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RETHINKING PAKISTAN’S HIGHER DEFENCE
“From Plato to Nato, the history of command in war consists of an endless quest for certainty…historical commanders have always faced the choice between two basic ways of coping with uncertainty…to construct an army of automatons following the orders of a single man, allowed to do only that which could be controlled; the other, to design organisations and operations in such a way as to enable the former to carry out the latter without the need for continuous control. …the second of these methods has, by and large, proved more successful than the first…”
— Martin van Creveld quoted by William Lind in Manoeuvre Warfare Handbook
“He plunged past with his bayonet towards the green hedge,
King, honour, human dignity, etcetera
Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm
To get out of that blue crackling air
His terror’s touchy dynamite.”
— The Bayonet Charge by Ted Hughes
SITUATING THE ISSUE
Umong other changes brought in by the 27th Constitutional Amendment, one relates to the creation of the office of Chief of Defence Forces (CDF). The position, which is to represent command of all three services, will not exist as an independent office but will be held concurrently by whoever is Chief of the Army Staff, beginning with the current incumbent. The amendment also extends the tenure of the current army chief/CDF as also those who would succeed him.
The issue of the probity of the amendment and the manner in which it was pushed through continues to be debated. The delay in the notification gave rise to much speculation about the grey areas in the draft, which seemed tailored for specific circumstances and person but will impact the Higher Defence Organisation (HDO) and civil-military relations beyond this moment and its politics. Expectedly and rightly, the debate on the political aspects of the amendment should continue.
My purpose here, however, is different and is related to analysing the argument, given by some former generals, that there’s nothing novel about the changes that have been made in the HDO because the issue was long being debated within the organisation and the system. They have argued that, in light of evolving warfare, the imperative for ‘jointness’ — seamless operational coordination among the services — has now been formalised through these changes.
On the face of it, these arguments cannot be faulted. For instance, the need for coordination at all three levels — tactical (where battles are fought), operational (where planning is done to achieve the desired outcomes), and politico-strategic (the highest level that informs the purpose of war as also the direction and intent of the other two levels) — should be obvious. War is not a clash of mobs. It requires disciplined forces that must operate to create synergies. That requires coordination.
The 27th Constitutional Amendment promises streamlined command across the military services by creating the post of Chief of Defence Forces. But neither is this a novel concept, nor is the current interpretation without its issues. History shows that organisational redesign alone cannot overcome the realities of conflict. Ejaz Haider urges revisiting the details of an important and necessary doctrine…
However, agreeing with the obvious or stating it without reference — in this case, to factors that do not fall within the operational domain — is not the same thing as agreeing with the details of how it is to be achieved and why in a particular way and not in another.
Further, while jointness is much talked about, like strategy, a term that has almost become meaningless, it must be problematised. It is neither a magic wand nor even desirable in many battle scenarios. We shall return to that.
At this point, a caveat is in order. What follows is my view. There can be many views. Debates over doctrines and the best courses of action have to continue. Wars usually settle them!
One example is the post-WWI debate in France over static and mobile defences. Critics of the idea of the Maginot Line — a vast French system of concrete fortifications, obstacles and weapon installations built along its eastern borders (Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland) in the 1930s — argued that it symbolised passivity, would be costly and a drain on resources and would not be effective against German manoeuvre warfare. The proponents argued that it would provide a strong defence, a base for counterattack and force the Germans into Belgium, drawing their main thrust into a pre-planned battleground.
As it happened, the real test came with the German offensive. The Germans didn’t attack the main line. They rapidly advanced through the supposedly impassable Ardennes Forest, getting around the line’s northern end. The French, who had committed their best mobile forces to Belgium, had left the Ardennes and the road to Paris vulnerable. The point is that debates over this and that can only be settled when the real test of battle comes.
The second issue is that wars are not linear. Nor do they follow a particular template, at least not for the winning side, which wins precisely because it does something different, unexpected. As the celebrated German Panzer commander Gen Hermann Balck once said, “There can be no fixed schemes. Every scheme, every pattern is wrong. No two situations are identical. That is why the study of military history can be extremely dangerous.”
In other words, the official view remains untested.
Let me begin this discussion with some history related to HDO in this country, take a look at jointness and its attendant problems and square it off with how battles frustrate top-down planning and why it is important to keep things simple.
HAVE WE THOUGHT OF JOINTNESS ONLY NOW?
The short answer is no. We thought of it way back in the 1970s, after realising the organisational failures, both vertically and horizontally, in the 1965 and 1971 Wars. Gen Ehsanul Haq, former Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff and arguably a most experienced officer, wrote an excellent paper (2013) for the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat) on higher defence organisation.
The paper briefly traces the history of why the government of the day established the Joint Staff Headquarters (JSHQ) in March 1976, how and why the centrality of that JSHQ was undermined and what needs to be done to return to what was started in the mid-’70s.
The paper is easily available for anyone interested in reading it, so I won’t go into the details of Gen Haq’s arguments. Two points are important, though. The first is a direct quote from the paper: “Given the political history of Pakistan, unless we build up credible security policy making mechanisms subordinated to Parliament and civilian control, ad hoc and parochial interests would continue to impact our policy formulation processes, undermining critical aspects of our national defence effort [Italics added].”
This, as should be obvious, establishes the principle of civilian control and the fact that, in war’s three levels, the highest is the domain of the civilian principles.
The second point is that jointness did not really require reinventing the wheel. JSHQ was meant precisely for that and, as Gen Haq suggested in 2013, the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) could have been made Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff or, if we like CDF better for some reason, CJCSC could have been renamed CDF or CDS or whatever suits our fancy.
