- 5/21/2025
Cmde C Uday Bhaskar (Retd.) speaks with Mayank Chhaya on Pakistan Army chief Asim Munir’s elevation as field marshal | SAM Conversation
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00welcome to south asia monitor conversation today it's always a great pleasure thank you
00:14as always as i said i look forward to having these unhurried conversations with you yeah
00:21this morning which is my morning your your evening on may 20th i want to talk to you about
00:28a rather mystifying development out of islamabad where pakistan's prime minister has announced
00:35that the pakistani army chief general asim asim munir has been elevated to field martian and i'm
00:44quoting him quoting the prime minister in specific terms he says in recognition of the strategic
00:51brilliance and courageous leadership that ensured national security and decisively defeated the
00:56enemy and court it's almost as if a massive cloud of delusion is hanging over pakistan what what
01:03defeat and what courageous leadership are we talking about
01:08you use the word mystifying
01:11mike who introduced the announcement that general murir will now be elevated to field martial
01:19and as a security analyst and as a student of pakistan's own internal dynamic for almost 30
01:29years i would say that you know this is not surprising it may be mystifying to some of us on the outside
01:41but if one were to contextualize the sequence of events in pakistan over the last few months
01:48months and particularly in the post operation sindur context i think the narrative in pakistan is that
01:58pakistan has been able to stand up to india and if you see the subtext of all the
02:04briefings that were done by the pakistani military
02:08and their director general of public relations it is that they were able to not only resist india
02:17but also give a very firm repost a very firm military kind of response
02:23which had pushed india on the back foot this as i said is their narrative
02:28now clearly they are buying into it and i say they i mean the political establishment
02:34because this is not just a case of recognizing strategic brilliance of the army chief
02:39and elevating him to field marshal which by the way for the record
02:43the last time it happened was 1959 if i remember right 65
02:49was it 65 or 59 when are you no i think i think i think it was 65 when you can himself elevated
02:56uh he becomes the you know army chief who elevates himself to field marshal at that time so it's almost
03:04you know 60 years plus and in that sense i think it is a case of the patistani political establishment
03:14as represented by the sharif brothers which is prime minister shabha sharif and in many ways the power
03:21behind the party at the moment which is the senior sharif former prime minister navash shabha
03:27have clearly got into a kind of an understanding with not only the army chief but perhaps also with
03:34the ppp represented by the president mr zardari and in a way this is my conjecture i don't have a smoking gun
03:43but to quarantine prevent mr emran thand from being able to make any political inroads and that to my
03:54mind is the broad context in which i think one can rationalize or explain how general monir is being
04:01elevated to the rank of field marshal and what it means of pakistan of course i think we can discuss
04:08as we go along but what is your own take mind sitting where you are the wise man
04:15cincinnati or wherever you are chicago in fact i was thinking that in purely cross cynical terms
04:24shabha sharif is really laying it on thick uh it's a political move in some sense because
04:31he needs uh the army chief on his side all the time and as you very astutely pointed out that
04:38perhaps one of the considerations is that uh they want to keep imran khan still at bay so
04:44the sharifs have basically got together to keep the army chief in good humor i think you are on to
04:49something there but i'm i find it strange what does it what do you mean what does field marshal really
04:56mean in operative effective terms nothing really it's uh what maybe you'll get some more privileges
05:02more salutes what exactly does it mean as a no in a purely technical sense you know i would say that
05:09for uh in terms of military protocol a general in the pakistani army currently general monir is what is
05:16referred to as a four-star general the lieutenant generals below him the court commanders are three star
05:23he is four star as chief of the army staff now he'll become five star so a field marshal is the
05:30equivalent of a five star general elevated to the rank is that of a field marshal and one of these
05:37stipulations is that field marshals never retire you are a field marshal for life right now does it also
05:46mean that in the current case general munir now soon to become field marshal munir will be the army
05:52chief for life that is a question mark because even now in the pakistani army when there was talk about
06:02general munir getting an extension as the army chief even without the reference to the rank of field
06:09marshal one hears that there was a lot of discord and disquiet because a number of people who are waiting
06:16to be promoted would have to retire before they are even looked at for the next rank so the immediate
