Seen from such a lens, Asim Munir’s use of analogies like ‘dump truck’ or the ‘railway engine’ are not harmless political theatre.

Pakistan’s leaders, both political and military, have long relied on self-serving metaphors to shape the domestic sociopolitical sphere and frame their country’s place in the broader region. Often delivered with a dramaturgical embellishment, these analogies do more than reflect insecurity or national mythmaking. They reveal a deeper strategic mindset in which Pakistan sees value in disruption, leverage through instability, and the cultivation of terrorism as a tool of statecraft.

The latest examples come from Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, which has historically dominated the country’s political and security architecture. It started with Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir’s interaction with expatriates in Florida, United States, in August this year, wherein he deployed a comparison that captured headlines for its brazenness. “India is a shining Mercedes coming on a highway like a Ferrari,” he said. “But we are a dump truck full of gravel. If the truck hits the car, who is going to be the loser?”

On its surface, such remarks appeared to emphasize resilience: that Pakistan as a lumbering truck may not be glamorous, but it can endure any difficulty and overcome any obstacle. Yet the real significance of this ironical analogy lies elsewhere. It implies that Pakistan retains the capability as well as readiness to cause strategic disruption, even at great cost to itself, and in doing so shape regional outcomes. The metaphor glorifies collision as an equalizer. It suggests that while India surges economically and diplomatically, Pakistan’s relevance lies in its ability to destabilize.

A parallel metaphor that is being increasingly used by the country’s political and military elite describes Pakistan as a “railway engine”, that is portrays it on a slow, traditional, yet persistent mode of progress. The image is meant to frame Pakistan as foundational to South Asian stability, chugging along in contrast to India’s sleek modernization. Implicit in this imagery is the claim that the region’s momentum, direction, and safety can still be both set and derailed by Pakistan’s choices.

Such analogies may seem rhetorical to common masses and yet contain within them a longstanding doctrine of purposeful disruption that Pakistan has employed in the last several decades. It is based on its decades-old strategic worldview wherein it has consistently valorized confrontation, framing India as an existential threat, and more domestically more significant objective of positioning proxy-terrorism as a legitimate extension of state power. 

Such a propagandistic rhetoric has found currency amidst Asim Munir’s sweeping consolidation of authority through constitutional amendments to expanded control over the judiciary, nuclear command, and internal security. This narrative push is designed to reinforce his martial narrative that Pakistan may be economically battered, politically unstable, and diplomatically isolated, but it remains capable of inflicting damage that forces global attention.

As such, while Pakistan’s establishment may dress its messaging in fresh metaphors, the underlying doctrine has barely evolved. Since the 26/11 attacks by ISI supported Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists in Mumbai, there has been little substantive reckoning within Pakistan about the use of terrorist groups as strategic assets. If anything, the rhetoric of state officials in the years since reveals continuity, not change.

It should be noted that there has been consensus within Pakistani establishment, as exposed by the statements from senior retired generals, political leaders, and religious ideologues, who often reiterate that proxy terrorism can be a “force multiplier” against India. Such an argument has been repeatedly framed as asymmetric necessity given that since Pakistan cannot match New Delhi conventionally, so it must leverage “non-state actors” to disrupt India’s rise even as its own economy falters. It explains why and how terrorist groups like LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed have been normalized within the socio-political discourse of the country by portraying terrorists as instruments of pressure than what they are: terrorists.

This mindset is reflected not only in Pakistan’s reluctance to prosecute figures like Hafiz Saeed or Masood Azhar, but also in its sustained tolerance of groups that openly espouse cross-border terrorism sold as so-called jihad. And the danger of such rhetoric is not abstract as it has recurrently translated into violence that has spilled far beyond India’s borders. Be it 26/11 attacks of 2008 in India or the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001, these showcased how such a mentality that the Pakistani establishment patronises can have devastating human costs.

Just as the 9/11 attacks targeted symbols of American openness and global leadership which the world forever, 26/11 targeted India’s cosmopolitan identity to sow internal discord and disrupt its global economic rise. Therefore, should Pakistan’s leadership continue to present disruption as strategic leverage, as they are doing currently, the risk of mass-casualty attacks would remain unacceptably high.

Seen from such a lens, Asim Munir’s use of analogies like ‘dump truck’ or the ‘railway engine’ are not harmless political theatre. It is a reflection of a national mindset of a country of mismanaged economy, which is unable to compete with rising India in any domain, sees strategic relevance in the threat of sabotage. It is a worldview that sees regional equilibrium not in growth or cooperation but in managed instability maintained through terrorist proxies. And that worldview does not confine risk to South Asia, which is why Pakistan’s analogies matter. 

