Generals, Gentlemen, and the Fine Art of Sabre-Rattling
https://www.business-standard.com/opinion/columns/asim-munir-tightens-grip-but-fifth-star-won-t-alter-ground-realities-125053001946_1.html By all means, Shekhar Gupta’s column “The Weight of the Fifth Star” could have been a sober, strategic analysis of civil-military tensions in Pakistan. Instead, it reads like a warning flare fired in the dark—noisy, dramatic, but ultimately directionless. While the piece accurately captures Pakistan’s descent into hybrid authoritarianism, it ultimately leans too far into speculative geopolitics, bordering on the theatrical. Let us begin with what is beyond dispute. Pakistan remains a garrison state, where the military tail wags the civilian dog. The Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, is not a national leader but a ceremonial compère reading scripts drafted in Rawalpindi. The President, Asif Ali Zardari, continues to weave his intrigues—but these days mostly in the salons of Karachi rather than the corridors of power. The institutions that should...