Something I wrote in 2004-5, in the context of US GWOT in the vicinity and implications for India

JIHAD AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR FOURTH GENERATION WARFARE

INTRODUCTION

1.        Jihad is an Islamic doctrine that has acquired prominence over the past quarter century beginning with the anti Soviet war in Afghanistan and culminating in the attacks on the mainland of the remaining superpower on 11 Sep 01. Coincident with the period has been the decline in governance in J&K resulting in the exploitation of the disaffection among the people from the Indian state by India’s perennial foe, Pakistan. Pakistan’s learning curve on such military intervention had peaked in its duty as a front line state against communist intrusion into Southern Asia in the Eighties. With Gorbachev having pulled out Soviet forces from its northern border, Pakistan was able to expand its interference in Indian Punjab to encompass J&K as part of twin plans attributed to it, dubbed ‘K2’ (Khalistan and Kashmir) and the semi-fictional ‘Op Topac’. While the long standing territorial dispute and imbalance of power between the two south Asian protagonist states was partially at the root of the ensuing conflict, Zia’s preceding Islamisation of Pakistan provided the opening for Jihadi forces into the issue. In the event, it became indistinct whether Pakistan was in control of policy as a rational inter state engagement, or whether the Pakistani state was increasingly a tool in the hands of Islamist forces. 

 

2.        Islamism had in the interim acquired status as the new global force with which the sole hyperpower had to contend in wake of the metamorphosis of Soviet Union into Russia. This owed in part to the control of energy resources in Arab lands by USA and its attempt to use the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait to reaffirm it. The relatively under employed Islamist fighters released from Afghanistan gained an outlet for the jihadi energy as the stability of the Cold War dissolved in the early part of the Nineties. Their motivational doctrine, that of Jihad, increasingly found echo on the Arab street where the condition of the masses was aggravated by a persecution complex brought on by a perception of being on the receiving end of the rash of conflicts along Islam’s ‘bloody borders’. Among these conflicts, it was Pakistan’s endeavor to make Kashmir also figure. This was in keeping with its technique of proxy war, that strategic theorists were acknowledging as an evolution in land warfare into ‘fourth generation warfare’.

 

3.        ‘Fourth generation warfare’ at the strategic level is to force a change in policy of the antagonist through a combination of diplomatic, military, economic and psychological pressures extended over time. At the tactical level, it amounts to waging of a low intensity conflict to exhaust the military capabilities of the opponent. From the broad contours of the conflict in Kashmir it can be discerned that the conflict in Kashmir can be classified as such. Since Jihadist forces are enmeshed as combatants in Kashmir, Pakistan’s resort to non-state elements for plausible deniability is obvious. Therefore the conflict lends itself to a study of the impact of Jihadist philosophy on ‘fourth generation warfare’ expansively defined to include unconventional warfare. 

 

 

AIM OF THE STUDY

 

4.        The aim of the proposed study is to examine the linkages between Jihad and fourth generation warfare at the global and regional level to arrive at a strategy for India to negotiate the future.

 

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

 

5.        From the topic it is self evident that the two aspects requiring a stand-alone exploration at the very outset are Jihad and Fourth Generation Warfare. With the definitional exercise aside, the wider implications of the intermeshing of both would require to be done prior to getting into the specifics as obtains in the incidence of fourth generation warfare to the extent it is impelled by Jihad in J&K. The logical sequencing of the study emerging from the foregoing is as broadly as follows:-

 

(a) A definitional exercise encompassing Jihad and fourth generation warfare individually and a survey of the international security situation in which an intermeshing of both aspects is discernible.

 

(b) The Indo-Pak conflict over Kashmir in its secular dimension and implications of the Jihadist connotations of the conflict on the Indo-Pak strategic dyad.

 

(c) The probable trajectory of Jihad inspired Islamism in its global contention with the corrupted Enlightenment project as represented by the Western world and its implications for the subcontinent.

