Pakistan under Field Marshal Asim Munir embodies a paradox that is both striking and dangerous. Abroad, it presents itself as a broker of global instability, mediating conflicts and offering corridors of connectivity. At home, however, it remains coercive, repressive, and deeply fragile, according to an analysis by The Print.
This duality has defined the state for decades, with the military’s ideology preferring perpetual risk over compromise. The consequences are stark. In 2025, Pakistan recorded 3,417 violence-linked fatalities, a 34 per cent increase from the previous year, marking its worst security record in a decade.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan accounted for more than 96 per cent of these deaths. Economically, the country grew by 3.7 per cent in FY2025-26, but remains trapped inside a $7-billion IMF program, with public debt hovering at 68.5 per cent of GDP. Diplomatic agility thus coexists uneasily with structural fragility.
The current crackdown in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir illustrates this contradiction most brutally. The Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee began in 2023 with demands for cheaper flour, electricity priced against locally generated hydropower, and an end to elite privileges.
Its agenda has since expanded to demand abolition or restructuring of the 12 assembly seats reserved for refugees living elsewhere in Pakistan. These seats, 12 of 45 directly elected and 12 of the 53-member House, are seen by protesters as a mechanism for Islamabad to engineer governments in Muzaffarabad.
Islamabad, unwilling to relinquish this control, has branded the protesters “state-enemies.” Casualty figures remain contested due to communications blackouts. Reuters conservatively estimated around 30 deaths since June, while JAAC alleges dozens more dead and hundreds wounded.
The political gravity of this revolt is undeniable. Baloch and Pashtun dissent has long been dismissed by the Punjabi establishment as peripheral. But Kashmir is different. Pakistan has spent decades portraying it as its shah rag, or jugular vein. When the supposed vein itself rejects the centre’s control, the metaphor collapses into absurdity.
India has sharpened its response, particularly after Defence Minister Khwaja Asif accused Indian agencies of backing JAAC. New Delhi’s legal position remains rooted in the unanimous 1994 Parliament resolution demanding Pakistan vacate the occupied territories.
Gilgit-Baltistan, however, was largely absent from Indian discourse until Rajnath Singh’s 2022 declaration that India’s journey to resolve Kashmir would only be complete after “reaching Gilgit and Baltistan.” Even now, many Indians conflate Gilgit-Baltistan with so-called Azad Kashmir, overlooking their distinct institutions, populations, and grievances.
This distinction is critical because it is where China enters the picture. Gilgit-Baltistan forms the northern throat of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor. The Karakoram Highway enters Pakistan from Xinjiang through Khunjerab, traverses Punjab and Sindh, and ends at Gwadar in Balochistan.
China has already seen its interests attacked from Gwadar to Dasu, where five engineers were killed in 2024. Instability now shadows the northern corridor as well. A 68-day traders’ protest halted Khunjerab traffic in 2025, and in 2026 electoral and dam-compensation protests blocked the highway again.
Financially, Beijing’s investments are complex. The CPEC portfolio is valued above $60 billion, mixing commitments, loans, and private power projects. Yet it is far from complete. One assessment counted only 38 of nearly 90 proposed projects finished, with 23 under construction and roughly a third untouched. Analysts such as Andrew Small have described China as Pakistan’s greatest economic hope and trusted military partner.
This logic explains why CPEC might still prevail. In 2025, the two sides launched CPEC 2.0, promising five corridors—growth, livelihood, innovation, green development, and regional connectivity—alongside realignment of the Karakoram Highway, new industrial zones, and the delayed ML-1 railway.
Despite chronic instability, China is unlikely to abandon this route or its access to the Arabian Sea. Persistent violence may instead push Beijing towards a more visible security posture: deeper intelligence coordination, hardened enclaves, private protection, and perhaps eventually an official outpost. Such a development would concern both India and the United States.
Yet fears of Pakistan’s “Balkanisation” remain improbable. China, Turkey, the US, Gulf financiers, and Pakistan’s army all have strong incentives to prevent state fracture, even if domestic reforms and strategic course corrections are indefinitely postponed.
For India, the reality is clear. Pakistan will remain flailing, punching above its weight internationally while cracking down internally. It will regenerate cross-border infiltration into India as a survival tactic. Pakistan is neither a miraculous winner of global instability nor an imminent ruin.
It is a state monetising disorder while being consumed by disorder; mediating wars overseas while militarising politics at home; offering corridors to others while closing roads to its own citizens. In today’s upended order, muddles can become leverage and puddles may reflect grand ambition.
But no performance can indefinitely reconcile mediation abroad with repression within. Eventually, the mountains return the echo.
Agencies
