On October 23, Pakistan will mark yet another grim anniversary — not one of triumph or national reflection, but of a crime that laid bare the moral rot at the heart of its state machinery.
It will be three years since investigative journalist Arshad Sharif was shot dead in Kajiado, Kenya, in what Kenyan police described as a “case of mistaken identity.” But for anyone remotely familiar with Pakistan’s record of silencing dissent, this explanation was as hollow as it was predictable.
Sharif’s killing was not a random tragedy. It was a cold, deliberate act — an assassination disguised as an accident, carried out under the shadow of Pakistan’s sprawling military-intelligence apparatus.
It was the inevitable result of a state that treats journalism as treason and truth-telling as a crime worthy of death.
From truth-seeker to enemy of the state
Arshad Sharif was not just a journalist; he was a chronicler of Pakistan’s decay — of corruption, military manipulation, and political deceit.
His investigations routinely exposed the underbelly of power in a country where generals rule from behind the curtain and politicians serve as their disposable props.
When Imran Khan’s government was toppled in April 2022 through a vote of no-confidence, Sharif’s reporting pointed toward the invisible hand guiding that political upheaval — the Pakistan Army, led then by General Qamar Javed Bajwa, and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt. Gen. Nadeem Anjum.
His programme “Woh Kon Tha”, aired on ARY News, questioned the military’s role in Khan’s ouster and shattered the carefully constructed illusion of neutrality the army tried to maintain.
That broadcast marked the beginning of Sharif’s end.
Soon after, he began receiving threats from military spokesperson Shafiq Malik and officers of the DGISPR. According to his mother, these threats were blunt: stop talking, or face “dire consequences.”
By August 2022, as a wave of sedition cases and FIRs were filed against him — each accusing him of “spreading false propaganda against the Pakistan Armed Forces” — Arshad had no choice but to flee. He first went to Dubai, but even there, he was not safe.
His wife Somiya would later testify that his visa was abruptly cancelled at the “connivance of Pakistan’s military leadership,” forcing him to escape to Kenya. That was where his killers finally caught up with him.
The murder and the farce of “mistaken identity”
On October 23, 2022, Sharif was gunned down by Kenyan police at a checkpoint in Kajiado County. Kenyan authorities claimed his car matched the description of a stolen vehicle and that police “mistakenly” opened fire.
The story fell apart almost immediately. Eyewitness accounts, ballistics evidence, and conflicting police statements painted a picture not of confusion, but of precision. Sharif was shot in the head and chest — targeted shots, not stray bullets.
His iPad and phone were confiscated, his movements closely tracked. Even the Pakistani government’s own fact-finding report, released that December, admitted the obvious: this was a “planned and targeted assassination” carried out by “transnational actors” — diplomatic language for an operation engineered beyond Kenyan borders, almost certainly by Pakistan’s own intelligence services.
But despite this damning conclusion, the perpetrators were never named, never arrested, never questioned.
The government’s inquiries were bureaucratic theatre — empty committees, toothless investigations, and endless reports designed to obscure, not reveal.
The mother’s cry for justice — and the state’s silence
Perhaps the most haunting voice in this tragedy has been that of Arshad’s mother, who has written directly to Pakistan’s Chief Justice, accusing General Bajwa, ISI chief Nadeem Anjum, and other senior officers of orchestrating a “targeted, premeditated, planned and calculated murder.”
Her letters, filled with grief and fury, describe the systematic campaign of intimidation that drove her son from Pakistan to his grave in Kenya.
Yet not a single FIR has been registered based on her complaint. Not one official has been held accountable. Not one soldier, intelligence officer, or government minister has faced even symbolic punishment.
Instead, Pakistan’s judiciary — once described as the last refuge of justice — has chosen complicity through silence. The Chief Justice, the federal government, and the interior ministry have all turned away, their indifference indistinguishable from guilt.
A state that hunts its own
What happened to Arshad Sharif is not an anomaly — it is a symptom of Pakistan’s systemic transnational repression, a practice that extends the country’s domestic censorship into exile.
Dissidents, journalists, and activists who flee persecution at home find themselves stalked abroad by the same forces they escaped.
Sharif’s case echoes a grim pattern: the targeting of exiled critics through intimidation, surveillance, and in some cases, assassination.
These operations rely on Pakistan’s diplomatic and intelligence networks abroad, exploiting friendly ties with host nations like the UAE to force deportations, revoke visas, or facilitate covert tracking.
By 2023, even the United Nations intervened, with experts demanding a full investigation into Sharif’s death and the political persecution that forced him to flee.
Yet Pakistan’s response was the usual mix of denial and deflection. The very institutions accused of orchestrating his murder were put in charge of “investigating” it.
In July 2024, a Kenyan court ruled that the police had acted unlawfully and ordered the government to pay compensation — a hollow gesture that did nothing to address the central question: who ordered the killing?
The facade of democracy and the rule of fear
Pakistan presents itself as a constitutional democracy, but its political system remains hostage to its military deep state. Every election, every civilian government, and every dissenting journalist exists at the pleasure of an army that sees itself as the nation’s divine guardian.
Under this arrangement, truth becomes subversion, and journalism becomes warfare. Arshad Sharif’s murder was not simply an act of violence — it was a message, a warning to all who dare to expose the generals’ corruption or question their political manipulations.
Even in death, the state refuses to let him rest. His name is used to whitewash inquiries, his legacy reduced to a talking point in the government’s hollow rhetoric about “press freedom.”
West’s silence and Pakistan’s impunity
The silence of Pakistan’s Western allies has only emboldened this culture of impunity. Despite mounting evidence of state-sponsored transnational repression, no significant sanctions, travel bans, or aid suspensions have followed.
Only in September 2025 did U.S. lawmakers finally issue a warning — threatening sanctions over Pakistan’s involvement in targeting dissidents abroad.
Yet, for Islamabad, this was little more than diplomatic noise. Decades of strategic patronage — from the Cold War to the “War on Terror” — have shielded Pakistan’s military establishment from meaningful accountability.
The killing of a journalist in Kenya will not move the needle unless the world accepts an uncomfortable truth: Pakistan is not merely a fragile democracy; it is an intelligence state that survives by silencing its critics, at home and abroad.
A death that defines a nation
As October 23 approaches, Pakistan’s rulers will try to pretend that Arshad Sharif’s death was an accident, a foreign tragedy disconnected from their own sins. But no amount of denial can erase the blood trail that leads back to Islamabad.
Sharif’s killing was not just the murder of a man — it was the execution of an idea: that truth matters more than fear, that journalists can stand against power, that conscience still has a place in a country drowning in hypocrisy.
For all its slogans about democracy and sovereignty, Pakistan has become a nation at war with its own citizens — a country where exile is no escape, and where justice for the dead remains as elusive as freedom for the living.