‘Cockroaches’ and crackdowns: Can Pakistan’s Gen Z storm the barricades?

Just look at what is happening in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. People have taken to the streets over bread-and-butter issues and local election grievances. At least 40 protesters have died this week alone. To add insult to injury, Pakistan defence minister Khawaja Asif has described these protesters as “enemies” like India and ruled out dialogue with them."Its absolute disdain for the innocent people of PoK was laid bare when the defence minister branded the protesting civilians as enemies," external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said. He said the “so-called” elections represented a “humiliating rejection” of the Pakistani establishment. "We urge that the international community should scrutinise Pakistan's actions and hold it accountable for its atrocities," Jaiswal added.And yet, the violence has barely registered internationally. Some foreign media outlets have offered customary coverage, often with the expected tilt, but it has largely been treated as business as usual in Pakistan. No professional outrage merchants or loud global campaigners have mounted a sustained protest against the conduct of the Pakistani army. Expectations from Pakistan are now so low that even the use of lethal force against its own people struggles to move the global news cycle.That silence says plenty about how the world views Pakistan. But the more interesting question is how Pakistanis see these protests themselves. The warning from withinPakistan interior minister Mohsin Naqvi may have inadvertently supplied part of the answer. “Whether you agree or not, the system we have been living under has collapsed,” Naqvi said at event.But his most revealing remark came when he talked about Gen Z. “If these ‘Cockroaches’ get united, they can turn everything upside down,” Naqvi said.With around 60% of its population under 30 and an estimated 65-70 million people belonging to Gen Z, Pakistan appears, on paper, primed for a youth revolt. So why hasn’t Pakistan produced a nationwide Gen Z movement?The uniform behind the curtainPakistan is a “hybrid regime”, as its own commentators describe it. Over the past two years, the army has moved beyond being informally supreme and begun formalising its dominance. A constitutional amendment created the post of chief of defence forces for the army chief, placing the navy and air force under him as well. His tenure was extended, and he was elevated to field marshal with what amounts to lifetime immunity from prosecution.None of this required a coup. It was delivered through a compliant civilian coalition of the PML-N and PPP that increasingly resembles the administrative wing of military rule rather than an elected government.The real genius of the military’s political arrangement has been its creation of an endless game of musical chairs. When one civilian face becomes unpopular, the establishment replaces it with another: the PPP, the Sharifs, Imran Khan, and then back again.This constant rotation serves a specific purpose. It prevents public anger from consolidating into a single grievance against the military establishment. Responsibility is repeatedly shifted to the civilian face of the day. When things go wrong, the answer offered is not structural change but another saviour, another party and another election promising to fix everything.For Gen Z, therefore, there is no clean and accessible target around which a national protest movement can form. A young Pakistani can be angry with a leader or political party. But the military, the country’s true centre of power, remains officially apolitical and practically beyond reach.A country of fragmented rebellionsPakistan does not lack dissent. Its dissent is fragmented by geography, ideology and competing objectives.In Balochistan, the Baloch Liberation Army and its supporters are waging a separatist insurgency. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan is not fighting for democratic accountability; it seeks the imposition of Sharia law and the overthrow of the constitutional order. A Baloch nationalist, a TTP sympathiser and a university student in Lahore or Karachi protesting unemployment are unlikely to assemble beneath one banner or chant the same slogans.The state, therefore, does not need to defeat one unified movement. It only needs to prevent several incompatible movements from recognising that they are confronting the same power structure.That fragmentation also allows the establishment to treat every form of dissent differently: terrorism in one province, separatism in another, political disorder elsewhere and foreign conspiracy almost everywhere.A terrorised societyThen there is the grim reality that Pakistan has become one of the world’s most terror-ravaged countries. The Global Terrorism Index 2026 ranked it as the country most affected by terrorism. Pakistan recorded over 1,000 terror-related deaths in 2025, its worst figures since 2013.This security crisis gives the army both political legitimacy and operational cover. Terrorism becomes the justification for an expanded military role, while dissent can be blurred with insurgency or branded “anti-state”. Extraordinary force is presented as an unavoidable response to extraordinary danger.The repression is often brutal but bureaucratically administered: Sedition cases, enforced disappearances, media blackouts, internet restrictions and the permanent threat of being labelled a traitor.Where is Imran Khan now?Pakistan’s Gen Z has already seen what happens when a genuinely popular political leader crosses the establishment.For many young and urban Pakistanis, Imran Khan became a vehicle for expressing anger against a closed political system. His removal from power and the crackdown that followed offered a textbook lesson in the cost of direct confrontation.Look at where Khan is now. The hybrid regime is actively trying to neutralise the country’s most internationally recognisable political figure. If the establishment can do that to Imran Khan, what chance does an ordinary young Pakistani believe he has?If it comes to its survival, the regime would not mind killing even thousands. Beaten into submissionReports of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings of Baloch and Pashtun activists surface with alarming regularity. Students, political workers, journalists and human rights defenders are reported missing after alleged abductions. Some are later found dead, their bodies bearing signs of torture.Pakistan’s own commission of inquiry documented more than 10,000 cases of enforced disappearance between 2011 and early 2024.For young Baloch and Pashtuns, the message could hardly be clearer: Challenging the state may result not merely in arrest, but in disappearance.What’s nextThis explains why Pakistan may not witness a Gen Z uprising in the classic sense: Millions occupying the streets, facing down the state and forcing a negotiated reset.Naqvi is right about one thing: if Pakistan’s young people unite, they could turn the system upside down. That is precisely why the system has spent decades ensuring they remain divided, disillusioned and afraid.Elsewhere, Gen Z has taken to the streets to reclaim its future from misrule. In Pakistan, it is being taught that survival itself may be the most it can hope for.Catch the latest World News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.