Pakistan has finally officially acknowledged striking targets in Afghanistan’s Khost and Paktika provinces. Earlier on Monday, Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesperson for Tehrik-e-Taliban Afghanistan (TTA) — the self-styled Afghan Interim Government — had put out a statement, “warning that strikes such as these could lead to consequences which are beyond Pakistan's control.”
Pakistan’s reaction followed Saturday’s terrorist attack in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan district. In response to Pakistan’s aerial strikes, the TTA defence ministry claimed that it had carried out multiple attacks on Pakistani army and FC posts along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Pakistan responded. This was corroborated by sources on the ground.
What next?
Official sources say that for now this is enough. That thinking is wrong at various levels. Consider.
Afghanistan is not a state in any modern sense of a state, especially not with the Taliban at the helm. To put it in perspective, Afghanistan is not India or Iran, both far more powerful states compared to Afghanistan but vulnerable precisely because a conflict would make them (as it would any state) lose much in economic, infrastructural and military terms.
Other factors being constant, deterrence, therefore, works when states are configured in similar ways. It seeks to maintain the status quo between them. In other words, deterrence works when a state can prevent another state from undertaking an undesired action by influencing a state’s perception of the costs, benefits, and risks of an action — i.e., when State X can persuade State Y that the cost (essentially, risk) of a particular action will most likely outweigh the benefits. In that sense deterrence is the absence of activity.
Other factors being constant, deterrence, therefore, works when states are configured in similar ways. It seeks to maintain the status quo between them.
The process involves the signalling of resolve backed by demonstrable capability; so communication is integral to deterrence. A good example is Pakistan’s recent retaliatory action inside Iran after Iran chose to engage targets on Pakistani territory. By demonstrating its capability and the resolve that it would respond to any such aggression, Pakistan signalled to Iran and, implicitly, also to India. Equally, by indicating that it did not want any escalation, it gave an offramp to Tehran. A stick must, therefore, have a carrot with it. That’s the combination of negative and positive inducements.
Whether it is deterrence by denial (convincing an opponent that he will not get his objectives should he start one) or punishment (the threat of counterforce and countervalue targeting against the adversary), the strategies require understanding the adversary’s pain points. What else are costs — which a state wants the adversary to calculate — if not that which causes pain and must therefore be avoided?
It is from this perspective that Afghanistan is different. This has consequences for any retaliatory policy which assumes that striking back will establish deterrence. It won’t, unless we can identify the pain points that can be targeted to raise the overall cost for the TTA leadership of housing the TTP and giving them a run of the house. The thinking, after the Taliban swept into Kabul, that TTA 2.0 might take a different approach to governance and relations with the outside world has proved, as some had correctly warned, a chimera.
That’s one point. The other, allied point, is with reference to the cost for Pakistan of a knee-jerk retaliatory policy. The scenario would run something like this: TTA remains mulish and continues to facilitate the TTP; the TTP mounts terrorist attacks; some get preempted, others go through. We retaliate. TTA responds across the border. There’s quiet for a while and then it begins anew.
Far from this being deterrence, it will degenerate into a dispiriting, violent cycle.
Official statements that a particular target was/is struck and neutralised means nothing either in operational terms or, more broadly, for achieving politico-strategic ends. No amount of “Natsec” and “Stratcom” social media signalling about what platforms were used and what targets were engaged would establish deterrence.
Afghanistan is not a target-rich country. Both TTA and TTP cadres are expendable. There’s no dearth of recruits to replace the ones we kill. In any case, the kind of low-intensity conflict the TTP is fighting doesn’t really require big numbers. It can attrit without big numbers.
As for the cost, far from imposing costs on Afghanistan, the cost — direct and opportunity — of such a cycle will steadily rise for Pakistan: instability in the affected areas, casualties, preparing and monitoring defences, constant vigil, expending ammo (small arms to light weapons to mortars to howitzers and field artillery), the use of aerial platforms (calculated in per hour operational flight cost for fighter jets that runs into thousands of dollars) et cetera. Net result: failure to establish deterrence.
