General Asim Munir in 2024 (Part 1)

General Asim’s seat while firmly fixed is likely to become hotter in 2024 than it was in 2023.

Syed Talat Hussain

As 2023 comes to a close, questions abound about which way the country is headed. Constitutionally, Pakistan’s political leadership should be providing the answers, but that is not the avenue anyone is looking at. It is the army chief General Asim Munir, who is at the centre of everything. And he is playing the part with relish.

If the outgoing year has been the year of the hybrid political model, in which politicians play the second fiddle to an omnipresent Establishment, the next twelve months will be all about the thinking, ambitions and planning of one man, General Asim Munir.

How he acts and responds to Pakistan’s internal dynamics and what type of power distribution he is willing to live with after the arrival of the next government will define Pakistan’s political fate. It will also decisively influence national economic direction and the full range of foreign affairs with key countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, the US, China and India.

But most importantly, his conduct will have a lasting bearing on the army’s role in national matters and decide the outcome of its struggle to restore its image and prestige in the public that has faced a thousand cuts at the hands of its own products like Imran Khan and his gang of social media trolls, now, according to intelligence claims, bankrolled and nannied by at least three key foreign powers.

So let’s first map the General’s armour in 2024. The coming year is the year of his power peak. In a way, the climax has already started: the second year of a 3-year tenure is generally the most significant one as it is reasonably away from the teething problems of the first and at a good distance from the year of retirement. So the general has all his power engines firing this year. He can do things that he could not do in the first, nor will be able to pull off in the last. If he has agendas to unfold, this is the year he has to choose.

Also, he has overcome some of the key rough patches that confronted him from the time of his appointment till now. There have been steady internal readjustments with Raheelites, Bajwaites, and Faizites being sent to their real place in the institution or out of it. A new team is in place and command flows meticulously. Moreover, he has done his foreign engagement rounds and has ticked all the boxes of the strategic matrix including his tour of the US.

The message is out to everyone who matters in Pakistan’s defence policy that he is the guy in charge and he is not iffy about throwing his weight around wherever it needs to be exerted.

Domestically, he has signalled to everyone, from retired generals to business leaders and religious representatives that he means what he says and says what he means. You don’t have to like what he says to hear what he has to say. This is a marked contrast to the stuttering, bumbling, ISPR-dependent Raheel or double-speaking, three-timing Bajwa, whose wife and father-in-law decided the policy menu on the kitchen table while he faked (without any success) military genius to a yawning audience. Put differently, General Asim has told everyone that he is a different man, that he has arrived, and that they should bend their ears or duck and run for cover.

Further, so far he has kept himself above board personally and has weathered the tumultuous times of his appointment, which General Bajwa and General Faiz tried to scuttle and Imran did everything in his power to stall and taint. His arrival wasn’t smooth and events like 9^th May while eventually fed his ability to tighten his grip over power, did shake his command for a while. It’s better now. With Imran caged, pleading for dumbells, sun-Iight and exercise cycles and his social media shenanigan-makers on the run, the political equation is also favourably positioned. He looks to be comfortably placed.

His middle-class values and tight upbringing seem to be holding good. So far he has not shown any visible sign of falling prey to the material temptations of his power-post — something some of his predecessors found it is impossible to resist as they fell to really petty levels and self-humiliated.

And yet this is not party time for General Asim Munir. Not at all. General Asim’s seat while firmly fixed is likely to become hotter in 2024 than it was in 2023.