“A (Hafiz) Sultan dreamed day-long of Peace,
Then while his Rivals' armies grew:
They changed his Day-dreams into sleep -
The Peace, methinks, he never knew.” 🇵🇰

So on paper its victory is total. Any mobilisation, whether by PTI or PTM or by Baloch nationalists has been suppressed by brute force and blood…
Yet when you talk to people, there is this sense of unease in the air. As if the Emperor has no clothes.
I guess time will tell…

The Army senior ranks have been purged. The retired personnel have been silenced. The media has by and large succumbed. The PPP/PMLN has accepted its loss of legitimacy and public support in exchange for crumbs and settling scores. The judiciary has been emasculated.

A coalition of proxies in party’s/bureaucracy/media accepted this arrangement in the belief that working through institutions would lead to a responsive state.
That coalition has collapsed over the last 3 years.
Yet, despite that the state has held on to power.

This was the approach the Pakistani state took towards areas seen as the periphery. The unofficial social contract with the ‘centre’ or mainstream, that they’d look the other way in exchange for western backed patronage & a degree of representation.

And a pony all my own

And a little lamb quite
clean and tame,
That I can take to town:
And when I'm getting really old,—
At 28 or 9—
I shall buy a little orphan-girl
And bring her up as mine.”

BY LAURENCE ALMA-TADEMA