 

THE CONCEPTUAL PRELUDE

 

Jihad

 

6.        Jihad is an Islamic doctrine dealing with selfless ‘exertion’ in pursuit of the cause of Islam. While Islam is popularly known to have five fundamental pillars, namely, belief in monotheism and the prophet hood of Mohammad; five time prayer; fasting in the month of Ramzan; a pilgrimage to Mecca in case feasible in a lifetime; and charity for the underprivileged, Jihad in at least one tradition of Islam is elevated as the sixth fundamental pillar. The Jamaat e Islami founded by Maulana Abu Ala Maududi has propagated this through his writings that have grown in posthumous popularity in pace with religious revivalism the world over. His first original work, not yet translated from Urdu, was titled ‘Jihad in Islam’. The concept found a ready audience in sections of the Arab world, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, reeling under colonialism since the discovery of oil and the end of World War I. The failure of the pan Arab and socialist project, the imposition of client sheikhdoms, the continuation of Israel as both an existential threat and affront and self centered actions of the USA as abandonment of Afghanistan and Iraq, combined to raise the profile of Jihad into being seen as central to Islam’s engagement with the world in some militant quarters. This politicization of Islam in the radicalization of the opposition to regimes and their patrons has been perceived as bringing about the new fault line in the ‘clash of civilizations’. It is what defines the main theoretical problem in international relations today in the tradition of the earlier focus on the cold war.

 

7.        The concept of Jihad is now a political football. In the traditional understanding it had two variants: ‘Greater Jihad’ dealing with the conquest of the self and ‘Lesser Jihad’ meaning striving in the defense of Islam. Islamists – Muslim extremists – privilege the latter version of Islam in pursuit of political ends of gaining power in Muslim societies. Their advantage is in collapsing the two versions of Jihad into each other. The striving in the Lesser Jihad itself amounts to Greater Jihad. There is however no religious or social consensus over their usurpation of the concept. Their agenda has acquired center stage as the principal threat to polity and international order largely because of Western domination of the media and its self-interest in preserving the same. The possibility and extent to which Islamists are proto-nationalists engaged in an anti-colonization project has not been broached adequately in security literature. That the West, through the dominant media, is engaged in hyping the Jihadi threat also indicates that the concept is being made to sub serve political interests by both opponents. The ‘Jihad threat’ will be utilized for legitimizing American expansion and control of energy resources as a national security compulsion. Imposition of democracy with Iraq as a forerunner to the neo-conservative Project for the New American Century only indicates that this conflict between the two forces will perpetuate itself into the future.

 

8.        The extent it impinges on the subcontinent is dependent on the stability of the Pakistani state that has flirted with both forces. The penetration of instability into India will be less a function of what transpires in Pakistan but more on India’s exertion of its ‘soft power’ in regaining the allegiance of Kashmiris. Elsewhere in India, the orientation of India’s secular polity will determine the extent to which minority management is successful.

 

9.        The argument here is that Jihadi doctrine fulfils a motivational function for the ‘cannon fodder’ being employed in the conflict at global level. It presents a ‘win-win’ situation for their madrassa learning benumbed minds – in death they ascend to heaven and in life Islam inherits the earth. An echo of the sermon of the Gita cannot be missed. Its political utility for mobilization of masses is limited by the several stronger competing lived realities of Islam all over the world in which the fundamentalist version of Jihad does not find resonance. In Kashmir, the study could seek to interrogate as to the extent Jihad is implicated in the actions of terrorists, both local and foreign. While there is a propaganda advantage to be had in elevating Jihad as the primary impulse, it would not do for the study to begin with this as assumption for in the Kashmir issue multiple tendencies predominate, with Jihad being not necessarily the most significant.

 

Fourth Generation Warfare

 

10.      There are varying conceptualizations on the evolution of warfare – one being its classification into four generations of warfare by two Marine Corps officers in conjunction with a civil military theorist in the Marine Gazette, circa 1989. In their postulation, the first generation comprised the Napoleonic ear when the smooth bore musket dominated the battlefield. The advent of machine guns and barbed wire in the American civil war lead up to the second generation of warfare with its high point in the First World War. The third generation of warfare had its inception in thinking on breaking through the trench lines of the Great War. It comprised the use of mechanized forces in conjunction with air power in a battle of maneuver. The ultimate was reached in Norman Swarzkopf’s ‘Hail Mary’ maneuver in Iraq War I. Prognostication on the direction of warfare lead these theorists to conjuring up Fourth Generation Warfare which was in effect a return to the old manner of war that has recurred even as warfare moved through the preceding three generations of technology induced innovation - the manner the Spaniards fought Napoleon, the Boers fended off the British, and the Slavs held down the Nazis. In effect fourth generation warfare is the original form of warfare though not technologically innocent in that it innovates in the field of information rather than steel and iron.

