If anything, the present nexus between the military establishment and the toothless civilian leadership has shown that it is difficult to have a fair space for criticism and dissent in Pakistan.

In yet another flummoxing display, Pakistan has charged the opposition leader in the National Assembly with treason. Mehmood Khan Achakzai, Chairman of the Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP), has been booked and charged with treason for his remarks at a public meeting in Balochistan. Achakzai is the president of Tehreek Tahaffuz Ayeen-i-Pakistan (TTAP), a multi-party opposition alliance formed to protect the Constitution of Pakistan, which, according to the opposition, is under attack from the military establishment, with the support of the government.

Although a long practice in the country, using the draconian law to silence critics of the military establishment/government has picked up in recent years. One reason for that is the nature of the present ruling administration.

It is interesting to see that the scope of these laws has expanded; now the political opponents of the existing “hybrid model” of government in Pakistan, as Defence Minister Khawaja Asif calls it, have borne the brunt of the sedition laws for their criticism of the government, or the hybrid regime, to put it in its truest description. The civilian leadership is forced to mitigate the adverse effects of the model simply because it cannot be in government or run functions if it were to break ties with the military establishment. That being the case, the civilian part of the model is subservient to the military establishment. How can that be called even a “hybrid model”?   

The civilian leaders act as intermediaries, while the military establishment pulls the strings on every decision. No wonder that in the last couple of years, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, and others have been currying favour with the country’s security forces, even on the economy. Prime Minister Sharif, known for his unhinged use of praise to extract favours from powerful personnel, went beyond even his own previous injudicious acts and said on an occasion recently that “History will always remember the wise and courageous leadership of the field marshal (Asim Munir) in golden words.”

Such flattering words from the Prime Minister tell a lot about the nature of the current model of governance in Pakistan: the civilian leaders will act on behalf of or for the military generals, and critics will bear the brunt.   

Achakzai’s case is not the only one. On a similar pattern, in yet another high-profile case, former Prime Minister Imran Khan was charged with treason for a rather bizarre accusation. Several activists and political opponents have been sent to jail after being charged with the draconian law.

All these cases are nothing but a mockery of such a serious penal law. While Imran Khan was accused of wrongfully dissolving parliament in 2022, Achakzai’s case is more interesting: he is charged with treason because he questioned the law and order situation in Balochistan and said that the government had failed to provide security to the people. There is no shortage of reports, even statements from the military establishment and the government on the situation in Balochistan that would mean the same, but it coming from the opposition leader is chargeable with the harshest possible penal code in the country, underscoring the strict policy of the current administration towards its opponents.   

More importantly, the case against the Opposition Leader in the National Assembly exposes the nature of politics in Pakistan. Essentially, the crux of the issue is that the military establishment is domineering in the present ruling political system, and any criticism of an issue points towards the failures of the military establishment. And given the stakes of Field Marshal Asim Munir in the system, the Army is unlikely to tolerate that. Therefore, conformity is sought in every case, at every possible cost.

It also shows that Pakistan’s perennial political crisis has taken a life of its own. There is no sign of it getting resolved. The Pakistani State has taken a clarion call: everyone must conform to the current administration, i.e., the military establishment, the deep state and its coterie in the civilian power circles.    

Historically, the military has dominated the country’s politics. Its domestic and foreign policies have been shaped by the generals. Even domestically, it is well documented that the military has “groomed” and “appointed” leaders in the country.

In politics, it is said that nation and state function as synonyms; in Pakistan, the military establishment and the state function as synonyms. So, any criticism against the military means the state is criticised. Such criticism therefore begets a strong punitive and legal response, including the charges of sedition. 

The story does not end here. Given that the military establishment is deeply involved in the government, any criticism, therefore, against the government is interpreted as a criticism against the military, and thus against the state. And there is a long list of such cases in Pakistan. Some of these include the cases of Baloch and Pashtun activists. In such cases, the people who have questioned the government policies towards Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) have been accused of treason and put behind bars.  

Almost the entire leadership of Baloch Yekjehti Committee (BYC), a non-violent Baloch organisation mainly comprised of the Baloch whose relatives have been victims of enforced disappearances, is in jail. So is the former member of the National Assembly and Pashtun activist, Ali Wazir. Wazir has been behind bars for a long time on treason charges for questioning the policy of the military operations and their impact on the common Pashtun in KP. Ali Wazir has spent a good share of his life in jail. He was arrested a few hours after he was released on bail on 26 March. The cases against Wazir are various sedition cases.  

Likewise, Mahrang Baloch, a Baloch and doctor by profession, along with others, is facing multiple cases of sedition. Even if she gets some relief or bail in one case, other cases are invoked to keep her behind bars. The same method is used against the people who support or defend activists in the courts of the country. Imaan Mazari and Hadi Chattha, advocates who are fighting cases of several victims of state violence, have been booked, charged and sentenced to 17 years of imprisonment for social media posts that were critical of the country’s security institutions.  

If anything, the present nexus between the military establishment and the toothless civilian leadership has shown that it is difficult to have a fair space for criticism and dissent in Pakistan. Now, since the military establishment has increasingly taken control of the country into its hands, any civilian leadership or government is symbolic. Naturally, any criticism directed at the government will be seen as criticism of the military establishment. Therefore, in all likelihood, draconian laws like treason and others will be employed more to frighten and curb dissenting voices in Pakistan. 

