Nowadays, the thrill of the Cricket World Cup 2019 has taken over all countries participating in the tournament. Each country is seen supporting its own team either by their physical presence on field or through social media, where a match other than the one payed on ground is played.
The two South
Asian neighbors, Pakistan and Afghanistan recently had their match in which
both teams gave each other a tough competition though Pakistan won by a very
small margin. It should add in favor of Afghanistan, whose cricket team in a
very short span of time has come up to the competition of a relatively better
team like Pakistan.
Even though
the game is called as a gentlemen’s game, where sportsman’s spirit should have
been adopted by both sides, supporting each other and taking the game lightly
enough to keeping it just a game, but it is undoubtedly very disappointing to
see it get escalated into a political strife quite quickly.
Supporters
were seen abusing each other, getting into physical conflict as soon as the match
concluded. The conflict was prevalent both online and offline, on social media
and in physical ways.
Deciphering
this situation, it is seen to be a matter of international importance as it
translates to certain grave outcomes that might prove costly for Pakistan in
the future. Firstly, it is an open dislike between two Muslim countries that
isn’t a norm generally. Pakistan maintains good relations with almost all
fellow Muslim nations except Afghanistan.
Unfortunately,
Pakistan has never been successful on pulling off cordial relations with its
immediate Muslim neighbor, though with great strands of commonality in culture,
society, religion etc.
The
bilateral relations have always been marked with mistrust, a game of accusation
and counter accusation and a complex blame game with each marking the other
responsible for its domestic volatility. This current match was just another
translation of this scenario.
Secondly,
this is also the translation of the most recent Indian war doctrine termed as
the “Hybrid Warfare Doctrine 2018-19” where India is fighting a soft war in the
choke points of Pakistan, including Kashmir, Baluchistan and Afghanistan.
Hybrid warfare basically is how Indian discourse is imposed over mindsets of
these area, creating among them an antagonistic point of view against Pakistan
through literature, indoctrination, propaganda, politics, false imaging etc.
The former
doctrines like the Cold Start or the Integrated Land Warfare doctrine have been
yet unsuccessful to deliver on the Indian military’s full expectations, where
they wanted to make conflict supremely costly for Pakistan. Particularly after
the Pulwama episode of conventional supremacy, that was derailed earlier this
year to deliver itself effectively, giving a huge set back to Indian military
planners.
The former
doctrines focused on arms, physical power, military and real-time war
supremacy. Hybrid doctrine is a hidden, clandestine version of soft hostility
Indian strategic thinkers have recently taken up, where a war is being waged on
soft platforms rather real-time conflict. The nature of this doctrine of being
secretive makes it a very lethal agenda against Pakistan.
India for
this reason has developed a “Technical Service Division (TSD)” that works
secretively to promote the ideas of this current warfare strategy to
destabilize Pakistan. It includes the indoctrination of the leaders of Indian
occupied Kashmir to build an anti-Pakistan stance amongst them, as well as in
Baluchistan and Afghanistan- the current given situation of which is a lustrous
example.
In this
domain; the world of soft power and propaganda, we have clearly lost a war
against India which may prove very costly to us in the future. We have yet lost
to establish a good writ of Pakistan among the Afghan societal mindset in whom
84% now think that Pakistan always has some gross scheme under its sleeve to
harm Afghanistan in all domains, with only 8% of Afghans being in favor of
Pakistan, whereas Pakistani policy makers only wish to think the opposite.
It is not
the Afghans alone that are involved in the spreading of hate for each other,
Pakistanis too, have been very hard to the Afghan settlers of Pakistan
generally, and also after the match on social media and one-to-one towards the
Afghan society as a whole.
This
scenario is not the alone work of Pakistani attitudes towards the Afghan
society but also is fueled by the vast Indian intervention and influence in
Afghanistan through smart power, which has only spurred up in the recent years.
Pakistan
has lost where it has created for itself in its Western borders another hostile
party, adding towards Pakistan’s own security vulnerability, which was already
quite grave by a traditionally insecure Eastern border. Pakistan now is
sandwiched between two adversaries, making its strategic equation look bleak on
its borders.
India’s
Hybrid Warfare Doctrine of 2018-19 is as harmful as the physical warfare
doctrine that Indian strategic thinkers have unfolded upon Pakistan formerly.
Pakistan had somewhat been successful in buffering the physical warfare
doctrines by either establishing arms that counter Indian proliferation or by
setting examples like the very recent episodes of Pulwama to decline Indian
hegemony over South Asia.
Pakistan
has yet not come up with a comprehensive plan in buffering the current hybrid
warfare doctrine of India within and without the borders of Pakistan, which may
prove very lethal towards the sovereignty of Pakistan in the near future, with
more of Pakistan’s choke points been infected with Indian propaganda, opting
for a stance antagonistic to that of the existence of Pakistan.
***Hareem
Aqdas, Researcher at Strategic Vision Institute, Islamabad and student of
International Relations and Politics at Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad.