ACCORDING to the NATO review, hybrid warfare remains a contested concept and there is no universally agreed definition of it. To put it simply, hybrid warfare entails an interplay or fusion of conventional as well as unconventional instruments of power and tools of subversion, to exploit the vulnerabilities of an antagonist state to inflict damage on it in an optimal manner. Glenn (2009) defines ‘hybrid threat’ as follows: An adversary that simultaneously and adaptively employs some combination of (1) political, military, economic, social and information means and (2) conventional, irregular, catastrophic, terrorism and disruptive/criminal warfare methods.
The hybrid war, meets the objectives without fighting as was suggested by the ancient military strategist, Sun Tzu who said, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. Hybrid attacks are generally marked by a lot of vagueness/obscurity so that the target country finds it difficult to apportion blame and give response. In the hybrid war, the vulnerabilities of the targeted state in the political, military, economic, social, information and infrastructure (PMESII) realms are exploited insofar as it is tangibly and functionally weakened. Also, through propaganda, a wedge is created between the state, its institutions and its people, to create conditions for its implosion. This is precisely what a hybrid actor aims at doing below the war threshold.
For the last many years India has launched the hybrid war against Pakistan to attain its objectives avoiding a military confrontation with the nuclear Pakistan. In this context, India is using all possible strands of this war to weaken Pakistan in various ways to establish its total hegemony in South Asia. In this context, different facets of India’s strategy of fighting this hybrid war against Pakistan are as follows. India is using terrorism/false flag operations to blame Pakistan as a sponsor of terrorism to tarnish its international image and bring it under UNSC and major powers’ sanctions to harm its economy and its defence capabilities, although so far it has failed to do so. India has also been sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan by covertly using the Iranian and Afghan soils through RAW operatives in its embassies in both countries and it is still doing that.
The arrest of Kalboshan Yadev and his confession of supporting terrorism and TTP’s refuge in Afghanistan and terrorist acts committed/being committed by it in Pakistan are examples. In the context of terrorism in Balochistan, as per media reports, India has given refuge to some Baloach separatist leaders and issued the Indian passports to others for treatment and training purposes. The above discussed terrorism is meant to weaken/harm Pakistan’s integrity and also to weaken its economy by disturbing/delaying the completion of the CPEC and discouraging foreign investment in Pakistan by threatening the lives of the Chinese and Pakistani engineers and personnel working on this project by sponsoring/supporting terrorist acts by the TTP/Baloach separatists, wherever the CPEC work is going on, including he Gwadar port area.
On the other hand, India sponsors false flag operations in IIOJ&K, like Pulwama attack and blames Pakistan for those attacks with two objectives, one to propagate IIOJ&K peoples’ legitimate freedom struggle as terrorism to weaken their cause at the UNSC and in the eyes of the major powers and also to blame Pakistan as a state sponsoring terrorism.
Likewise, India also orchestrates false flag operations inside its own territory, like the Mumbai, Indian Parliament and Samjhota Express attacks and blames Pakistan to get it declared as a state sponsoring terrorism at the UNSC or by the US/other western major powers. India did so in case of Mumbai attacks by blaming Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamait-ud-Dawa and its some leaders were declared as terrorists by the UNSC.
Although later, as reported by the Times of India in 2013, a member of a Special Investigating Team (SIT) of India’s Central Bureau of Investigation had accused incumbent governments of “orchestrating” the terror attacks on the Indian Parliament and the 2008 Mumbai attacks. And, Hikmat Krakare’s (Head of India’s Anti-terrorist Squad, later murdered) investigations revealed that a serving Indian Army officer; Lt Col Prashad Srikant Puohit and his accomplices were involved in Samjohta Express attack in 2007.
In the field of foreign policy, the Indian Prime Minister Modi and his Foreign Minister, referring to India’s own orchestrated false flag operations, have been constantly blaming Pakistan for sponsoring those terrorist acts in IIOJ&K and India, in their speeches/meetings with the major powers’ leaders and at major forums like the SCO, G-20 and BRICS summits andUNSC/UNGA to undermine Pakistan’s international standing. India has also scuttled SAARC summit to be held in Pakistan for years now, to isolate Pakistan in South Asia and it is also developing strategic relations with the Gulf countries to the detriment of Pakistan.
Politically, India has been interfering in our domestic politics by using its print, electronic and social media to negatively influence its readers/viewers in Pakistan, to enlarge political differences among Pakistan’s political parties, to tarnish the international and domestic image of Pakistan’s major institutions, especially the armed forces, to create hatred among the provinces, to encourage separatist tendencies in Balochistan and also to disturb the inter-provincial, inter-religious and intersect harmony in Pakistan.
To weaken Pakistan’s economy, right from its inception in 2014, India has been opposing the CPEC by making it controversial through its propaganda campaign that its was passing through Gilgit-Baltistan being a part of the disputed J&K state, whereas it has denied since 1948 to hold a plebiscite in the state as was required under the UNSC resolutions. In this context, India has also been delaying Pakistan’s exit from the FATF’s grey list for years to push Pakistan to its black list.
In view of the above discussion, it is important that Pakistan keeps vigilance on India’s hybrid war objectives and its strategy being used to achieve those and continues to prepare and implement plans/strategy to counter it. Above all, Pakistan should implement an urgently formulated internal plan/strategy to put its economy on the path to progress, to achieve better internal political, economic, social, religious/intersect and inter-provincial harmony, to make its major institutions work efficiently, and further strengthen its foreign policy.
—The writer is a former Research Fellow of IPRI and Senior Research Fellow of SVI Islamabad.
Email: hanifsardar@hotmail.com