The only point where I disagreed with Gen Haq’s excellent analysis when I first read the paper 12 years ago was his suggestion that “while the Chairman may continue to be from the Army (due to the predominance of land strategy and asymmetry in the size of the services), the Vice Chairman [4-star] may be on rotation between the Navy and the Air Force.”
General Haq’s suggestion is/was in good faith. My disagreement then was based on two factors: JSHQ became dysfunctional precisely because of the army and the praetorian tendency of certain chiefs.
In fact, within 14 months of the reorganisation of high defence, Gen Ziaul Haq mounted his coup, essentially kicking the chessboard to play solitaire. To break that cycle and move away from the army’s primacy, the office was to rotate among the three services.
Second, jointness is not about service size. Just like an army CJCS or a CDF cannot make naval operational strategy and would need the navy’s input, a navy CJCS would need the army’s or air force’s inputs for land and air operations.
Now I have a third objection, given the type of war we have witnessed: non-contact, technical and high-intensity, no ground incursions. (This is not to say there can’t be ground incursions. Small-scale incursions can and would likely happen, but the thrust has generally changed.) If the idea of jointness has to have any meaning in the operational sense, the air force has emerged as the thin end of the wedge and, in any future round, the navy could likely get involved on its own and with dedicated air assets in support from the air force.
Within land forces, ground air defence (AD) and long-range artillery have emerged as the main fighting elements. This is unlikely to change and this is where ground AD will have to be fully integrated with PAF. Cyber is a new element but will be central to many operations.
Given these and other factors, we have to look anew at the traditional centrality of land forces as the backbone of military operations — ie the assertion that the army, given its sheer size, is not just primus inter pares [first among equals] but the dominant force. It is not, from an operational perspective, the politics of the issue notwithstanding.
Critics might point to the Russo-Ukraine War and say land forces are critical. That situation does not obtain between Pakistan and India. Neither has the sustainment capacity for long, meat-grinding wars and both are nuclear armed. The Russo-Ukraine scenario would mean — even if we discount the sustainment factor — that either one or the other will resort to nuclear weapons or else the weapons and the entire concept of deterrence through them has been bunkum.
LET’S TALK JOINTNESS AND COORDINATION
There’s a reason for this. The neatness of ‘jointness’ and coordination on the drawing board must get tested in the messy reality of the battlefield, as it often does.
The US military should know. Their Joint Publication 1, whose latest iteration came in 2023, promises to be “the capstone publication for all joint doctrine, presenting fundamental principles and overarching guidance for the employment of the Armed Forces of the United States.” Yet, we have seen the US military grapple with the contingencies of irregular wars and has often failed strategically, even when winning tactical battles.
A good example is the military presentation of plans. Maps, symbols, arrows, timelines. Units represented by icons. They assume perfect (or at least good) communication, shared situational awareness, adherence to timelines and probable enemy reactions.
But information is never perfect — radios don’t work well in nullah beds. The enemy can be wily and Boyd Cycle you, to quote Lind, which basically refers to US Air Force Col John Boyd’s ‘OODA’ loop — observe, orient, decide, act. Whoever can run the OODA loop faster is better placed. Exercises and simulations try to model friction but they cannot go beyond controlled variables. The reality, when the shooting begins, is about exhausted, scared humans with equipment malfunctioning and everything that can possibly go wrong going wrong.
A supposedly rapid advance on a map becomes a gruelling slog through mud, traffic jams on narrow bridges, or unexpected urban sprawl. If you think this is fiction or unlikely, just recall what happened to the Russian forces advancing on the north-south axis towards Kyiv from Belarus.
The conceptual Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) of the 1980s was thought to reduce and ultimately eliminate the fog of war. The First Gulf War further entrenched this idea. Since then, battlegrounds have made clear to both practitioners and theoreticians that the fog comes in many ways and no one can get rid of it. Cutting-edge technology can help defeat forces in conventional conflicts but the fog sets in when a military tries, as the US did, to grapple with populations.
Technology, however useful, can fail. GPS can be spoofed, software can crash, batteries can die. Ukrainian artillery with GPS-guided HIMARS [High Mobility Artillery Rocket System] rounds realised the Russians were jamming and spoofing their GPS signals. It was back to relying on non-GPS rounds and old-school artillery methods both for battery and counter-battery.
Take logistics. The perfectly synchronised attack can falter when one unit runs out of fuel, ammunition or food, because a supply convoy was ambushed, or the map was read wrong by a unit. Any military officer reading this would nod in agreement with a sad face.
One only has to read reports from the Russo-Ukraine front and even about the genocidal Zionist occupation force. Fear, fatigue, fog (in the case of Donbas, a real one!). Humans are not robots. They get exhausted. Exhaustion degrades decision-making among commanders and the fighting spirit among soldiers.
To top it all. The dastardly enemy has an independent will. He is the greatest source of disorder because, unsurprisingly, he actively seeks to disrupt coordination. He ambushes command posts, attacks supply lines and flanks, jams communications, feints and deceives. What he does can throw everything awry: planned timelines and sequences.
Does this mean planning and coordination are meaningless? No! If anything, they are even more important. As in most endeavours in life, the paradox is that planning is essential precisely because it will go wrong. In other words, coordination is crucial not because it is easy to achieve for the reasons cited above (and they aren’t exhaustive), but because its absence can be catastrophic.
Put another way, it provides a commonly-understood baseline and shared intent for all fighting echelons in that theatre of operations. When communication breaks down, which can often happen, leaders at the tactical level can make decisions based on the operational commander’s intent.
This is what Germans called Auftragstaktik [‘mission-tactics’ or as the US military translates it, ‘mission command’]. The term often misunderstood, like Clausewitz’s schwerpunkt (which is NOT centre of gravity), had its meaning in professionalism and an entire military culture (Prussian and German) as it evolved over a long period of time.
