Pakistans Changed Doctrine: Perspectives and Perceptions | PKKH.tv
PKKH Editorial
News reports have emerged in the Pakistani and foreign media trying to portray that the Pakistan Army no more sees India as its major threat. The Dawn reported.
The Pakistan army has changed its operational priorities for the first time in eleven years and described internal threats as the greatest risk to the countrys security
And the India Today rejoiced:
The Pakistan Army now believes that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and a host of assorted militants within, are a bigger security threat than India.
The Pakistan Army publishes its Green Book every year. The Green book holds strategic papers written by professional soldiers who give their ideas on various subjects. This year a special chapter titled Sub-Conventional Warfare has been included. This chapter, which has not been published at their website as yet, is told to have introduced the doctrine of internal threat in the military thinking. Though this doctrine is not new to an Army that has been at war with all kinds of internal threats for over 11 years, the time chosen to highlight it may be of significance.
As the Pak Army has revised its doctrine, declaring that the actual threat is inside the country, this by no means eliminates the externals; in fact it can be taken in the very opposite. The perspective of this report can be taken as a declaration of the Pak Army that it does not adhere to the conventional idea of warfare alone in this era of the 4th and the 5th generation warfare; an era when most hostilities are being dealt with newly evolving methods that would save the combatant from a boots-on-ground scenario.
The presence of US/NATO troops in our north-west and changing trend in Indian troops accumulation on our east is no hidden matter that any mature Army can be heedless of, not to mention the over 10,000 Indian troops placed in Afghanistan, close to our boarders. Though these armies pose to be defenders of peace and progress, it is clear that without their approval and assistance such internal enemies as TTP, BLA, BRA, that make their nexus through our metropolitan cities, could not have emerged or thrived, in a previously calm history of the area.
The 4th Generation warfare has now become the new turf for power players and Pakistan is a prime victim of all this. This new warfare defines itself with a blurring of the lines between war and politics, soldier and civilian, it is a war in which one of the major participants is not a state but rather a violent non-state actor, a warfare which uses classical tactics; tactics deemed unacceptable by traditional modern thinking; to weaken the advantaged opponents will to win.
Therefore it is unfeasible for the Pak Army to act reckless and allow non-state actors on both sides of its borders to use their techniques of persuasion, training and weaponing civilians from around the world to be used as killing machines against the un-alert civil population of Pakistan. Those who have sold themselves to the bribes and intimidation of these vicious war-lovers, need not to be called Pakistanis or Afghanis or Uzbek; for they do not represent these honorable names; they represent only greed, hypnotic transformation and an extreme behavior approved by their designers.
The asymmetrical threats in form of sub-conventional warfare are to be countered and by and large this threat has been highlighted by all the concerned bodies and think tanks since day first of this war. But we need to understand the need of such a revision in Armys voice in the perspective of the 2014 withdrawal scenario and its aftermaths. We need to understand the agony of defeat in a retreating enemy and its will to destroy anything it can find on his way back. So this may be the right time, after 11 years, that the Army has chosen to send its warning-signal.
The ISPR and the Army have distanced themselves from the false-perception much of the media has tried to convey. In the Corps Commanders Conference that was held at the General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi, chaired by the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, he made it clear:
The threat matrix of conventional and now sub-conventional threat will be addressed simultaneously and no one has forgotten to counter the conventional threat being faced by the country
And on Tuesday, while inspecting the Sialkot Garrison, he cleared all confusions, the army needs to remain fully prepared to respond to the full spectrum of threat be it direct or indirect, overt or covert.
Source
PKKH Editorial
News reports have emerged in the Pakistani and foreign media trying to portray that the Pakistan Army no more sees India as its major threat. The Dawn reported.
The Pakistan army has changed its operational priorities for the first time in eleven years and described internal threats as the greatest risk to the countrys security
And the India Today rejoiced:
The Pakistan Army now believes that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and a host of assorted militants within, are a bigger security threat than India.
The Pakistan Army publishes its Green Book every year. The Green book holds strategic papers written by professional soldiers who give their ideas on various subjects. This year a special chapter titled Sub-Conventional Warfare has been included. This chapter, which has not been published at their website as yet, is told to have introduced the doctrine of internal threat in the military thinking. Though this doctrine is not new to an Army that has been at war with all kinds of internal threats for over 11 years, the time chosen to highlight it may be of significance.
As the Pak Army has revised its doctrine, declaring that the actual threat is inside the country, this by no means eliminates the externals; in fact it can be taken in the very opposite. The perspective of this report can be taken as a declaration of the Pak Army that it does not adhere to the conventional idea of warfare alone in this era of the 4th and the 5th generation warfare; an era when most hostilities are being dealt with newly evolving methods that would save the combatant from a boots-on-ground scenario.
The presence of US/NATO troops in our north-west and changing trend in Indian troops accumulation on our east is no hidden matter that any mature Army can be heedless of, not to mention the over 10,000 Indian troops placed in Afghanistan, close to our boarders. Though these armies pose to be defenders of peace and progress, it is clear that without their approval and assistance such internal enemies as TTP, BLA, BRA, that make their nexus through our metropolitan cities, could not have emerged or thrived, in a previously calm history of the area.
The 4th Generation warfare has now become the new turf for power players and Pakistan is a prime victim of all this. This new warfare defines itself with a blurring of the lines between war and politics, soldier and civilian, it is a war in which one of the major participants is not a state but rather a violent non-state actor, a warfare which uses classical tactics; tactics deemed unacceptable by traditional modern thinking; to weaken the advantaged opponents will to win.
Therefore it is unfeasible for the Pak Army to act reckless and allow non-state actors on both sides of its borders to use their techniques of persuasion, training and weaponing civilians from around the world to be used as killing machines against the un-alert civil population of Pakistan. Those who have sold themselves to the bribes and intimidation of these vicious war-lovers, need not to be called Pakistanis or Afghanis or Uzbek; for they do not represent these honorable names; they represent only greed, hypnotic transformation and an extreme behavior approved by their designers.
The asymmetrical threats in form of sub-conventional warfare are to be countered and by and large this threat has been highlighted by all the concerned bodies and think tanks since day first of this war. But we need to understand the need of such a revision in Armys voice in the perspective of the 2014 withdrawal scenario and its aftermaths. We need to understand the agony of defeat in a retreating enemy and its will to destroy anything it can find on his way back. So this may be the right time, after 11 years, that the Army has chosen to send its warning-signal.
The ISPR and the Army have distanced themselves from the false-perception much of the media has tried to convey. In the Corps Commanders Conference that was held at the General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi, chaired by the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, he made it clear:
The threat matrix of conventional and now sub-conventional threat will be addressed simultaneously and no one has forgotten to counter the conventional threat being faced by the country
And on Tuesday, while inspecting the Sialkot Garrison, he cleared all confusions, the army needs to remain fully prepared to respond to the full spectrum of threat be it direct or indirect, overt or covert.
Source