Multiple crisis vectors destabilising Pakistan
The glue of self-interest binds the government and the military firmly together.
Two distinct vectors have intersected in Pakistan this past week. The first was a high-intensity political clash as the jailed Imran Khan’s wife led large numbers of his supporters into the heart of Islamabad in defiance of the government, vowing to remain till their leader was released. If the intention was to create a high-pressure situation to change the status quo, clearly the effort did not work. The protest was dispersed with some force but without the major casualty figures that would have significantly discredited the government. It leaves Imran Khan in much the same position as he was earlier — very popular, but in jail along with other major figures of his party.
The second vector was major armed clashes, part-sectarian, part-intertribal, in the Kurram district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. This Shia-Sunni confrontation was the cause of over 100 casualties over a four- to five-day period before an uneasy truce was somehow stitched up. Violence levels have since reduced but only slightly, and clashes and gun battles continue.
Neither situation is new. Mobilising large armies of supporters in the tens of thousands is a favoured technique of Imran Khan: It enables him to put pressure on his opponents and the expectation is that under pressure, mistakes will be made. In 2014, he led his supporters into Islamabad and refused to leave the city centre, bringing life in the capital city to a near halt. So disruptive was the process that a scheduled visit by the President of China had to be put off. Such protests can get out of hand too. Last year, on May 9, following Imran Khan’s arrest, his protesters targeted prominent military installations, further cementing the divide between the army command and the former Prime Minister (PM). Unsurprisingly, last week’s protest was somewhat of an anticlimax; PM Shahbaz Sharif is presently assured of the military’s support, so Imran Khan’s attempts to rock the boat can be countered. Equally clear is that this setback does not appear to have dented the jailed leader’s popularity.
The Kurram clashes are also part of a long pattern of Shia-Sunni clashes — overlaid by tribal differences — in this erstwhile tribal agency. Kurram is incidentally the only Shia-majority district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. As elsewhere in Pakistan, the events of 1979 — with the Shia Revolution in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan — transformed what were relatively minor local issues and conflicts into geopolitical fault lines. The recent clashes in Kurram stand out for their intensity and cannot be dissociated from the ferment in the Af-Pak border region after the consolidation of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the now public divide between Pakistan and the Taliban in Kabul.
The high drama in Islamabad and the bloodletting in Kurram come also in the wake of other political and security stresses. Violence and terrorist attacks in Baluchistan as well as in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have seen a marked spike over most of November and, in fact, over the course of 2024 as a whole. Major terrorist attacks, targeting both relatively soft civilian targets as well as security personnel, have been regular features during the past few weeks.
What has attracted the most attention is the safety of Chinese personnel in Pakistan. In the first week of October, at least two Chinese nationals were killed in an apparently targeted terrorist attack in Karachi. Baluch insurgent groups are believed to have been responsible. The question of security for their project workers has led to a very unusual public airing of concerns by Chinese officials about the security situation in Pakistan.
Amidst this distinct uptick in terrorist attacks and related violence, political manoeuvrings, and tactical positioning alongside major constitutional engineering also continue, almost as if on an autonomous track. In late October, the National Assembly and Senate passed the 26th Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan. The most substantive of the changes it has made is in the relative power positions of the judiciary vis-à-vis the legislature, which is now tilted pretty decisively in favour of the latter.
For instance, the commission which oversees all superior judiciary appointments has been reconstituted so that the judicial members in it are in a minority. The Chief Justice of Pakistan will henceforth not be appointed on the basis of seniority but by selection from a panel of three seniormost judges by a parliamentary committee. There are other changes with the same thrust: The empowerment of the judiciary, which had been a striking feature of the process that saw the end of the Musharraf military dictatorship, is basically being reversed. The reason is also clear. Neither the government led by the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and supported by the Pakistan People’s Party, nor the army wants to take the chance of a pro-Imran judge or Chief Justice acting in a way that could upset their calculations.
Where does all this leave Pakistan? It is tempting to see all this as the further unravelling of Pakistan’s long “poly-crisis” — a structural malaise encompassing economic, internal and external security-related, geopolitical and numerous internal dysfunction vectors. But, equally, it is essential, especially for us in India, not to make the mistake of seeing this as a kind of tipping or even implosion point for Pakistan. It most certainly is not. The glue of self-interest binds the government and the military firmly together and as long as that alliance is firm, it can assure Pakistan of the minimum stability it needs to stagger on — much as it has always done in the past.
TCA Raghavan is a former high commissioner to Pakistan.The views expressed are personal
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