Every May 28, Pakistan celebrates Youm‑e‑Takbeer. It goes back to the day in 1998 when five nuclear devices tore through the Chagai hills in Balochistan, amid a frenzy of jubilations as the state declared itself inviolable. For a country traumatised by Partition and the 1971 defeat, the bomb became therapy, revenge, and a promise that no one would again force a surrender like Dhaka’s.
India’s 1974 nuclear test—barely three years after it had defeated Pakistan and carved out Bangladesh—was seen as another existential slap. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, whose own political cynicism helped push East Pakistan to the brink, responded with his famous vow: “We will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own [bomb].” It was a declaration of national will: the need for strategic parity with India at any cost.
Twenty‑seven years after Pakistan achieved that parity, millions of Pakistanis are indeed eating grass—metaphorically and, for some, literally. Inflation has crushed the middle class, the state borrows to pay interest on old loans, and the nuclear deterrent—meant to reduce the need for a massive conventional army—has instead encouraged a suffocating occupation by the military.
The Great Paradox: Deterrence Without Discipline
Pakistan did not lose East Pakistan in 1971 because it lacked soldiers. It lost because its generals were delusional, divided, and catastrophically incompetent. The surrender of 93,000 personnel—almost half of them combat soldiers—scarred the army’s psyche. Bhutto’s nuclear quest was, in part, a promise that the remainder of Pakistan would be able to afford a choice between humiliation and annihilation.
And the bomb worked. Since 1998, India has not attacked Pakistan in conventional terms. In the post-nuclear reality, during the Kargil Conflict, India even refrained from crossing the Line of Control for fear of leading to nuclear escalation. Pakistan’s nuclear programme deserves credit for that stability or assurance. While ‘the bomb’ might have solved the problem of immediate annihilation by the enemy, its custodians are now choking the country with slow asphyxiation.
Instead of downsizing once the nuclear umbrella opened, Pakistan maintained a standing force of roughly 650,000 active personnel and another half‑million in reserves and paramilitaries. Defence spending hovers around 4% of GDP—among the highest in the developing world, something Pakistan in its current state of total economic dysfunction, cannot afford. On top, despite such a massive expenditure, the return is grim.
The threat of conventional war with India continues, and Pakistan has also failed to subdue insurgents operating inside what is supposed to be its own territory. A major driver of this persistent failure is deviation from professionalism—whether in training, discipline, or performance in the field - to staging coups, running commercial empires, and brutalising its own citizens. Strategic parity became a licence for strategic irresponsibility. Nuclear weapons gave Pakistan security; the army used that security to avoid reform, accountability, or competence.
Deeper Than Debt: The Political Economy of Militarism
Pakistan’s economic crisis—default risk, IMF dependency, and debt‑to‑GDP above 75%—is not a natural disaster. It is the predictable outcome of a political order in which the military establishment holds veto power over everything – from political direction to economic policy.
Whenever a civilian government attempts fiscal discipline or seeks regional trade—especially with India—the army’s invisible hand appears. The result is a permanent state of the so-called high‑alert that has given rise to perpetual low‑growth stagnation.
The military’s economic footprint is deliberately opaque. The official defence budget is around ₨1.8 trillion, but hidden expenditures—pensions, intelligence operations, paramilitary forces, and military‑run enterprises—likely double that. Through the Fauji Foundation, Askari Group, and other ventures, the army owns everything from fertiliser plants to banks to cereal brands. These enterprises pay negligible taxes, crowd out private investment, and operate as a parallel economy accountable only to generals.
Meanwhile, the army has systematically hollowed out Pakistan’s civilian institutions. The judiciary was reshaped after 2007 and largely neutered; the civil service has been politicised and intimidated into paralysis; and the Election Commission has been reduced to a pliant instrument, manipulated at will. The 2022 ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan—technically constitutional, practically choreographed—once again demonstrated that no elected leader can govern without Rawalpindi’s approval.
An army consumed by politics and commercial control turns into an incompetent fighting force. The cost shows in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the TTP has brutally killed thousands of people. Counterinsurgency demands patience, local intelligence, and the trust of communities; it cannot be run as a sideshow to domestic political dominance.
The result is a perpetual low‑intensity war that kills Pakistanis, drains the treasury, and grants the army yet another justification for its outsized role.
Prescription: What the Pakistani Army Must Do Now
Pakistan is not going to be invaded or occupied as it was in 1971 on its eastern flank; such a scenario is inconceivable under present conditions. The real danger today is internal implosion—economic, political, and social. Preventing that collapse requires the army to withdraw, voluntarily and irreversibly, from domains it was never meant to control, either constitutionally or legally.
I propose these reforms that can trigger the structural reset that Pakistan desperately needs to afford it a realistic chance of averting an otherwise inevitable breakdown:
Publish a Single, Audited Defence Budget: All military expenditures—pensions, intelligence, paramilitary forces, and military‑run industries—must be consolidated into one transparent, independently audited budget under the Auditor General. Even basic accountability could cut waste by 25–30%.
Divest All Military‑Owned Businesses Within Five Years: The Fauji Foundation, Askari Group, and all military‑run enterprises should be transferred to the Privatisation Commission. The estimated USD 10–15 billion in proceeds must go toward debt reduction and social welfare.
Punish Corrupt Personnel: Corrupt military personnel should face inquiries, courts martial and be punished in accordance with the law. Additionally, a parliamentary committee must oversee intelligence budgets and covert operations to ensure that the ISI does not continue to function as a state within a state.
Reduce Active Personnel to 250,000: With nuclear deterrence in place, Pakistan does not need a 650,000‑strong standing army. A professional force of 200,000–250,000 is more than adequate for territorial defence and disaster response. The remainder should be retired with time‑bound severance packages funded through asset sales.
End Military Interference in Civilian Appointments: The army must relinquish all influence over the selection of the DG ISI, Foreign Secretary, Chief Election Commissioner, and senior bureaucrats. These appointments must rest solely with the Prime Minister and be confirmed by a two‑thirds parliamentary committee. Civilian supremacy is not symbolic—it is constitutional and must be nurtured and institutionalised.
Withdraw Troops from Civilian Zones: Military checkpoints and cantonment expansions should be handed over to a federalised police force; urban cantonments lands can be auctioned, raising USD 5–8 billion for hospitals, schools, infrastructure, and debt servicing.
Accept a Permanent Non‑Aggression Pact with India: Conventional war is unwinnable; nuclear war is unthinkable. Pakistan should pursue mutual troop reductions with India along the LoC and international border, monitored by neutral observers; and India should positively respond. This would open the door to trade normalisation—an economic windfall that could add 2–3% to GDP annually.
Abolish Military Courts for Civilians: All civilian trials must take place in civilian courts. The misuse of military courts to target political opponents has been a travesty of justice.
Dignity Beyond the Bomb
Nuclear weapons paired with an expansionist military establishment are not a guarantee of survival—they are a blueprint for national ruin.
There is no denying that the nuclear bomb gave Pakistan some measure of dignity and global visibility it had never enjoyed before. But dignity cannot be stored in underground silos. It is earned daily through functioning schools, affordable food, peaceful streets, and governments that rise and fall without army’s permission.
Reform for Pakistan army is not optional; it is existential. A smaller, professional, politically neutral military would still be one of the region’s largest and still matter strategically.
That would be a day worth celebrating. I shall propose it to be called Youm‑e‑Najat, the Day of Deliverance – from the illusion of grandeur that feeds on its country’s resources but ravages it.
Have you liked the news article?