Afghanistan is not a target-rich country. Both TTA and TTP cadres are expendable. There’s no dearth of recruits to replace the ones we kill. In any case, the kind of low-intensity conflict the TTP is fighting doesn’t really require big numbers. It can attrit without big numbers. That’s how the psychology of bodies piling up incrementally works.
If people did matter, the TTA would have a different approach to governance and relations with the external world. These modern benchmarks are unimportant for the TTA leadership. What does matter then? Infrastructure? There’s hardly any to begin with, countless marriage halls from Kabul Airport to downtown Kabul notwithstanding. Strategic locations? Military cantonments? Command and control centres that can be degraded? Dams, power grids, power lines? There is some of that but not much. Poverty is a powerful bulwark against a more powerful state seeking to dominate.
Attack and capture? Easy-peasy, as the US found out. But then the fighters disperse and return to you like hellhounds sent by the devil himself. Twenty years down the line you find yourself packing up and leaving, realising that only the creatures of hell can live in a hell. Except, Pakistan can’t up and leave the neighbourhood.
Corollary: it’s a wicked problem. Inaction is not an option; action requires more than reacting to attacks. So what’s the way out?
First and foremost, let’s acknowledge that we have a problem and instead of dissembling, as is the wont of Pakistani leaders, both civilian and military, speak the truth.
Second comes with truth. These CT operations are not the usual war. There’s no clear culminating point of victory. The best that can be achieved is to bring it to what I call the diabetic level — a level of reduced violence that one can live with.
Third, acknowledge that we are in this for the long haul. Not just the security forces, but the entire nation has to be prepared for it. The nation’s participation requires constitutional legitimacy for the governments and the system. The less said on that score for the current goings-on the better.
Fourth, for the long haul, you need a long-term policy with a mix of overt and covert actions, whether kinetic or non-kinetic. Any such policy must have offensive and defensive prongs: act preemptively and proactively when and where required while strengthening the defensive side of this equation.
Fifth, the policy must also, as should be obvious by now, should move from merely dealing with the TTP and holding the TTA responsible for TTP’s actions. As historian and friend Ilhan Niaz pointed out to me, dealing with TTP alone won’t cut it. TTA’s direct action against Pakistani forces and its obvious strategy of using the TTP as leverage against Pakistan opens the space for any direct or indirect action against the TTA. He is right. The Schwerpunkt, to use the Clausewitzean term, must shift to the TTA.
Since we are in this for the long haul, it would be advisable to develop, train and deploy a force specific to the task of border patrolling, monitoring and defence.
Sixth, for this to work, the policy must identify and then target the TTA’s pain points. This can hardly be overemphasized, because it is central to any deterrence strategy whether through punishment or by denial. Policymakers who have the full picture can identify those points. The important thing is that pressing a pain point may not always require a kinetic approach. In any case, as noted before, the policy should be a blend of kinetic and non-kinetic approaches.
Seventh, in this kind of irregular conflict, the primary requirement is first-rate intelligence. The type of platforms to be employed for kinetic action are important in relation to the nature of an operation, but secondary to intelligence work.
Eighth, these approaches would need overt and covert action. While overt actions can be listed, I find no reason to publicly state what covert actions can be taken. Veterans of intelligence work understand perfectly well how degradation and psychological pressure work through covert actions.
Ninth, since we are in this for the long haul, it would be advisable to develop, train and deploy a force specific to the task of border patrolling, monitoring and defence. Technically, Frontier Corps is supposed to do this. They are good fighters, but the force needs to put more brain into its training, especially the non-commissioned corps. Also, so far, the FC doesn’t have the capability or the wherewithal to undertake offensive CT operations across the border. I mention FC because it provides the chassis for the force I am suggesting and because we are too quick to reinvent the wheel.
Training FC for this task and revisiting its operational terms of reference are also important because the regular army troops are already stretched. Just like cricket, war has different formats, different objectives, different strategies. FC should be the team for this particular format.
Central to all of this of course is for the policymakers to go beyond reactive and operationally inconsequential retaliatory strikes to formulating a comprehensive, long-term policy to deal with this problem.