On Monday, 4 November, the Pakistan government used Parliament to pass six controversial bills, all of which were signed into law Tuesday. The most eyebrow-raising among them was an amendment in the Pakistan Army Act to extend the tenure of all service chiefs to five years from the traditional three years. Another equally worrying piece of legislation pertains to increasing the number of Supreme Court judges from 17 to 34. Many observers in Pakistan told me that the intention is for the establishment to pack the court with aligned judges in order to get favourable judgements. The aim of this particular legislation seems obvious—to control the court better and to ensure that they do not pose a challenge to any controversial laws or governance, especially any proceedings that impact the army chief’s tenure. In short, changes to the higher judiciary are mainly to cushion the army chief’s extension.
With the Army Act changes, General Asim Munir will now complete his tenure as Chief of Army Staff in November 2027 instead of November 2025. The Pakistan Air Force chief, Zaheer Ahmad Babar, who is already on a year’s extension, will get an additional one year. The naval chief, Admiral Naveed Ashraf, was appointed in October 2023, which means that he will now retire in October 2028.
Political sceptics, who are in a state of shock, now fear that General Asim Munir’s tenure may not end in 2027, but get another five-year extension. Their concern stems from other amendments in the Army Act, such as the removal of the age limit of 64. If Asim Munir’s plan is to stay for another ten years it will probably make him akin to General Zia-ul-Haq or Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak—whose prolonged influence led to them being despised by their own men and ordinary folk for what they did to their country’s politics.
The services chiefs’ extensions prompted journalist Cyril Almeida to draw a comparison with what Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Imran Khan and Lt General (retd) Faiz Hameed had once planned. Khan, it is believed, wanted to make Hameed the army chief so he could extend his own rule for 10 years. The difference in the two cases is that while the PTI leader dabbled with the military structure to extend his own power—which was not tolerated and punished through his removal—the Shehbaz Sharif government has tamed Parliament to fulfil General Munir’s desire for an extended tenure. The hope is that the army chief will eventually be sympathetic and let the government continue.
However, the ruling coalition’s actions remind me of American President Abraham Lincoln’s famous words: “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.”
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A path to self-destruction
Pakistan’s Parliament, in this case, has been truly suicidal in extending the army chief’s tenure a year in advance and succumbing to General Munir’s desires—under the pretence of ‘fixing’ the ailments of Pakistan’s democratic system.
The army chief and his political partners were irked by the judiciary exercising its power, a ‘problem’ that is in the process of being fixed. And in its ‘suicidal’ decision, Parliament has granted Munir more years in service and unchecked power without seeking anything in return.
Interestingly, to those observing the political tactics of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), the decision doesn’t come as a surprise. Some resourceful contacts I spoke with before the 2024 elections were of the view that the PML-N was eager to increase the army chief’s tenure to five years. The idea was that his tenure should end at the same time as the elected Parliament’s. This logic operationalised would mean that the present Parliament, elected in April 2024, would also start packing its bags by the end of 2027, even though it would still have months left to its life. But instead of bringing any stability, this would likely lead to even more intense realpolitik or further legislative manoeuvring to extend Munir’s tenure if he so wishes.
The ‘stability’ canard
On paper, the extension of the service chiefs’ terms makes some sense—a three-year period is short for a chief to take over the organisation, understand its mechanics, and then bring changes. Pakistan army sympathisers in the media argue that if the Chinese, German, or American army chiefs have longer than three years, then why not the Pakistan army chief?
However, this argument totally ignores the fact that these other countries don’t face the same civil-military crisis that Pakistan does. These other militaries are instruments of policies made by their civilian bosses. Not to mention the geopolitically intense roles these militaries are meant to play on both global and regional levels.
One wonders what difference Asim Munir will make to an army that is unable to fight serious threats on its northwestern borders or internally in Balochistan. With little money in the kitty, Pakistan is unlikely to procure major weapons systems in the next two years that would justify a chief to stay on. My own argument ignores the political reality that Asim Munir is not simply an army chief but the true ruler of the country, who has managed to disguise his military rule in the garb of a military-civil partnership.
There is also no major restructuring of the army underway to enhance its professionalism—something obviously lacking, given its failure to provide security to Chinese workers in Pakistan. So bad is this problem that China has cited it as an impediment to investments in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Munir also seems to be in no mood to use these additional two years to transfer more power to civilian rulers, something his predecessor, General Qamar Javed Bajwa at least paid lip service to. In any case, the present Parliament is too incompetent to wrest any form of power from the military.
This trend is hardly new; Nawaz Sharif’s 2013-2018 government willingly surrendered its power to play a major role in military decision-making by making the Cabinet Committee of Defence (DCC) redundant. In his book Between Dreams and Realities: Some Milestones in Pakistan’s History, the late PML-N member and minister Sartaj Aziz wrote that the DCC was allowed to die because Parliament lacked the capacity to decide on serious military issues like weapons procurement.
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How will it all play out?
Pakistan’s political parties, whether in power or opposition, don’t have the institutional strength to reclaim control from the army. This tragic condition will continue even as public restlessness and resentment toward the all-powerful army mount. This anger, fear, and aversion will only grow.
With his extended tenure, the army chief, now more powerful than before, may read the tea leaves and negotiate with Imran Khan. Of course, this depends largely on how seriously he perceives the resentment and political challenge facing him. Possibly, Munir will now feel more confident in dealing with both his own army and the PTI.
However, this added power isn’t very good for the ruling coalition—a more confident Munir is just as likely to abandon the government and enter negotiations with Khan. In short, the government’s move does not necessarily ensure political stability. In fact, it may well lead in the opposite direction in more ways than one.
For advocates of ‘stability’, a confident army chief is like a king, now free to take risks he couldn’t before while watching his back and counting down the months left in service. Some may even argue he’ll be bolder in his approach to India and align with Nawaz Sharif’s idea of mending fences. I would say this is just a daydream. General Munir may have gained years, but perhaps not the bravado to tackle his own organisation and convince it to change its entrenched ideology.
Ayesha Siddiqa is Senior Fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. She is the author of Military Inc. She tweets @iamthedrifter. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)