Waging of sub-conventional warfare is the option of the weaker side as it attempts to overcome the substantial conventional force superiority of its opponent by resorting to irregular/asymmetric or fourth generation warfare techniques. In the first six decades of the 20th century, sub-conventional wars were generally waged by societies that had been colonised by the industrialised and powerful European nations. They called themselves ‘freedom fighters’ and their struggles ‘wars of independence’ while their colonial masters termed them as rebels and their movements as rebellions or mutinies. WWII, which was essentially an internecine war between the European colonial powers, is considered a watershed of colonial rule and when the debilitating conflict ended six years later, both the victors and the vanquished had been considerably weakened and they had neither the power nor resources to reverse the tide of independence movements in their respective colonies.
From the rubble of WWII, the USA and USSR emerged as rival superpowers and neither of them was guilty of having vast colonial empires. After WWII, both the superpowers encouraged the freedom struggle of the colonised societies and within the next two decades, colonial rule came to an end as new countries emerged as sovereign states. The colonisation of societies was tantamount to the practice of slavery at the national level and its end was a major achievement in the history of human civilisation, but the manner the sordid occupation was ended and new countries created sowed the seeds for future sub-conventional warfare.
Almost the whole of Africa and much of Asia was under the colonial powers and when they were finally evicted, the new nations that they created were neither on the basis of ethnic, linguistic or cultural contiguity nor on natural boundaries but purely on who ruled over which part of the territory. This arbitrary partition has resulted in small minority groups within the new nation states who feel themselves isolated and believe they are being commercially and socially exploited by the majority. Many have taken up arms against their states. The current low intensity conflicts in Indian Assam and Kashmir, the freedom struggle of the Kurds in the Middle East, the atrocities in a number of African states based on ethnic and tribal rivalries, and countless other big and minor armed struggles in a variety of newly independent nation states can be traced to the unnatural boundaries and the arbitrary nature of their creation.
Sub-conventional warfare based on religious grounds is a relatively new phenomenon and its beginning can be traced to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. While the Afghan freedom struggle against the Soviet invaders was essentially based on Afghan ethnicity, the USA, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia promoted it as a religious movement (Islamic jihad) against the infidels. While this strategy roped in Muslim volunteer fighters from all corners of the Muslim world, it also led to the creation and rise of al Qaeda under Osama bin Laden, whose edifice was purely religion-based. Once the Soviets were expelled from Afghanistan by the Afghan jihadists with substantial financial, arms and logistics support of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the US, al Qaeda turned its attention to the US, especially when the latter sent its forces into the ‘Holy Land’ (Saudi Arabia) in a bid to expel Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces from neighbouring Kuwait. Al Qaeda since then has raised the religious banner to fight the ‘enemies of Islam’ — the infidel US and its European cohorts. Attacks on US interests began in earnest in the 1990s and culminated in the 9/11 episode that has led to the US war on terror, which many in the Muslim world view as a war on Islam.
The US invasion of Afghanistan codenamed Operation Enduring Freedom may have toppled the Taliban regime and destroyed the al Qaeda infrastructure in Afghanistan, but the two simply migrated and shifted their operations to neighbouring countries. It has led to the resurgence of the Taliban who have fought the US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan to a standstill and are poised to force them to end or substantially reduce their combat footprint in their country by 2014. An offshoot of the Taliban, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), meanwhile, has declared war on the state of Pakistan, and it is involved in extensive subversive and terror activities in the country. Other extremist religious terror organisations in Pakistan like the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) along with some criminal syndicates have joined hands with the TTP.
The isolation and eventual elimination of Osama bin Laden did not result in the elimination of al Qaeda as it split into a number of affiliated but independent groups all operating under the al Qaeda philosophy. One of the principal objectives of al Qaeda and its associated groups is to introduce the very strict Salafi form of Islam in all Muslim states where the majority belong to and practise the more tolerant versions. While al Qaeda has an international agenda about the establishment of an Islamic emirate according to their understanding of Islam, the TTP has a local one: turn Pakistan or at least some of its parts into a Salafi model Islamic emirate. The sub-conventional war currently being waged against Pakistan by the al Qaeda/TTP combine is a manifestation of the religious divide within the ambit of Islam.
The writer is a defence analyst and Director of Centre of Airpower Studies and can be reached at [email protected]