06:24run after general munir who would have been normally considered for the army chief's post are clearly
06:32dissatisfied were he to become field marshal for life and army chief for life then my sense is that
06:38within the army there are factions there is one group that is loyal to general munir who represents the
06:44equivalent of the islamist leaning part of the officer corps officer kader of the pakistani army
06:52whose lineage goes back to general zia ul haq who also was a very very sort of conservative in terms of
06:58his practice of religion and applying it to the army but there are others who do not necessarily share
07:05this persuasion and therefore i expect that there would be murmurs and perhaps even more than murmurs and
07:12general munir would have to deal with it but he will be in an advantageous position because he has
07:17the backing of the current political dispensation that is the sharif brothers and the president mr
07:23zardari who represents the ppp so in that sense he has an advantage but let's not forget buying that
07:30during his tenure as army chief you'll recall for the first time in the history of pakistan
07:36the citizens of pakistan who are very unhappy particularly those who were imran khan supporters
07:43had ransacked the house of the core commander right never happened before and pakistan had to take some
07:49emergency measures to restore the equivalent of some semblance of order subsequently there have been
07:56other setbacks including the train hijab which had put general munir again on the back foot in terms of
08:02internal security so when you look at this entire thing in a holistic sense i don't think it will be
08:08such a smooth ride you know for general munir soon to be field marshal munir when he assumes office
08:14because there will be a number of internal challenges mind yeah to to understand a little more
08:21you you pointed out that field marshal is is for life does it mean that an army chief is also for life now
08:27can there be a situation where he can remain field marshal for life but there can be a new army chief at some point
08:37you know that's a tricky question in pakistan because we know from previous experience
08:42that if you hand over the post of chief of the army staff that's where real power lies
08:48and in the event general munir field marshal munir decides that he would step down as the army chief
08:58and remain field marshal but what would be his locus meaning that there is a prime minister a civilian
09:06prime minister there is a president there is an army chief what does the field marshal do
09:13if he does not have an army at his command so that would be a very anomalous situation in pakistan and
09:18even general moshara realizes that one of the reasons why he continued to remain army chief even though he
09:24was president but because true power in pakistan comes from sitting in that particular chair that of
09:31the army chief then you have not only the loyalty but you have the confidence that the core commanders
09:37cannot buck you that is the ravarpindi is the gsq and the core commanders represent the true power
09:44and if they know that there is the army chief sitting right on top of them they will not do anything
09:49to rock the boat as it were so that is my sense that the field marshal without the army command would be anomalous
09:57you know i was thinking politically i i understand that it's expedient for the sharif
10:02to spin this as a sort of a triumph uh in in in its conflict with india but i'm sure internally even
10:11uh field marshal munir now understands that the situation was nowhere close to being as sanguine as
10:18they have publicly pretended it to be what's your reading in terms of uh internally what they are thinking
10:25because by all accounts india has given them quite a walloping in in a significant sense although in a
10:32precise sense and we have taken some beating i suppose as well because sitting afar here in chicago
10:38it's hard for me to assess you are there what's your take on uh what you know suffered how much based on
10:45all the information in the public domain i would say that tactically india was able to
10:51to send a very strong message the very fact that you could reach punjab we are talking about sites
10:58like muridke and bahawalpur which is in the heart of punjab i think has sent a very strong signal that
11:05india's tactical ability to strike has been demonstrated and pakistan's own offensive against india
11:15when they decided to target military assets all the way from gujarat to srinagar were in a way
11:23pushed back you know india's air defenses blunted the pakistani attack so just if you take these two
11:29indicators and the fact that india's long-range missiles like the bramos were very effective
11:36india's air defense was very effective and perhaps there are some question marks now about india's own
11:43ability in terms of the first few hours in terms of the aerial platforms that needs to be addressed
11:50as and when i think more information is available but in totality i think india's tactical advantage
11:58was there it was established and the signals were sent to pakistan and the internal situation in pakistan
12:05my own reading is that it is very very fragile and the reason i'm saying this is that apart from
