December 11, 2025 08:58 AM IST
First published on: Dec 11, 2025 at 06:12 AM IST
There is a peculiar stillness about Pakistan today, the kind that comes after a storm yet carries the scent of more turbulence ahead. With its most popular leader, Imran Khan, in Adiala jail, Field Marshal Asim Munir in full command and Shehbaz Sharif, a Prime Minister in name only, in attendance, the flotilla of a failed democracy sails on. For India, which has just witnessed a deadly terrorist attack in Pahalgam followed by Operation Sindoor, the domestic churn across the border is not a distant spectacle; it is a strategic factor that will increasingly shape the Subcontinent’s fragile equilibrium.
Khan’s downfall has been dramatic even by Pakistan’s standards, marked by corruption convictions, a campaign of delegitimisation by the military, and efforts by the state to fracture his party. Yet paradoxically, he remains the single most potent political symbol in Pakistan. His incarceration, rather than erasing his appeal, has cemented him as the voice of resentment toward a political order seen by many Pakistanis as manipulated by an entrenched military establishment. The courts may have reduced his charges in some cases, but his most serious sentence remains in place. Whether he will re-emerge is now a political question, entirely dependent on whether the army perceives value in rehabilitating him. For now, the answer seems an unequivocal no.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), deprived of its election symbol, appears weakened. Its cadres have been arrested, its rallies blocked, and its leadership driven into silence or into the arms of the establishment. Still, in the urban centres of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, among the young and the middle class, the party remains the natural vessel for anti-establishment sentiment. The judiciary’s later decision to restore PTI’s claim to reserved parliamentary seats symbolised this uneasy truth.
Hovering over all of this is the figure of Munir, now elevated as Pakistan’s first Chief of Defence Forces. Munir is the architect of the present political order. His line against Khan has been unyielding, his view of internal security uncompromising, and his control over foreign and security policy unmistakable. The civil-military equation has always tilted toward Rawalpindi, but Munir has formally codified it. Sharif governs with a mandate shaped not by electoral enthusiasm but by the military’s strategic needs — obediently, he walks behind the army chief wearing the fig leaf of a democratically elected leader. This compact between Munir and Shehbaz is functional but fragile. Pakistan faces an economy exhausted by debt, IMF conditionalities, and chronically low growth.
Externally, Pakistan’s challenges are becoming more complex. Its relationship with the Taliban regime in Kabul has deteriorated sharply. Islamabad accuses the Taliban of harbouring the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), whose attacks inside Pakistan have escalated. Pakistan has responded with air strikes, border closures, and mass deportations of undocumented Afghans — measures that have generated both domestic debate and international humanitarian concern. Despite occasional Qatar-brokered ceasefires, the relationship hovers on the edge of open hostility. In contrast, India’s deepening diplomatic engagement with Kabul gives it a counterbalance to Pakistan.
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) remains the cornerstone of its partnership with Beijing, though China is now more cautious and demanding. The US, for its part, has reopened channels with Pakistan, driven largely by counterterrorism and strategic concerns. Meetings in Washington attended jointly by Sharif and Munir illustrate a cooperative but transactional relationship.
A key player in this dynamic is Saudi Arabia. Riyadh has repeatedly acted as Pakistan’s economic first responder. In the initial decades, it built airports for Pakistan, contributed to infrastructure, built mosques and aided madrasas. Today, it offers deferred oil payments, emergency deposits and political cover during moments of instability. For Munir and Sharif, Saudi support is indispensable; without it, IMF negotiations would be far harsher, and Pakistan’s foreign reserves dangerously thin. Yet, Saudi Arabia’s growing strategic intimacy with India signals that Pakistan can no longer take Saudi friendship for granted.
This broader diplomatic geometry feeds directly into the India-Pakistan trajectory. For India, the Pahalgam attack crossed a threshold. The subsequent strikes on Pakistan-based groups, the Pakistani retaliation, and the ceasefire that followed have created a grim new normal: A region where limited military exchanges, drone warfare, and missile deterrence coexist with nuclear shadowboxing. What makes this moment uniquely dangerous is that the old diplomatic frameworks — the Indus Waters Treaty and Simla Agreement — have been suspended or frozen.
The region now faces a strategic moment unlike any in the past two decades. Pakistan’s internal volatility creates an environment in which foreign policy becomes reactive rather than deliberate. For India, this means the neighbour is not merely weakened; it is unpredictable. And unpredictability in South Asia often carries more danger than outright hostility. The challenge for Delhi is to separate noise from signal, rhetoric from intention, and political theatre in Islamabad from the deeper structural shifts within the Pakistani state.
India must avoid the temptation of viewing Pakistan’s disarray as a strategic windfall. A neighbour that is insecure, economically distressed, and politically cornered is capable of sudden, impulsive choices — not always sanctioned by its civilian leadership. The cost of misreading such a moment can be high. India’s task is not to stabilise Pakistan — that is impossible — but to ensure that instability there does not spill across borders or distort India’s strategic priorities, whether in the Indo-Pacific, with the Gulf, or in its growing engagement with Afghanistan.
Ultimately, the future of India-Pakistan relations will not be shaped by grand diplomatic breakthroughs but by careful management of risk. Pakistan today is not the rival of old; it is a state negotiating with its own contradictions. Recognising that reality — and responding with firmness but without agitation — is what will define mature Indian statecraft in the years ahead. In a region as combustible as ours, the real measure of strength is not loudness but composure.
The writer is a former civil servant, former vice-chancellor, Jamia Millia Islamia, former lieutenant governor of Delhi and chairman, Advanced Study Institute of Asia
