There is a peculiar stillness about Pakistan today, the kind that comes after a storm yet carries the scent of more turbulence ahead. With its most popular leader, Imran Khan, in Adiala jail, Field Marshal Asim Munir in full command and Shehbaz Sharif, a Prime Minister in name only, in attendance, the flotilla of a failed democracy sails on. For India, which has just witnessed a deadly terrorist attack in Pahalgam followed by Operation Sindoor, the domestic churn across the border is not a distant spectacle; it is a strategic factor that will increasingly shape the Subcontinent’s fragile equilibrium.

Khan’s downfall has been dramatic even by Pakistan’s standards, marked by corruption convictions, a campaign of delegitimisation by the military, and efforts by the state to fracture his part

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