General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Pakistan’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, recently made a statement in which he talked about India’s so-called “politicised military" and “militarised polity". The irony could not have been sharper.

General Mirza represents the most militarised nation on earth—where generals anoint prime ministers, court rulings are dictated under duress, and torture cells serve the interests of the uniform.

And yet he had the audacity to lecture the world’s largest democracy on civil-military balance. This staggering hypocrisy can be better understood when one scrutinises Pakistan’s military establishment. It is a well-established fact that the Pakistan military has been the most powerful centre in a country that is falling apart as the Pakistani generals have throttled democracy, executed elected leaders, amassed vast illicit fortunes, unleashed terror in Balochistan and the former FATA region, and muzzled journalists who dared reveal its excesses.

Architecture of Military Dictatorship

Since Pakistan’s inception in 1947, the military has been the sole constant in a nation where elected governments are temporary fixtures and democratic institutions are theatrical props. Pakistan has suffered four major military coups, spending over three decades under direct martial law: Field Marshal Ayub Khan seized power in 1958, overthrowing President Iskander Mirza and establishing a presidential dictatorship that concentrated absolute authority in military hands.

General Yahya Khan ruled from 1969 to 1971, presiding over the catastrophic Bangladesh Liberation War that dismembered the nation. General Zia-ul-Haq overthrew Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Operation Fair Play (1977), ushering in eleven years of brutal Islamisation that permanently altered Pakistan’s secular........

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