In his Instructions for Large Unit Commanders, Helmut Karl Bernhard von Moltke (the Elder) wrote in 1869: “In general, one does well to order no more than is absolutely necessary and to avoid planning beyond the situation one can foresee. These change very rapidly in war. Seldom will orders that anticipate far in advance and in detail succeed completely to execution. The higher the authority, the shorter and more general will the orders be. The next lower command adds what further precision appears necessary. The detail of execution is left to the verbal order, to the command. Each thereby retains freedom of action and decision within his authority.”
This passage was quoted in ‘How the Germans Defined Auftragstaktik’ by Donald E. Vandergriff, a former US Army major. Vandergriff writes, “The overall commander’s intent is for the member to strive for professionalism. In return, the individual will be given latitude in the accomplishment of their given missions.”
According to Lind, “During 19th-century war games, German junior officers routinely received problems that could only be solved by disobeying orders. Orders themselves specified the result to be achieved, but never the method (Auftragstaktik). Initiative was more important than obedience. Mistakes were tolerated as long as they came from too much initiative rather than too little.”
Today’s wars and their many battles are far more complex. No CDF can stand on high ground like Bonaparte, observe enemy movements and send directives to commanders in the field. Yes, we have satellites and other means to have eyes on the enemy, but command has to be delegated and field commanders have to think on their feet. Nothing has changed on that count and nothing is likely to.
A SYSTEM-LEVEL ANALYSIS
Critics would say: what are you talking about? Jointness is about the three services and making them fight like one unit, not in silos. A higher headquarters, in this case the CDF, will make the plans on the basis of threat assessment so the army, navy and air force can operate seamlessly, communicate with each other, be integrated.
Sounds good. The problem is, wars have different formats. A conventional war is not the same as an irregular war or low-intensity conflict. A conventional, non-contact war (May is an example) is not the same as a ground incursion. A ground incursion at a single point or even multiple points in one theatre is not the same as on a very broad front. The fight is different in the mountains from operations in the plains or the desert. Air operations are not the same as naval operations and vice versa, though air can support both ground troops and naval attack vessels. A short, sharp war is different from a long, attritive war in the trenches, which is what we are witnessing in Ukraine.
This brings into play the issues of training and doctrinal gaps. Different services (army, navy, air force) have different cultures, communication protocols, and priorities. This is a problem which has been analysed and written about a lot within the US military.
Despite the emphasis on jointness, the US military continues to grapple with challenges like integrating complex systems, overcoming bureaucratic silos among services — what’s referred to as stove-piping — adapting to new threats (cyber, grey zone operations) etc. The services also face funding problems where the requirement of modernisation often runs into the problem of readiness. This invariably leads to inter-services friction. True jointness, in addition to other impediments, requires overcoming deep-seated institutional biases.
Again, the point is not that jointness should be ditched. It’s a process. Joint planning forces different services to communicate, reveal their capabilities and limitations, and build (some) shared understanding before the battle. This relationship-building is as valuable as the plan itself. Equally, the plan cannot be taken as a rigid script. At best, it’s a foundation for adaptation whose goal, howsoever difficult, is to adapt together more effectively than the enemy.
Put another way, coordination in real-battle conditions is often a patchwork effort to manage chaos at the operational and tactical levels. The elegant flowchart can only provide design principles. To expect more of it is to assume that one side has perfect information and, therefore, can work out every little detail about the adversary’s moves. That is simply not possible.
Another downside of jointness and creating multiple headquarters that link up with a single office is bureaucratisation.
This problem has been dealt with by various writers in relation to the US military, albeit that’s just one example. Personally, I find Edward Luttwak’s The Pentagon and the Art of War: The Question of Military Reform to be an incisive account. Luttwak highlights how the Pentagon’s immense budget often funds technically impressive but strategically useless weapons systems and is driven by bureaucratic incentives rather than genuine military need.
Reason: large bureaucracies, in this case the Pentagon, prioritise internal processes, career advancement, and complex planning over effective outcomes, leading to waste and strategic blunders. Luttwak coined the “Luttwak Paradox”, which suggests that military efforts often become less effective as they become more complex and technically advanced.
Jointness demands inter-services interface. In reality it means (again the US military’s example) that an individual service’s bureaucracy is not replaced. Instead, a new layer on top of existing bureaucracies is added. As identified by various writers, this means that a commander must navigate not only their own service’s logistics, personnel and acquisition systems but also the protocols, politics and resource battles of the joint structure. What begins with creating agility and clarity ends up doing the opposite: slowing things down.
Complexity in systems is a subject long debated since American sociologist Charles Perrow’s analysis of the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown accident. What’s true of tightly coupled engineering systems and the cascading effect of failure in one spreading through the system is also true — in a different way — of complex human organisations.
A good example of how what begins as an elegant concept can end up badly in the heat of battle was the ‘Systemic Operational Design’ created and introduced into the Zionist Occupation Force by Brig Gen Shimon Naveh, who headed the defunct Israeli Operational Theory Research Institute. The language of the concept, given the complexity it introduced, was never understood by the fighting echelons and their commanders who went to battle Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006.
Success lies not in the most elaborate joint plan, but in creating the conditions where a simple directive, empowered subordinates, and shared awareness can produce coherent action in chaos. The system must be designed not for neatness on the drawing board, but for resilience under stress — and that almost always favours robust simplicity over fragile complexity, to use Lebanese-American writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s phrase.
The challenge is to institutionalise the principles of jointness — shared intent, trust and interoperability — while minimising, to the extent possible, the bureaucratic structures that are supposed to deliver it. The aim is, to use the title of US Gen Stanley McChrystal’s book, create a ‘team of teams’ culture that coordinates organically and is not a rigid, top-down machine that requires constant management. In essence, go back to Elder Moltke’s advice: keep it simple.
