Islamabad, Pakistan — Pakistan’s parliament in late August passed legislation that, for the first time, spells out in statute the powers of the country’s most senior military office, continuing a restructuring of the military’s command structure that began with last November’s 27th constitutional amendment.
The National Assembly on August 20 approved the Defence Forces of Pakistan Act, 2026, and an amendment to the National Command Authority Act, 2010. Together, the two laws give legal shape to the office of the Chief of Defence Forces (CDF), created through that amendment last year.
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The bills were not on the National Assembly’s original agenda; the cabinet cleared them that morning, and they passed within hours. The 27th amendment moved through parliament in a similarly compressed timeframe last November.
The changes come just over a year after Pakistan’s four-day conflict with India in May 2025.
Analysts say the changes mark the most significant restructuring of Pakistan’s higher military command since 1976, when the post of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) was created to coordinate, in a limited way, between the army, navy and air force.
That post has now been abolished. In its place is a Defence Forces Headquarters (DFHQ), headed by the CDF, currently Field Marshal Asim Munir, who also serves as army chief.
Al Jazeera sent questions to the military’s media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations, about the rationale behind the changes and how the navy and air force will be represented at the new headquarters. It received no response.
Pakistan’s military, and the army in particular, has dominated the country’s political life since independence in 1947, staging four coups and ruling directly for more than three decades.
No elected prime minister has ever completed a full five-year term. The new legislation formalises a degree of authority the army chief has often held informally.
So what exactly do the new laws change, and what could they mean for the balance of power between Pakistan’s civilian government and its military? Al Jazeera examines the key questions.
How is the CDF role different from the old CJCSC?
The CJCSC was designed as a coordinator, not a commander. It had no authority to act on the navy or air force, and each service largely ran its own affairs.
The new law changes that. It gives the CDF “operational command and control of the Armed Forces”, making him responsible to the federal government for military operations across all three services, not just the army.
A Rawalpindi-based retired three-star general, speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the subject, described the new arrangement as a genuine, codified chain of command for the first time: the prime minister, then the CDF and his new headquarters, then the individual service chiefs, and finally formations on the ground.
“The CJCSC never had that kind of codified, statutory operational grip,” he told Al Jazeera.
That authority means little, other officers argue, unless it comes with the power to enforce it.
“Any command is ineffective if the commander cannot incentivise or disincentivise,” said Naeem Khalid Lodhi, a retired three-star general and former defence secretary. “The Commander of the Defence Forces is now a real commander, and that has been properly formalised through this legislation.”
Under the earlier arrangement, “there were no arrangements whereby the office holder could take any action with respect to the air force or the navy”, Lodhi told Al Jazeera. “He could act within the army, but now it is all-encompassing.”
Abdul Moiz Jaferii, a Karachi-based lawyer, said the old coordinating post had, in practice, become largely symbolic well before it was formally abolished.
“In practice, this became a ceremonial position with little more than post office authority due to the hegemony of the army within the hierarchy,” Jaferii told Al Jazeera.
Is Pakistan’s military command becoming too army-centric?
Whether the new authority upsets the balance between the three services is the question dividing Pakistan’s defence establishment.
Under the new law, the Commander of the National Strategic Command (CNSC), the post overseeing the country’s nuclear-capable forces, must come from the army and is appointed on the CDF’s recommendation.
General Syed Aamer Raza was appointed the first CNSC in July 2026, promoted from lieutenant general to fill the post, having previously served as Chief of General Staff.
The navy and air force are excluded from the post altogether.
“Since the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee was a rotational post, its abolition also means the Commander of the National Strategic Command will remain a four-star appointment, but will now come exclusively from the army,” said Majid Nizami, a Lahore-based strategic analyst. “A four-star officer from the navy or the air force reaching that post has been formally closed off.”
The CJCSC could, in theory, be filled by an officer from any of the three services. In practice, the last non-army officer to hold the post was Air Chief Marshal Farooq Feroze Khan, who left the role in 1997.
The Rawalpindi-based retired three-star general was more blunt about where that leaves the balance of power.
“The institutional centre of gravity of the new system is unmistakably army-centric,” he said.
A former senior military official who served in a strategic planning role, speaking anonymously because he was not authorised to comment publicly, said the shift could affect careers across the navy and air force.
