Pakistan Will Regret Letting the Army Back In
In the thick of it: Shehbaz Sharif, Asim Munir and Marco Rubio in the Oval Office.
Photographer: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
It’s usually easy to know when a country has fallen to military dictatorship. Tanks on the streets, uniforms in gilded palaces, the political class interned en masse. Sometimes, however, the takeover is more subtle, more insidious. That is what has befallen Pakistan over the past few years, culminating in a constitutional amendment last week that gave its army chief, Asim Munir, additional powers and lifelong immunity from prosecution.
The “establishment” — Pakistanis’ euphemism for their powerful military and the industries and organizations it controls — has held a large share of power since its first decade as an independent nation. But democratic politicians have usually been arrayed in opposition, displacing it when it stumbled, such as after the country lost its eastern half, now Bangladesh, in 1971.