Challenges of Hybrid Warfare and Regional Dynamics

Throughout Pakistan’s history, regardless of political chaos, wars with India, USSR and terrorism, there was an unshaken bond between the people of Pakistan and our armed forces. Due to this strong bond Pakistan came out of many severe challenges successfully. The challenge of 5^th generation hybrid warfare with guerrilla tactics, using Afghan soil against Pakistan, initiating separatist sentiments with a blend of world financial institutions’ interventions through loan programs were utilized along with other diplomatic maneuvers to manage Pakistan’s economic and foreign policy. Pakistan, each time, however, was able to manage the pressures emerging out of such challenges and one of the major factors was the close bond of the army with people of Pakistan.

The challenge Pakistan is facing now is the most lethal and optimized version of hybrid/5^th generation warfare trying to create deep divisions within rank and file, amongst not only our families and the society but also within the armed forces.

The key point of 5^th generation warfare is to utilize the flow of popular sentiments that could potentially be brought within various sections of population. For example, in the 80s era, the MQM utilized popular sentiments of the quota system, urban and rural division of resources, etc. The famous SWAT Tehreek-e-Pakistan (TTP) insurgency used Shariah law as the basis of their struggle and the FATA based TTP used Pakistan’s involvement in the war on terror and drone attacks’ collateral damage as an excuse.

Currently social media is being used to target the Pakistan Army’s unity of command that cannot be tolerated at any cost.

The collaborators of such campaign are usually the younger generation who know practically nothing about history of the country and related provincial sensitivities. The main purpose of such campaigns is to weaken the country’s soft image, infrastructure, and economy. Unfortunately, many social media trolls from hostile nations are helping this vicious campaign.

In the past decade the hostile nations and their agencies had failed badly in waging a proxy war on Pakistan under the shadows of TTP and BLA, but the Pakistan Army was able to handle this challenge with its professionalism and unity of command. Normally, to achieve such objective, the hostile powers use various means and maneuvers to execute their plans such as igniting religious or ethnic sentiments that crop up being usually mishandled by incompetent government officials, conflicting media reporting to create chaos, elaborate negative imaging to harm the economy, widen the socio-ethnic differences between country’s population and currently political anarchy is being used under the corruption slogan and this appears to be a new type of model being tried.

In this new hybrid warfare, it is important to create counter narrative groups. No harmful trend should be allowed to be transmitted/spread under any external agenda. Also, we must counter and keep a close eye on such media anchors who might ignite the situation by frequently switching their versions, posting negative trends, and acting like social media troll collaborators. It must be noted that media groups and their personnel are one of the key tools in such type of warfare. We need to develop counter capabilities of civil law enforcement agencies quickly and aggressive Intelligence Based Operations (IBOs) must be continued on long term basis. IBOs have proved to be extremely effective and must be extended to all other domains wherever necessary.

Anti-riot forces need to be developed or upgraded keeping in mind recent trend of utilizing mobs to pursue unhealthy political ends, therefore mob management capabilities must be initiated within our law and enforcement agencies.

In this regard, NACTA is supposed to be leading effective coordination amongst various agencies as such; this should be the leading institute countering hybrid warfare tactics. Unfortunately, we have not seen any evidence of NACTA being very effective; this needs to be a critical step to fight 5^th generation warfare. In recent days, we lost an exceptional ISI Brigadier Mustafa Kamal Shaheed who became the victim of hybrid warfare. While the sacrifice of this brave soldier will never be forgotten, the point of concern is that proxies are still able to maneuver in the proximity of the Durand Line. Pakistan has taken a commendable step to counter 5^th generation proxies and safeguard Pakistan’s interests, it started building a dual sided fence along the 2500+ km long Pak-Afghan border.

As of now, a considerable portion of the fence has been completed along with military settlements and many fortified style check posts. An immediate impact was noticed all over the country as major terror attacks against Pakistan were reduced considerably. This indicates that many notorious actors were hiding in Afghanistan and its soil was being used as a launching pad for terrorism against Pakistan. Nonetheless, some recent attacks suggest that stricter measures need to be taken to close the loopholes for effective border fencing arrangement. In addition to fence the border, we must keep in mind the late Brig. Mustafa Kamal incident, he was martyred in the Angoor Adda locality of South Waziristan, a mountainous region that borders Afghanistan and has long been a hotbed of militants, therefore some additional steps need to be taken in coming future. This is the sole right of a country to protect its interests and safeguard its citizens from any uncertainty due to the war-like situation next door. We can leverage just a recent example from Turkey.

Turkey launched an assault on Syria against PKK/YPG terror groups. It also enforced a zone of influence about 30 km wide along its border with Syria so that Turkey could be saved from ISIS, PKK and YPG terror groups. The same tactics can be exercised by Pakistan to protect its borders, if the time comes. The entire world is aware that war-torn Afghanistan is a sanctuary for all kinds of terrorist networks. So, acting against terrorists working from inside Afghan is the right of a sovereign country like Pakistan. This is the world where only the powerful prevails.

