Spectacle and Soft Power

On May 17, the Pakistan Super League (PSL) — the country’s premier cricket tournament, and a national cultural fixture — resumed after a brief suspension due to the conflict with India. But it wasn’t the cricket that took center stage. During the innings break, audiences were subjected to a surreal, thirty-minute mini-concert: a grandiose tribute to the Pakistan Armed Forces.

Military anthems blared from the speakers and fireworks lit up the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium, just a stone’s throw from the Army’s General Headquarters. Performers, draped in green, waved enormous Pakistani flags.

It was, by any measure, bizarre. But it was also effective. This spectacle, brazen and unabashed, was widely celebrated. Working-class cricket fans were being co-opted into nationalism against their material interests in real time.

The following night, another tribute interrupted play, pushing the game well past midnight. The symbolism was unmistakable: cricket, often seen as Pakistan’s great unifier, was conscripted into the military’s propaganda machine. All this unfolded while the country’s most successful cricketer and its former prime minister, Imran Khan, languishes in solitary confinement — punished for his falling out with the military.

Much like the National Football League’s post-9/11 co-branding with the Pentagon, when players saluted troops and fighter jets soared over stadiums, these PSL concerts were not spontaneous expressions of national pride. They were carefully orchestrated displays designed to conflate sport with national security.

The message was clear: the military is your savior. As a famous Pakistani adage goes: “You sleep at night because the soldier stays up.” The army downs Indian planes; it protects your games. So stop asking questions — about missing persons, political prisoners, stolen elections.

Aesthetics of Vulgarity

This kind of cultural sanitization, which turns national pastimes into instruments of state propaganda, is not new. From the Indian cricket team wearing army camouflage caps during international games to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s militarized football broadcasts in Egypt, authoritarian governments have long weaponized spectacle to paper over the reality of repression.

Political theorist Achille Mbembe calls this the “aesthetics of vulgarity” — a phenomenon in which the state’s excesses are repackaged as collective celebration. Under this regime of spectacle, dissent becomes unpatriotic, and fascism parades as festivity.

While crowds in Rawalpindi were being whipped into patriotic fervor, the Pakistani government — in essence, puppets of the military establishment — promoted Army Chief Asim Munir to the rank of field marshal. It was the country’s first such promotion in over six decades, the last being in 1959, when military ruler Ayub Khan awarded himself the five-star title.

Though largely symbolic, the move is constitutionally ambiguous and underscores the military’s continued grip on civil governance. It also shows how the recent conflict with India has helped justify and amplify that consolidation of power.

This move came less than two weeks after Pakistan’s Supreme Court, which has long been a pliant instrument of military pressure, issued a ruling allowing civilians to be legally tried in military courts. The decision was handed down on May 7, just hours before India struck Pakistani territory. It marked yet another blow to the country’s already fragile legal system, as impunity reigns and military jurisdiction overrides constitutional rights.

Meanwhile, those most often subjected to that extrajudicial system — activists in Balochistan, young men in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — continue to vanish into black sites. Since 2011, the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances has recorded over ten thousand “enforced disappearances” in Pakistan. Over half of these took place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Many have never been seen or heard from since.

Yet the national mood has palpably shifted. The downing of Indian jets, combined with the euphoria of the PSL, has already burnished the military’s image in the public imagination. The same institution that has toppled elected governments, enriched itself through real estate empires, and presided over decades of violent repression now basks in the glow of popular adulation. According to a recent Gallup Pakistan survey, shared with Al Jazeera, 92 percent of respondents said their opinion of the military had improved as a result of the conflict.

A History of Impunity

The Pakistan Army’s dominance over the state’s institutions is neither accidental nor recent. It stems from decades of deliberate entrenchment through coups, coercion, and constitutional manipulation. To understand the military’s role in civilian governance, one must return to the Partition of 1947 and the foundation of the Pakistani state.

At independence, Pakistan inherited a disproportionately large share of the British Indian Army: around 36 percent of military assets despite comprising just 17 percent of the population. With weak civilian institutions and immediate conflict in Kashmir, the army quickly emerged as the most organized and powerful institution in the fledgling state. This early ascendancy laid the foundation for the military’s expansion into politics, economics, and foreign policy. Over time, it transformed into Pakistan’s most powerful political actor.

Since independence, the military has carried out three coups, in 1958, 1977, and 1999, and ruled the country directly for nearly half of its existence. Even under civilian rule, it remains Pakistan’s de facto power broker, presiding over a hybrid regime where elected governments operate under its shadow.

The military’s intelligence wing, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), functions as both political kingmaker and internal enforcer. Often described as a “state within a state,” the ISI has rigged elections, created political parties, and repressed dissent with impunity. In 2018, it played a central role in ushering Imran Khan into power by sidelining opponents and intimidating critics.

However, when Khan started challenging its supremacy and resisted its control over key appointments, the establishment turned on him. In 2023, he was jailed on widely condemned corruption charges. His party was dismantled, allies imprisoned, and election outcomes manipulated to block his return. Today he remains incarcerated, with his release likely contingent on a future deal with the military.

This cycle is far from new. In 1990, the ISI funneled millions to conservative politicians to block Benazir Bhutto’s reelection. Under General Pervez Musharraf in 2002, electoral engineering ensured that the newly formed, military-aligned Pakistan Muslim League (Q) party won the most seats. In 2013, polling stations in Balochistan were violently suppressed. One polling station, NA-262, reported a 184 percent turnout.

