Chaman blast should force Pakistan of new counter–hybrid war strategy
Jan Achakzai
The blast in Chaman which killed at least 6 people is symptomatic of the fundamental problem of how Balochistan has evolved into an epicentre of new operational space for Pakistan's antagonist strategic environment unfolding in South Asia.
Unfortunately this operational space has become a stage for employing tactical instruments of another kind –non kinetic–to undermine Islamabad's national security: What is being seen is something below the threshold of war.
Balochistan is going through a phase which is neither a war nor a peace and could be described as a grey area providing operational space to Pakistan's adversary to test instruments for latter's hybrid strategy.
Pakistan's strategic environment is very much defined and informed by India's new capabilities in hybrid warfare capitalizing vulnerabilities in grey zones of adversary. Contextualised against the objective, national power, strategic policies, intent and capabilities of India which has started to shape the strategic environment around the smaller neighbors so as raise an order aimed at carving out new sphere of influence, or thinly veiled suzerainty in South Asia, eg, from Bhutan to Bangladesh.
In case of Pakistan, India has sought a very coherent policy of confrontation that could be described as follows:
1) Strategic rapprochement: this is for happy Pakistanis who believe there exists a kind-hearted India who will happily live with Pakistan as a peaceful neighbor. Delhi’s interests and ideology go against having a big heart. So it is not there in the real world.
2) Strategic shock: to break our national will and make us a pliant state is another goal India cherishes. Military and nuclear weapons make it very painful for India to fulfill this goal.
3) Strategic coercion: it is called death by a thousand cuts or slow poisoning, also known as hybrid war. Pakistan is subject to all these three approaches that Delhi adopted long ago.
Against this backdrop, Pakistan's vulnerability is in its peripheral geographical land and borders with thin population centres like Balochistan.
Compared to India, Pakistan has a growing gap in national power, faced with it's long-term border confrontation, the low level conflict and hybrid non-Clawzwitian strategy, should think hard and fast what options it has:
Is there a possibility to make China the new security sponsor;
Does Pakistan need to have any implicit Hamalyan Quad countervailing Indian role in Indo-Pacific Quad where by the US has declared Delhi as the net security provider–as per the recently declassified American strategic literature points to–in South Asia.
At the local level in Balochistan, the security establishment has to find and identify the new instruments of hybrid war which include creating uncertainty, menace and mistrust, to enhance its ability to counter these new conceptual and physical realities.
Since there is a lack of communication and networking, a new system be devised which could lead to military and civilian common office so that both streams move in two orbits but work and liaise in one universe from the strategy to down to small tactical levels;
Lack of harmony and shared communication between stakeholders create narrative gaps and lead to all sorts of conspiracy theories– on of the tangible achievements of hybrid strategy.
The hybrid war has to be coordinated through a unified civil-military office or flatform. But for this purpose, the increasing deligimtisation of civilian leadership has to be reversed in Balochistan.
The Army has to take upon a new role as a final arbiter to ensure efficiency and good governance in the province of Balochistan. In other words efficiency in statecraft can create capability to fight the grey war imposed on Balochistan due its intrinsic vulnerabilities. For this goal to be executed a new authority is needed which only could be the Army as a last arbitrator.
Last but not the least, the Army also needs to be the final arbiter for another very important goal i.e. massive investment on human capital so that people can be educated, and they can think, make a judgment and become employable.
Thus the dynamic of 1) efficiency and 2) human capital investment has to have a watchdog as arbiter to ensure these goals are achieved. And that force has to be the Army.
Nevertheless, If the conceptual and physical realities of the operational space are not understood, all stakeholders will be less equipped to play an effective role in combating the war of attrition where there is no visible enemy yet the whole geo-political sphere looks like a conflict zone for these killings through bomb blasts and suicide bomings. The
Chaman's unfortunate b bombing and similar other incidents of the recent past will morphe into a bigger challenge for Pakistan's national security. This is why the security institutions need to revisit counter-hybrid war strategies and tactics.
Comments
Post a Comment