The Field Marshal’s baton has been dusted off again. Not from the echoes of a great war, not from a hard-earned national victory, but from the quiet corridors of unchecked power where applause comes easy and questions never arrive. The burden of Ayub Khan’s Field Marshal legacy was already heavy. This new elevation adds no glory to history—it merely adds weight to silence.
The Constitution? Torn into a handkerchief, waved when needed and discarded when not. The President, the Supreme Commander in name only, is now a ceremonial silhouette, signing what he’s handed, commanding nothing. The Chairman Joint Chiefs? Invisible. The Air Force, which bore the burden of real skies in real time, watches from the sidelines. There are no medals for those wings, no speeches for that defiance. Instead, a new centre of gravity emerges—not grounded in merit or necessity, but in myth.
This was not a recognition of service. It was a rewriting of symbolism. An attempt not to salute accomplishment, but to immortalize hierarchy.
History, of course, remembers these things.
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When rulers gaze into the mirror instead of history’s measure, empires shrink. Caligula appointed his horse as senator—not out of affection for animals, but to mock the very idea of shared governance. Napoleon crowned himself, pushing the Pope aside, because no higher hand could be allowed to touch his head. Reza Shah Pahlavi invented titles like “Arya Mehr,” as if heritage alone granted sanctity. Hitler declared himself Führer, blending state and self into one dark abstraction. Saddam Hussein, wrapped in a cult of personality, awarded himself medals on religious holidays. Gaddafi took no title officially, but ruled Libya through sheer narrative control, branding himself “Leader of the Revolution” while institutions decayed beneath him.
What united these rulers was not vision, but vanity. Not reform, but reinforcement of their own myth. In their courts, law bent to applause, and judgment was issued not by jurists but by loyalists.
And they all fell. Not at the hands of foreign invasions, but under the weight of their own delusions.
They tried to master time—but time walks alone. Their palaces are now relics, their portraits dulled, their medals encased behind museum glass. Their names, once thunderous, now echo in empty halls and forgotten anniversaries.
Why recall these fallen empires now?
Because the present has begun to resemble those faded frames. Because once again, the republic seems less like a state and more like a stage. Because somewhere along the way, we traded substance for symbolism, and forgot that titles are not crowns—they are responsibilities.
In this elevation to Field Marshal, what did we reward? Was there a war won, a doctrine proven, a moment of national transcendence? Or was it simply the final flourish of a long orchestration, designed to make permanence feel official?
This is not how a democracy behaves. This is how democracies erode—slowly, quietly, with medals in one hand and mourning in the other.
And what of Parliament? Its benches sit heavy with silence. The courts, wearied and bowed, offer the ritual nod. The media, too used to spectacle, packages the ceremony into highlight reels. And the people, battered by inflation and apathy alike, turn to private distractions. No one asks the questions anymore. Or if they do, they ask them quietly—because in this theatre, even grief sounds like sedition.
Let it be said clearly: elevation without justification is a theft—not of process, but of principle. When merit is replaced by myth, when history is crafted by decree, when power rewards itself in mirrors, a nation loses more than its direction. It loses its meaning.
Look around. The federation is brittle. Institutions have become accessories. Politics is reduced to pageantry. And in this hollowing, authority consolidates not by service, but by spectacle.
We are told it is ceremonial. That it is just a symbol. But symbols are never “just” anything in countries that still remember what republics are supposed to be. Symbols shape narratives, and narratives define what is allowed—and what is erased.
What precedent does this set? What message does it send to the colonels in waiting, to the next generation of commanders and civilians alike? That in Pakistan, the way to honour is not by battle or bravery, but by staying the course of power long enough to crown yourself within it?
It is not anger that one feels—but grief. Grief for what this country could have been. For what it still pretends to be. For the citizens who are told this is normal, and for the children who will one day read about this and ask why no one spoke.
Perhaps we are too tired to resist. Perhaps we are now a people who accept applause as accountability. The elevation of a Field Marshal in today’s Pakistan should have caused introspection, not celebration. It should have revived old debates about civil supremacy, institutional overreach, and the myth of invincibility.
Instead, it passed like a breeze—decorative, dull, and dangerous.
We must ask ourselves: who owns the right to honor? Who decides what service means? And if democracy is not vigilant in guarding its rituals and rank, then what is left to defend?
This is not just about a title. It is about a slow unravelling of republican dignity. It is about a system where truth is trimmed to fit uniforms, and history rewritten to flatter the present. It is about the quiet retreat of legitimacy behind the drumbeat of ceremony.
Tell me, motherland, who rewrote the stars? Who altered the lines of destiny so that applause replaced accountability, and titles became self-bestowed blessings? And how long will your children remain spectators, while scripts are rewritten in silence?
Until we ask these questions—not in whispers, but in public, not with fear, but with conscience—we will keep handing out medals while losing the meaning behind them. And the curtain will never fall, because the play no longer ends. It simply loops—one title, one ribbon, one silence at a time.
The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.