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.