Pak Army Chief’s Response to ‘Hybrid War’

By Sajjad Shaukat

Now-a-days Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa is visiting various garrisons in various cities as part of farewell trips, as he will be retired on November 29, this year.

One of the most important achievements of Gen. Bajwa is that under his command, Pakistan’s security agencies, especially Pakistan Army has been successfully coping with hybrid war or fifth-generation warfare.

According to a definition, hybrid war is a military strategy in which conventional warfare is integrated with tactics such as covert operations and cyber attacks—the use of a range of different methods to attack an enemy.

Similarly, a fifth-generation war is one where non-state actors take on the state, where information spreads quickly through the internet, and where military engagement and the protocols of war are now mutating into something more amorphous, less easily defeated.

The military has also long suggested that fifth-generation warfare or hybrid war is being thrust on Pakistan.

In April 2018, Gen. Bajwa said that hybrid war had been imposed on Pakistan to internally weaken it, while noting that the enemies were failing to divide the country on the basis of ethnicity and other identities. He elaborated: “Our enemies know that they cannot beat us fair and square and have thus subjected us to a cruel, evil and protracted hybrid war. They are trying to weaken our resolve by weakening us from within.”

In fact, besides some other US-led some western countries, including Israel and particularly India is waging a hybrid war against Pakistan—also due to the fact that the latter is the only nuclear country in the Islamic world.

As part of anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim policies, Indian extremist government of the fanatic Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the leader of the biased ruling party BJP is acting upon the ideology of Hindutva ((Hindu Nationalism). Their various malicious moves such as persecution of religious minorities especially Muslims, anti-Muslim laws-CAA/NRC, assaults on Muslims by the extremist Hindus, blaming Indian Muslims and Pakistan for spreading coronavirus, implementation of bringing demographic changes in the disputed territory of the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), registration of almost 2.5 million new non-local voters in that region etc. are notable.

Indian forces had also intensified shelling inside Pakistani side of Kashmir by violating the ceasefire agreement across the Line of Control (LoC) and compelled Pakistan Army to give a matching reply. In February 2021, the Director Generals of Military Operations of Pakistan and India had agreed to strictly observe the 2003 ceasefire agreement at the LoC and other sectors, including Working Boundary from the midnight of February 24 and 25. Despite it, Indian forces violate the agreement from time to time.

Earlier, on August 5, 2019, Indian extremist government revoked articles 35A and 370 of the Constitution, which gave a special status to the IIOJK. Indian government bifurcated Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories—Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh to be ruled by the federal government. Indian cruel actions against the Kashmiris reached climax, as on the same day, New Delhi also imposed strict lockdown in the Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK), and deployed more than 900,000 troops there. Indian military and paramilitary troopers have martyred tens of thousands of the Kashmiris, including women and children through ruthless tactics, firing of pallets and extrajudicial killings.

Implementing the August 5 announcement, New Delhi had issued a map on October 31, 2019. In accordance with it, Jammu and Kashmir was bifurcated into two union territories—Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh and identifies Pakistani side of Azad Kashmir as well as certain areas of Gilgit-Baltistan as an Indian territory. Both China and Pakistan rejected Indian illegal measures.

Particularly, New Delhi had escalated tensions with Islamabad especially in the aftermath of the false flag terror attack at Pulwama-in the IIOJK. In this respect, on February 27, 2019 in response to the Indian so-called pre-emptive air strike near the town of Balakot, close to the border with Pakistan’s sector of Kashmir, Pakistan Air Force (PAF) shot down two Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter jets and launched aerial strikes at six targets in the IOK. Pakistan’s civil and military leaders have repeatedly pointing out that India is planning another false flag operation-Pulwama-II against Pakistan in order to divert attention from its internal issues and failure of external policy. Taking cognisance of these developments, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa has repeatedly warned India, saying: “We will respond any aggression with full might.”

It is mentionable that unlike other countries’ war against terrorism, including the US-led Western countries’ war against these non-state actors, Pakistan’s Armed Forces displayed unbelievable progress through the military operation Zarb-e-Azb (Sharp and Cutting strike), which started on Jun 15, 2014 against the militants in North Waziristan Agency (NWA) and afterwards extended to other tribal areas, has almost, successfully, achieved its objectives.

During Gen. Bajwa’s term, continuing the Zarb-e-Azb, in February 2017, the Pakistan Army launched ‘Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad (Elimination of Discord) aimed at indiscriminately eliminating the residual/latent threat of terrorism, and further ensuring Pakistan’s border security.

Addressing the Defence Day and Martyrs Day ceremony on September 6, 2018, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa stated: “The country passed through a very difficult phase during the past two decades…Our forces and nation have rendered sacrifices in the war against terrorism…Our houses, schools and leaders were attacked. Efforts were made to weaken us internally.” Noting that more than 70,000 Pakistanis were martyred and injured in this war (2017), the army chief vowed to collectively fight this menace of terrorism.

However, Pakistan’s armed forces and primary intelligence agency ISI have successfully broken the backbone of the foreign-backed terrorists. Peace has been restored in the provinces of Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Karachi as well as in other vulnerable regions. 

But, in the recent past, terrorist attacks especially in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan which is central point of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) show that the CIA-led Indian RAW and Israeli Mossad are destabilizing Pakistan and want to damage the CPEC project which is part of China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative or BRI, as Washington and New Delhi have already opposed this project.