EPILOGUE
Let’s recap: if we can make three disparate services with their own roles, systems, training protocols etc to roll together, that’s great. But if such integration is not done intelligently, it can end up defeating the very purpose for which jointness was undertaken.
The other point, as discussed above, is that jointness was conceptualised and a system put in place in 1976. It was made to fail because allowing it to work would have undermined army chiefs and how they control(led) politics. Laying waste to that system, instead of strengthening it had nothing to do with military professionalism.
What 27th Amendment has done is to constitutionalise what was long debated and opposed by proponents of balanced civil-military relations. To cloak it in the shiny garbs of jointness and operational integration is to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes.
Jointness requires input from all services. Given the conduct of war, in most cases, the air force and navy will have a bigger role to play. If we are indeed looking for jointness from an operational, not political, angle then the office of CDF should be separate from the office of army chief, stand on its own and above the offices of service chiefs. And, yes, it should rotate among the three services.
Finally, no matter how sound the planning at the top, battles are fought on the ground. It’s ultimately the commander in the field — at any level — who needs to have the Odyssean metis or what Bonaparte, in a different context, called coup d’œil — the glance that takes in a comprehensive view.
The writer is a journalist interested in security and foreign policies. X: @ejazhaider
Published in Dawn, EOS, December 14th, 2025
Mrs Wilberforce (Katie Johnson) lives alone in a rickety Victorian house near London’s King’s Cross railway station. She rents a room to Professor Marcus (Alec Guinness), who claims to be a musician, and asks to use the room for practice sessions with his string quintet.
But wait. Professor Marcus and his four associates are in fact plotting an armed robbery and plan to use Mrs Wilberforce in their dastardly scheme. What a pleasure it is to revisit The Ladykillers (1955) — a jet-black, peculiarly subversive marriage of genteel English manners and anarchic criminality.
With its cast of eccentrics, dry wit and distinctively British whimsy, this film from London-based Ealing Studios perfectly zig-zags between kind-hearted and creepy. And 70 years on, it is fondly remembered as the closing flourish of the golden age of Ealing comedies.
A comic institution
Ealing Studios, based in the west London suburb of the same name, was founded in 1902, making it the world’s oldest continuously running film studio.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, under the leadership of Michael Balcon, the studio became known for producing a series of comedies that reflected British values, class tensions and post-war anxieties, often in a light-hearted or ironic way.
The Ladykillers, which turned 70 this year, was a darkly comic masterpiece of a film that continues to elate audiences
Films such as Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), Passport to Pimlico (1949) and The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) portrayed a particular brand of British humour: ironic, restrained and, above all, socially observant.
These films gently poked fun at the British class system while celebrating quirky individuals and tight-knit neighbourhoods. As Balcon himself later said: “We made films at Ealing that were good, bad and indifferent, but that were indisputably British. They were rooted in the soil of the country.”
Earlier successes depicted criminal protagonists whose schemes were both ingenious and only slightly morally dubious. The Ladykillers took this tradition to its logical extreme: the criminals were no longer charming anti-heroes but grotesque figures, hapless in their execution of the robbery.
The film’s delicious central irony, in keeping with the Ealing ethos, is that the one person capable of undoing the criminal plot is the least likely: a frail old woman with a kettle and a parrot.
Making a masterpiece
The Ladykillers was written by William Rose, who allegedly dreamt the plot and awoke to write it down. This dreamlike provenance makes its way into the film.
Scottish-American director Alexander Mackendrick, who had previously worked for Ealing on Whisky Galore! (1949) and The Man in the White Suit (1951), gave the film its distinctive atmosphere of part-grotesque fairy tale and part-suburban farce. As Mackendrick once remarked: “The characters are all caricatures, fable figures; none of them is real for a moment.”
Mrs Wilberforce’s house, where most of the action is set, was constructed on an Ealing backlot — a convincing reminder of the sooty urban geography of post-war London. Prague-born cinematographer Otto Heller used shadow and deep contrast to lend a macabre quality to a comedy that often flirts with horror. A perfect example is when Mrs Wilberforce opens the door to the professor for the first time.
Alec Guinness’s performance is a revelation. His waxen features, exaggerated false teeth and vulture-like gestures are a far cry from Obi-Wan Kenobi and George Smiley. He turns Professor Marcus into a grotesque parody of a criminal mastermind.
Guinness is abetted by stalwarts such as Herbert Lom and Danny Green. And Peter Sellers gives a nervy performance as Harry, in a role that would mark the beginning of his rise to Hollywood stardom.
A profoundly moral tale
Professor Marcus and his band of misfits mock the pretensions of criminal sophistication, contrasting them with the quiet rectitude of an old woman who represents a vanishing Britain.
They brilliantly capture the contradictions of 1950s London: the post-war optimism laced with paranoia, social deference mingled with subversion, and a genteel facade barely concealing the chaos beneath. It’s little wonder some critics see this Ealing output as deeply political.
Without spoiling the plot, The Ladykillers concludes with a restorative, comic sense of moral order. The criminal enterprise collapses, not due to law enforcement or clever detection, but because of the gang’s own ineptitude and Mrs Wilberforce’s stubborn innocence and moral clarity.
A beloved film, then and now
The Ladykillers was a critical and commercial smash in the United Kingdom. Critic Penelope Houston applauded its “splendid, savage absurdity.” It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and won Katie Johnson a BAFTA for Best British Actress, aged 77.
The film was remade by the Coen Brothers in 2004, this time with Tom Hanks as a Southern gentleman crook. But this version was widely panned, illustrating just how specific the tone of the original was.
Its reputation has only grown since December 1955, with the British Film Institute ranking it among the best British films of the 20th century.
