Opinion | As Pakistan Amends Its Constitution, It Unmasks Its Deep State

What the amendment is aiming to do is already happening. The army has long played a major role in politics, the judiciary has long been under pressure, the provinces for years have been squeezed on finances and powers.

From where I stand across the Pir Panjal in a Kashmir that still breathes with hope as part of the world’s largest democracy I watch with a mixture of relief and sorrow what is happening in Pakistan. I am grateful that I am free from the kind of oppression that the people of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan have endured under the Pakistani government and its deep state machinery. While scrolling through comments on X one evening I came across a Pakistani citizen who wrote, this amendment is the burial of our constitution, and felt I had to write this piece.

What the proposed 27th Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan attempts is, in essence, nothing new for Pakistan. The country has long suffered from a military deep state complex hidden behind civilian façades, with judicial and provincial autonomy eroded quietly and relentlessly. What this amendment does is give a legal and constitutional shape to what was already being done illegally. It strengthens federal control, reduces provincial rights, curtails judicial independence and embeds the armed forces deeper into governance. For instance, the draft bill proposes changes to Article 243 regarding military command, the creation of a Federal Constitutional Court, and reforms to judge transfers and provincial finances.

I remember following reports and discussions about a midnight session of parliament that approved major changes with hardly any real debate. That moment felt surreal and farcical. The judiciary was treated like a rubber stamp, and the provincial federating units were treated like afterthoughts. Now, under this amendment, those scenes will not just be the exception, they will become part of the constitutional order. The clause that empowers the Judicial Commission to transfer high court judges without real consent harkens back to jokes in legal circles about how the courts of Pakistan had become hunted houses where judges would shift seats overnight.

From my vantage in Kashmir I cannot help but feel the irony of a country that criticises others for violations of rights while enshrining in its own constitution the tools of oppression. Pakistan warns the world, preaches justice and fairness, yet here it is formalising centralised power, deepening the grip of its military on civilian affairs, and making the provinces mere shadows in the federation. If a banana republic is defined by strongman rule dressed up in democratic clothes, then Pakistan is proposing to wear that label openly.

Let me share an anecdote. While reading comments on X very lately, I came across videos and posts showing parliamentarians being shepherded into the assembly, cameras off, lights dimmed, vote count rapid, fuss minimal. People were commenting on how surreal it looked, like an assembly of school children waiting for a lesson from the teacher. That image stayed with me because now the 27th Amendment will give that scene constitutional legitimacy. And the joke that used to be whispered in legal circles about courts opening at midnight and decisions emerging with lights on then off now becomes statute, becomes regular procedure. Another example, while following news and discussions online, showed how Islamabad had modernised its constitution and promised more federal integration for Gilgit Baltistan. The reactions of people from the north were telling, the awkward shuffles, the unwilling smirks in comment sections, because they knew what modernisation really meant, fewer rights, less autonomy, more rule from the centre and the army. Now, the 27th Amendment is precisely that modernisation. And I say thank you for being on this side of the Line of Control.

What the amendment is aiming to do is already happening. The army has long played a major role in politics, the judiciary has long been under pressure, the provinces for years have been squeezed on finances and powers. What this proposed change does is not so much reinvent as codify. Pakistan’s problems with democracy have never been about lack of laws but about lack of respect for them. Now the respect for democracy will dissipate further when the constitution itself becomes the vehicle of the deep state rather than the check on it.

In Kashmir I have seen how life changes when power becomes law and law becomes power. I have watched friends arrested without reason, families displaced, voices silenced during the peak times of terrorism in 1990s. I live with those memories. I write this to say that when a nation who already lacks moral high ground preaches justice and freedom to others, we must refuse to be mistaken for supporters of that narrative. Pakistan should not be in the business of teaching others about fairness when it is dismantling those very foundations at home.

The amendment is, for all its facade of reform, in fact a consolidation of the few over the many. It is a formal invitation to authoritarianism inside a constitutional shell. I, as a Kashmiri woman who values autonomy, rights and dignity, condemn it. I am grateful to live where I live, but the gratitude comes with a responsibility, to watch, to write, to speak. Because the shape of constitutions matters. The silent undoing of democracy matters. The world should not let this pass without scrutiny.

The writer is a female activist and can be reached at inkpenandpoetry@gmail.com