The generals’ farce: valor below, villas above

In every nation, there exists a sacred myth—the story a people tell themselves about who they are and who protects them. In Pakistan, that myth has long centered on the soldier: the stoic, selfless guardian of the realm, standing alert at the border, poised to defend the homeland against existential threats. This myth remains intact at the level of sepoys and fighter pilots, where danger is real and the salaries are not. But at the higher rungs—among those decorated with medals for bureaucratic cunning rather than battlefield valor—the myth curdles into farce. The generals still wear the uniform, but what they serve now is not the nation, but themselves.

This distinction is not semantic—it is structural. The common Pakistani soldier, airman, and officer remains a figure of legitimate public respect. Their sacrifices are real. Their courage, especially in the face of Indian aggression that often targets civilians, is rooted in a sincere sense of duty. They do not posture for press conferences or manage narratives from marble-clad compounds. They see themselves as protectors of 240 million people, animated by patriotism—not by power, property, or perks. They stand ready to fight and die for Pakistan, even as their own children live without steady electricity and safe drinking water.

But this noble instinct is entirely divorced from the motivations of Pakistan’s military high command. Today’s generals increasingly resemble a caste of khaki-clad oligarchs—real estate moguls with a side hustle in national defense. With stakes in everything from housing societies to cereal brands, the military’s upper crust has turned defense into a business model and patriotism into a PR strategy. They do not lead the nation; they extract from it. Their weapons are not aimed at enemies abroad, but at dissenters at home. Their most frequent deployments are not to borders, but to boardrooms.

Take, for instance, their conduct during the latest flare-up with India. A few missiles here, a few counterstrikes there—enough bloodshed to provoke global headlines, but not enough to disrupt the business of militarised governance. The Indian strikes, brutal and cynical, were meant to provoke—and they succeeded. But Pakistan’s response was not statecraft; it was stagecraft. A manufactured moment of martial valor, packaged and delivered for domestic consumption. The message was simple: Look there, at the foreign threat, not here, at the domestic rot.

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But the old playbook is wearing thin. The people are no longer buying what the generals are selling.

Among the rank and file of the armed services, a quiet truth has begun to fester. If India had limited its attacks to targeting the high command in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, there is a growing sense that many soldiers might have simply folded their arms and watched. After all, these are the very men who have turned Pakistan’s sprawling, nuclear-armed security state into an international punchline—a circus of censorship, repression, and absurdity. Loyalty to these generals is no longer instinctive; it is increasingly reluctant. The rank and file still believe in Pakistan. It’s the generals they’re beginning to doubt.

At the center of this farce stands Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir, a man once praised as principled and incorruptible. Today, he presides not over a disciplined military but over a caricature of governance in fatigues. His regime has suffocated dissent, jailed political opponents, and weaponised the judiciary to dismantle democracy under the guise of “stability.” His failure is not merely administrative; it is moral. Under his watch, the military has not only tightened its grip on the country—it has loosened its grip on reality. Foreign observers no longer speak of Pakistan as a regional power, but as a cautionary tale. A state capable of launching a nuclear missile, yet incapable of generating reliable electricity.

This collapse of credibility explains why former Prime Minister Imran Khan now languishes in prison. Love him or loathe him, Khan’s nationalism was of a different hue. He spoke not in the language of perpetual war, but of regional peace, economic sovereignty, and justice. He critiqued American imperialism and Gulf sycophancy alike. He dared to envision a Pakistan that was less militarised and more meritocratic. For the generals, that made him not just a nuisance, but an existential threat.

Make no mistake: the military does not fear Indian aggression nearly as much as it fears irrelevance. Its power depends not on peace, but on permanent paranoia. Without a perpetual enemy at the gate, what justifies the trillion-rupee budgets, the VIP convoys, the corporate empires, the palatial golf courses? Without crisis, how do unelected men justify the erosion of democracy in the name of “security”? The answer, of course, is they can’t. And so crises must be conjured. Threats must be invented. Fear must be weaponized like clockwork.

The line between national security and institutional self-preservation has not merely blurred—it has been obliterated. The recent skirmishes with India were seized by the generals not as a tragedy to be avoided, but as a spectacle to be exploited. With one eye on the conflict and both hands on the narrative, the military establishment cast itself once again as the last bulwark against annihilation. But this time, the spell didn’t hold. The optics fell flat. The applause was tepid. And the public, battered by inflation, IMF diktats, and daily indignities, quickly resumed asking the questions the generals fear most.

Like: Why are electricity bills rising while generals build villas? Why do food prices soar while military-owned enterprises rake in record profits? Why are critics jailed while criminals in uniform thrive?

The cynicism is not confined to drawing rooms and dissident circles. It simmers in the barracks and dormitories, where soldiers gossip about the BMWs of their superiors and the bankruptcies of their own families. They still fight—but increasingly, they fight for the people, not the generals. That distinction is no longer abstract. It is felt in the bones. It is growing sharper by the hour.

Were it not so tragic, it would be comic. Ordinary soldiers bleed on borders while generals trade properties in Dubai. Fighter pilots risk their lives in dogfights while their commanding officers invest in shopping malls. This is not national defense—it is organised looting under the banner of loyalty. And the looters are not hiding; they are flaunting their theft, decorated in stars and salutes.

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Pakistan today is not a failed state. It is a hijacked one. Its institutions are not broken—they are occupied. Its people are not apathetic—they are hostage to a mafia in uniform that confuses its own survival with that of the nation. And like all hostage-takers, they are willing to destroy the very thing they claim to protect. They will burn down the house rather than allow it to be cleaned. Their obsession with control is so pathological that they have criminalized hope. Imran Khan did not fall because he failed; he fell because he hoped. He dared to imagine a Pakistan not ruled by barracks but by ballots.

But the myth is cracking. The narrative is collapsing. The once-sacred image of the military as the last honest institution in Pakistan has shattered beyond repair. No airstrike, no “foreign conspiracy,” no kangaroo court can restore what has been lost. The generals’ power now rests not on admiration but on intimidation. And even that is eroding, as fear gives way to fury.

The tragedy of Pakistan is not its people. It is not its soldiers, nor even its history of coups and corruption. The tragedy is that its most dangerous enemy has never worn a foreign uniform. It has always worn its own. The danger is internal, systemic, and smugly patriotic. Until Pakistanis can distinguish between national service and national sabotage—between those who bleed for the country and those who feed off it—the cycle of self-destruction will continue.

But perhaps, not for much longer. There is a limit to every farce. There comes a point when even the most tightly orchestrated propaganda cannot drown out the groan of a hungry stomach, the whisper of a betrayed soldier, the anger of a disenfranchised youth. When the uniform becomes a costume, and the general becomes a meme, the empire begins to totter.

And in that moment, when fear collapses under its own absurdity, the people may yet remember that the real defenders of Pakistan were never the men behind the podiums—but the ones buried quietly, without fanfare, beneath its soil.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.