The ummah stops here: Pakistan’s red line is Washington

And so, the farce continues. Gaza burns. Pakistani generals pose for selfies with Western diplomats. A hafidh recommends a war criminal for the Nobel Peace Prize. The military budget balloons, while moral courage evaporates. The system works—for them.

JUNAID S. AHMAD

They strut about with medals on their chests and missiles in the background, claiming to be defenders of the Muslim world, protectors of the faith, and guardians of the nation. They command one of the largest armies on Earth, sit atop a nuclear arsenal, and rule a state ostensibly founded as a sanctuary for the oppressed.

But when Gaza is turned into a graveyard—when Palestinian mothers cradle bloodied shrouds where their children once slept—the Pakistani military does nothing. Not even a murmur beyond the usual sermon of ‘deep concern’. Why?

The answer is not complex. It is corrupt. What stops the sixth-largest military in the world, armed with nuclear weapons and ruling over 240 million people, from lifting even a symbolic finger to defend Palestinians? In a word: Zionism—not the ideology of the masses, but the foreign-aligned, spine-deficient Zionism that festers in the minds of Pakistan’s military and political elites. These are not defenders of the ‘ummah’; they are custodians of American interests, obedient caretakers of empire, garlanded in hypocrisy.

For decades, Pakistani officers have been packed off to US military academies not merely to learn warcraft, but to be domesticated into the value system of empire

Behind the shrill slogans of ‘strategic restraint’ and ‘regional stability’ lies a quiet complicity. The Pakistani military establishment—particularly its top brass—has long been entangled in the machinery of American imperialism. For decades, Pakistani officers have been packed off to US military academies not merely to learn warcraft, but to be domesticated into the value system of empire: loyalty to Washington, deference to Tel Aviv, and disdain for any real resistance to Western hegemony. They return with shiny diplomas, inflated egos, and carefully cultivated blindness to the screams coming from Gaza.

And the people of Pakistan, God bless their eternal patience, are expected to pretend this is all an internal affair. They are told to believe that the process of appointing an Army Chief is a matter of local politics, seniority, or maybe even divine intervention. The truth is far more colonial: the Chief is chosen not in Islamabad but in Washington. The Pakistani generals who market themselves as protectors of sovereignty are, in practice, franchise managers for empire. Their real bosses speak English with an accent and think of Palestine as a dispensable nuisance.

One might expect that someone who has memorised scripture would find something to say—anything—about the Zionist holocaust unfolding in Gaza. But no. Munir’s most notable foreign policy gesture in recent memory has been his recommendation of Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Consider the current Chief-cum-Field Marshal, Asim Munir. Elevated to near-messianic status by a toady media apparatus, Munir is praised as a hafidh of the Qur’an and hailed as the army’s moral compass. One might expect that someone who has memorised scripture would find something to say—anything—about the Zionist holocaust unfolding in Gaza. But no. Munir’s most notable foreign policy gesture in recent memory has been his recommendation of Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Yes, that Donald Trump. The man who gleefully recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, brokered apartheid in the name of ‘peace’, and handed over the Golan Heights to Netanyahu like a casino chip. That man, somehow, earned the admiration of Pakistan’s Qur’an-memorizing Field Marshal. Trump, in turn, proudly acknowledged the honour. It was a grotesque moment of mutual back-patting between two men whose spiritual values, apparently, include turning a blind eye to genocide.

But Munir is merely the symptom. The disease is deeper. The Pakistani generals’ Zionism is not of the Israeli variety—it is more subtle, more cowardly, and more lucrative. It is the Zionism of silence. Of normalisation by stealth. Of prioritising IMF packages and Pentagon praise over the lives of Muslims and other oppressed groups. When Palestinians are bombed with American-supplied missiles, Pakistan’s generals do not rage—they recalibrate their talking points to ensure ‘diplomatic balance’.

And when they do speak of Gaza, it is always with the antiseptic language of bureaucrats. No fire. No urgency. No pain. Just the usual dirge: ‘Pakistan condemns…’ followed by the sound of more funding requests sent to Washington. For a military that prides itself on valour, there is something deeply cowardly in this quiet deference to genocide.

