The era of presenting a ‘soft image’ of a country is coming to an end. In the last two decades or so, many developing countries — especially those hit hard by terrorism and violence — began shaping advocacy avenues and platforms, through which they tried to establish that the inherent culture of their countries was soft, pluralistic and friendly. 

They bemoaned that their countries were largely misunderstood due to the antics of a handful of violent groups. These countries mostly consisted of Muslim-majority nation states such as Pakistan, Egypt and Algeria that had been facing persistent incidents of Islamist terrorism and religious violence ever since the 1980s. 

Last week, the Pakistan army chief, Gen Asim Munir, told parliamentarians that if Pakistan were to successfully address the challenges posed by rising political, Islamist and ethnic militancy, the country would have to become a ‘hard state.’

In 1999, when a military coup in Pakistan put Gen Parvez Musharraf in power, he cracked down on the country’s two largest parties. But parallel to this, the Musharraf dictatorship also began to initiate programmes designed to broadcast a “soft image” of Pakistan. Attempts were made to mitigate the violent outcomes of tensions that had risen in the polity. These outcomes included sectarian violence, ethnic clashes and the erosion of the last bits of ‘moderate/liberal Islam’ remaining in the country. 

For decades, nations plagued by terrorism and political instability, such as Pakistan, have tried to project a ‘soft image’ to the world. But faced with rising militancy and governance crises, is a shift towards a more authoritarian and centralised state inevitable?

Assured of his power and ‘popularity’, Musharraf not only sidelined political parties that opposed him but also went after sectarian and Islamist groups that were once supported by the state as “strategic assets” to be used in Afghanistan and in India-held Kashmir. However, his regime was highly selective in this because it ‘protected’ some of these assets for possible future missions. But the elimination of others was exhibited as an example of Pakistan yearning to become a “moderate country” again. 

Tourism was promoted and a plethora of modern and traditional cultural activities were encouraged.  These were then broadcast to the world to proliferate a soft image of what, in 2011, the British policy analyst Anatol Lieven would go on to describe as “a hard country.” 

Emboldened by the success (or the perceived success) of these manoeuvres, Musharraf allowed the setting up of private electronic media outlets. He also encouraged the promotion of ‘Sufi’ ethics and doctrines as a way to neutralise the moribund variants of Islamism that had seeped into various public institutions. 

However, in 2007, when faced with pushback from the two major political parties that he had sidelined, and by the resurgence of Islamist and sectarian violence, Musharraf suddenly found himself trapped in the policies that were shaped to strengthen his regime’s soft image.

He realised that he didn’t have enough constitutional leverage, nor any control over the noisy, populist electronic media outlets that he had allowed to mushroom. Some of the most prominent beneficiaries of the regime’s policies that were enacted to portray a soft image of Pakistan included the private electronic media and civil society groups, who then conveniently rose to oppose Musharraf. 

On the other hand, the cultural actors who had also benefitted were largely useless in the battles Musharraf found himself fighting from 2007 onwards. Pakistan had become a ‘soft state’ woven by a dictator who had invested quite a few resources to carve a soft image of a ‘misunderstood’ country. 

The idea of the soft state is rather ambiguous. Even though it may be about a state that is regulated by constitutionalism, the judiciary and the civil society, its softness is often incapable of dealing with serious crises. According to the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, laws and rules are treated rather casually by the people in a soft state. 

The two democratic governments that came to power after Musharraf’s ouster toed similar pro-soft-image policies and were okay with a soft state. This suited them vis-à-vis their problematic relationship with the military. 

This changed a bit though when, in 2015, the parliament agreed to give the military some extraordinary powers to effectively tackle rampant terrorism unleashed by Islamist militants. Therefore, one can presume that between 2015 and 2017, or till the terrorist groups were largely neutralised, Pakistan did become a hard state of sorts. 

However, after 2018, it went back to becoming a soft state, even though there was nothing soft about the way a charismatic maverick (Imran Khan) was facilitated by the military establishment (ME) to come to power. The maverick and his patrons in the then ME launched their own soft-image campaigns by promoting ‘Sufism’, the “correct interpretation of Islam”, and promises of a tolerant “Islamic Welfare State.”

They invited (paid) white men and women to film travelogues in ‘friendly Pakistan.’ Oddest of all was an attempt to ‘rehabilitate’ many hardened anti-state Islamist militants. 

Generally speaking, it is usually authoritarian set-ups that are described as hard states, such as China, North Korea, Russia etc. In this regard, a hard state is denoted by a strong, centralised power and a high capacity to enforce laws and maintain order, often relying on military force and a robust bureaucracy. 

Nevertheless, to Myrdal, a hard state is characterised by strong governance, strong rule of law, and a more disciplined society. He gave the example of European countries. 

In their 2021 book, Hard State, Soft City, Simone Chung and Mike Douglass studied the example of Singapore — a city-state that had remained in the grip of political turmoil for decades before it became a hard state and began to grow into a highly efficient society and vibrant economic power. 

But Chung and Douglass, too, understood the idea of a hard state as an authoritarian or quasi-authoritarian state that constantly regulates political, economic and social affairs from above. 

One can’t say exactly what Gen Asim really meant by the term, ‘hard state.’ Yet, as the current ME-backed government continues to face serious challenges from Islamist and ethnic militants, the judiciary, the media, a troublesome populist party and hostile neighbours, it is likely that Gen Asim was demanding that the current regime invest more powers in the security forces and, for that matter, in itself, so that those succeeding in exploiting the vulnerabilities of a soft state can be tackled in a more effective and decisive manner.

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 30th, 2025