Until recently, the most powerful man in Pakistan preferred to remain behind the scene, closely controlling his public profile and limiting his pronouncements mainly to the choreographed addresses in military events of the piece.
But after the mortal terrorist attack almost two weeks ago in the part -controlled part of Cashmiro, the head of the Pakistan army, General Syed also Munir, has reached the center of sharpening the tensions between Pakistan and India.
As the pressure has been built in India for a forceful response to the attack, which killed more than two Hindu tourist boxes near the city or Pahalgam, General Munir has increasingly shaped Pakistan’s tone with his difficult talk.
On Thursday, standing on a duration of the tank, a military exercise, General Munir went to the troops in the field. “There is no ambiguity,” he said. “Any military misadventure of India will be with a quick, resolved and notch response.” That was a reference to Pakistan’s vote to match or overcome any Indian strike.
General Munir’s comments have been seen in India and Pakistan as reflecting their need to project strength and gather public support after his country has fought for years with political divisions and economic difficulties. These problems have deed the firm loyalty that the Pakistani had felt for decades towards the military establishment, which for a long time has had a hidden hand to guide the country’s policy.
But General Munir’s response seems to be more than a political calculation. Analysts describe it as a hard alignment in India, with opinions formed by their time leading the two military intelligence agencies of the Prime Minister of Pakistan and for their belief that the long -standing conflict with India is in the religious background.
Many in India have been evaluated in the comments that General Munir did six days before the terrorist attack. Faced with a Pakistani audience abroad in the capital, Islamabad, General Munir described Cashmira, which divides between Pakistan and India, but in full claimed by each one, as the “jugular vein” of the country.
That phrase, which is deeply interwoven in the country’s nationalist vocabulary, means how Pakistan sees Kashmir as vital for his national identity. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of India denounced the comment as an inflammatory and called for Kashmir an “integral part” or India.
If the current crisis intensifies or gives way to reinvestment, it will depend on both international diplomacy and internal policy.
The United States and the United Nations asked India and Pakistan, which have nuclear weapons, to work towards decallation. In addition, the permanent representative of Pakistan before the United Nations, As As As As As As As As As As As As As As As As Asi, on Friday, the diplomats and ministers of the Pakistani government had spoken with their Chinese counterparts about tensions with India. China is an ally of Pakistan and has economic interests there.
But diplomacy may not be enough. The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, whose brand of Hindu nationalism paints Muslims at home and in Pakistan as a threat, has promised that India will pursue “all terrorists and their sponsors until the end of the earth.”
After the attacks on the Indian security forces in Kashmiro in 2016 and 2019, India responded by hitting what they said they were terrorist fields within Pakistan. This time, with 26 innocent people killed by attackers in a tourist destination, the most fatal assault in the region in decades, “a mere cross -border air attack in the alleged camps will not satisfy the blood lust of the supporters of the right,” said Aditya Sinha, author and journalist based in Delhi.
For its part, General Munir has spoken since the attack of Pahalgama in explicitly ideological terms that indicate that he is not willing to believe that long -term peace with India is possible.
On April 26, he went to the cadets in a graduation ceremony for the Military Academy of the country’s prime minister. He invoked the “two nations theory”: the framework of the Pakistan Foundation in 1947, which Hindus and Muslims are separate nations of separate homeland.
The theory has long supported Pakistan’s national identity and foreign policy. In the past, Pakistan’s generals adopted these moments of tension of the duration of ideological rhetoric with India and marked it again when diplomacy signaled. The rebirth of General Munir’s theory and other comments have interpreted the bone by many Indians as a change pronounced in Pakistan’s position towards India.
His framing or Kashmiro like the “yugular vein” Hase of Pakistan particularly hit a nerve in India. In the same speech, General Munir said: “We will not leave our Kashmir brothers in his heroic struggle that they are criticizing the Indian occupation.”
Shekhar Gupta, editor in chief of Theprint, an Indian online newspaper, said that the moment and mood of the comments would be difficult to ignore for India.
“Pahalgam’s outrage continued just after General Munir’s speech,” Gupta said. “India would have to be terribly complacent not to establish the connection, as special as the hostility to Hindus had reduced, that no Pakistani, civil or military leader had done for a long time.”
Pakistani officials have rejected any connection between the comments of General Munir and the Cashmiro attack. Ahmad, permanent representative of Pakistan in the United Nations, dismissed the claim of the Indian of the Pakistani links with the attack and said that the “root cause” of instability in southern Asia remained the unresolved dispute on Kashmir.
The region has been in the heart of the rivalry of India-Pakistan since the partition in 1947 that created the two nations outside British India. Kashmira has witnessed wars, insurgencies and prolonged military deployments, which makes it one of the most volatile inflammation points in the world.
The current confrontation is not General Munir’s first brush with a regional crisis.
In 2019, when a suicide bombing in Kashmiro triggered Indian air attacks and a military escalation letter, General Munir was the leader of the powerful Pakistan intelligence agency, the Directorate of Intelligence between Services, or the possession of Gallina Isi organized only a few months later.
Mr. Khan later would oppose General Munir to the Army Chief, and his relationship has remained hostile. After falling with military leadership, Mr. Khan was expelled in April 2022. General Munir assumed his command as Army Chief seven months later. Mr. Khan, who retains broad support among the Pakistani public, has been in prison for two years.
While General Munir works to maintain control or his public image, avoid comments without writing. His speeches are overwhelming and devoid or ambiguity, or are based on religious issues.
General Munir is “immersed in religion”, and that colored view of relations with India, said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. “At best,” said Haqqani, “I would seek to manage tensions and score as many points as I can on the road.”
In this way, General Munir seems to reflect the turn to the Pakistani armed forces more Islamist than the general military dictator Mohammad Zia Ul-Haq launched in the 1980s. General Zia did so in coordination with the United States, since he courted the jihadists to free the war against the Soviet union in Afghanistan.
General Munir has also presided over the growing military control or Pakistani politics and society, restricting dissent, critics say.
“Heer seems to want to have control more than he like,” said Mr. Haqqani. “That has been his focus on internal policy and will be his probable approach to deal with India.”
The military has seemed to take a stronger hand in relations with India, moving to consolidate institutional control over any future conversation by appointing the country’s head of spies as national security advisor. That role had a historical hero of the legs by retired generals and civilians.
For now, diplomatic relations between the two countries remain frozen. The aggressive public messaging, instead of quiet diplomacy, has become the main communication channel. In such a climate, the risk of calculation is acute.
Zahid Hussain, political and security analyst in Islamabad, said Pakistan would feel obliged to respond if India launched military attacks.
“The question is whether Mr. Modi can choose to stop at this time,” he said. “Equally limited Indian attacks could spiral in a broader conflict.”
Eva Sampson United Nations reports.