“Since all senior positions in the three services would now be approved by the CDF, it may eventually erode the individual identity of the other two services,” the Islamabad-based official told Al Jazeera. Promotions decided “by someone else who is not from their service” risked breeding resentment, he added.
The risk, said Ahmed Saeed, a retired vice admiral, is most acute for the navy.
Pakistan’s sea-based deterrent depends on sound technical judgement, communications at sea, and the demands of submerged, surface and air platforms that the navy institutionally understands and the army does not, according to Saeed, who is also a former president of the National Institute of Maritime Affairs, an Islamabad-based think tank.
This point is more related to two aspects, which are how proportionately the services will be interlaced into the CDF HQ decision-making loop and how much operational leverage services chiefs will enjoy at the top level, he said.
“The risk isn’t dilution of control,” he said. “It’s that assurance and survivability arguments get subordinated to a land-centric concept of deterrence.”
Lodhi acknowledged the concern but said it was not new.
He said he had in the past suggested that the position overseeing strategic forces rotate between the three services, rather than remain fixed with the army, and that senior officers from each service be designated as potential successors to the CDF.
“That, too, may come later,” he said, adding that the rules of business still to be finalised could require the CDF to act only on the recommendation of the respective air or naval chief.
Where does this leave nuclear command?
The new law also indirectly touches Pakistan’s nuclear command structure.
An Islamabad-based defence analyst, speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity around Pakistan’s nuclear programme, said the CDF is now expected to serve as deputy chairman of the National Command Authority (NCA), the body that oversees Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and is chaired by the prime minister.
The army also set up a separate command last year, the Army Rocket Force Command, to handle conventional missile strikes that fall outside the nuclear chain of command.
“This creates a clear separation between strategic deterrence and conventional missile operations that previously sat in an ambiguous space,” the analyst said.
The military official who has served in a strategic planning role said the Strategic Plans Division (SPD) is expected to retain that role, working “under the new appointment of CNSC” rather than being absorbed by it.
The SPD is the military department that has run Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programmes for more than two decades.
Formal control over nuclear forces is likely to remain with the prime minister, he added, “but in practice, the CDF may have a major say in nuclear decision-making”.
Does this weaken civilian oversight of the military?
The clearest disagreement is over what the changes mean for civilian control of the military.
Colonel Inam Raheim, a former army officer who is now a lawyer, said the new law shifts significant power away from elected civilians.
Previously, dismissing or retiring an officer required a summary to be sent to the prime minister and cabinet, he said. That authority now rests with the CDF alone.
“He no longer needs to send a summary anywhere,” Raheim told Al Jazeera. “He will simply issue a letter, and that officer will be dismissed, retired or have his service reduced.”
The Islamabad-based defence analyst went further, arguing that the new law sits uneasily with Article 243 of the constitution, which states that “the federal government shall have control and command of the armed forces”, wording that last year’s amendment left untouched.
“By granting operational command and control to the CDF over the armed forces, the political government is also violating Article 243,” he said.
Jaferii pressed the point further, arguing that the new arrangement goes beyond what the constitution actually allows.
Service chiefs, he said, are formally equal and structurally subordinate to civilian authority, whatever the practical reality on the ground.
“If we still had an independent judiciary, and if an air force or navy chief wanted to challenge suddenly becoming subordinate to an arm of service they were supposed to be equal to, it would make for an interesting challenge in court,” Jaferii said. “Luckily for this regime, we do not have any forum independent enough to consider this question.”
The retired three-star general took a more measured view.
The new law, he said, is “not obviously ultra vires” the constitution. In plain terms, it does not obviously exceed what the constitution allows.
Not everyone agrees the changes are cause for concern.
Hafiz Ahsaan Ahmad Khokhar, an advocate of the Supreme Court, described the legislation as the ordinary legal follow-through required after a constitutional amendment, comparing it to how Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia have each legislated the powers of their own top defence officers.
“Parliament has therefore not created an authority independently of the Constitution,” Khokhar told Al Jazeera. “Rather, it has given legislative effect to a constitutional structure already established” by last year’s amendment.
The comparison only goes so far, however.
In the UK and Australia, the officer equivalent to Pakistan’s CDF is a separate post, historically rotated between the navy, army and air force, and is not held by the sitting head of any one service.
Pakistan’s CDF, by contrast, is permanently and concurrently the army chief.