Pakistan Army has not only been successful in uprooting the anti-state and separatist elements, but also contributed a lot in socio-economic development of Balochistan besides giving military training to the youth, while protecting mega-projects and the CPEC staff.

This is noteworthy that the Taliban fighters on August 15, 2021 entered the Afghan capital Kabul and seized power, taking control of Afghanistan. The Taliban-led government clarified that Afghan soil would not be used for any terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda, ISIS and TTP for terror-attacks against neighboring countries, including Pakistan. But, regarding some recent terror-attacks, sources suggested that some militants of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which is based in Afghanistan have entered Pakistan from Afghanistan. Hence, military leadership has warned Kabul to check this infiltration. 

In November, 2020 at a joint press conference, military spokesman-Director General (DG) of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major-General Babar Iftikhar and the then Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi unveiled a dossier containing “irrefutable evidence” of India’s sponsorship of terrorism in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN Munir Akram had handed over the dossier to the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

In its 27th report, dated February 3, 2021 and the 28th report, recently published, the UN Security Council’s monitoring team for tracking terrorist groups confirmed Pakistan’s dossier, and drew attention to the increasing cross-border terrorist threat to Pakistan.

In his recent interview to an Indian news channel,  an ex-RAW agent named Daniel admitted that he spied on Pakistan at India’s behest in the ‘90s and “was caught by Pakistani security forces…he was sent to Pakistan “to make bombs go off…India frequently sends spies over into Pakistani territory”.

Notably, the country’s security agencies arrested the terrorists involved in a blast which occurred on June 23, 2021 near the banned Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed’s house in Johar Town, Lahore. Addressing a press conference, the then Punjab Inspector General of Police Inam Ghani provided details of the blast and proved that the mastermind behind the blast was an Indian citizen, having clear links with RAW.

The then Foreign Minister Qureshi had remarked that if the international community had taken timely notice of Islamabad’s concerns over New Delhi’s involvement in terrorist activities across Pakistan, Lahore’s Johar Town blast and several terrorist incidents in Balochistan would not have taken place.

Meanwhile, the EU DisinfoLab has continued unraveling gradually, India’s terror-network and anti-Pakistan propaganda campaign. In its report, titled “Indian Chronicles”, the EU DisinfoLab, published on December 9, 2020, exposed an Indian disinformation network, operating since 2005 to discredit nations, particularly Pakistan. It aims to reinforce pro-Indian and anti-Pakistan and anti-Chinese feelings.

In this regard, Indian plot against Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) was also confirmed, when on various social media platforms on February 1, 2021, a youth from that region Mehdi Shah Rizvi, son of late Syed Haider Shah Rizvi disclosed that how he and his father—sub-nationalists worked for his handlers from abroad to achieve their desired objectives—linkage with the RAW—, operating under the cover of accredited NGOs forced them to make anti-Pakistan statements.

World’s renowned newspapers had reported that the then Prime Minister Imran Khan’s number was among those targeted for surveillance by India, using Israeli spyware–Pegasus software.

And it was owing to Gen. Bajwa’s efforts that on October 21, this year,  the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global money laundering and terrorism financing watchdog removed Pakistan from a list of countries under “increased monitoring”, also known as the “grey list”, while Indian lobbying and propaganda campaign to blacklist Pakistan failed.

In this context, DG of ISPR, Major-Gen. Iftikhar pointed out on June 17, 2022: “Completion of FATF AML/CFT action plans by Pakistan is a great achievement…Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa said that the Core Cell established at the General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi, in addition to civil and military team, made Pakistan proud by successfully completing action plan of the Financial Action Task Force.”

At this juncture, Pakistan is also facing multi-faceted crises and challenges like corruption, soaring prices, energy-shortage, unemployment, crimes, and dependence upon the US-led developed countries, IMF and World Bank for financial aid. In this backdrop, as part of the hybrid war, these external anti-Pakistan entities seem determined to exploit the ongoing political turmoil of the country, which is further deepening. 

In this connection, an assassination attempt was made on the former Prime Minister Imran Khan-Chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) on November 3, this year when the party’s ‘Haqeeqi Azadi’ [Real Freedom March] march reached Wazirabad’s Allahwala Chowk.

Nevertheless, some third elements such as RAW or some anti-Pakistan foreign entities can again target the long march to widen the gulf between Army and the ruling alliance PDM on one side and the PTI supporters on the other with the aim to further destabilize the country.

Regrettably, country’s political entities and media persons are moving Pakistan towards anarchy or civil war by giving priority to their personal interests over national interests.

Taking note of these drastic developments, addressing the passing-out parade ceremony on October 8, this year at the Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa clarified that the armed forces, with the support of its citizenry, will “never allow any country, group or force to politically or economically destabilise Pakistan.” He advised the cadets—“never get distracted by fake news and political wrangling in the country…to respect the democratic institutions and be always ready to defend the territorial integrity, sovereignty and constitution of Pakistan with their life.

Undoubtedly, Pakistan’s security forces have been facing a different war, while enemy is also different, who employ subversive activities of various kinds which include both internal and external challenges. In these terms, Pakistan is in the state of hybrid war.

At this critical hour, the government, the opposition leaders, civil societies and media owners, including all other segments of society must sign a charter of unity which is essential to pull the country out of the ongoing serious crises which are rapidly creating political instability, giving a greater setback to country’s fragile economy.

Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations

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