One year after Operation Sindoor — India's military response to the 22 April 2025 terror attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir — Pakistan continues to grapple with worsening political instability, a fragile economy, and an entrenched military dominance over civilian governance, according to a detailed assessment by One World Outlook.

The report characterises the four-day conflict of May 2025 as a turning point that deepened, rather than resolved, Pakistan's pre-existing structural crises — even as Islamabad's leadership worked to project an external image of resilience and strategic relevance.

Military Consolidation Over Civilian Governance

Under Pakistani Army Chief Asim Munir, the military has tightened its grip on core state decisions, according to the report. Political disputes are increasingly framed as security concerns, with the report describing a pattern of 'replacing governance with military management' — most visibly in Balochistan province and other restive regions.

The assessment cites recurring instances of mass arrests, enforced disappearances, and politically motivated legal proceedings against opposition figures and activists. These trends, it argues, reflect a measurably shrinking democratic space in the country.

'The 2025 war reinforced the military's centrality by allowing it to present itself as the guardian of national sovereignty, but it did not resolve underlying grievances about federal power sharing, provincial autonomy, or civil-military imbalances,' the report noted.

Economic Fragility: Inflation, Poverty, and Debt

The timing of the conflict compounded what the report describes as an already severe economic crisis. According to its analysis, Pakistan recorded negative growth in the period, with inflation running at approximately 6 per cent in FY25 and a poverty rate exceeding 42 per cent — affecting more than 100 million people.

The report warns that these conditions leave 'little fiscal room for post-conflict reconstruction or social protection,' raising questions about Islamabad's capacity to absorb the financial costs of the standoff. Looming debt obligations add a further layer of pressure on an economy that was already under an IMF programme before hostilities began.

Social Emergency: Children, Health, and Displacement

At the societal level, the report flags what it terms an education and health emergency. Approximately 23 million children are out of school in Pakistan, while child stunting reportedly affects around 40 per cent of children. Preventable diseases are said to claim more than a thousand children's lives per day, according to the report's cited data.

Postwar uncertainty has aggravated these conditions, particularly in border communities. Residents of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Balochistan, the report notes, widely perceive that they bear the heaviest costs of conflict without receiving any of its 'supposed strategic benefits.'

The Gap Between Narrative and Reality

Perhaps the report's sharpest observation is the widening divergence between Pakistan's external messaging and its internal condition. Civil unrest persists alongside long-standing demands for greater autonomy or outright independence in Sindh and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir — demands the war did nothing to address.

'One year on, the gap between Pakistan's domestic troubles and its external narrative of resilience and victory has become a defining feature of its postwar reality,' the One World Outlook report stated.

As the first anniversary of Operation Sindoor approaches, analysts will be watching whether Islamabad's civil-military tensions, economic pressures, and social fault lines converge into a more acute crisis — or whether the military's narrative management continues to hold.