 

11.      An extract below from a document forming part of an inaugural publication of the Army’s Center for Land Warfare Studies, ‘Army 2020’ makes clearer the concept:

 

“Military analysts in the USA are now deliberating and reflecting on a fourth generation warfare in which the target will be the whole of the enemy’s society (ideology, culture, political, infrastructure and civil society).  This generation of warfare, they say, will be characterized by dispersion, increased importance of actions by small groups of combatants, decreasing dependence of centralized logistics, high tempo of operations and more emphasis on maneuver.  Masses of men or firepower may become a disadvantage, as they will be easy to target.  Small, highly maneuverable, agile forces will tend to dominate.  The aim would be to cause the enemy to collapse internally rather than physically destroying him.  There will be little distinction between war and peace.  It will be non-linear, possibly to the point of having no definable battlefields or fronts.  Major military and civil facilities will become targets.  Success will depend heavily on joint operations.  If we combine these general characteristics with new technology, we see one possible outline of the new generation of warfare.”

 

12.      This generation of warfare retains some of the characteristics from earlier generations. For example, the Total Wars of last century were aiming at structural and ideological changes. Likewise, the cold war was neither peace nor war, but was fought through proxy in the Third World. Civilian targets were not spared and joint operations were pursued to the extent material was available. Crystal ball gazing in 1989 however has not captured the essence of the conflict well underway by the turn of the century. In this conflict the chief characteristic is of non-state actors combating a coalition of states. Non-state Islamist cells embedded in society have waged a technologically sophisticated war best exemplified by the coordinated attacks on the symbols of American capitalist, political and military might, known to history as 9/11. This dimension of the latest form of war has not been adequately covered in fourth generation warfare conceptualization indicating that at the turn of the penultimate decade of last century America was interested in discerning contours for employability for its massive military power. Towards this end fourth generation warfare conceptualization provided a blueprint, while Huntingtonion theorizing provided rationalization for a new enemy in the form of radical Islam.

 

13.      An admixture of asymmetric war theorizing drawing on Maoist revolutionary theory helps flesh out the concept of fourth generation war. The asymmetric dimension is implicit in the David versus Goliath analogy exploited by the Jihadi opposition, while the lead nation in the ‘coalition of the willing’ engages in the war its military is best configured for – that of fourth generation war towards regime change in ‘rogue states’.  It is here that the linkage between Jihad and fourth generation war can be established. In order to take on the military might and cultural hegemony of the USA, its allies and client states, the Islamist opposition has to rely on the Jihad doctrine to mobilize its supporters for the encounter. As with any universalistic movement, Islamism also has a comprehensive ideological frame affixed on Islam. That Islamic doctrine obtains in many narratives and that privileging any does not command a consensus is not material. Instead the ‘foco theory’ that originated in post revolution Cuba is being relied on to energize the opposition to the USA. The actions of the USA in this regard have only deepened the skepticism with which they are received. The point is that ascendance of Jihad owes to the asymmetric dimension of fourth generation war being engaged in between Islamism and the USA.

 

 

THE INDO PAK CONFLICT

 

 

14.      Interpretations of the Indo-Pak conflict abound. The secular dimension of the conflict can be deemed to be in the internal and external balancing being resorted to by a weaker power in face of the superiority of the regional power. This is historically proven, with Pakistan seeking US aid in the cold war and lately in the War on Terror to firm up its political, diplomatic and military position in the Indo-Pak equation. In so far as the Jihad factor is concerned, it can be deemed to be a form of internal balancing in its motivational dimension with respect to the Pak Army post its Islamisation of the Zia era. The non-state Jihadi actors implicated in the Kashmir question are in it for varying ends not least being the self professed aim of completion of the ‘unfinished business’ of Partition. They only apparently have a broader agenda that propagandistically is projected as extending into defending Muslims in India. However, pragmatically, it may be an outcome of internal politics of the Pakistani state in which the Islamist right would prefer to move to center stage by capture of state institutions to include the Army that has controlled Pakistan for most of its existence with not a little help from Islamist parties. In Kashmir they are thus at the vanguard, with the Army controlling the level of their ‘success’ so as to keep it below the threshold of tolerance of India. Interestingly, motivated analysis apart, the institutional interest of the Pakistani Army, and at one remove the national interest of the Pakistani state defined by its Army, lies in keeping the Jihadis occupied in keeping India tied down, reminiscent of the cliché ‘two birds with one stone’.

 

15.      The Pakistan Army has the requisite experience stemming from the role of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) in the Afghan conflict of the Eighties. It has been well established that the precursor to the International Islamic Front, colloquially termed Holy War Inc, of today were the groupings of the Afghan Arabs aided by the CIA as mediated by the ISI. With Afghanistan neglected, the rash of conflicts accompanying the retreat of cold war frontiers of Russia, and the physical intrusion of the USA into the holy lands of Islam provided these fighters a new focus. That the ISI ensured diversion of Jihadi energy and resources into Kashmir has been well substantiated. However to what extent if any is the Jihadi element in Kashmir an offshoot of the larger confrontation of Islamism with the West elsewhere is worth a study.