At one point in the film, Professor Marcus cries out: “We’ll never be able to kill her. She’ll always be with us, for ever and ever and ever, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Just like the stubborn, indomitable spirit of Mrs Wilberforce, The Ladykillers isn’t going anywhere.
The writer is Associate Professor of French Studies at the University of Adelaide in Australia
Republished from The Conversation
Published in Dawn, ICON, December 14th, 2025
The icon Waheed Murad is celebrated every year on his birthday (October 2, 1938) and death anniversary (November 23, 1983). The legendary actor and producer would have turned 87 this year.
As a producer, he was the driving force behind Pakistan’s first Platinum Jubilee film, Armaan. As an actor, he was a trendsetter known for his distinctive style and signature hairstyle. With his debut production, Heera Aur Pathar (1964), he managed to assemble a skilful team of artists who went on to make a big name for themselves in the film industry.
But few know that, as a director, Waheed Murad pushed Pakistani cinema’s boundaries with Ishaara (1969), a stream-of-consciousness story with actors singing in their own voices, no villains, multi-layered editing and in which one actor played a dozen roles.
True to its title, Ishaara was a ‘signal’ to local filmmakers — a reminder that cinema could be original, imaginative and meaningful all at the same time, when most were content with copying Indian films or churning out formulaic masala fare.
At the peak of their career, no other actor or producer would have dared take such a risk. A romantic star would often be confined to that genre for a decade or more, an action hero would be typecast in high-octane roles, and few could ever break free from the shadow of tragedy. It was only Waheed Murad who, after a brief appearance in S.M. Yusuf’s Aulad (1962), became a sensation with a supporting role in Santosh Kumar’s Daaman (1963), and soon captured the audience as a leading man in Heera Aur Pathar as Jaanu.
Waheed Murad’s sole directorial venture, Ishaara, was not very successful at the box-office and is often ignored in his filmography though it pushed Pakistani cinema’s boundaries
He held his own opposite Muhammad Ali in Kaneez (1965) and delivered Armaan (1966) in a period when Bollywood films had suddenly stopped screening throughout Pakistan. That same year, he expanded his horizons by venturing to the East Wing, starring in Zaheer Raihan’s Bhaiyya (1966). After taking Lollywood abroad with Rishta Hai Pyar Ka (1967) and helping launch future star Shabnam from East Pakistan in Samundar (1968), Murad then embarked on Ishaara, a film he envisioned as a timeless exploration of the human conscience.
The film was an unusual story driven by four complex characters, each following their own desires. Aamir (Waheed Murad) plays an artist with a sensitive soul who falls deeply in love with a college girl, Aliya (Deeba Begum), who is bound by duty to marry her cousin, Ishrat (Talat Hussain). Meanwhile, the wealthy and compassionate Reshma (Rozina) helps Waheed’s Aamir find his footing in the art world and, in the process, develops feelings for him.
The film, entirely shot either in Karachi’s Eastern Studios or parks around the city, beautifully navigates the quiet struggles of the heart, where choices weigh heavily on the conscience. In the end, love and integrity prevail: Aamir and Aliya unite, while Ishrat and Reshma gracefully step aside, their hearts tested but ultimately at peace.
The story begins with Waheed Murad addressing the audience in a voice-over, inviting us into the community he calls home. He introduces himself as the aspiring artist Aamir, drawing us into his world — a modest apartment he shares with his friend Bezaar (Lehri), a struggling musician. Ishrat, Bezaar’s wealthy friend and an engineer, soon befriends Aamir as well.
Aamir and Aaliya meet by coincidence. Hoping to impress her classmates, Aaliya is persuaded by her friend Shakila to write a letter to a fictitious “Aamir”, inviting him to meet her at midnight near the college gate. By chance, Aamir’s bicycle develops a puncture, placing him at the scene. The moment he sees Aaliya, he loses his heart and their brief romance begins.
Unaware of what lies ahead, Aamir and Aaliya exchange promises of marriage. Meanwhile, Ishrat’s mother — Aaliya’s guardian — wants her to marry Ishrat instead. After all, Aaliya is the daughter of her late friend, and honouring that trust leaves Aaliya unable to refuse.
Does it sound familiar? Shades of Yash Chopra’s cinema — Shah Rukh and Madhuri Dixit, Karishma Kapoor and Akshay Kumar — are hard to miss. If you have watched Dil Tau Paagal Hai (1997), you would know that Ishrat gets to know about Aaliya’s ‘sacrifice’ in time and instead persuades her to go with Aamir.
Director Pervez Malik, actor-producer Waheed Murad, music director Sohail Rana and poet-dialogue writer Masroor Anwar had formed a creative team known for producing quality, meaningful cinema. With Armaan (1966) and Ehsaan (1967), their collaboration proved remarkably successful. However, Doraha (1967) exposed the first cracks in the partnership and, between 1968 and 1970 the group shifted and reshuffled — like a series of permutations and combinations — as the four repeatedly tried functioning as a trio.
Waheed, Pervez and Masroor worked together on Jahan Tum Wahan Hum (1968); Masroor, Pervez, and Sohail collaborated on Saughaat (1970); and Waheed, Masroor, and Sohail reunited for Ishaara.
Rozina and Agha Sarwar returned from the Armaan cast, while Nirala was replaced by Lehri — an actor who excelled at playing the hilariously inept music teacher, blending incompetence with impeccable comic timing. Santosh Russell played Talat Hussain’s mother, a forthright and hard-hitting presence in her son’s life, who keeps a close eye on Aliya, driven by a desire for payback.
