PAKISTAN PERSPECTIVE

Dawn frames the event as a Pentagon 'shake-up' -- a word that evokes chaos rather than reform. The Pakistani paper insists on the abruptness: 'abruptly forced into immediate retirement.' For a country where the army is the real power (four coups since 1958), the firing of a chief of staff by a civilian reads through a completely different lens. In Pakistan, it's generals who oust civilians, not the other way around. Dawn doesn't write it explicitly, but its readers make the comparison. The Iranian context is crucial for Islamabad: Pakistan shares 900 kilometers of border with Iran and fears the conflict's fallout -- refugee influx, instability in Balochistan, disruption of the economic corridor with China (CPEC). A Pentagon in disarray means a potentially longer and more unpredictable Iranian conflict, which is the worst-case scenario for Islamabad.