12:10whatever may may have happened on the military front the imf loan is a good indicator if you recall
12:18during operations hindu pakistan was waiting very very anxiously with weighted breath almost
12:25to make sure that the imf approved the loan now there are other reasons that because of china and the
12:32united states and their uncritical support if you will for pakistan and pakistan's complicity in terrorism
12:39the imf loan was approved it was only then that pakistan could really heave a sigh of relief so for
12:46a country that is so dependent on an emergency loan of a few billion dollars is indicative of the internal
12:54fragility and compounded you know if you look at the three main strands for any nation state you know the
13:00military capability the economic capability and the political credibility on all three fronts i would say
13:08that pakistan is in a vulnerable area so taken together i would say that currently pakistan would
13:17need to do a lot of internal rewiring to regain whatever kind of resilience it is seeking in dealing
13:26with numerous challenges including the one that it has now provoked with india you know you haven't even spoken about the indus water by the way
13:36to to to me that begs the question then what what is this triumphalism about uh i mean it's it's almost
13:43delusional uh even if they manage to stand up a little bit which they might as well have the the notion that
13:52the leadership of general muneer was so spectacular and courageous that he has been elevated to field
13:58marshal it's i mean i'm i'm trying to make some rational sense out of it other than just basically
14:04basically you know this actually is very interesting to try and see this in terms of the strategic culture
14:13of the pakistani military as an institution you know every major military comes with its own strategic
14:20culture and if you look at the long cycle of history recent history the last hundred years
14:26it's a bit like saying that the soviet army had its own distinctive culture
14:32that was distilled over two great wars world war one world war two you could say the same thing about
14:38germany the german military the way it evolved or you could talk about the royal navy
14:44britain or you could talk about the united states and the u.s military whether it is the marines or
14:50the u.s navy or the u.s army and each of them have internalized experiences since you're sitting in
14:56chicago let me take the liberty of saying that perhaps the u.s army the u.s military has internalized
15:04both vietnam and afghanistan it has left its own impression in terms of strategic culture
15:13like that the patistan army i think has internalized its own experiences and one of the strands is this
15:20delusional kind of thinking and the narratives that they build and start believing now i don't want to
15:28use too much of jargon but you know in critical theory we talk about the simulacrum yeah you create a bubble
15:35bubble yeah make-believe and you enter that bubble to such a degree that the make-believe becomes more
15:43real than reality you know this is all the stuff that maudrilard etc talk about i'm trying to extrapolate
15:50that to the current situation and tentatively make the suggestion that this is a military that believed
15:57that after 1971 the humiliation and the loss of bangladesh east pakistan becomes bangladesh
16:03that they had resisted india you know there are chapter and verse to say that they were not defeated
16:09but for the fact that the americans let them down they would have won that is 71 more recently
16:17pakistan was led to believe that osama bin laden did not reside in pakistan near abotabad i mean general
16:27mushara himself went to great length to say that he knew nothing about osama bin laden
16:34we had the mumbai attack for days on end pakistan refused to accept that the terrorists had come from
16:41pakistan till to the credit of the pakistani media i always say that we must acknowledge
16:48that the professional integrity of the pakistani media was on display in 2008 when mumbai happened
16:53that it was a pakistani journalist who revealed the identity of kasab otherwise till then pakistan believed
17:01that you know they had no hand in mumbai so what i'm trying to get at is to say that they have internalized
17:08this kind of simulacrum believing these delusional narratives so i am proposing that the way in which
17:18the rationale or the reason for elevating general munir to field marshal is about strategic brilliance
17:27that's very very debatable but i am sure there would be enough people within pakistan
17:33who would perhaps critique this in a more informed way as to what were the compassions for them to
17:40create this new simulacrum if i may say that about general munir operations hindu and the strategic
17:47brilliance that he brought to the table in terms of uh what it does to him about his flexibility to wage
17:57future wars uh with india do you think it has any meaning to it that he's a five-star general not a
18:03four-star general because at the end of the day at the end of the day he's still heading the same
18:08military machine right no no i'm sorry for replying so quickly but i would say not at all and the reason
18:15i'm saying that is pakistan's ability to engage in a conventional war with india