Agha Sarwar as Munshi, with his iconic tagline “Behra nahin hoon main [I’m not deaf]”, provided comic relief in an otherwise semi-emotional film. Rozina, meanwhile, was given a more substantial role than in Armaan. A frequent collaborator of Waheed Murad, she had also appeared alongside him in Ehsaan and Samandar.
Waheed Murad tried a number of innovations as a director. The use of lead actors singing a song on the telephone, ‘Jaisay Taisay Beet Gya Din’, was experimental and ahead of its time. With the entire team a fan of Hollywood musicals, it was a typical Grace Kelly-Fred Astaire moment, which the local audiences could not digest at the time.
In another song’s surreal sequence, ‘Itnay Barray Jahaan Mein’, Waheed had Lehri showcasing his versatility on vocals, guitar, bass, drums and keyboard. At the end of the song, it is revealed that the audience was also Lehri. This was probably inspired by Buster Keaton’s silent era film The Playhouse (1921).
Ahmed Rushdi, a regular playback singer in every Waheed Murad film from 1964-77, showed a wide range of emotions in the film’s songs — from the gentle romance ‘Woh Hum Se Roothain Tau’, to the joyful celebration of ‘Mat Poochho’ and ‘Socha Tha Unnse’ (a duet with Mala), and the deep sadness of ‘Main Aik Bhoola Hua Naghma Hoon’ (with Mala and Naseem Begum). Mala’s solo song ‘Pyar Ka Haq Hai’ was mesmerising as the penultimate song but it was Mehdi Hassan’s ‘Aakhri Baar Mil Rahay Hain Hum’ that left the deepest mark, with its haunting melody and heartfelt emotion.
Aamir’s couture — Nehru-cut sherwani-collared suit adorned with intricate karchobi embroidery — was also iconic, perfectly reflecting his elegant style and leaving a lasting impression on audiences as a symbol of sophistication and charm.
However, Ishaara was not as successful as Armaan or Ehsaan at the box-office, as audiences were not yet prepared for such a sudden shift in cinematic style.
Four years later, Waheed, Pervez, Sohail and Masroor reunited for Usse Dekha Usse Chaaha, a film that shared notable similarities with Aamir Khan and Salman Khan’s much later Andaz Apna Apna (1994), but it too failed to resonate with audiences. By then, East Pakistan had become Bangladesh and the film industry in Karachi had suffered a decline and the hub of Urdu movies had shifted to Lahore.
With multi-starrer films on the rise, Waheed shifted entirely to acting, stepping away from production, and — after the Ishaara setback — never attempted direction again.
Published in Dawn, ICON, December 14th, 2025
In a production studio in Karachi, on the largest floor in the city, a set stands that defies the country’s current economic mood. It is grand, illuminated by special lights imported from Dubai, and designed to project a glitzy image that mesmerises Pakistani audiences.
“The set you see now is actually 20 percent smaller than planned,” admits Nadeem J, the show’s director, co-producer and visual architect. “Otherwise, it was an even bigger set and even grander. So big that it started bending.”
This mix of grand ambition and structural improvisation — the quintessential Pakistani jugaarr [making things work with limited resources] — has a lot to do with the resurrection of Pakistan Idol.
While platforms such as Coke Studio and other branded franchises, along with Spotify and YouTube, have kept the country’s music scene vibrant, they often rely on established names, niche discoveries, or artists with the means to produce their own music. What has been missing is the pipeline from the grassroots — specifically talent outside the golden triangle of Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad (KLI).
After a hiatus of over a decade, Pakistan Idol has returned to a media landscape that is radically different from the one it left. The last time Pakistan Idol flickered on screens here, social media was in its infancy, visuals were shot on low-resolution DV cams, and the definition of a ‘star’ was dictated by television executives. Today, the show is being steered by four industry veterans who believe that this isn’t just a TV programme; it is a movement to rebuild a grassroots infrastructure.
Pakistan Idol is back after a hiatus of more than a decade. And this time it’s making big waves, primarily because of the sheer talent of the new voices featured on clips going viral on social media. Icon goes behind the scenes to check what is making it tick and its producers’ vision for breathing new life into Pakistan’s musical culture…
I sat down with the core team behind this massive undertaking: Badar Ikram, the producer; Nadeem J; Umar Amanullah, head of creative and communications; and Shuja Haider, the music producer. Between them, they share nearly a century of experience in Pakistan’s entertainment sector. Their mission is not just to find a singer, but to bridge a generational gap that threatens to erase a huge chunk of Pakistan’s musical history.
THE ‘WHY NOW?’ FACTOR
Why bring back a behemoth like Pakistan Idol now? The franchise had a turbulent history in Pakistan, launching once in 2013-14 before disappearing, leaving its winner in obscurity and the industry sceptical.
“There was a gap,” says Ikram, a media strategist with 25 years of experience, who initiated the revival. He was part of the team of the previous iteration and has been trying on and off to get it off the ground since, but felt the market remained untapped. “Pakistan Idol happened once, but for some reason… Fremantle [the format owners] wasn’t doing it in Pakistan. Multiple people tried in between, but it didn’t happen.”
The scepticism was high. Ikram recalls the barrage of questions he faced during the six months it took to convince the stakeholders who had numerous reservations and questions such as, “Pakistan doesn’t have enough music”, “Without Indian music, how will it happen?”, “Is it financially viable?” and “Can live music really be played here?”
We were recording eight songs in a day,” Nadeem J reveals, detailing a schedule that sounds gruelling even by industry standards.
“We do it because we are Pakistanis. We have a habit of jugaarr. We find a way.”
These questions were not unfounded. The Pakistani music industry needs fresh blood, and not just from the major cities. The grassroots infrastructure that once groomed talent — Radio Pakistan and the arts councils — has crumbled. The concert culture, the primary source of monetisation for artists, vanished for 10 to 12 years due to security instability. Brands like Coke Studio have played a considerable role in promoting artists who were already up-and-coming, but what’s been missing is what we have been witnessing unfold on Pakistan Idol.