 

16.      In this enquiry there is also no need to repeat the themes of information war relevance projected during the Kargil conflict in which some analysts went to the extent of suggesting the hand of Osama bin Laden in the intrusion, his presence in Gilgit and the presence of his 055 Brigade in Kargil! An additional fact must also be factored in that the information on the agenda and utterances of the presiding figurehead of the Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, is Western mediated. As to how much of the same is Kashmir related is questionable and would do with an independent enquiry. The recommendation is that there is no call to develop a contrived linkage with the wider Islamist phenomenon than warranted for this may in the event may not amount to more than a tactical linkage, for example of usage of the same training facilities in Afghanistan or Pakistan by the two sets of fighters with differing preoccupations.

 

17.      To preempt a finding that may emerge, it is possible to see the Pakistani inspired Jihad in Kashmir as having strategic utility for Pakistan. However, on that account it is a rational policy with the attendant connotations of control and limitation even if at a risk of flirtation with Frankenstein. That Pakistan has realized this and is engaged in an extent to remedy the self-created situation as part of its side of the bargain with the USA has to be conceded. To what extent would they compromise on the gains made through Jihadis in Kashmir is a debatable issue that could invite study. The study’s major contribution would be in discerning respective levels of Jihad inspired terrorism and that springing from other reasons as Kashmiri sub nationalism, misadventure, inappropriate angst, or as victims of circumstance. An earlier study of similar nature by a former BGS of the Valley based corps titled ‘Kashmir Diary’ had not reported an alarming Jihadi influence. The present study could ascertain if the situation has changed radically since. The fact that Jihadis have been on an ascendant curve since the publication of the mentioned finding needs to be brought out without overstating the point as psychological war related tracts are prone to do. While Jihadis are indeed the mainstay of the terrorists in Kashmir, the jury is still out on the extent of their linkage with wider Jihad and the levels of support enjoyed by these elements in the demographic terrain of Kashmir.

 

18.      Objectivity amounting to intellectual honesty is all the more important when dealing with the question of the levels of penetration of Jihadi elements into India’s Muslim minority. In so far as religious strife obtained in the Nineties and persisted into the new century in the form of the infamous Godhra-Gujarat episode, there is a case made that the ISI has acquired ubiquitous dimensions within India. There are competing interpretations of India’s socio-political trajectory through the period in which Hindu revivalism, exploited by interested political parties, is also implicated. It is suggested contrary to the terms of reference of the study, that this dimension not be belabored for it would amount to a political comment that has questionable space in an in-service endeavor. Alternatively, the study could highlight the converse to the popular, if alarmist, analysis on the susceptibility of Muslim India to Pakistan inspired Jihadi subversion. Instead the study would do well to highlight the local coordinates that have lead up to the localized violence that has punctuated the Indian scene over the past decade and more. Rightly the media has alighted on the exploits of Irfan Pathan and Sania Mirza to reveal the hitherto fore ignored tendency in Muslim India to partake of India’s economic miracle.

 

PROGNOSIS: GLOCAL (GLOBAL AND LOCAL)

 

19.      The outgoing Chief has already highlighted the beginning of the end game in Kashmir. The fresh policy predicated on exposing the ‘human face’ of the Army in Kashmir will likely yield result in the form of expanded good will for the Army and at one remove the Indian state, of whom the Army has episodically been the only credible representative. While the ingress of the fundamentalist philosophy into Kashmir has to be contended with, the accommodationist orientation of Indian democracy would be able to handle the challenge. With a subsiding of gun culture, the eclipse of syncretic Islam as practiced in Kashmir can be expected to make a recovery. The perceived legitimacy of the forces of violence would recede in face of drawing down of their supposed cause of fighting in the way of Islam against oppression of fellow Muslims. This outcome is feasible in case the current twin initiatives of engaging Pakistan and interfacing with the separatist element in Kashmir are taken to its logical conclusion. So long as Pakistan retains agency this is not a pre-determined outcome. Much would depend on the internal politics of Pakistan of which ads has already been noted the Kashmir problem is a spillover. Pakistan’s stability would also be a function of the international security environment in which the self-willed actions of the US have a major role.

