Away from LoC, General Munir is losing a far more fateful war within Pakistan

The Print

07-05-2025

General Asim Munir, though, is fighting a far more significant battle on a second front in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where soldiers of the Peshawar-headquartered XI Corps are engaged in a grim war within. Few figures are available, but at one stage, the campaign drew in tens of thousands of soldiers. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) jihadists, streaming south from Afghanistan, have carved out small emirates across Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, coexisting uneasily with both the state and its enemies.
Late on Tuesday night, Indian missiles rained down on nine jihadist-linked infrastructure targets across Pakistan, in revenge for the massacre of 25 tourists and one local citizen in Kashmir's Pahalgam. International media, citing Pakistan military sources, said five Indian jets were shot down during the course of the operation, allowing Pakistan Army chief General Asim Munir to claim victory. India has denied Pakistan's claims.
Tin chests, charpais, bundles of blankets, almirahs: their lives piled up on ageing Toyota pick-up trucks, the villagers of Lakki Marwat's Sarkatti Michan Khel last week began a long journey to outrun the searing heat of war. The week before, after a battle that claimed the lives of eight Pakistani Special Forces personnel, the villagers were ordered to cut down trees and brush around the village and ensure jihadists could no longer enter the mosque. The villagers decided their best chance of survival was to leave.
Azm-i-Ishtekham—the military operation launched in 2024—was named 'A Resolve For Stability'. So far, it has mainly succeeded in grinding down ordinary people, not the terrorists it is targeting.
For Indian strategists planning their next steps, the state of Azm-i-Ishtekham holds out an important lesson: Forcing Pakistan to commit more troops to holding the Line of Control would bleed it of resources far more effectively than flamboyant air strikes.
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Emirates of the night
Long before the villagers of Sarkatti Michan Khel left home, their lives had already transformed beyond recognition. As reported by Abubakar Siddique and Abdul Hai Kakar, music had been banned, barbers forbidden from trimming men's beards, and women barred from leaving home without escorts. Girls' schools were shut due to threats—or in some cases, blown up. The Army is, without doubt, the most powerful force in the region. And yet, the Tehreek-e-Taliban rules.
Figures are hard to come by, but past interventions have sucked in up to two brigades drawn from the Indian border, in addition to two elite Special Services Battalions—on top of the three divisions and paramilitary forces normally available to XI Corps.
The Pakistan Army, in turn, uses religious imagery to discredit its adversaries, calling them khwarij—extremists who reject Islamic consensus. Last month, Dawn reported that 'hundreds of military personnel have been martyred in attacks in 2024; the number of police martyrs would add to this total.' In Kashmir, that number is in the low double digits.
Just last week, Islamabad-based Islamist cleric Abdul Aziz Ghazi—who led an attempted insurrection against General Pervez Musharraf's regime in 2007—declared the Pakistani state to be kufr, or founded on the rejection of Islam. To his followers, he proclaimed that siding with the Pakistan Army against India was impermissible under Islamic law.
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A war not to win
Even as the military declares growing success in counter-terrorism operations—56 terrorists were reported killed in ambushes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border at the end of last month—Khyber Pakhtunkhwa does not appear any safer. Last month, 18 men working for the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission were kidnapped from Lakki Marwat's Zareefwaal mines; some are still missing. Earlier, a police officer guarding a polio vaccination team was shot dead. A government official suspected of spying on the TTP was tortured and killed.
For the best part of 25 years, as scholar Zahid Khan reminds us, the Pakistan Army has responded with a deranged effort to crack walnuts with sledgehammers.
In 2003, as Pakistani jihadists began consolidating in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa—out of reach of Western troops in Afghanistan—Lieutenant-General Muhammad Safdar Hussain, then commander of XI Corps, launched Operation Al-Mizan, deploying 70,000-80,000 soldiers across 35 square kilometres in the Wana region. The idea was to displace commanders such as Nek Mohammad Wazir, Noor-ul-Islam, Haji Mohammad Sharif, Maulvi Abbas, and Maulvi Abdul Aziz—all of whom hosted large numbers of foreign fighters.
One result of that offensive was a peace deal with Nek Muhammad Wazir. In a video recorded in the spring of 2004, he garlanded Lieutenant General Safdar and declared: 'The most important thing is that we are Pakistani soldiers, too. The tribal people are Pakistan's atomic bomb. When India attacks Pakistan, you will see the tribals defending 14,000 kilometres of the border.'
The United States killed Nek Muhammad in a drone strike in 2004, but the problem didn't end. As Khan writes, a succession of ill-fated counter-insurgency operations followed, often backed by US intelligence and air power: Rah-e-Nijat and Rah-e-Rast in 2009, Sher-Dil in 2008, and Zalzala and Rah-e-Haq in 2007. In each case, artillery and air power were heavily used, ostensibly to target jihadist strongholds—often at massive civilian cost.
As scholar-journalist Daud Khattak has noted, each offensive eventually ended in a peace deal. The Army ceded territory held by jihadist warlord Baitullah Mehsud through the 2005 Sararogha Agreement—even compensating him for destroyed land and homes. Violence, however, continued, as Mehsud used his new legitimacy to expand his influence.
After the 2007 showdown at Lal Masjid, jihadist Fazlullah expanded his shari'a-based regime in Swat, preventing girls from attending school and banning women from wearing burqas in public. The government gave in, passing the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation in Swat on 15 February 2009, effectively conceding to a shari'a mini-state.
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Keeping out democracy
For the most part, the Pakistan Army's objective has been to ensure that its jihadist clients can exercise power—so long as they don't threaten its hegemony. The real threat, from the military's perspective, comes from secular political formations demanding democratic rights—like the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement. In 202, popular politician Sardar Muhammad Arif Wazir was assassinated in a drive-by shooting by a TTP hit squad. Legislator Mohsin Dawar, a central figure in non-violent democratic mobilisation, has been repeatedly targeted for assassination.
General Munir's soldiers—like those before them—are showing they are good students of their Imperial British forbearers. The Raj sought to subdue Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa with a mix of bribes and subsidies for loyal proxies and brutal violence against dissenters.
'The brigade had demonstrated its power to take and burn any village that might be selected, and had inflicted severe loss on all who attempted to impede its action,' wrote future Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1888, describing the Malakand Field Force's campaign to suppress ethnic-Pashtun insurgency. 'The assailants retire to the hills. Thither it is impossible to follow them. They cannot be caught. They cannot be punished. Thus, only one remedy remains: their property must be destroyed.'
Faced with genuine political resistance—not just in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa but also in Balochistan—the Pakistan military's strategy is nearing irretrievable collapse. India ought to be able to discern opportunity in this situation. The new political movements in Pakistan do not seek secession. They demand a nation ruled not by generals, but by its constitution. Their grievances have not made them enemies of Pakistan. Nationalism continues to be a powerful force.
A genuinely democratic Pakistan, however, would be one where the generals' jihadist proxies no longer enjoy state patronage and impunity. India must avoid hostile ultra-nationalist polemic and existential threats—moves that will only push Pakistan's new democrats to rally around the military.
Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint. His X handle is @praveenswami. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)