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What Pakistan’s generals seek is a role disturbingly similar to that of the Palestinian Authority — a local police force whose real function is not to protect Palestinians but to protect Israel from Palestinian resistance.
By PROF JUNAID S AHMAD
From Islamabad to Washington via Riyadh and New Delhi, the geopolitical jigsaw is being rearranged — and the pawns might think they’re kings. In this grand theatre of delusion, ordinary Pakistanis are once again pushed to the margins while generals, ex-expats and the Washington–Riyadh axis play musical chairs with alliances and national identity.
The illusion of glory
The idea of a ‘protection force’ being deployed to enforce a ceasefire in Gaza rings hollow when one recalls that the very institutions being elevated — Pakistan’s military and its diaspora cheerleaders — failed to lift a single bullet for the besieged people of Gaza. These same institutions are now paraded as brave global guardians, feted for their ‘peacekeeping’ credentials.
In truth, what Pakistan’s generals seek is a role disturbingly similar to that of the Palestinian Authority — a local police force whose real function is not to protect Palestinians but to protect Israel from Palestinian resistance. Oppression, outsourced under the banner of protection. The hand that refused to defend the defenceless now reaches out for medals and applause.
Manufactured heroism
The generals know this game well — they’ve played it for seventy-five years. External ‘glory’ is the perfect distraction from internal decay. Whenever national anger rises over repression or economic despair, a patriotic diversion appears: a border skirmish, a handshake with a foreign leader, or a TV spectacle of martial pride.
Each cycle restores the military’s myth of guardianship while the state crumbles beneath it. Protesters are jailed, journalists disappear, and a former prime minister languishes in prison. Yet the cameras pan back to the uniform — polished, heroic, and untouchable.
Diaspora delusions
This latest act of redemption has been sweetened by the applause of diaspora elites — affluent expatriates who once denounced the military’s corruption but now celebrate its nationalism from suburban comfort. They romanticised Imran Khan as a civilian David against the establishment’s Goliath. Yet when the military flexed against India and Washington offered symbolic praise, they erupted in patriotic celebration.
Their social media feeds, once full of outrage, now overflowed with euphoria. A handshake with Donald Trump and a jet flyover were hailed as geopolitical triumphs. It was the purest hypocrisy: supposed democrats turning nationalist when power looked glamorous.
But when Washington later signed a ten-year defence pact with India, these same self-styled ‘activists’ fell silent. The reality was clear — in the new Cold War, it is New Delhi, not Islamabad, that matters. Pakistan’s elites had once again mistaken proximity for power, access for influence.
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The empire’s hierarchy
Washington’s priorities are pragmatic. India, for all its authoritarianism, offers what Pakistan never could: a vast market, strategic geography, and alignment against China. The United States has no sentimental ties to Islamabad — only transactional interests. Pakistan is invited when useful, ignored when not.
Elites at home and abroad continue to misread this. They treat photo-ops as policy, cocktail receptions as diplomacy, and selfies with senators as statecraft. They mistake visibility for influence. Meanwhile, real crises — collapsing infrastructure, mass unemployment, inflation — fester unattended.
Parallel delusions
Across the border, Modi’s India performs its own theatre of nationalism. Democratic in language but authoritarian in practice, it represses dissent and persecutes minorities while projecting global prestige. Its Islamophobia finds easy endorsement in Western capitals obsessed with ‘strategic partnerships’.
Pakistan and India, adversaries in geography, mirror images in pathology — both sustained by spectacle, both dismissive of their citizens’ suffering.
The forgotten citizens
Teachers go unpaid, farmers drown in debt, and students are silenced. The Pakistani military celebrates pageantry; India’s ruling elite flaunt ‘development’. Both regimes glorify strength while neglecting the weak. These are the real casualties of empire — the people erased each time a pact is signed or a parade begins.
The question that remains
The issue is not whether Pakistan can protect Gaza — it cannot — but whether it can protect its own people from its own generals. Who guards the dissenters when ‘national interest’ becomes a slogan for suppression? Who speaks when Washington and Riyadh remain silent and the diaspora looks away?
For all their self-importance, the elites remain spectators. They cheer when the generals rise and mourn when Washington looks elsewhere, mistaking mood swings for strategy.
In the end, the farce writes itself. The generals get their parade, the diaspora gets its photo op, Washington gets its loyal ally, Modi gets his handshake — and the people get silence.
If hope remains, it lies not with the elites but with those who have nothing left to lose: the worker, the student, the dissident — from Lahore to Karachi, Srinagar to New Delhi. For them, solidarity is not a slogan but survival.
Prof Junaid S Ahmad teaches Law, Religion and Global Politics and is Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Decolonisation (CSID), Islamabad. He is a member of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), the Movement for Liberation from Nakba (MLN), and Saving Humanity and Planet Earth (SHAPE).
