Pakistan’s surrender to self-destruction

IN every generation, nations must ask not just what they remember, but how they choose to remember. When memory becomes vendetta, it shackles the future in the chains of the past. No doctrine illustrates this more starkly than Pakistan’s post-1971 obsession with revenge.

Fifty-three years after the surrender in Dhaka, one truth remains immutable: the partition of Pakistan in 1971 was not India’s doing — it was Pakistan’s undoing. It was not just the end of a war; it was the unravelling of a flawed national imagination. The tragedy of East Pakistan was authored by those who refused to see that unity cannot be enforced through coercion, nor identity denied through silence.

Yet rather than reckon with this truth, the Pakistani state, particularly its military establishment, chose a different path: one not of reflection, but of retaliation. From the embers of defeat, it forged a doctrine of revenge. One that substituted course correction with conspiracy, and repurposed national pain into institutional permanence.

That doctrine has since metastasised — from doctrine to dogma, from defence to delusion.

In the decades since 1971, Pakistan’s military has inserted itself into every arena of public life: economy, education, media, foreign policy and even religion. Textbooks glorify aggression and erase introspection. Civilians are elected, but generals decide. Economic autonomy has been exchanged for strategic rent-seeking. And when the world stopped paying, others — China, Gulf powers, even non-state proxies — filled the void, not as partners, but as puppeteers.

To sustain this structure, enemies were essential. If India did not exist, this doctrine would have had to invent another enemy. And so, the war never quite ended — only moved from battlefields to narratives. Kargil, the IC-814 hijacking in Kandahar, the Mumbai attacks, Pulwama and now Pahalgam — each act was an attempt to project control, recover stature or rewrite humiliation. Each time, the fallout was worse for Pakistan than for its intended target.

The cost of this doctrine is internal decay and external isolation. And what has this revenge achieved?

– Terrorism has become a double-edged sword — once wielded for strategic depth, now turning inward with impunity.

– Economic ruin deepens — inflation, energy collapse, sovereign default.

– Diplomatic fatigue sets in — even traditional allies now extract terms before offering sympathy.

– Civic erosion is complete — journalists silenced, minorities persecuted, dissent criminalised.

This is not national security. It is national self-harm disguised as doctrine.

The army that once claimed to be the “guardian of ideology” now guards real estate and media channels. It has become, in effect, the author and captive of its own incapacitation.

And then came Asim Munir! Just when it seemed the embers of revenge were dimming, a man arrived who rekindled them with fury. Gen Munir, loathe to the idea of failure, could not abide the quieting of Pakistan’s post-1971 script and certainly not the abrogation of Article 370 in J&K. He did not just relight the embers — he reignited the entire doctrine.

Munir’s rhetoric invoked the Two-Nation Theory with a vengeance, emboldened extremism and attempted to mobilise both street and state in renewed hostility. But this time, the region responded differently.

Operation Sindoor marked not just India’s military clarity but its diplomatic restraint. For Munir, the cost became clear — not just in deterrence but in isolation. Ironically, it was the very civilians he empowered for electoral gains who now must reckon with the blowback. The doctrine that once promised prestige has returned as burden.

Bangladesh, born in blood and once a symbol of stoic reconstruction, now walks a troubling path. It mirrors the very impulses once turned against it — consolidating power, stifling opposition and rewriting dissent as disloyalty. Bangladesh now risks becoming what was once a cautionary tale it overcame. The irony is deep. The region watches — quietly, but not blindly.

Here again is South Asia — immune to learning.

Yet Pakistan’s military remains locked in a zero-sum delusion — mistaking headlines for strategy and decline for dignity. And in doing so, it drags its citizens deeper into insecurity and disillusionment.

It is worth asking: what good is a doctrine that strengthens none of the state’s institutions, heals none of its wounds and secures none of its people?

Revenge is a poor tutor. It teaches nothing but repetition. The world is not waiting for Pakistan to collapse, and it is not waiting for it to recover either.

The choice ahead is stark:

– Continue the doctrine of revenge and remain hostage to a myth of victimhood that feeds only the military’s coffers.

– Or rewrite the doctrine — not with denial, but with dignity. A doctrine that accepts past follies, disengages from proxy adventurism, reorients from defence to development and recovers the moral agency of the people.

India, for its part, need not — and must not — relish its neighbour’s decline. Restraint remains India’s civilisational compass. But clarity is not cruelty. The region’s future cannot be hostage to one doctrine’s decay.

The hardest mirror to face is one that reflects the self, not the adversary. Pakistan’s greatest defeat was not Dhaka. It was the refusal to learn from Dhaka. The pain of 1971 could have birthed a more inclusive, democratic, federal imagination. Instead, it became the alibi for an authoritarian one.

Now, even the mirage of strategic parity with India has faded. What remains is the opportunity — still faint, still fragile — for a new script. But it cannot be written by those who have benefited from the old one.

Common enemies make good friends, until you become your own worst enemy. Then the other friend plays you. That’s not strategy; it’s surrender in slow motion. It is time, perhaps past time, to get it right.

And so, if there is one lesson South Asia must now learn — and teach — it is this: blunder begets blunder, but when the blunder begins to wound the blunderer more than the intended adversary, it is time to break the chain.

Let SAARC evolve into the South Asian Concord — a voluntary, values-aware platform of cooperation, connectivity and civility — open to all nations rooted in the shared geography, civilisational memory and forward-looking intent of the region. It is built not on uniformity, but on understanding.

Concord is a spirit set free by intent. Let every nation that seeks peace, not proxy, find a place at the table. And if Pakistan still chooses to stand apart, let its chair remain vacant — not as a rebuke, but as a quiet reminder of the future it once helped imagine, and could still one day reclaim.

Lt Gen SS Mehta (retd) is ex-Western Army Commander and Founder Trustee, Pune International Centre.

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