By: Junaid S Ahmad
The ruling elite understands perfectly well that it is not facing a narrowly sectarian reaction. It is facing something far more dangerous to its survival: the possibility that Pakistanis across sectarian lines recognise the same structure of subordination, the same external alignments, and the same internal cowardice masquerading as prudence.
Politics asks why a state that invokes sovereignty in speeches becomes timid before Washington and ferocious before its own citizens. Politics reveals that the men who posture as guardians of the nation are, in practice, wardens of dependency.
This is why sectarianization remains such a prized weapon of Muslim ruling elites. Since 1979, the central objective has been to prevent the Iranian Revolution from being understood as what it was: not a Shia event, but a political one.
General Asim Munir’s reported effort to force Pakistani Shias into an absurd binary — submit silently as “good Pakistanis” or leave for Iran — is not statesmanship. It is sectarian intimidation in the service of geopolitical obedience.
It is the language of a military ruler who knows that public opposition to the US-Israeli assault on Iran is not confined to Shias and must therefore be falsely sectarianised before it becomes politically unmanageable.
The Pakistani security state wants this moment to be interpreted as a Shia-Sunni issue because it cannot survive it being understood as a political confrontation between an illegitimate, collaborationist ruling structure and a population that increasingly refuses to accept it.
The issue is not sectarian identity. It is widespread opposition to Zionist war, Western hegemony, Gulf-backed reaction, and the domestic apparatus that enforces these alignments.
This piece originally appeared in Middle East Monitor. Image via Gulf News.
