The first CDF

Pakistan's armed forces' administrative structure stands synergised, with its tri-services coordination now synchronised. The new catbird position in our higher defence organisation — the Chief of Defence Forces — is a leap forward, and has been clubbed with the powerful office of Chief of Army Staff. Field Marshal Asim Munir dons two hats, as his elevation has been notified by the President of Pakistan on the advice of the Prime Minister subsequent to an amendment to the Constitution earlier last month.

Field Marshal Munir, the 17th army chief, will hold the command of both the offices in uniform till 2030, subject to a plausible extension, if need be. The notification on Thursday also pronounced the extension in service of Air Chief Marshal Zaheer Ahmed Babar for another two years, with effect from March 19, 2026.

This restructuring was primarily necessitated in view of the changing dynamics of warfare, and with the apt realisation that technology has summarised decision-making in a unitary format. Many of the leading armies in the world have already reorganised themselves in a similar manner. The state-of-the-art coordination by all the three forces in the May 2025 duel with India led to the conclusion that the military command and control structure is in need of reforms and advancement. Thus the outcome was the office of CDF, as the decades-old JCSC authority was scrapped with the passage of the 27th amendment. So far so good.

The political hiccup, nonetheless, acted as a spanner in the works as the government exhibited its inefficiency in notifying the desired constitutional change in the military organogram. This not only led to a delay of several days in notifying the extension in service of Field Marshal Munir's original three-year term as army chief that ended on November 28. This fuelled uncertainty and threw open a rumour mill of speculations, putting the security mosaic under stress and strain. The point is, if an amendment to Article 243 can be carried out in a jiff, why can't a successive order be issued in due course of time? That is where the civil-military coordination took a blink.