18:20would depend on the assets that they have correct the kind of tangible military assets they have
18:28the kind of assistance they are likely to get from quote unquote nations friendly to pakistan
18:35in this case in operation sindur we saw a few countries that went out of their way to provide
18:39tangible military support to pakistan as in the case of turkey there are reports of iran also united
18:46states pakistan sorry china in different ways so that is the second factor pakistan's ability to
18:55engage with india militarily will be predicated on these two tangible indicators whether the army
19:02chief is four star or five star to my mind would not be that relevant but you can see there's a clique
19:09forming in pakistan around general munir because air marshal siddu has also been given an extension
19:14right that is open-ended now we are aware that air power and the way in which technology is now
19:22enabling air power is an important determinant for military capabilities across the world now whether
19:27it's ukraine or west asia or what is happening in south asia so i thought that was also an interesting
19:34indicator that not only has general munir got an elevation to field marshal but the air chief is also
19:41getting an extension and again there are lots of i would say uh narratives about the air chief
19:48and his own track record which doesn't appear to be as uh shining as is often made out to be to wrap up
19:57just the last couple of things one is i want to be a bit facetious with you what happens when uh in the
20:03uh in the aftermath of general munir's elevation when he beats his indian vis-a-vis uh the army chief
20:10uh is is is that is there going to be any difference in the way they approach each other i don't think so
20:17because first of all there is no interaction between the indian army chief and the pakistani army chief
20:21i'm saying it's a sort of a hypothetical situation i mean as i said i see this as a low probability
20:30but purely in terms of protocol yes the indian army chief is four star and if there is ever such an
20:37exigency i think the pakistani army chief the one presumes that field marshal munir will continue as
20:43the army chief that there would be that kind of military uh you know contrast one is forced up and
20:50the other is five star but only to that extent uh to to conclude where do you think this is going now
20:57now that ceasefire seems to be holding in some significant ways where are we headed now in terms
21:05of any kind of resolution of the issues at hand you know at the moment as you said the ceasefire is in
21:13place but to my mind it's an uneasy ceasefire and you will recall that from the indian side
21:19prime minister modi had made this point that this is only a pause that operation sindur has not
21:25concluded so that is a signal that you know there are options that are being kept open and india has
21:32also drawn certain red lines about how it will deal with any provocation so my sense is that after the
21:40elevation of general mooney to field marshall perhaps there will be an internal consolidation within
21:46pakistan because pakistan's politics are also in a state of considerable floods i don't think mr emran
21:55khan is out of the ring he may be in prison but from whatever little bit one gathers from social media
22:02and anecdotally i think there are large sections sections of pakistan's own demography that are very
22:08unhappy number one with the army number two with the two major parties the pml and the ppp for having
22:16made their own again strong word to use faustian bargain with raul pindi because the pti and mr emran
22:26khan the agenda there was to remove the army from the calculus of power in pakistan and perhaps that was
22:33too much for the army to accept but i think that story is not over so my sense is that there would
22:39be some internal consolidation and don't forget balochistan balochistan is a very important domestic
22:45i would say challenge for the establishment in pakistan at the moment they are dominant but there are
22:52various as i said exigencies that could unfold all of these would demand the attention of the pakistani
22:59state and its power grid in a very focused way for which they need to have their economic and fiscal
23:07resilience in place so if you want to see where pakistan is going track the pakistani rupee in
23:14relation to the u.s dollar that would give a good indicator about the fragility we are talking
23:20right on that note uh i want to thank you i know most of the talking was done by you because i deferred you
23:28when it comes to military matters and it's that's one of the reasons why i wanted to talk to you but i
23:33remain mystified at this rather symbolic move that islamabad has moved i see it as a really the
23:40sharif laying it on sick politically for their own survival as well as just to essentially take the
23:48pakistani public uh down at the garden pass about the situation being far more sanguine than it is
23:55so that's how i see it and i i i don't know if it has any practical value eventually for pakistan as a
24:02country but let's wait and watch and i'm sure both of us can come back and compare notes again
24:09indeed at some point in the near future indeed
Recommended
7:42