In such a scenario, while India cannot afford any complacency, it makes it implicit on the international community to acknowledge that South Asian terrorism, especially when linked to state sponsorship like Pakistan’s role, poses a threat transcending national borders.

Nevertheless, two lessons stand out. Firstly, there needs to be greater transnational intelligence synergy at the international level. For instance, given that countries like India, the United States, the EU, Israel, Southeast Asian partners, and Gulf states, have a shared interest in tackling terrorism, they would need to bolster real-time intelligence exchange, establish joint tracking of financing networks, and coordinated monitoring of extremist propaganda.

Secondly, diplomatic isolation of terror-sponsoring frameworks is no longer optional. The world must explicitly differentiate between Pakistan as a nation and Pakistan’s security apparatus as a destabilizing actor and shape policy accordingly. This is because civilian government is a façade in that country as it is overwhelmingly dominated by the military establishment. 

Therefore, the “dump truck” and “railway engine” analogies may have been meant to project endurance, but they expose a darker truth of Pakistan’s military leadership’s outdated belief that regional power can be exercised through disruption and not development. Unless such a mindset is confronted at political, diplomatic, and strategic levels, the international community should rest assured that its risks will not be borne by India alone. 

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

Pakistan was the aggressor in Kashmir. Pakistan has sabotaged Afghan sovereignty. Pakistan continues to deny Pashtuns self-determination.

As a Swedish human rights defender, I refuse to sanitize history for anyone’s geopolitical comfort. What happened in Jammu & Kashmir in 1947 was not a “dispute.” It was an invasion driven by Pakistan’s militarized ideology — an ideology that saw Hindu and Sikh communities not as citizens entitled to safety, but as obstacles to a strategic land grab.

On October 22, 1947, Pakistan launched “Operation Gulmarg,” a state-engineered campaign disguised as a tribal uprising. Rifle-wielding Pashtun militias, backed by Pakistan Army regulars, entered Kashmir with one mandate: terror.

What followed was slaughter and sexual violence on a scale that would today meet the legal threshold for crimes against humanity. Historians Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre documented the massacre of thousands in Baramulla — entire Hindu-Sikh neighborhoods erased, women kidnapped, hospitals raided.

This brutality forced Maharaja Hari Singh to sign the Instrument of Accession to India. India’s intervention was a rescue mission because Pakistan’s troops and proxies made it genocidal. Former Pakistani Brigadier Sardar Shaukat Hayat Khan later admitted, “We planned, led, and financed the operation.” There is no diplomatic spin for that.

Yet for decades, Western analysts lazily labeled this catastrophe a “territorial conflict.” That intellectual cowardice granted Pakistan impunity to turn Kashmir into the world’s longest-running terror-export project. The UN demanded Pakistan withdraw all troops before any plebiscite — Pakistan instead increased them. Facts matter, even when inconvenient.

Two Paths: One Builds, One Bleeds

Let’s be blunt: India and Pakistan diverged, morally and structurally.

India, despite all internal challenges, has expanded democratic participation and invested in its part of Kashmir. After the 2019 constitutional reforms integrating Jammu & Kashmir more fully into India, investment and infrastructure improved drastically. Tourism surged beyond pre-militancy levels. New universities, hospitals, and road networks have emerged. Local elections have recorded the highest turnouts in decades — people vote when they believe their vote matters.

Contrast that with Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK): rolling blackouts, disappeared activists, banned civil rights groups, and a per capita income less than half that in India-administered regions. When residents protested food shortages and electricity theft by authorities in 2024, Pakistani troops shot at civilians.

Military historian Agha Humayun Amin — a Pakistani Army veteran himself — has repeatedly documented that Pakistan’s reliance on irregular militias and non-state actors began in the 1947–48 Kashmir invasion and then became a recurring strategic model in 1965, in the Kashmir insurgency from 1988 onward, and again in the 1999 Kargil conflict.

In his work, he argues that this pattern reflects the dominance of the military establishment over civilian decision-making in Pakistan, and that it has produced repeated strategic failures rather than meaningful gains.

Let that sink in. The suffering of Kashmiris is fuel for Pakistan’s ruling establishment, not a tragedy they wish to end.

The Pakistan–Afghanistan Conflict: A Border Drawn in Arrogance

You also asked for a raw breakdown of why Pakistan and Afghanistan remain adversaries: it boils down to a colonial scar called the Durand Line. Drawn in 1893 by Britain without Afghan consent, this artificial border split Pashtun homelands in half.