 

20.      While the above may be the preferred future, the past also does not make for confidence in its inevitability. Pakistan has revealed a propensity to turn the clock back when signs of improvement make an appearance in Kashmir. The elevation of the HM over the JKLF in the early Nineties and the Kargil misadventure are cases to point. However, there is a case for examination of the indicators from the internal polity in Pakistan that may be indicative of Pakistan turning a new leaf in President Musharraf’s endeavor to ape his model, Ataturk. If strategic rationality of policy in terms of a weak power seeking to balance a regional power is conceded, then its logical extension is an examination of the comparative trajectory of both powers. Given the current movement in India’s economic and military power, Pakistan’s self-analysis rationally would be to incline towards a period of stability resulting from foregrounding Pakistan over Kashmir. This has been partially initiated in the form of seeking US support while also playing up to its part of the bargain, if insubstantially. The institutional interest of the Pakistani Army that is widely acknowledged as being a state within a state is thus assured and fundamentalists are kept at bay even if their support is tactically solicited. In case the President is assassinated, a fate he has providentially escaped reportedly six times already, there is the specter of civil war. The recent coming together of secular democratic forces albeit in exile is an indicator of alignments in the offing of a post Musharraf and possibly post Jihadi future.

 

21.      It would be a misreading of Islam if the concept of Ummah is taken literally. The differences define the Islamic reality more than commonality of belief. The state of the Arab world comprising nineteen nations is a pointer. Clearly the gap between the Arab cells of Osama bin Laden and South Asia is insuperable, not least because of the threat to Arab cultural imperialism that South Asia poses as housing the largest concentration of Muslims on the planet of which the dynamism of the majority is only now becoming apparent. The salience of Pakistan’s untutored masses does detract from this analysis. However, the lionizing of Osama bin Laden does not in itself indicate a Pakistani preference for fundamentalism of the Taliban variety. The point is that the connection between Arab centric Islamism and South Asian fundamentalism is not of the order as to warrant India weighing uncritically on the side of the West in its current face off with radical Islam.

 

22.      The future of the global battlefield is predictable. The presence of the USA in the Muslim world is set to deepen with the US threatening Iran in wake of winding up its commitment in favor of a clientelist regime in Iraq. The uncertainty of upset power equations between communities in Iraq brought on by US design would be a breeding ground for tomorrow’s terrorists. In so far as Iraqi society is currently devouring itself, this future is not readily apparent. But to the Arab watching Al Jazeera there is a growing demand for a pay back time that cosmetic democratic moves such as the recent municipal elections in Saudi Arabia can unlikely amend. Thus irrespective of the longevity of OBL, the urges he has set in motion and partially represented are not likely to halt by themselves. The USA’s preparation for fourth generation warfare in terms of stand off bombings with no boots on the ground would not be relevant for the Fallujas of the future. Its well-tried strategy would be to exploit the faultlines within Islam that are as salient as the fault line postulated by Samuel Huntington. The outcome of attacks by the Iraqi underground against American collaborators would have a bearing on gauging US success. The hold of the Egyptian and Algerian regime indicates that the military suppression of Islamist forces is feasible. The loosening grip of the Saudi monarchy does not however lend confidence of replication elsewhere. The twin provocations of US actions in preserving energy security and its undemanding support for Israel could prove the Achilles heel of a superpower in overstretch.

 

CONCLUSION

 

23.      India would do well to await the outcome of the global standoff rather than bandwagon with the US. The threat to intrusion of Islamism into India as a manifest threat is slight, even if its presence in Kashmir is an irritant India could do without. India’s best defense is its economic trajectory for which stability is indispensable. In so far as energy needs go, even fundamentalist regimes in oil rich lands require selling of oil. By maintaining a distance from the conflict, India would not attract the terrorist scourge onto itself, something that US planners may wish so as to avail themselves of India’s participation in manpower intensive missions as taming Iraq. India may seek tactical advantage in its triangular relationship with Pakistan and China by playing along with the US. However, it must be borne in mind that the US being the global hegemon can play a like game that an India mindful of its long term national interest should take care to handle.

 

24.      For such a conclusion to emerge from the study, there is a requirement of departing from the traditional mode of analysis that makes a bogeyman out of the Jihadi and pushes India into the American embrace or into militarizing its state and society. To this end there is a requirement of clarity as to whether the proposed study is to be a psychological initiative or one conducted to enliven the strategic scene through generation of fresh insight. The future is made by actions taken based on perceptions of reality. It is therefore of importance that the perception is rightly informed. The study could fulfill this function by lending balance to strategic analysis based on which the hoped for Indian reality of tomorrow will unfold itself.