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Hybrid Warfare and its Nuances:
A Case-Study from South Asia
Dr Farah Naz* &
**
Dr Zia ul Haque Shamsi
Abstract
In a hypothetical sense, hybrid war, in its all nuances, may prove
extremely damaging for Pakistan due to certain evident fault lines
in country’s security infrastructure and body politic. India and its
closest allies did try to find several avenues, which could be
exploited with their location within Pakistan’s political, religious,
cultural, and psychological domains. Pakistan’s response to
India’s Hybrid War, as exposed recently by the European
Watchdog through the ‘Indian Chronicles’, has been of great
significance and worth investigating. Pakistan was able to sail
through the troubling times, unleashed by this Hybrid War
imposed by India. It retrospectively offers a formative case study
in this context. This paper aims to explore how and what kind of a
Hybrid War was imposed on Pakistan, which could rather prove a
* Dr Farah Naz has a doctorate in Government and International Relations from
the University of Sydney and is serving as an Assistant Professor at the
Department of Government and Public Policy, NUST. She is author of
‘COVID-19 Challenges for Pakistan’, and ‘Pakistan under Hybrid War.’
**Dr Zia Ul Haque Shamsi is PhD in Strategic Studies from NDU, Islamabad. He
has authored books: ‘Nuclear Deterrence and Conflict Management between
India and Pakistan’ and ‘South Asia needs Hybrid Peace’ published by Peter
Lang, New York, USA. He also translated into Urdu, Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of
War’. He is presently serving as Director at the Centre for Aerospace and
Security Studies, Islamabad.
___________________
@2022 by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute.
IPRI Journal XXII (1): 25-43
https://doi.org/10.31945/iprij.220102
IPRI JOURNAL 2022 25
Dr Farah Naz & Dr Zia ul Haque Shamsi
recurrent security threat. In addition, an effort has been made to
determine pathways and methodologies adopted by the hostile
neighbour to achieve its defined objectives by undertaking diverse
insidious pathways.
Keywords: Hybrid War, Economic Security, India, Pakistan,
Psychological Warfare, Informational Warfare
26 IPRI JOURNAL 2022
Hybrid Warfare and its Nuances: A Case-Study from South Asia
Introduction
n the global strategic and security community, Hybrid War is meant
for gaining interest along with influencing strategic thinking by
engineering demoralization at several levels. The concept of Hybrid
I
War is as old as the warfare itself, but its canvass has expanded beyond
conventional techniques to other means and ways, including propaganda
campaigns.1 The nature and character of Hybrid War have transformed
into an extremely damaging instrument due to its execution and the
resultant impact on the people of the targeted country.2
Pakistan has been under the cloud of Hybrid War for the last two decades
by India and its Western allies particularly, since the overt nuclearization
of the Sub-continent in 1998.3 The concept became even more strenuously
4
popularized after the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2014. It combines
multiple complex avenues simultaneously, mainly purported to achieve
the desired goals and thus has become an integral part of modern warfare.
Apart from employing a wide range of methods, strategies and
technologies, a wide variety of terminologies are also being used by
experts to explain Hybrid War phenomenon. Scholars belonging to
diverse regions and specialisms, define the concept according to their
regional situations and respective imperatives. Some scholars also include
state’s coercion, conventional and non-traditional threats, grey-zone
conflict, financial sanctions, coercive diplomacy, cyber-attacks, irregular
criminality, and international pressure within an ever-expansive paradigm
1 Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud & Patrick Cullen, “What is Hybrid War?” (2016),
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, https://core.ac.uk/download/
pdf/52131503.pdf, accessed May 2, 2021.
2 Jack Brown, “An Alternative War: The Development, Impact, and Legality of
Hybrid Warfare Conducted by the Nation State,” (2018), The Journal of Global
Fault lines, Vol. 5, Nos. 1-2. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/
jglobfaul.5.12.0058#metadata_info_tab_contents, accessed 13 May 2021.
3 Munir Akram,”Hybrid Warfare”, Dawn, December 9, 2018 vide
https://www.dawn.com/news/1450346, accessed May 18, 2021.
4 James K. Whiter, Making Sense of Hybrid Warfare, 2016, Connections, Vol.
15, no. 2, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26326441?seq=1#metadata_info_tab
_contents, accessed May 17, 2021.
IPRI JOURNAL 2022 27
Dr Farah Naz & Dr Zia ul Haque Shamsi
of Hybrid War.5 However, differences withstanding, distinguished
academics have mostly defined hybrid conflict trajectories as a
combination of conventional and unconventional tools for pursuing
6
hostilities.
In this paper, Hybrid War is defined as the process and employment of
multiple avenues to hurt the enemy with all the available kinetic and non-
kinetic means of warfare making into a parallel or even complementary
pursuit of achieving the goals “by other means.”
Hybrid War has been the subject of intense debate in Pakistan over the
recent past because the country found itself under the spotlight by India
and a motley of its numerous supporters pursuing their own unilateral
agendas and interests. As per our premise in this paper, the concept of
Hybrid War is not new and dates back to the inception of the warfare
7
itself, India has often successfully employed all the available means at its
discretion to hurt its rival Pakistan militarily, economically,
psychologically, internationally, and domestically.8 The Indian Hybrid
Warfare strategy is/was to exploit the existing fault lines in Pakistan’s
9
political system, which is highly polarized and vulnerable to exploitation.
From urban terrorism to sectarian killings, manipulation in stock
5 Viktant Deshpande, Hybrid Warfare: The Changing Character of Conflict, 2018,
Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis, https://idsa.in/system/files/book/
book-hybrid-warfare-vdeshpande.pdf, accessed May 10, 2021.
6 Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud & Patrick Cullen, “What is Hybrid Warfare?,” 2016,
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/52131503.pdf, accessed May 3, 2021.
7 Patrick J. Cullen, MCDC Countering Hybrid Warfare Project: Understanding
Hybrid Warfare, A multinational Capability Development Campaign Project,
2017, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. https://assets.publishing.
service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/64777
6/dar_mcdc_hybrid_warfare.pdf, accessed on May 11, 2021.
8 Muhammad Nadeem Mirza, Summar Iqbal Babar. The Indian Hybrid Warfare
Strategy: Implications for Pakistan. Progressive Research Journal of Arts and
Humanities (PRJAH), Progressive Research Journal of Arts and Humanities
(PRJAH), https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-03013546/document,
accessed May 12, 2021.
9 Ibid.
28 IPRI JOURNAL 2022
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