“I always believed that it would happen and it would be successful,” Ikram says. To prove it, he assembled a team that could navigate both the corporate boardroom and the chaotic reality of a live production floor.
THE MIRACLE MACHINE
The result is what Nadeem J calls a “miracle machine.” Unlike the drama serials that dominate local television, a music reality show is a logistical beast. In a standard season, most musical programmes in Pakistan produce perhaps 20 songs. Pakistan Idol is attempting over 250 songs in a single season.
“We were recording eight songs in a day,” Nadeem reveals, detailing a schedule that sounds gruelling even by industry standards. “We do it because we are Pakistanis. We have a habit of jugaarr. We find a way.”
This improvisation, however, stops at the audio quality. The team made a rigid commitment to authenticity in an era of auto-tuned perfection. “Our commitment was: no lip-syncing,” Ikram asserts.
Nadeem J reinforces this: “All musicians play live, all singers sing live. In between, I see comments on YouTube saying ‘This is lip-syncing’… no! It’s all written and performed live.”
To achieve this, the team utilises a ‘jamming room’ recording method, overseen by the multi-talented and extremely hard-working Haider — tracks are prepped, sent to contestants via WhatsApp to memorise, rehearsed the next day, and then performed live. It is a high-wire act of production, executed at a pace that could only be achieved through sheer passion.
THE COPYRIGHT NIGHTMARE AND THE ARCHIVE
One challenge the production team has been facing is copyright infringement. With Indian songs largely off the table due to geopolitical tensions and rights issues, the show has been forced to look inwards, digging into the archives of Pakistani pop, rock and film music. This necessity has revealed a startling generational disconnect.
“Regarding the time Pakistani music left off, around 2006, 2007 or 2008,” says Amanullah. “That was a great time for music up to 2006, and it is surprising to me that quite a few kids today haven’t heard that music. They have mostly been listening to recent music.”
For Gen-Z contestants, ‘new stuff’ is simply what is trending on TikTok today. They are oblivious to the heritage of the early 2000s, let alone the classics of the 70s and 80s. The show, therefore, has inadvertently become an archival project, reintroducing the nation’s youth to its own sonic history.
But securing the rights to this history has been a battle. The tragedy, according to Amanullah, is that everyone loses. The show loses content, but the songwriters and original rights holders lose relevance. “It’s a loss for both,” he says. However, the team is turning this disadvantage into an advantage. By allowing contestants to sing older, often forgotten Pakistani tracks, they are reviving dead catalogues.
“My EMI [record label] contacts told me their repertoire usage has increased because we played a song, and the listener went back to listen to the original,” Ikram notes. “It’s about turning an apparent disadvantage into an advantage,” adds Amanullah.
Haider points out a structural difference between the Indian and Pakistani industries that complicates this. “Our region is so small compared to our neighbours, yet there is no comparison in terms of talent and diversity of music. They [India] have a lot of material. Their quantity of music is huge. We have fewer quantities, but we have more genres.”
This scarcity of volume but depth of genre makes selection difficult, yet crucial. “Every past era acts like a seed for the next era,” Haider muses. “The 60s inspired the 70s… We didn’t have that here. Everything shut down very quickly.”
FINDING TALENT
Most of the contestants walking on to Nadeem J’s grand stage are not polished performers. They are, in the local vernacular, “zero-meter”— brand new.
“When we started the Theatre Round… we shortlisted 75-80 people,” points out Ikram. “By and large, 80 percent of them were those who had never held a mic.” This lack of experience is a direct symptom of the collapsed infrastructure. There are no school choirs, no community centres, and very few ustaads [teachers] accessible to the masses.
Haider uses a poignant analogy to describe the situation: “I often say that, for a beginner, music is like a pond. But for a learner, it is a vast sea.”
He laments that, unlike his generation, which learned by hanging around studios and observing the masters, today’s youth lack that access. “Nowadays, our talent doesn’t get the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them,” Haider says. “I feel I cannot judge these kids on how good or bad they are right now. I feel this is a beginning for them.”
This rawness creates moments of magic and terror on set. Haider describes the moment the red light goes on: “We have fixed big names, guided them in studios. But when these kids pick up the mic… see, if you sing normally, you sing fine. But the moment I press ‘Record’… you’re gone. The recording button is very tricky.”
Speaking of the contestants… while they’re all really good, some of the stories are really moving. Take Rawish Rabab, a schoolteacher from Layyah in southern Punjab: a distinct, melodious voice that has become a point of pride for her entire district.
Her story reads almost like a classic Idol script — difficult circumstances at home, nerves at her first audition, and then a sudden surge of confidence once she realised the judges were actually listening. She calls winning a shield in the early round a turning point; her performance in the Theatre phase drew some of her loudest applause yet.
When she went back to Layyah, the welcome felt like a local festival: students, teachers and neighbours lining up to greet her. It is not just a personal victory; it’s the sense that a schoolteacher from a small town can stand under studio lights and be treated as national news.
If Rawish embodies hometown pride, Maham Tahir from Khanpur, in Rahim Yar Khan, stands for something more fragile: survival. An MPhil student and, after her father’s early death, effectively a co-breadwinner for her family, Maham pays bills and tuition with the same voice she now uses on the Idol stage.
She built her craft not in fancy studios but through naat and spiritual poetry recitals, gravitating towards Sufi singing and treating Abida Parveen as a kind of spiritual mentor, even without formal training. Idol, for her, isn’t just a platform; it is a rare space where devotion, economic necessity and artistic ambition line up under one spotlight.
