Two major incidents occurred in Balochistan involving the martyrdom of at least 12 soldiers from FC on the same day. They followed another blast in Chaman which killed at least 6 people nearly two weeks ago. These terrorist acts are emblematic of a fundamental problem of how Balochistan has evolved into a new operational space for Pakistan’s antagonist strategic environment unfolding in South Asia. Unfortunately, this operational space has become a stage for employing tactical instruments of another kind –kinetic strategy–to undermine Islamabad’s national security: What is being seen is something below the threshold of war. Balochistan is going through a phase that is neither a war nor a peace and could be described as a grey area providing operational space to Pakistan’s adversary to test instruments for the latter’s hybrid strategy. Pakistan’s strategic environment is very much defined and informed by India’s new capabilities in hybrid warfare capitalizing vulnerabilities in grey zones of an adversary. Contextualized against the objective, national power, strategic policies, intent, and capabilities of India which have started to shape the strategic environment around the smaller neighbors so as raise an order aimed at carving out a new sphere of influence, or thinly veiled suzerainty in South Asia, eg, from Bhutan to Bangladesh. In the case of Pakistan, India has sought a very coherent policy of confrontation that could be described as follows: 1) Strategic rapprochement: this is for happy Pakistanis who believe there exists a kind-hearted India that will happily live with Pakistan as a peaceful neighbor. Delhi’s interests and ideology go against having a big heart. So it is not there in the real world. 2) Strategic shock: to break our national will and make us a pliant state is another goal India cherishes. Military and nuclear weapons make it very painful for India to fulfill this goal. 3) Strategic coercion: it is called death by a thousand cuts or slow poisoning, also known as hybrid war. Pakistan is subject to all these three approaches that Delhi adopted long ago. Against this backdrop, Pakistan’s vulnerability is in its peripheral geographical land and borders with thin population centers like Balochistan. Compared to India, Pakistan has a growing gap in national power, faced with its long-term border confrontation, the low-level conflict, and hybrid non-Clawz within strategy, should think hard and fast what options it has: Is there a possibility to make China the new security sponsor; Does Pakistan need to have any implicit Hamalyan Quad countervailing Indian role in Indo-Pacific Quad whereby the US has declared Delhi as the net security provider–as per the recently declassified American strategic literature points to–in South Asia. At the local level in Balochistan, the security establishment has to find and identify the new instruments of hybrid war which include creating uncertainty, menace, and mistrust, to enhance its ability to counter these new conceptual and physical realities. Since there is a lack of communication and networking, a new system be devised which could lead to the military and civilian common office so that both streams move in two orbits but work and liaise in one universe from the strategy to down to small tactical levels; Lack of harmony and shared communication between stakeholders create narrative gaps and lead to all sorts of conspiracy theories–one of the tangible achievements of hybrid strategy. The hybrid war has to be coordinated through a unified civil-military office or flatform. But for this purpose, the increasing digitization of government leadership i.e. due to losing trust for being able to resolve the problem of ordinary masses has to be reversed in Balochistan. The Army has to take upon a new role as a final arbiter to ensure efficiency and good governance in the province of Balochistan. In other words efficiency in statecraft can create a capability to fight the grey war imposed on Balochistan due to its intrinsic vulnerabilities. For this goal to be executed a new authority is needed which only could be the Army as the last arbitrator. Last but not the least, the Army also needs to be the final arbiter for another very important goal i.e. massive investment in human capital so that people can be educated, and they can think, make a judgment and become employable so as to take the youth away from the potential recruitment of militancy. Thus the dynamic of 1) efficiency and 2) human capital investment has to have a watchdog as arbiter to ensure these goals are achieved. And that force has to be the Army. Nevertheless, If the conceptual and physical realities of the operational space are not understood, all stakeholders will be less equipped to play an effective role in combating the war of attrition where there is no visible enemy yet the whole geopolitical sphere looks like a conflict zone for these killings through bomb blasts and suicide bombings. The latest unfortunate bombing and similar other incidents of the recent past will morphe into a bigger challenge for Pakistan’s national security. This is why security institutions need to revisit counter-hybrid war strategies and tactics.