Over the past four years, South Asia has seen the collapse of three governments: Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Each had a different motive. Sri Lanka faced financial collapse, Bangladesh battled inflation and unemployment, and Nepal struggled with coalition infighting and corruption. But all of these had a common thread: broken governance, elites who diverted public resources, and a young generation that refused to tolerate bad administration any longer. However, Pakistan tells a different story. Its population faces similar economic problems and corruption, yet no protest has removed a government this way. Why?
Throughout its history, Pakistan has experienced different notions of democracy. Today, however, its democratic system shows authoritarian tendencies. Fully authoritarian governments crush protests before they grow. Mature democracies absorb public anger. Countries stuck in the middle, too weak to negotiate and too open to full suppression, face the greatest risk of collapse. Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka fall into this middle zone. Pakistan sits closer to the crush-it-early end.
In Bangladesh and Nepal, political power revolved around a single leader or a few ruling elites rather than independent institutions. In Bangladesh, when protests erupted, the army refused to keep killing citizens to protect an unpopular leader, so it stepped aside, and Hasina fled within weeks. Similarly, in Nepal, once the police and internal security failed to contain the unrest, the army stepped in — not to defend the government, but to manage the country after the collapse. The government fell within 36 hours.
The Anatomy of the Hard State
Pakistan operates on entirely different terms. Its military doesn’t sit above one government; it functions as the government. The military leadership follows the doctrine of a “hard state” that uses political repression and constitutional changes to centralise control and shrink space for opposition or protest. Today, speaking out about sensitive regional issues is dangerous in Pakistan. In Pakistan-administered Kashmir, activists demanding basic things like fair electricity pricing have faced police brutality and mass arrests under anti-terrorism laws, while the peaceful civil rights group JAAC was publicly labelled as a terrorist organisation.
Additionally, rights groups have reported that dozens of Kashmiri activists have gone missing since the recent crackdown began. This has made tracking harder because authorities have shut down internet access for almost 40 days. This isn’t limited to Kashmir; Pakistan’s own Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances has recorded more than 10,000 cases nationwide. Students have been among the most frequent targets, often picked up by unidentified men in plain clothes with no arrest warrants ever shown to their families.
Structural Resilience vs Structural Vulnerability
Moreover, Pakistan’s power structure never depends on one removable face, so arresting a prime minister does not change anything. These facts explain why Pakistan behaves so differently from Nepal and Bangladesh. It isn’t that Pakistanis feel less anger; Kashmiri, Baloch citizens, and students clearly have grievances. The difference is that the Pakistani state has built an apparatus specially designed to stop protests before they spread. This includes anti-terrorism laws, internet shutdowns, and enforced disappearances that silence organisers early.
Bangladesh and Nepal’s governments cracked because power was tied to an unpopular leader who could be removed. Pakistan’s power is tied to an institution that doesn’t need to remove anyone; it simply prevents the protest from ever reaching a breaking point.
The High Cost of Suppression
This pattern has a real cost for Pakistan itself, not just for people protesting. Pakistan’s “hard state” approach may deliver short-term political control, but it does not fix the long-term grievances driving unrest in regions like Balochistan or among supporters of jailed political opponents. Suppressing a protest is not the same as solving the problem behind it. A government can silence people today and still face the same anger tomorrow, often stronger than before.
Until Pakistan’s institutions start responding to grievances instead of just controlling them, the underlying tensions will keep building, even if they never explode onto the streets the way they did in Dhaka and Kathmandu. This comparison shows that protests succeed when power stays personalised, and governments crumble under pressure. They fail when an established apparatus treats dissent as a threat to be eliminated rather than a demand to be answered. Pakistan’s anger and structural vulnerabilities run just as deep as Bangladesh’s or Nepal’s, but it simply lacks a single fragile target to remove.