Operation Cyclone

The army’s institutional power was most aggressively consolidated under General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who ruled from 1977 to 1988. Zia implemented a sweeping Islamization campaign, embedding clerics into the judiciary, education system, and media. He banned political dissent, had journalists flogged, and orchestrated the judicial execution of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The Zia years entrenched the army not just as a political actor but as a moral and ideological authority, laying the groundwork for decades of religious and political repression.

Zia’s rule also marked Pakistan’s deepest alignment with US foreign policy. This entanglement persists to this day, despite growing ties with China and the Belt and Road Initiative. Under “Operation Cyclone,” the CIA funneled billions to the Afghan mujahideen via Pakistan’s military and the ISI.

This alliance empowered the army further while flooding Pakistan with weapons and militants, and forcing over three million Afghans into Pakistan as refugees. Today many of these refugees and their children, who were born and raised in Pakistan, are being forcibly expelled. Since April 2025, more than 80,000 Afghans have been deported from the country, with rights groups alleging mass human rights violations.

The military’s reach also extends deep into Pakistan’s economy. Through an expansive network of military-owned conglomerates — including the Fauji Foundation, Army Welfare Trust, and Defence Housing Authority (DHA) — it controls assets worth billions. In her 2007 book Military Inc., Pakistani political scientist Ayesha Siddiqa estimated the value of the military’s business empire to be around £10 billion. The figure today would be even larger.

The DHA alone now owns prime real estate in nearly every major city, while the Fauji Foundation operates everything from fertilizer to cereals. These ventures are tax-exempt, unaudited, and insulated from civilian oversight. Retired generals sit on corporate boards. Entire neighborhoods function as military fiefdoms.

This is neoliberal militarism in action: the fusion of authoritarian power with market capitalism. National resources are commodified for the benefit of a military elite, while land, labor, and speech are repressed. In Pakistan, the military is not just the guardian of the state — it is also the landlord, the employer, the censor, and the judge.

Neoliberal Militarism

The Pakistan Army’s grip on power is not just a consequence of Partition or domestic realities. It is also reinforced by a global ecosystem of military aid and geopolitical expediency. Chief among its enablers is the United States, which has consistently shielded the army from accountability, funded its expansion, and turned a blind eye to its deep entrenchment in governance.

Since 2001, Washington has channeled billions of dollars into Pakistan under the guise of counterterrorism cooperation. This alliance has enabled the military to detain and disappear thousands of civilians, many of whom were handed over to the CIA and sent to Guantanamo Bay without trial. US drone strikes, which killed thousands of civilians on Pakistani soil, were publicly condemned by the country’s politicians but quietly facilitated by its military. American aid hasn’t just supported a military partner — it has underwritten authoritarianism.

As Uzair Younus, director of the Pakistan Initiative at the Atlantic Council, observed: “The Pakistan Army is treated as a strategic necessity, no matter how brutal its internal record. That bargain has shielded it from the kind of scrutiny or conditionality imposed on other authoritarian regimes.”

That shield remains intact. In recent months, as the military has escalated its crackdown on Baloch dissidents, jailed political opponents, and prevented Imran Khan’s PTI party from contesting elections, US officials have offered no condemnation.

The relationship between US capital and the Pakistani establishment is also evolving. In April, the army brokered a cryptocurrency deal with World Liberty Financial, a shadowy fintech firm linked to Trump. The scheme would funnel millions into military-controlled wallets, bypassing public oversight entirely. It’s a stark example of the army’s growing financial sophistication — an authoritarian institution cloaking itself in the language of tech and development.

Meanwhile, military-run business empires dominate key sectors of the economy. Real estate ventures like the DHA mirror the logic of garrison states: walled enclaves of luxury and private security, built atop dispossessed land. These military communities, which come complete with schools, hospitals, gated parks, and malls, project Western urbanism while enforcing authoritarian discipline.

Pakistan, then, exists in a dual condition. It is both a client state of American empire and an autonomous, militarized economy in its own right. Generals invoke anti-India rhetoric and pan-Islamic unity yet align themselves seamlessly with US interests and global capital. These contradictions are not accidental.

Today, buoyed by a nationalist upsurge, the army is more emboldened than ever. In Balochistan, crackdowns have intensified, justified under the claim that Baloch separatism is “Indian-sponsored.” While that allegation may contain elements of truth, it refuses to engage with the political exclusion and systemic marginalization at the heart of the Baloch struggle.

Those Baloch activists who speak of civil rights, like Mahrang Baloch, languish in jail. Any prospect of democratic reform is deferred indefinitely. The image of a victorious, disciplined army now launders decades of abuse — rebranding authoritarianism as patriotism weeks after public resistance to de facto military rule had reached remarkable levels.

India remains a hostile neighbor. Its occupation of Kashmir is brutal and illegal. The lust of Narendra Modi’s Hindu-supremacist government for Pakistani blood is also very real. But we cannot let the threat of war blind us to the authoritarianism within our own ranks.

To celebrate the Pakistan Armed Forces for doing their job — defending the country — is understandable. But that job ends at the border. It does not include abducting Baloch students, silencing journalists with bullets, or embedding itself into the government.

If the Left in Pakistan (and across the diaspora) is to have any relevance, it must reject the seductive trap of militarized nationalism. It is possible to defend Pakistan from India while opposing the fascist tendencies of its own military elite.