying indefinitely on the military establishment.

The uncomfortable truth emerging from Pakistan itself is that national security cannot substitute for economic development, military power cannot substitute for political legitimacy, and political rhetoric cannot substitute for governance. The real test for Pakistan is whether its powerful institutions are prepared to recognise that distinction before today's crisis becomes tomorrow's structural decline.