A state that relies on disappearing its citizens, disenfranchising its minorities, and outsourcing its justice to religious mobs is a state in retreat from the modern world.

Amidst the complex landscape of South Asian geopolitics, Pakistan finds itself at a precarious crossroads where the traditional boundaries of law and statecraft are increasingly blurred by shadow policies and the instrumentalization of religious sentiment.

As of early 2026, the structural integrity of Pakistan’s social contract is under unprecedented strain. The state’s reliance on extrajudicial mechanisms to manage dissent, coupled with a legislative environment that increasingly narrows the definition of a “citizen,” has created a cycle of instability that transcends simple political friction.

To understand the current crisis, one must look at the three pillars of this systemic decay: the normalization of enforced disappearances, the institutionalization of religious repression, and the calculated weaponization of faith as a tool of political and social control.

The Shadow State and the Silence of the Disappeared

The phenomenon of enforced disappearances has evolved from a sporadic counter-insurgency tactic into a standardized instrument of state governance.

Throughout 2024 and 2025, reports from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and international monitors like Amnesty International have painted a grim picture of a “culture of impunity” that operates beyond the reach of the judiciary.

In Balochistan alone, the numbers are staggering; data from November 2025 indicated at least 106 new cases of enforced disappearances in a single month. This is not merely a regional security issue but a nationwide crisis of constitutionalism.

The human face of this crisis was most vividly captured by the Baloch Long March and the subsequent leadership of activists like Mahrang Baloch.

In late 2024, the targeting of women activists marked a disturbing escalation in the state’s crackdown. The “kill and dump” policy—a term now synonymous with the discovery of mutilated bodies of formerly disappeared persons—continues to terrorize marginalized communities.

Despite the 2024 United States Department of State Human Rights Report highlighting these “unlawful or arbitrary killings,” the domestic response has been largely performative.

The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (COIED), established to address these grievances, has been widely criticized by civil society as a “clearing house” for state narrative rather than a mechanism for justice.

Families of the missing, many of whom have spent over a decade in protest camps, find themselves trapped in a legal vacuum where the state neither acknowledges the detention nor produces the body, effectively erasing the individual from the legal record.

Institutionalized Repression: The Shrinking Space for Minorities

While the shadow state deals with political dissent, the legislative state has been busy refining the machinery of religious repression.

In Pakistan, faith is not a private matter of conscience but a public marker of legal status. For the Christian and Hindu communities, 2024 and 2025 have been years defined by a terrifying “weaponization of the womb.”

In Sindh, where over 90% of the Hindu population resides, human rights groups estimate that over 1,000 minority girls are forcibly converted and married off each year.

A harrowing case in June 2025 involved the abduction of four Hindu siblings—including a 14-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl—from their home in Shahdadpur. Within 48 hours, forced videos were circulated online to “validate” their conversion, a tactic increasingly used to bypass legal scrutiny.

The Christian community remains similarly besieged. Following the horrific Jaranwala violence of August 2023, the subsequent years have offered little justice. As of late 2025, despite over 5,000 people being initially accused of burning 26 churches and 80 homes, convictions remain virtually non-existent.

Instead, the judicial system has seen cases like that of Shagufta Kiran, a Christian woman sentenced to death in September 2024 for allegedly sharing “blasphemous” material in a digital chat group.

This environment of selective justice ensures that while the mob remains free, the minority victim remains incarcerated or in hiding.

The Blasphemy Industrial Complex and the Weaponization of Faith

The most volatile element of this triad is the weaponization of faith through the country’s blasphemy laws. What were once intended as colonial-era protections against communal disharmony have been transformed into a “blasphemy industrial complex.”

In 2024, the HRCP estimated that over 750 people remained in prison on blasphemy charges, many of them languishing for years without trial.

However, the most dangerous development in 2025 has been the emergence of what activists call “blasphemy gangs”—organized groups that use social media to entrap individuals, particularly the youth, in fabricated religious controversies to extort money.

This weaponization has led to a total breakdown of the rule of law in instances of mob violence.

The lynching of a man in police custody in Quetta in September 2024, and the subsequent “encounter” killing of a doctor in Umerkot by police officers after he was accused of blasphemy, illustrate a terrifying trend: the state is no longer just failing to protect the accused; its agents are actively participating in the summary execution of those accused of religious offenses.

When the state itself adopts the logic of the mob, the judicial process becomes a mere formality. The Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and similar groups have successfully shifted the “Overton window” of Pakistani politics, making it political suicide for any mainstream leader to suggest reform of these laws.

The consequences of this three-fold crisis are clear. A state that relies on disappearing its citizens, disenfranchising its minorities, and outsourcing its justice to religious mobs is a state in retreat from the modern world.

The analytical consensus for 2026 suggests that unless there is a fundamental shift toward civilian supremacy and a genuine commitment to pluralism, the internal contradictions of the Pakistani state will continue to manifest in cycles of violence and international isolation.

The path forward requires more than just legislative reform; it requires a dismantling of the security paradigm that views its own citizens as the primary threat to national integrity.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.