Pakistan's deep state

There is an invisible clique that ensures that certain ideas and issues are never compromised. Ayesha Siddiqa, senior fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College in London, and author of the acclaimed Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy, gives her views on this invisible entity

- As told to Sanjib Kr Baruah

OVER THE YEARS, and especially after the post-Pahalgam conflict with India, elements in the Inter-Services Intelligence have grown bigger and more powerful. And so, my argument is that any Pakistan general who ever tries to cross the red lines will get knocked down. And those red lines are not political or domestic. They are more geopolitical.

There is a deep state sitting within the military, which doesn’t allow the top leadership to cross a certain line. And for me as a Pakistani, that is a matter of concern. You will not get the same answer from somebody else who, like me, also has expertise on the military. We don’t know how this deep state network works. This is a group that comes together to get rid of a leader.

For example, in their mind, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto crossed the line. In one of the last interviews before she left for exile to Dubai, she was asked if she would hand over A.Q. Khan (father of Pakistan's atomic weapons programme) to the US if they asked for him. She said, "Yes." She crossed the line. I think getting rid of Benazir was an institutional decision. (Benazir was assassinated in a bomb explosion in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007).

It needs a careful study at your (India’s) end and our end as well. How does that deep state within the military operate? That mechanism needs to be understood.