I am not suggesting that immediate steps be taken as Turkey has done or sending our troops inside Afghanistan. There are ways to establish a Buffer Zone and I am convinced that the time is approaching when our planners must keep this option on the table. For instance, active or semi-active special flanks can be posted permanently beyond the Durand Line to prevent imminent threats towards Pakistan. These are not the steps we have not exercised previously, but we have vast experience in 1980 era Afghan war where many tactical procedures were developed and factually utilized. In order to be more effective, the intelligence networks need more resources (state of the art technology tools) and rigorous training keeping in mind various internal and external fronts.

It includes all levels of resources starting from additional resources for defence agencies to
civil law enforcement agencies. In addition to this, Joint Intelligence Collaboration with SCO member states can be extremely helpful in handling challenges from the region. This collaboration will further benefit when additional economic activities like CPEC, North South Gas Pipeline will mature in the next few years provided hurdles somehow will be removed. Pakistan is the only country who has fought foreign imposed hybrid warfare in the past couple of decades that has resulted in tremendous monetary and other losses, yet it emerged victorious while many countries were destroyed by such warfare tactics. After defeating the proxies in SWAT and FATA, our sports grounds returned to normalcy and we have started enjoying cricket matches with international teams, recently we successfully conducted the Pakistan Super League 8 (PSL 8) cricket matches across Pakistan.

This indicates the positive development towards a better Pakistan as far as country’s image is concerned. One of the key aspects of social media is how to utilize it positively and effectively to Pakistan’s benefit. We have been noticing a rather harmful type of trolling in social media platforms YouTube, twitter/spaces, Facebook and Instagram, in actual fact these platforms could be used for healthy outcome-based debates. We have challenges in every sphere of life, so social media usage for such healthy debates can prove to be a very helpful for formulating foreign policy tool, strategic paradigm maneuvering and geo economics.

Pakistan has to play a key role in the future events that will occur regionally as well as globally. There are certainly some spiritual dimensions that dictate Pakistan’s armed forces to get ready with maximum deterrent and optimum power to handle requirements of such divine events. The creation of Pakistan is itself a miracle during the scared month of Ramadan and the mass killing of migrants in 1947 is the baseline and spiritual backbone of the ideology of Pakistan’s Armed Forces. We can never forget our martyrs of 1947 and if Pakistan is able to sustain so many difficult problems, it is due to the memories and hidden prayers of Shaheeds of 1947 Partition. This is the spiritual dimension that cannot be quantified by any foreign analytical study.

We must not forget what’s going on in our neighborhood in the form of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that gave rise to Hindu extremism. RSS’ Akhand Bharat ideology is today quite visible, they openly say that the division of the sub-continent was not right and that one day this division will be eliminated. It means they believe that Pakistan and Bangladesh are still part of a greater Sub-continent under RSS rule. The problem here is that Pakistan is the main hurdle in their way. RSS leaders believe that once Pakistan is dealt with, Bangladesh has no power to stand against India and can be captured within no time. That is why all their negative efforts and evil energies are focused on Pakistan. Indian hybrid warfare tactics against Pakistan were exposed by the apprehension in 2016 of Indian Naval Officer Kulbhushan Jadav from the Balochistan area, the details that emerged during investigation were quite alarming. It became evident that India is working at the state policy level to weaken Pakistan and that any project or plan for Pakistan’s future progress, like CPEC, is not acceptable to the Indian establishment.

The point to make is that this can only be possible when one predominant sect of political ideology takes a major role indulging in this ideology at all levels of state sectors like military, police, judiciary and in this case, RSS has successfully done this and is now very much focused on its expansionist plan westward. If we compare RSS development in India the puzzle can be solved easily, this is the reason that India is on the forefront to destabilize Pakistan by unleashing hybrid tactics, separatist training, guerilla attacks on armed forces and civilians etc. The rapidly changing geo-political situation needs to be carefully examined in the foreign policy domain and right decisions need to be taken to get a positive outcome for Pakistan. We were facing negative consequences of the Russo Ukraine war in terms of food security and global supply chain issues that are directly impacting regional geo-economics. Yet another important development occurred recently i.e. the Saudi-Iranian peace negotiations and restoration of bilateral relations, thanks to Chinese mediation. This is a huge development that will change the regional geo-politics as well as geo-economics. The Saudi Iran paradigm shift in terms of restoration of diplomatic ties will certainly ease the knots for Pakistan in many ways. We must focus more internally to eradicate elements of lethal hybrid warfare that is trying to create deep divisions amongst the masses and we must forcefully stand up for our Army’s Unity of Command that is extremely essential for the survival of Pakistan. In addition, as suggested above, we MUST support and strengthen other civil and law enforcement institutions so that reliance on our Armed Forces for each and every problem could be minimized so that they can focus only on external threats.

Other important elements that impact foreign policy is the economic model and removal of hurdles that restrict economic wellbeing of the nation. To ease this, education and health reforms are a must alongwith formation of prestigious educational and health institutions. Basic system reforms need to be done in the fields of taxation and agriculture, social justice and above all, punishment to corrupt elites must be given. Pakistan must develop a mixed blend of economic models that cover sale of military hardware, tourism, agriculture and regional connectivity projects for revenue generation. This can only be achieved if and when Pakistan is able to eradicate internal threats in the form of hybrid warfare. We must handle it as a nation, standing side by side with the Pakistan Army and its current leadership.

By Hafiz Anees – April 08, 2023 in Defence Journal https://defencejournal.com/2023/04/08/challenges-of-hybrid-warfare-and-regional-dynamics/