Munir’s Dangerous Overreach

Pakistani Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Asim Munir is always in the news, mostly for the wrong reasons. Very recently, Pakistan summoned (on December 26) the British Deputy High Commissioner, Matt Cannell, in Islamabad after a viral video showed a woman at a rally in the city of Bradford (U.K.) saying that the Pakistani Army Chief would die in a possible car bomb attack. The woman was allegedly rallying in support of Pakistan’s imprisoned former Prime Minister, Imran Khan.

It may be recalled that Khan, ousted in a no-confidence vote in April 2022, has been in prison for two years on a corruption conviction. Still, he remains popular with many supporters. The video in question was posted by the British chapter of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.

Again, on December 26, Pakistan’s Deputy Interior Minister, Talal Chaudhry, told a local television channel that while Khan’s party has been inciting supporters against the military, “the car-bomb threat” at the Bradford rally crossed all limits. He urged the U.K. government to investigate and initiate legal action. Meanwhile, the U.K. High Commission in Islamabad said in a brief statement that it was asking for all relevant material to be forwarded to the U.K. police for further action. Amid the rising confrontation between PTI and the Army, Army spokesperson Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry described Khan as “mentally ill”.

It would appear from these developments that Munir continues to be a target of political opponents, particularly overseas, and that any threat to the COAS’ life could possibly be real. And that is because Munir is exceeding his limits and has probably taken things for granted, assuming that all is hunky-dory. That is why his adversaries privately confide that he is disillusioned and under the misconception that his popularity is soaring, while the reality is something different, as seen in the video threat.

In another Munir-related development, the all-powerful and self-hyped Field Marshal paid a visit to Libya recently and signed a 4 billion US dollar deal to sell conventional military equipment to the Libyan Army. Although the Foreign Ministry, Defence Ministry, and the military did not respond to media requests for comment, military officials described it as historic in terms of its size and financial impact. The purchase includes several JF-17 fighter jets, jointly developed by Pakistan and China, and a number of Super Mushak trainer aircraft used for basic pilot training.

It is relevant to mention that since 2011, the United Nations (UN) has imposed an arms embargo on Libya, which means transfers of weapons and related material require UN approval. However, senior Pakistani military officials justified the arms sale, saying that many major Western and Middle Eastern states have been supplying weapons and equipment to Libya for many years despite the embargo. Interestingly, the internationally recognised Government of National Unity, led by Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah, controls much of western Libya, while General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) controls only the east and south, including major oilfields, and does not recognise the Unity government’s authority. Haftar has been widely accused of rampant human rights abuses. Hence, any arms sale to this ruthless dictator merits condemnation. There is also an interesting video clip circulating on YouTube in which Asim Munir is seen making a strong pitch for military assistance to his Libyan hosts, invoking historical defence ties.

Reacting to the deal, the Grand Mufti of Libya, Sheikh Sadiq al-Gharyani, lambasted Pakistan for agreeing to sell weapons to Khalifa Haftar. The Mufti alleged that Pakistan, one of the biggest Muslim countries in the world, knows very well that Haftar would use Pakistani weapons to kill innocents and launch wars in Libya and Sudan. With this unethical act, Pakistan has exposed itself as a country whose dealings are not governed by principles, Islamic brotherhood, religion, legal responsibility, or even humanity, but rather by greed and a rush for money. The Mufti also questioned the role of the UN Mission in Libya regarding this agreement and urged the government to summon the Pakistani Ambassador and rebuke him for supplying weapons to Haftar in violation of the UN arms embargo.

Significantly, the South China Morning Post, in a prominent column (December 27), wrote that Pakistan is selling warplanes it jointly developed with China to the LNA, a move analysts said could serve as a gateway for Beijing to expand its influence into North Africa. This assessment should not be lost sight of. It is also important to mention that the planes under reference have previously been sold to Myanmar, Nigeria, and Azerbaijan. While most of these sales have been conducted through Pakistan, the latest Pentagon China military power report named the JF-17 as the “best-selling” Chinese-designed fixed-wing aircraft on the global market.

Later, Field Marshal Asim Munir also visited Egypt and Saudi Arabia to rally support in the region ahead of an anticipated deployment of reportedly up to 3,500 troops to Gaza to be part of the Trump administration’s International Stabilisation Force. Canada-based journalist of Pakistani origin, Let Ali, claims that Asim Munir’s eagerness to be part of the Gaza project is being directed by his mentor in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Mohammed bin Zayed.

According to some experts’ estimates, Field Marshal Asim Munir’s steady ascent to the peak of Pakistan’s power structure is, in many ways, a replay of familiar trends in the Islamic nation’s history of governance, in which the supremacy of the military uniform routinely invokes the doctrine of necessity and controls the levers of power under a veneer of democracy. From Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan through Zia ul Haq and Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan has oscillated between overt martial law and covert dominance of the praetorian guard, as it were. Under Asim Munir, that pattern has coalesced into a more centralised, personalised, and ideologically ruthless strongman image-building exercise. His elevation to the rank of Field Marshal (only the second officer after Ayub Khan), his appointment as Chief of Defence Forces (CDF), the subordination of all three services to his command, and his effective control over Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal have turned him into an unchallenged arbiter of power, with grave implications for democracy in Pakistan and regional stability.

In sum, Munir’s visit to Libya and the sale of multi-billion-dollar military hardware, followed by visits to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have led strategists to assume that Munir’s political and military ambitions are exceeding acceptable limits. Possibly, with his backdrop of radical Islamic inclination, he is trying to forge an unholy military nexus with Islamic countries that are dictatorial, supportive of military regimes, and fanatical, with traces of extremism. This may also be an attempt to recalibrate his position in the Islamic world on the lines of Turkish President Erdoğan, who has been trying to carve a niche for himself as the most dominant leader in the Islamic world. It is, however, doubtful whether Munir would succeed in this fantasy and pursuit of ambition, which certainly portrays him as a confused despot.

Views expressed are personal. The writer is a retired IPS officer, Adviser NatStrat, and a former National Security Advisor in Mauritius