Humour on the battlefield
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IF there was very one obvious lesson from the tumultuous week of conflict we have just left behind, it is that different nations deal with war in remarkably different ways.
Ever since India began to sound the war drums following the Pahalgam attack on April 22, 2025, it was all snickers and giggles from the Pakistani side.
Over on social media, where half of all battles now seem to be fought, Pakistanis devised memes and reels that mocked India and themselves. A favourite one was a reel of driving on a Karachi road in the dark, with the voiceover explaining the futility of bombing an already broken and wrecked city.
Others requested that the attack take place when the gas supply was on so that there would be no way of serving tea to the invaders after 9:15 pm. Female Instagram influencers wondered what would be appropriate to wear during the war. Some forecast Eid celebrations at the Taj Mahal, others boasted of plots purchased in DHA Phase 13, located in New Delhi. Mirth and mockery made up the national mood.
This seemed to be remarkably different from how things were across the border. Over there, the more familiar emotions that accompany an impending war were more in evidence, and there was anger, frustration, and fear of the future. The difference in the reaction itself, their own versus Pakistanis’, was something that seemed to surprise and shock the Indians. How could a country rely on humour and jokes to get itself through what were some of the most agonising moments in recent history?
All sorts of upheavals have created a national understanding that worrying at the individual level simply does not matter.
The responses to this question expose a crucial misunderstanding on the part of Indians. Unlike the Indians who have enjoyed a long period of peace and prosperity in their country, Pakistanis have endured a near-constant state of conflict for most of this century.
Pakistan was thrust into the conflict when the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and Pakistan became a Nato supply route. From then until 2021 and the infamous, sudden and hasty withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan, Pakistan has been constantly beset by terrorist attacks. The tribal areas were no-go zones and the military was constantly carrying out operations in them. Terror attacks that killed scores forced people to endure unimaginable levels of stress on a daily basis for years on end.
Terrorist attacks like the shocking and utterly inhumane one on the Army Public School in Peshawar in 2014 shred the nation’s emotional fabric. The tiny corpses that were carried out of the school in the aftermath of that attack are seared in the collective memory of the nation. All of this is to say that unlike India, Pakistanis are used to war because they have been at war for days and years.
They have also developed strategies to cope with war. While writing this article, I had a conversation with Dr Yousuf Zakaria, a consultant psychiatrist in the UK. According to him, the Pakistani reaction tells a deeper story about war and survival. In his view, humour as a coping strategy in times of extreme stress and uncertainty is an iteration of ‘learned helplessness’ on a mass, national level.
As he put it: “Learned helplessness is a phenomenon observed when people, after being repeatedly exposed to stressors they feel powerless to control, begin to internalise a sense of futility. Eventually, even in the face of danger or hardship, they may stop reacting with urgency or alarm — not because they don’t care, but because they’ve learned, consciously or unconsciously, that their reactions won’t change the outcome.”
Humour then is a Pakistani survival strategy.
Decades of political and military instability, the constant threat of terror attacks, unexpected school and work closures, all sorts of upheavals have created a national understanding that worrying at the individual level simply does not matter and will not affect the outcome. As Dr Zakaria put it: “Humour, nationalism, even defiant nonchalance can serve as emotional shields against helplessness. By making light of the threat, people regain a sense of agency — if not over the situation, then at least over how they emotionally experience it.”
This is not to say that the trauma of war was experienced the same way by all. Those living in border areas saw explosions, shelling, and drones in a way those sitting in the urban areas did not.
As a study by the National Centre for Post-Traumatic Stress in the US shows, civilians who are exposed to prolonged combat face many stressors such as the fear of being bombed, displaced, targeted, having restricted access to food and water and even being fearful of experiencing sexual violence. All these threats and fears have undoubtedly affected all those who live near the targeted areas, and especially the Line of Control.
Every Pakistani knows that their worrying would have no effect on the outcome of the war. In deploying humour to deal with the build-up, onslaught and aftermath of the war they took control of their own emotional narrative. This allowed them to at least have control over their feelings even as they had little control over what Indian forces would do or even how their own forces would respond.
Resilience is often the consequence of having endured significant and serious hardship. Pakistanis are resilient because they have borne so much, wars, pandemics, coups and everything else one can imagine.
Last week’s national mood was a victory against despair and an example to the world of a country that is strong because it has endured so much and a people who can laugh — including at themselves — because they know crying will not change the circumstances or the outcome.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2025
