Pakistan is one out of few Islamic countries in the world where a democratic infrastructure is present, although the democracy had been killed many times in the last 70 years of independence, there is serious disagreement being erupted periodically, Islam is being used to disrupt it, the establishment use it as a tool to pull out one another legs. Pakistan was created out of fear, a fear was spread that the Islam was threatened in Hindu majority homeland, but in actual India became more Islamic than Pakistan with 2nd highest Muslim population in the world, military establishment is still considering that India is an existential threat for them, so they keep eye on civilian government activity while making any deal or relations with India. Terrorism, corruption, sectarianism, and separatism are the major challenges for Pakistan, the civilian government earns failure for all this, although the military establishment is using all this to promote its agenda in internal affairs and external affairs, and democracy doesn’t dare to question military. The civilian government has been allocated enough power in the constitution but military overrules it, foreign office is being run by the military, they have strong reservations on the internal affairs.
It looks like democracy is not suitable for Islamic nations, there are as many as 60 Muslim majority nations exist on the planet but very few of them have adopted democracy as a political system, Turkey is leading them and it promotes itself as a model democracy in the Islamic world although the progress graph has gone exponentially downward in the recent years. Creation of Pakistan was a bad idea and politically motivated, it has created a huge irreparable gap between two communities which co-existed from hundreds of year, as a result of it discord, differentiation, disagreement, and dissonance has been spread between Hindu and Muslim across the Indian subcontinent. The only good thing that happened to Pakistan was its leadership accepted democracy as a way of governance, was a rare Islamic country in 50’s to have it, and it was a great embracement for the Islamic world.
But the military has a strong influence in civil administration, it has been maintaining good relations with bureaucrats, and it helps them to take over all the executive offices when they require. The democracy was raided at least 3 times in the last 70 years, military misleads the innocent people of Pakistan to promote its agenda by creating fabricated threat perception, and its motives of overthrowing of democratically elected civilian government was never justified. The biggest threat for Pakistan’s military in India, they are considering it an existential threat, but in actual India has never taken any step against Pakistan’s national security, India has answered only its military aggression.
Civilian government has huge disagreements with military establishment on Kashmir conflict, foreign affairs, terrorism, and sectarianism, government wants a peaceful solution of Kashmir conflict and want to go with different approach to deal with foreign offices, but the military wants it to prolong as it helps them to create threat perception for national security, they are using terrorism to fight the proxy against India in Kashmir, an Indian territory and the United States in Afghanistan, and both are using sectarian as a tool for political gain.
The very first military action against the democratically elected government took place in the first decade of its independence itself, democracy was suffocated and overrun in 1958 when Feroz Khan Noon was unseated by president Iskander Mirza by the help of retired general Ayub Khan, who later on ousted Mirza. Democracy was murdered in a second military coup when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was overthrown and prosecuted by his own appointee Army chief Zia-ul-Haq. Latter on Supreme Court of Pakistan declared martial law legal under the doctrine of necessity, huge crackdown had started upon democracy, Islamic law was introduced and strictly blended with the legal system which results into the present day sectarianism, peace uprising in Baluchistan was crushed, and he reversed socialism reform. General Musharraf had orchestrated a third military coup in 1999, he had ousted Nawaz Sharif as he was being blamed for retreating from Kargil.
Civilian establishment, civil society, and media are working hard to strengthen democracy in Pakistan even in such a stressful environment, there is always a risk of being overthrown, prosecution and killing, there is very less space for parliamentarian, they can be seen bowing down to terrorist, sectarian and separatist due to the pressure of military establishment, civil society and media personalities are getting disappeared for the opposition of military.
People of Pakistan must denounce the military action against its own democratically elected government, their intervention in internal and external affairs, and proxy war against the neighbor. They must learn from people of Turkey how they had defended democratically elected President Erdoğan in 2016 during the attempted military coup. Prosperity and peace could only prevail in Pakistan due to democracy not by martial law, they must contain military for only defense, and the military shouldn’t allow asking for the stakeholder in civilian administration.
