How conflict with India helped boost the Pakistan military’s domestic image

Islamabad, Pakistan – On May 9, 2023, thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets across major cities, targeting both public and private properties, especially those affiliated with the powerful Pakistani military.

Among the targets were the army’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, the residence of a top military commander in Lahore, which was set ablaze, and several other installations and monuments.

The demonstrators, supporters of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), were protesting the arrest of their leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was detained at the Islamabad High Court on corruption charges.

Though Khan was released in less than 48 hours, the protests marked an unprecedented challenge to the military’s dominance, which has long been regarded as the most powerful and influential entity in Pakistan, wielding its authority in most spheres.

Almost exactly two years later, on May 11, 2025, thousands once again took to the streets, but this time in celebration – and praise – of the military.

India and Pakistan have each claimed wins in their brief but intense military clashes last week, during which they launched attacks on each other’s facilities on a scale unseen since their 1971 war.

What is clearer is the domestic impact of the near-war in Pakistan: a sharp surge in support for the military, which is viewed as having defended the country against Indian aggression.

A Gallup Pakistan survey conducted between May 11 and 15 showed that 96 percent of more than 500 respondents believed Pakistan had won the conflict.

Initial data and survey trends shared exclusively with Al Jazeera showed 82 percent rated the military’s performance as “very good”, with fewer than 1 percent expressing disapproval. Most significantly, 92 percent said their opinion of the military improved as a result of the conflict.

‘Black Day’ to ‘The Day of the Righteous Battle’

On May 11, a day after United States President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, cities across Pakistan were filled with people riding cars and motorbikes, honking horns and playing patriotic songs. They were waving the national flag and posters praising the military, particularly its chief, General Syed Asim Munir.

There was jubilation in the air, and relief. For four days before that, Pakistan had been locked in a tense military confrontation with archrival India, the latest chapter of a conflict that analysts say has long served as the principal raison d’être for the country’s military.

On May 7, more than two weeks after gunmen killed 26 civilians in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, India, blaming Islamabad for the attack, launched missiles at multiple sites in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Pakistan’s Punjab province, killing at least 51 people, including 11 soldiers and several children.

Over the following three days, the two nuclear-armed nations launched missiles, drones and artillery at each other, bringing 1.6 billion people in the subcontinent to the brink of a full-fledged war.

After the ceasefire was announced, Pakistan’s government declared May 10 as “The Day of Righteous Battle”. This was a stark contrast to May 9, 2023, which the government had described as a “Black Day”, because of the violence unleashed by Khan’s supporters against public and private infrastructure.

Six days after the ceasefire, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif hailed the military’s actions as a “golden chapter in military history”.

“This is a victory of the Armed Forces of Pakistan as well as the self-reliant, proud and dignified Pakistani nation. The entire nation is standing by the armed forces like a wall made of lead,” Sharif said in a statement, in a reference to the name of the operation against India, “Bunyan Marsoos“, an Arabic phrase meaning “a structure made of lead”.

Imprisoned ex-premier Khan, who has been in jail since August 2023, also issued a statement through his lawyers, saying the military needs public support more than ever.

“The morale of the nation becomes the strength of the armed forces. That is why I’ve consistently emphasised that we must not isolate our people, and we must breathe life back into our justice system,” Khan said, according to a message posted on his account on X, the social media platform, on May 13.

Though released soon after his arrest in May 2023, Khan was arrested again in August 2023 and remains in custody, along with his wife, Bushra Bibi.

‘Reverence turned to fear’

Since Pakistan’s independence from British colonial rule in August 1947, its military – especially the army – has remained the most dominant force in the country.

Maria Rashid, a lecturer in politics and international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, said the military has long portrayed itself as “the saviour and defender of Pakistan’s physical borders but also its ideological frontiers”.

This dominance has been cemented by four military coups and decades of direct and indirect rule. Before retiring after his six-year-long tenure, former Pakistani army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, in his farewell address, conceded in 2022 that Pakistan’s military had meddled in politics for decades. He also promised that in the future, the army would steer clear of interfering in Pakistan’s democratic sphere.

Yet the military’s stranglehold over the public’s goodwill has been tested in recent years.

When Imran Khan first became prime minister in 2018, the former cricket star turned-philanthropist-turned politician spoke of how his government and the army were “on one page”.

