Evolving response to Pak's hybrid warfare

Surgical strikes cannot be India's absolute response to deter the neighbour's tactical terror attacks always.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj condemned the terrorist attacks on the Indian Army base at Uri, Jammu and Kashmir, in her speech at the UN. The tone and tenor of the speech was to evoke a sense of nationalism among her countrymen and inform the international community about India’s zero-tolerance towards externally-fostered terrorism. The Indian Army also strengthened these political pronouncements with the statement that it reserves the “right to respond at the time and place of its own choosing.”

However, the ambiguity over the Indian response ceased with the “surgical strikes” on terrorist launch pads across the Line of Control (LoC). The Indian media reported 38 terrorists and two Pakistani soldiers killed with no Indian casualties. The Pakistan Inter-Services Public Relations vehemently dismissed and acknowledged only the killing of two soldiers.

Beyond the narratives and counter narratives of the incident, both the Pakistani terror attack on Uri and the Indian Army response are just tactical components on a larger strategic canvas. To secure a strategic victory against Pakistan, it is necessary to appreciate the hybrid nature of the threat posed by Pakistan in conjunction with the emergent geopolitical realities.

In the wake of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on the grim developments within Balochistan, security experts on South Asia prophesy a terrorist attack on India in the near future. Christine Fair, a strategic affairs analyst with Rand Corporation, pointed out a pattern of Pakistan’s terror response to India’s benevolent gestures and, thus, advocated a hardliner approach for India.

According to Nadia Schadlow, hybrid warfare uses a “blend of military, economic, diplomatic, criminal, and informational means to achieve desired political goals”. Pakistan’s hybrid war against its neighbours, India and Afghanistan, is almost as old as its formation as a nation state in 1947.

Pakistan’s pursuit of a hybrid warfare model against India and Afghanistan can be understood by two principal factors. Whilst the quest for strategic depth is the fundamental driver in Afghanistan, the Kashmir issue, multiplied by the bitter memories of Bangladesh liberation, has been the key determinant in the Indian context. The second factor that compels Pakistan is the numerically superior Indian military force levels and the nuclear deterrent.

This explains Pakistan’s hybrid war strategy against India in Punjab and Kashmir through support from local militants, pr-ovided with economic and military aid, besides diplomatic support from China. Pakistan has also raised militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) and others to work as proxies and permit it plausible deniability.

Pakistan follows a similar strategy in Afghanistan with the Taliban as its proxy. Douglas A Livermore, a US Special Forces Officer, writes that Pakistan’s support to the Taliban is to acquire “strategic depth on its western flank, allowing (it) to focus all its attention on India.” 

Sino-Pak nexus

Along with this hybrid threat, the other factor that begs attention is the Sino-Pak nexus and Indo-US friendship that has changed the regional geopolitical scenario. The popular assessment is that China’s rationale to develop a heavily burdened, one-sided, all-weather friendship with Pakistan is because Beijing perceives India as a peer competitor which must be confined to South Asia.

Andrew Small, author of The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics, has argued that China’s economic, military, diplomatic and technological assistance “hasn’t been out of a spirit of good will” but has largely “corresponded very closely to China’s strategic interests in the region and beyond”.

Moreover, the metamorphosis of the Indo-US relationship under the BJP regime has open-ed channels for greater military cooperation between the two countries, especially to challen-ge China’s primacy in the region.

Janes’ defence analysts Brian Cloughley and Caron Natasha Tauro conducted empirical research on the developments around the Sino-Indian borders in Aksai Chin area and Arun-achal Pradesh to conclude the rising risk of conflict along the Line of Actual Control. For fear of encirclement by US allies, the Sino-Pak nexus can only grow stronger. Such stronger Sino-Pak ties may manifest to cyber warfare and cyber espionage.

China’s cyber capabilities have been a real concern for the West and the proliferation of these capabilities to Pakistan, and further to territorially based clandestine non-state actors, can severely challenge India’s critical infrastructure security. Chinese assistance in this area can be central to enlarge Pakistan’s hybrid war design.

Pakistan’s hybrid warfare against India which includes terrorist targets like Uri, Pathankot and Gurudaspur, has a clear strategic ambition. The nuclear component in the hybrid war st-rategy is sought to act as a guarantor against full-fledged retaliation. So, the surgical strikes cannot be an absolute response to deter Pakistan’s tactical terrorist strikes time and again.

India’s diplomatic, economic and military responses against Pakistan amount to psychological war against her. Clearly, the decision to highlight human rights violation in Balochistan and the pronouncements to review the 1960 Indus Water Treaty form part of such a policy towards Pakistan. Also, the latest move against India’s participation at the Saarc summit in Pakistan proves to be another step in this direction. 

(The writer is an M Phil research scholar at the School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi)