One Man, Three Fronts

On August 24 Field Marshal Asim Munir sat in Tehran with Iran's president, pressing for peace between Iran and the United States. A month later he sat in Riyadh with the military chiefs of Saudi Arabia and Türkiye, pledging to make their new defense pact operational at once. Walter Lippmann held that a nation's foreign policy stays solvent only while its power covers its commitments, with a surplus held in reserve. Pakistan's commitments have multiplied this year while its means have not, and the man who carries them holds his rank for life.

Pakistan now faces three fronts, in Afghanistan, India and the Gulf, and one man stands at the head of all of them. Last November Parliament made his rank lifelong and extended to its holder the immunity from arrest and criminal proceedings. In December he became the first Chief of Defence Forces, over all three services. On each front the army has led, and on each it has gained. The Saudi alliance brings money and standing now; its costs will come later, in quarrels Pakistan did not choose. When Riyadh asks Pakistan to fight, the answer will come from the field marshal, and Parliament is unlikely to say otherwise.

The western front began as a doctrine the army made its own. Pakistani planners answered Kabul's refusal to accept the Durand Line with strategic depth. The idea, associated with General Mirza Aslam Beg, came to mean a friendly government at Pakistan's back while the army faced India. In the 1990s Pakistan backed the Taliban, first through Benazir Bhutto's interior minister, a retired general, and later through the army's intelligence service. When the Taliban returned in 2021, the chief of that service was in Kabul within weeks. The Pakistani Taliban, a separate movement at war with the Pakistani state, found shelter across the border. In October 2025, the month a ceasefire was brokered in Doha and Istanbul, India hosted the Taliban's foreign minister and restored its Kabul mission to an embassy. The doctrine failed, and the institution that owned it lost no authority.

The ceasefire with Kabul lasted four months. On the night of February 26 Pakistan's forces launched an offensive named Ghazab lil Haq, which the defense minister called open war. The next day the prime minister went to army headquarters to be briefed on it and praised the armed forces under the field marshal's leadership. Between July and September the Centre for Research and Security Studies counted nearly 1,400 deaths, militants included, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan alone. Between September 21 and October 1 Pakistan carried out three rounds of air strikes on Afghanistan. The UN mission there says the latest raids killed at least ten civilians, most of them children. Islamabad says the militants it strikes act for India. By its own account, the friend at its back now shelters agents of the enemy in front. A war with no end in sight keeps the army at the center of the state.

On the eastern front, in April 2025, gunmen killed 26 people, mostly tourists, at Pahalgam. India blamed Pakistan, which denied any part in the attack. In May the two militaries fought for four days before a ceasefire held. The rewards of the war went to the army and its chief. Within days Gallup Pakistan found that 93% of those surveyed said their opinion of the army had improved. Ten days after the ceasefire the government made the army chief a field marshal. In June President Donald Trump hosted him for lunch at the White House, reportedly the first time an American president had received Pakistan's army chief there without senior civilian officials. Six months after the war the 27th Amendment followed. Nothing has been settled with India since. Whoever is to blame, the lack of a settlement keeps the army indispensable.

The newest front runs through the Gulf, where the field marshal has stood at the center. In September 2025 the prime minister signed a mutual defense agreement in Riyadh with the field marshal beside him. Pakistani defense sources said Munir had been central to the negotiations. When Iranian missiles first struck the kingdom early this year, Pakistan stayed out of the fight, but by April Riyadh had announced the arrival of a Pakistani force. Reuters reported some 8,000 troops in May, and this month 30,000 to 40,000, as well as arms shipments to Yemen's government in September. In August Pakistan joined Saudi Arabia and Türkiye in the Makkah pact, which treats an attack on any one as an attack on all. Türkiye's speaker says the pact will go to his parliament for ratification. Islamabad has announced no such step. Neither pact's text has been published.

In the short run the alliance has paid. The kingdom added $3 billion in deposits in April and pays for the force it hosts. The army's stake in the Gulf predates both pacts. Since 2023 its chief has sat on the apex committee of an investment council created to court Gulf money. That year he reportedly told business leaders he hoped to bring in up to $100 billion. The army has won Pakistan more weight abroad than any civilian government in years. This spring Islamabad hosted American and Iranian negotiators. Pakistan opened six transit routes to Iran in April. In August Tehran said it saw no reason to fear the Makkah pact. But when the Houthis, Iran's allies in Yemen, escalated their attacks on Saudi cities in September, Reuters reported that Pakistan delivered the kingdom's warning to Tehran, which replied that it does not control the Houthis. Islamabad called the report baseless.

The long run is where the costs arrive. Glenn Snyder described the two fears that govern every alliance, abandonment by a partner when it matters and entrapment in a partner's quarrel. Easing one, he argued, tends to sharpen the other. Pakistan has spent the year buying insurance against abandonment, and the premium is entrapment. In September the Foreign Office said no military response to the Houthis was under discussion for now. A week later the armed forces' spokesman said Pakistan would go to any extent to defend the kingdom. Striking the Houthis at Saudi request would end the role that lifted Islamabad this spring. Pakistan has already armed one side, and a mediator may lean and still serve both. A party to the war cannot. No law requires Parliament to ratify a treaty, and bills to require it have failed to pass for two decades. Those commitments will outlast the men who made them.

The money binds as tightly. Saudi deposits now arrive beside a Saudi defense commitment, two things that will be hard to separate when Riyadh asks for more than a garrison. About 45% of record remittances in the fiscal year to June came from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, so the families who depend on them would be among the first to pay for a wider Gulf war. This year's budget raised defense spending by nearly 18%, to about Rs3 trillion. Interest will consume Rs8.05 trillion, more than two thirds of the roughly Rs11.75 trillion in net revenue the federation keeps. By Lippmann's test, Pakistan has no surplus in reserve. It runs a deficit on commitments shaped by an institution whose budget keeps rising.

The obvious reply is that no one man decides. Civilians signed both pacts, though the cabinet's record for the second shows a briefing and a resolution of praise, not an approval. The prime minister recommended Munir for the new office and ministers announced the recent strikes on Afghanistan. The 27th Amendment also built a new constitutional court. Much of the army's rise belongs to a domestic contest over the courts, with the fronts supplying justification and timing. The objection holds for the institution and weakens for the man, because a lifelong rank and the immunity attach to one holder, not to an office that passes on. Gains have limits. Defeat in 1971 broke the army's standing and opened the way to civilian rule. Short of defeat, the institution tends to gain.

Riyadh has already asked for help. This week the pact's committee agreed to rush forces to the kingdom. When the request to fight comes, Pakistan's reply may decide whether it keeps both a Saudi patron and a quiet border with Iran. In 2015, when Riyadh asked for troops in Yemen, Parliament debated the request and answered in public. This year Pakistanis learned from Riyadh that their troops had arrived. The next answer will come from Rawalpindi, and the country will learn it afterward.