But like many of his predecessors, that relationship soured. In April 2022, Khan was ousted via a parliamentary vote of no confidence. Yet, unlike previous leaders, Khan fought back publicly, accusing the military and the US of directly engineering his removal. The military and the US have both vehemently and repeatedly denied those allegations.

His confrontations with the military escalated, including after General Munir assumed leadership in November 2022. Khan and the PTI launched a campaign of defiance, leading to dozens of criminal cases, including sedition against him and his colleagues.

The May 9 riots in 2023 triggered a sweeping crackdown against the PTI. Thousands of party workers were arrested by the police, with more than 100 subsequently tried in military courts, many receiving prison sentences.

While the military has faced allegations of domestic repression before, Rashid said that the backlash after Khan’s ouster was unprecedented.

“It was a fall from grace, and it was vocal. It also coincided with the rise of social media, where the military found it difficult to control narratives,” she said.

“If earlier, there was reverence for the military, lately, it has been just fear,” she added.

‘Indispensable military’

The Pakistani military’s centrality has also been shaped by repeated wars with India – in 1948, 1965, 1971, and 1999 – primarily over Kashmir, which both nations claim in full but control only parts of.

For Muhammad Badar Alam, a political analyst, the sense of a perpetual threat posed by India is “one of the fundamental factors” that gave the military a prominent position in society, politics and governance.

Since their last conventional war in 1999, India has accused Pakistan of fomenting violence and “terrorism” on its soil by supporting violent elements, particularly in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Pakistan denies the charges, saying it offers only moral and diplomatic support for Kashmiris.

The last quarter of a century has seen multiple attacks inside India, especially the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which more than 160 people died, which India said was planned and executed by armed groups in Pakistan.

Islamabad acknowledged that the perpetrators of the attack might have been Pakistani, but rejected India’s allegations that its government or military had any role in the assault on Mumbai.

Ties between India and Pakistan nosedived further following the rise to power of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014.

Since then, India has responded to armed attacks on its soil by striking inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in 2016, 2019 and now, in 2025.

Lahore-based Alam told Al Jazeera that Modi’s hardened stance has helped the Pakistani military justify its power.

“As long as the threat from the east exists, the military remains indispensable,” he said.

‘War of perception?’

Both sides have made contradictory claims about the recent four-day conflict. Pakistan reported shooting down five Indian fighter jets and emphasised the significance of the US-led ceasefire. Trump urged a resolution of the Kashmir dispute, an issue India insists can only be resolved through bilateral negotiations between India and Pakistan, without third-party involvement.

India claimed deep strikes into Pakistani territory, targeting both alleged hideouts of armed groups and military installations.

Islamabad-based political commentator Arifa Noor said that a conflict with a “next-door neighbour” does rally the citizenry around the state and its armed forces, and this is as true of Pakistan as it is of any other country.

Noor added that while there is no doubt the military in Pakistan is enjoying a groundswell of goodwill, it might be too early to conclusively identify the impact of this on domestic politics.

“Punjab, being on the border, saw the most visible support. But provinces like Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan might view it differently,” she said.

Both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have seen sustained violence. Critics there accuse the military of human rights abuses and enforced disappearances – allegations the Pakistani military denies.

Alam, echoing Noor’s view, also says the outpouring of public support was primarily visible in Punjab, as well as other urban areas of the country.

Alam also said that with Imran Khan still in jail, it is unclear how much the military’s image has changed in the eyes of the former prime minister’s core supporters.

Will popularity surge last?

Analysts warn that despite the “rally around the flag” effect that becomes pronounced in times of international tension, public support for leaders and institutions is typically short-lived.

Niloufer Siddiqui, an associate professor of political science at the University of Albany in New York state, told Al Jazeera that it is unclear how long the military will receive an approval bump from the current crisis. Much, she said, could depend on “Indian rhetoric and whether it continues to be inflammatory”.

Siddiqui further added that it will also depend on the type of rhetoric in which the PTI, which previously was a harsh critic of the military, chooses to engage going forward.

London-based Rashid, who is also the author of Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army, said the big question for Pakistanis going forward would be whether they could draw a distinction between the military’s role at the borders and its involvement in domestic politics.

“We need to be able to call out the involvement of Pakistan Army in politics, but, at the same time, acknowledge that their performance at the border is praiseworthy at this moment,” she said.

Alam, meanwhile, said that the military, too, had lessons to learn from the crisis with India.

“The military must realise that success requires public support. We cannot remain in perpetual war with India,” he said. “We must fix our economy, or it will become an existential issue. It should be a sobering moment.”