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After Pakistan’s military “win” in the May 2025 confrontation with India, the army under Asim Munir as field marshal has even greater power over the state, the civilian government and the judiciary

IN MAY THIS YEAR, Pakistan and India engaged in armed hostilities for four days after the Pahalgam attack – the most serious crisis between the two nuclear-armed neighbours in decades. As the conflict ended with de-escalation, without a decisive outcome, both sides claimed victory before their respective national and political constituencies. In Pakistan, the internal perception of a decisive victory over India in the brief, intense and symbolically important exchange of hostilities has triggered deeper entrenchment of its military in national affairs.  

Pakistan has long been called a “garrison state” for the outsize role of its military in the country’s politics since its founding in 1947. The military has ruled the country directly three times – from 1958 to 1971, from 1977 to 1988 and from 1999 to 2008. But its political power extends beyond direct rule, and its decades-long ability to influence politics indirectly has been greatly enhanced in recent years by laws that have created jurisdiction for the military to operate at both the federal and provincial levels of government.

The conflict in May helped further raise the profile of the military and its current chief, Asim Munir. Afterwards, he was promoted from a four-star general to field marshal – the highest rank in the Pakistan Army – expressly for his leadership during the standoff. He is only the second person in Pakistan’s history to hold the title; the first was Ayub Khan, the country’s first military ruler. The rank of field marshal is held for life and confers immense prestige and authority on a recipient, both within the armed forces and beyond.

Munir took over as the army chief in 2022 for a stipulated term of three years. However, in November 2024 the Pakistan government passed a law to extend the tenures of the heads of the armed forces from three to five years, and to remove an earlier age limit for four-star generals. This allows Munir to hold the post till 2027. His promotion to the lifetime rank of field marshal renders such an extension a formality. And although he has not made any moves to formally take over political power, the promotion is important in terms of its symbolism and timing. It consolidates his position as the most powerful man in the country, despite not being the head of the government.

In mid-June, during an exchange of fire between Israel and Iran, Munir had a closed-door meeting with the US president Donald Trump at the White House. If the US was considering Pakistan as an ally as it supported Israel in the standoff in West Asia, then it recognised Munir as the person to take quick political and strategic decisions rather than the prime minister or anyone from the civilian government.

The outcome of the 2025 war appears to have two major political consequences. First, the military’s institutional dominance has been further entrenched, foreclosing any immediate prospects for democratic revival in Pakistan. The country seems to once again be on a trajectory that parallels the authoritarianism of the 1960s, when army generals like Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan wielded unchecked power. Together, their rule from 1958 onwards steered Pakistan down the path of territorial disintegration and towards the creation of the sovereign state of Bangladesh in December 1971.

Second, the increasing and overwhelming concentration of power in Munir’s hands suggests a shift away from tacit military rule to outright autocracy – with power being centralised in a single individual, the threat of  civilian leaders being reduced to figureheads, and the state becoming  an instrument for advancing the narrow interests of the security establishment.

THIS SHIFT BEEN ENABLED – if not actively facilitated – by a civilian political class desperate to stay in power and retain relevance. In the wake of the conflict in May, Pakistan’s civilian leaders have rushed to align themselves with the military narrative, sanctioning budgetary and symbolic moves to elevate the army’s stature.

In June, Pakistan’s government decided to increase the country’s overall defense spending by 20 percent, to PKR 2.55 trillion, or USD 9 billion, per year. This marks a sharp jump from the annual hikes of 10 to 15 percent seen in recent years. Muhammad Aurangzeb, the finance minister, framed the increase as a gesture of gratitude for the military’s exceptional performance during the war. In parallel, the government announced a “special relief allowance” for the armed forces for the upcoming fiscal year. Senior officers will receive a 50-percent bonus on their basic salaries, and  junior officers and soldiers will see a 20-percent bump. This is in addition to a 10-percent increase in regular salaries for all military personnel.  

While military budgets soared, development spending was quietly slashed. Public development funding for the 2025–26 fiscal year was reduced from PKR 1.4 trillion to PKR 1 trillion. This did not set off any public outcry or political debate despite the country’s massive economic struggles and social inequality. 

Like the civilian government, Pakistan’s superior judiciary is also reinforcing the military’s dominance. During the May conflict, a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, allowed military courts to try civilians involved in the anti-military riots on 9 May 2023. These riots were triggered by the arrest of Imran Khan, leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI), and involved attacks on key military installations across several cities, including Lahore, Karachi, and Rawalpindi. In doing so, the court reversed its earlier decision that declared the military trial of civilians unconstitutional. Judges who wrote dissenting opinions in the verdict continued to maintain that such a move was unconstitutional, and several legal experts have called the decision a complete surrender of judicial independence and basic human rights. 

Pakistan’s judicial system had already taken a hit when prime minister Shehbaz Sharif’s cabinet passed an amendment to the constitution in October 2024. This allowed the government to introduce significant reforms that have, in effect, curtailed the judiciary’s powers, and also gave the government, which functions at the behest of the military, the ability to rein judges in.    

The military’s consolidation of political and judicial power adds to the economic powers it already holds. The Pakistan military has a direct say and is the dominant voice in the National Security Council. Pakistan appointed the director general of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the country’s military intelligence agency, as its national security adviser in the days  before the armed escalation, as tensions with India ratcheted up. The army also plays a dominant role in the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), which was created in 2023 and is responsible for making key decisions about domestic economic policies and securing international investment. Most importantly, a legal amendment passed in 2023 allows the SIFC to exempt projects from regulatory requirements as it sees fit and grants immunity to the SIFC and its members for procedural lapses or omissions while granting these exemptions.

In February, Sharif had vowed that Pakistan would surpass India economically. The country's current trajectory, with the complete submission of its institutions to the military, does not bode well for this promise. The recent budget contains no proposals to revive those sectors of the economy that matter to real economic growth – agriculture and industry in particular, both of which contracted over the last fiscal year. The output of major crops contracted 13.5 percent overall – 31 percent for cotton, 15 percent for maize and 9 percent for wheat – according to the government’s latest economic survey. 

This is one of the worst contractions in agriculture in Pakistan’s history. If the trend persists, Pakistan will have to import these commodities, increasing its import bill and its vulnerability to the vagaries of external markets and supply chains, and compromising food security.  Ignoring the sector also risks pushing the nearly 40 percent of the labour force employed in agriculture deeper into precarity. Large-scale manufacturing also contracted, by almost 2 percent. Yet the budget has taken no specific steps to revive these two pillars of Pakistan’s economy. 

The ruling civilian elite in Pakistan intends to use this budget and the overall policy of appeasement of the military to maintain the current political alignment and retain its privileged position in the short and long term. The dangerous consequence is that this will keep the country’s economy and politics fundamentally militarised in ways that may prove difficult to reverse.△

Salman Rafi Sheikh is an assistant professor of politics at Lahore University of Management Sciences. 

This article was originally published on Himal.
Views in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect CGS policy.