Pakistan has recorded its worst internal security deterioration in over a decade under Army Chief General Asim Munir, according to a detailed analysis published by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). The report, released in July 2025, argues that Munir's hard-security doctrine — built on military sweeps, mass arrests, and narrative control — has deepened instability rather than resolved it.

The Security Data Behind the Claim

According to figures cited from the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS), militant attacks in Pakistan rose sharply year-on-year under Munir's tenure: from 380 attacks in 2022 to 645 in 2023, 908 in 2024, and 1,066 in 2025. PICSS assessed that 2025 recorded the highest number of militant attacks since 2014, the highest security-force fatalities since 2011, and the worst civilian death toll since 2015.

Munir was elevated to the rank of Field Marshal in 2025, yet the security indicators during his tenure present a sharply different picture from the image of a stabilising military commander that official narratives have cultivated.

The Hard-Security Model and Its Failures

When Munir assumed command in 2022, Pakistan was already grappling with renewed militancy, unrest in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and deteriorating relations with Afghanistan. Rather than pursuing political accommodation, the military deepened its reliance on coercive tools: cross-border strikes, bans on political organisations, centralised army control, and mass detentions.

The MEMRI report states: 'The contradiction is structural, not cosmetic, and sits at the center of Munir's security approach. Abroad, Pakistan speaks the language of ceasefire, dialogue and mediation. At home, the state relies on coercion, bans, arrests, disappearances, military sweeps and collective punishment.'

The report further notes that Balochistan remains politically alienated, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa remains volatile, the former tribal belt remains heavily militarised, and relations with Afghanistan have escalated from diplomatic tension to repeated armed confrontations.

Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and the JAAC Crackdown

The coercive approach has also been applied in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). Protests near Rawalakot and Muzaffarabad in June 2025 turned violent after the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) — a civil-society group demanding political and economic rights — was banned under anti-terror legislation. The crackdown drew criticism from rights organisations and added another layer to what the MEMRI report describes as Pakistan's compounding internal crisis.

Narrative Management Over Accountability

Human Rights Watch (HRW) separately assessed that Pakistani authorities in 2025 used vague and overly broad laws to intensify crackdowns on media freedom, political opposition, and civil society. The MEMRI report draws a direct line between this information control and the failure to address root causes of militancy.

'Every major failure is reframed as a foreign conspiracy, every protest is treated as a security threat, and every military escalation is projected as national resolve. But narrative control cannot substitute for public security,' the MEMRI report noted. 'The result is a state that polices criticism more aggressively than it resolves the conditions producing militancy.'

Critics argue that the same military leadership that presents itself as a mediator between Iran and Washington has been unable — or unwilling — to create political space for its own Baloch, Pashtun, and Kashmiri citizens. As militant attacks continue to rise and civilian casualties mount, the gap between Pakistan's international posture and its domestic security reality appears to be widening.