Operation Sindoor, followed by a short but intense skirmish between India and Pakistan bears testimony to the evolving nature of war in international politics
War, long considered a crucial issue in international politics, has since the 1990s experienced ebb thanks to the forces of globalization and growing interdependence among countries. However, since 2022, war again has acquired a center stage in the high politics of the international community. This time, the battleground is South Asia. In this geopolitical region, warfare has evolved dramatically in the past three decades, especially from the Pakistani side. Pakistan’s policy of asymmetric warfare through its policy of using terrorists as an instrument of state policy has been the cause of loss of many innocent lives.
Most recently, the ugly face of Pakistan’s asymmetric warfare was on full display when Pakistani terrorists belonging to the little known outfit The Resistance Front (TRF)-a proxy group of the UN proscribed Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group gunned down 26 innocent tourists and a local Kashmiri pony wallah in the Pahalgam district of Jammu and Kashmir on April 22.
In response India commenced tightening the screws against her arch nemesis through a whole host of economic, diplomatic and political measures. As was seen in the surgical strikes of 2016 & Operation Bandar of 2019, it was clear that India would certainly exercise all options.
Operation Sindoor
On May 7, the Indian Air Force launched a series of precision airstrikes against 21 terrorist infrastructure targets across 9 sites deep inside Pakistan Occupied Kashmir & Pakistan. Among them, some of the targets worth noting are Muridike, Bahawalpur and Muzzafarabad, which housed the headquarters of three Pakistan based terrorist groups-Jaish-e-Muhammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen.
As per official reports, all the targets were destroyed with clinical efficiency resulting in the effective dismantlement of Pakistani terror machinery.
Operation Sindoor is a quintessential example of sub-conventional warfare wherein the level of conflict is above the level of peace time condition but far from the nuclear threshold. It underscores the evolving nature of retaliatory warfare and that too for the first time in South Asia.
Hybrid Warfare is the new normal
General Rupert Smith in his book The Utility of Force argued that the days of conventional war are long gone; today it is “war amongst the people”. This became highly applicable in the case of India and Pakistan recently. In the aftermath of Operation Sindoor, Pakistan launched what became the first drone warfare in South Asia as Pakistan launched hundreds of Turkish origin drones against important civilian and military installations across the length and breadth of northern India while consistently violating the Line of Control by shelling in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab.
While India successfully managed to repeal the drone and missile barrages using a potent combination of the S400 triumf and the indigenous Akash missile defense systems, the short skirmish also saw information warfare being waged by Pakistan against India through a litany of misinformation, disinformation and propaganda campaigns, some of which involves false claims of downing the Dassault Rafale fighter jets during the operation or the “Pakistani strikes” of an Indian military base.
All these are a part of Pakistan’s psychological warfare repertoire meant to achieve twin objectives-to foment communal fissures in India and wrest control of Kashmir from India. It is also meant to achieve, according to Tilak Devasher- “strategic parity” with India.
Information warfare, psychological warfare and drone warfare which forms a part of asymmetric warfare highlights the evolving nature of war in South Asia, it is also indicative of a new unfolding great game in South Asia marked by the rise in the stakes of powers like Turkiye, Azerbaijan, USA, Israel and Russia.
Different countries are jostling to back their respective sides to not only enhance their power vis-à-vis the other country but to shift the balance of power in one of the world’s most turbulent geopolitical regions.
A combination of these new forms of warfare and the ensuing political tussle is a part of the emerging literature of hybrid warfare. Coined by Frank Hoffman, former career US army officer Hybrid warfare is defined as a, “combination of the emerging simultaneous use of multiple types of warfare by flexible and sophisticated adversaries who understand that successful conflict requires a variety of forms designed to fit the goals at the time”. It involves the use, alongside of conventional warfare, methods like cyber attack, economic warfare, lawfare, political warfare to name a few to achieve a primarily political goal.
The paradigm of inter-state industrial war has passed on the mantle to hybrid warfare wherein both India and Pakistan’s actions and reactions have demonstrated to the world that war not only continues to be an integral part of international politics but also continues to animate diplomatic and academic discussions and deal making globally.