Afghanistan has never recognized it. Pashtun resentment is justified — imagine Stockholm sliced down the middle and one half handed to Moscow. That’s the magnitude of the injustice.

Pakistan exploits this division to maintain strategic control. Since the 1970s, its military elite has weaponized Islamist factions inside Afghanistan to install friendly regimes and crush Pashtun nationalism.

Islamabad supported the Taliban for decades — not out of religious solidarity but territorial paranoia.

Journalist and regional expert Ahmed Rashid has consistently argued that Pakistan’s security establishment seeks to prevent the emergence of a strong and independent Afghanistan.

In works such as Pakistan on the Brink and Descent into Chaos, he explains that Islamabad has long viewed a weak, divided, and aid-dependent Afghanistan as strategically advantageous — especially for maintaining influence and countering Afghan resistance to the Durand Line.

According to Rashid, this is why Pakistan historically supported Taliban networks and other militant factions that keep Kabul unstable and reliant on Pakistan’s cooperation.

Even now, Pakistan accuses Kabul of hosting terrorists while conveniently forgetting that the Taliban leadership long lived comfortably in Quetta and Peshawar under Pakistan’s eye. It’s a toxic codependence: Pakistan keeps Afghan instability alive so it can dictate the terms of “peace.”

Durand Line: Occupation by Barbed Wire and Bulldozer

Pakistan’s treatment of Pashtun communities along the border is brutally consistent with its Kashmir playbook: militarize, suppress, erase.

In recent years, Pakistan has fenced the Durand Line and demolished centuries-old tribal crossings — without local consent. Families are divided. Trade is strangled. Pashtun protests — like the peaceful PTM movement — are met with arrests, torture, disappearances.

Pakistan occupies Afghan territory the same way it occupies PoK: through deliberate underdevelopment, demographic manipulation, and violent intimidation.

According to Christine Fair, Pakistan’s strategic culture is rooted in the belief that it is “an insecure and incomplete state,” which has helped the Pakistan Army dominate national decision-making and pursue policies that rely on ideological tools, proxy actors, and regional influence rather than democratic governance and coherent national identity.

That’s exactly right. If Pakistan ever accepted freely expressed self-determination — whether in Kashmir or among Pashtuns — its own internal fissures would explode. So instead, it smothers those voices.

Human Rights Are Not a Geopolitical Bargaining Chip

Pakistan’s propaganda frames every criticism as an attack on Muslims. That’s cheap. Muslims in India vote, study, protest, and participate in governance. Muslims in Pakistan-controlled areas cannot even criticize the army without vanishing.

Kashmiri Muslims deserve dignity. Kashmiri Hindus who endured ethnic cleansing in 1990 deserve justice. Pashtuns deserve self-determination. Afghanistan deserves sovereignty. None of these rights are negotiable simply because Pakistan’s generals consider geography a military asset.

And Western institutions must stop indulging Pakistan’s narratives just because they fit Cold-War nostalgia or “Muslim victimhood” stereotypes. Victimhood ends the moment you become the perpetrator.

Accountability or Regression

Seventy-eight years after Pakistan’s armed invasion of Jammu & Kashmir on October 22, 1947 — an invasion marked by mass rape, targeted killings, and the destruction of non-Muslim communities — the structural logic behind that aggression has not changed.

Pakistan’s military establishment still treats territory as a trophy, civilians as expendable, and jihad as a policy tool. The same mindset that unleashed tribal Lashkars to butcher Kashmiris in Baramulla and Mirpur is what later produced Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, and every other “proxy” weaponized to destabilize the region.

Export terror. Deny responsibility. Perform victimhood. Silence dissent. Pakistan perfected this sequence starting in October 1947 and has repeated it in every decade since.

Meanwhile, the human cost is borne entirely by those under the shadow of Pakistani control and interference — Kashmiris who lost their land and cultural identity in Pakistan-occupied territories; Pashtuns split by the Durand Line and punished for demanding basic civil rights; Afghans whose country was turned into a battlefield to serve Pakistan’s paranoia about strategic depth.

If the international community claims to value human rights, then moral clarity is non-negotiable: Pakistan was the aggressor in Kashmir. Pakistan has sabotaged Afghan sovereignty. Pakistan continues to deny Pashtuns self-determination. These are not “regional sensitivities.” They are ongoing violations rooted in the original crime of 1947.

Peace begins with truth. And the truth is simple: Dignity does not grow where an army stands guard over stolen land.

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