The show is also quietly full of students reshaping their academic lives around music. Rohail Asghar, originally from Jhang and now based in Lahore, moved with his parents so he could study on a music-category seat in Punjab University’s Mass Communication department. He now heads the university’s music society, earns part of the family’s income through gigs, and recently found himself receiving an honorary shield from the vice chancellor after his Idol performances.
Rohail has no formal classical training, but talks about learning from listening obsessively to Ghulam Ali and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. One of the most moving details in his backstory never made it on to the main show: his younger sister Jia had planned to audition too, but couldn’t — because she was donating part of her liver to their mother.
Every contestant has an inspiring back story, more so because, in our country, talent is very rarely nurtured and given the importance that it should be.
THE DEATH OF THE “MEAN JUDGE”
To judge this raw talent, the team curated a panel comprising Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Fawad Khan, Bilal Maqsood and Zeb Bangash. An undoubtedly respectable panel, notable for its lack of a ‘Simon Cowell’ figure — the archetype of the rude, abrasive judge that defined the early 2000s reality TV boom.
“People asked me, ‘Who is the Simon Cowell of this panel?’,” Ikram recalls. “My answer was: Simon Cowell is not even on American Idol anymore.”
The team recognised a global shift in audience sensibilities. “That kind of judgment — dressing someone down, insulting them if they didn’t sing properly — is not taken very well by audiences globally anymore,” Ikram explains.
In the age of social media, the public acts as the critic. “The awaam [public] is answering these questions themselves on social media,” Amanullah quips, noting that the audience defends the show’s choices without the production needing to issue press releases.
THE ROAD AHEAD: THEMES AND ELIMINATION
As the show moves past its initial phases, the stakes are rising. The season is structured over 40 episodes, spanning 20 weeks. Having completed the Auditions and Theatre Rounds, the show is now in the Gala Phase, where the remaining 16 contestants will face themed challenges.
“Now, themes will come in. Genres will come in. Special episodes… Wedding songs, Mother’s specials etc,” Nadeem J explains.
Crucially, the power is about to shift from the judges to the public. “From next week, the public voting starts,” Nadeem says. The format is ruthless: at the end of each episode, a “Bottom 3” will be announced based on judges’ scores, and the contestant with the lowest public votes will be sent home.
This leads to the Finale — the last two episodes — in which the team plans to enhance the visuals further.
DEFINING SUCCESS
The ultimate question remains: what does success look like in a country where the previous Idol winner vanished, and in a world where “viral fame” is often mistaken for a career?
For the core team, success is not about ratings, but about sustainability.
“In India, it’s the 16th season this year… They have a regular cycle,” Nadeem points out, contrasting it with Pakistan’s stop-start history, where promises made weren’t kept.
As far as ratings are concerned, Amanullah explains, “When we talk about ‘ratings’, we’re no longer looking only at television in isolation. Our primary measure of success is digital reach and repeat-viewing, because that’s where the global Gen-Z audience lives — whether they’re consuming news, entertainment, or music.”
He adds that “Gen-Z doesn’t wait for scheduled broadcasts; they discover talent through shareable clips, bingeable backstage content, and on-demand viewing. That’s why for us, our performance indicators are centred on streaming minutes on the Begin App, for instance.”
He goes on to say that “Traditional TRPs [television rating points] still matter for television, but the long-term value of Pakistan Idol lies in digital fandom — the kind that grows artists into global acts, not just weekly ratings winners. And the numbers are in the millions on our digital content, which is quite encouraging.”
This time, as a private production driven by passion, the show’s goal is to create a figure that lasts. However, Ikram looks beyond the winner. He cites the ‘Jennifer Hudson effect.’ “Success is… look at Jennifer Hudson. She was in the Top 7 on American Idol, then became an EGOT [Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony] winner. It’s about the platform. It’s not about when you got kicked out.”
There are already signs that the platform is working. Ikram mentions contestants who didn’t even make the Top 16 but are seeing their careers take off.
“Ahmed Hassan… he isn’t in the Top 16. But his song is on Spotify, and it’s become popular,” he notes.
Ikram then shares a story about a call from the Multan Arts Council, which is holding a ceremony to honour the 11 or 12 kids from the city who merely went to the auditions. “They are being celebrated in their community,” he says.
To the team, this is the seed of a new ecosystem. “We need infrastructure where record labels and corporate infrastructure exist. When concerts start, monetisation starts… the industry builds itself,” Ikram argues.
A QUESTION OF PRIDE
Beyond the economics and the logistics, there is an emotional current running through Pakistan Idol. In a polarised country often starved of good news, music remains a rare unifier.
Ikram reflects on the birth of private media: “I remember when we started Geo… there were no newscasters because there was no demand previously.” He sees Pakistan Idol doing the same for music professionals.
But the real validation comes from the comments section. Ikram beams when mentioning the reaction to a recent medley performed on the show. “People commented, ‘Pakistan Zindabad.’ There is a sense of pride,” he says. He recounts a comment from an overseas Pakistani in Dubai: “I am in Dubai, sitting in my office with foreigners, and I showed them this… look, this is my country.”
Amanullah adds that the show has revived the concept of communal viewing. “I know quite a few families, for example, in Canada, who have weekend watch parties,” he says.
For a team of veterans who have seen the industry rise and fall, this project is personal. It is, as Ikram puts it, “a labour of love.” “We are not saying we are doing a programme,” Ikram concludes. “We say this is a movement.”
And as the lights dim on the Karachi set and the next “zero-meter” contestant steps up to the mic to sing a song from an era they never knew, one can’t help but feel that the movement has finally begun.
Nofil Naqvi is a writer and a communications professional. He can be reached at nofil@outlook.com
Published in Dawn, ICON, December 14th, 2025
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