Ironically, when India sneezes across the Line of Control, these very generals puff up their chests like Bollywood extras. A 48-hour skirmish, and suddenly the nation is treated to a Wagnerian opera of jets taking off, ministers waving flags, and ISPR crafting patriotic anthems with the urgency of war. We are told, again and again, that these men are the ‘pride of the nation’, that they stand ready to defend Muslim honour. But when Israeli tanks roll into Gaza, flatten hospitals, and incinerate refugee camps? Silence. Not even a whisper of real action.

In Palestine, children die under rubble while the self-proclaimed protectors of the Muslim world polish their medals and draft congratulatory letters to Trump.

The contrast is grotesque. In Palestine, children die under rubble while the self-proclaimed protectors of the Muslim world polish their medals and draft congratulatory letters to Trump. In Pakistan, people protest in the streets, fly Palestinian flags, and donate what little they have. But their rulers—the military aristocracy—remains firmly in its imperial coma.

There is no shortage of rhetoric in Pakistan. ‘Kashmir banega Pakistan’, they chant. ‘Labbaik ya Aqsa’, they declare on banners. But all this theatrical posturing collapses under the weight of their own hypocrisy. Palestine exposes the Pakistani military’s carefully cultivated mythology as just that: myth. It reveals a ruling class that is deeply invested in the architecture of oppression so long as that architecture is Western-approved and Zionist-designed.

One must ask: what would it cost Pakistan to send even a symbolic force to the Gaza border? A unit of military medics? A diplomatic convoy to Egypt carrying aid? A unilateral declaration of boycott against companies funding Israeli weapons? Nothing. And yet, nothing is done. Why? Because the objective is not to confront oppression—it is to maintain the status quo. The generals know that standing with Gaza would mean standing against America, and that, for them, is unthinkable. Far better to tweet a Qur’anic verse, host a Friday sermon, and move on to the next military land-grab in Bahria Town.

There is an even darker possibility: that the Pakistani elite see in Israel a mirror. The military establishment that crushes dissent at home, engineers elections, and disappears journalists may well admire Israel’s ‘efficiency’. A colonial outpost turned regional superpower through sheer militarism—what’s not to envy? Perhaps this is why they send officers to Israeli-adjacent war colleges. Not to learn how to resist injustice—but how to manage it.

And so, the farce continues. Gaza burns. Pakistani generals pose for selfies with Western diplomats. A hafidh recommends a war criminal for the Nobel Peace Prize. The military budget balloons, while moral courage evaporates. The system works—for them.

But the people of Pakistan deserve better. They are not cowards. They are not traitors. From Karachi to Khyber, the people stand with Palestine—not just in theory but in aching solidarity. They see the bombs. They cry with the mourners. They know that silence is complicity. But they are ruled by men who see Palestine as a PR inconvenience and the Pentagon as a parental authority. The cognitive dissonance is unbearable.

What Pakistan needs is not more parades or televised flyovers. It needs moral clarity. It needs leaders who can tell the difference between genocide and ‘geostrategy’. It needs generals who quote the Qur’an and then actually act on it—not selectively, not performatively, but with justice as the goal and courage as the means.

And let us be blunt: a nation whose army fears Washington more than it loves Gaza has not achieved sovereignty. It has leased its soul.

And let us be blunt: a nation whose army fears Washington more than it loves Gaza has not achieved sovereignty. It has leased its soul.

So let the medals gather dust. Let the sermons cease. Let the generals and their entourage of sycophants enjoy their dinners with diplomats. History will not remember them kindly. While children in Gaza are buried in mass graves, the Field Marshal of Pakistan will be remembered as the man who handed a genocidaire a peace prize.

Until Pakistan’s military elite sheds its colonial loyalties and stands for the oppressed rather than the oppressor, all its grand titles—Chief of Army Staff, Field Marshal, Strategic Command—will mean nothing. They will be the regalia of cowards.

And the people? They must stop clapping – which most thankfully have, by the way. Stop mythologising generals who genuflect to genocide. Stop mistaking uniforms for honour. Because the next time other Gazas burn, as they surely will, the silence from Pakistan’s barracks will once again echo louder than any bomb.

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Professor Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Decolonisation (CSID), Islamabad, Pakistan. He is a member of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST – https://just-international.org), Movement for Liberation from Nakba (MLN – https://nakbaliberation.com), and Saving Humanity and Planet Earth (SHAPE –https://www.theshapeproject.com/)