Wasim Khan

221437091
Plsc 203
Hybrid Wars
“War is nothing but a duel on extensive scale, an act of violence intended to compel our
opponent to fulfill our will” General Clausewitz
Hybrid wars as Suggested by Col Frank Hoffman as a war which employs political warfare and
blends conventional warfare, irregular warfare and cyber warfare with other influencing
methods such as fake news, diplomacy, lawfare, and foreign electoral intervention.
Hybrid wars are one of the most common terms used in today’s international relations. In ancient times,
the conventional war techniques of all out war were used, but as the technology progressed, the world
has come with vast variety of destructive weapons, more clearly the conventional wars were mostly
about the numbers but now thanks to automatic weapons even a small number can deliver ultimate
destruction. Hybrid war takes place in tree places; battlefield, the indigenous population of conflict zone
and international community. So now a days even the powerful states use the methods of hybrid war.
Hybrid war have many dimensions to discuss.

 Intelligence war
 Cyber war
 Proxy war
 Economic destabilization
 Narrative war

War is an action of achieving goals of oneself by force. But the hybrid war is a blend of conventional
warfare and others mentioned above. Hybrid war is the best way to decrease the causalities of
actor. All the elements of hybrid war may align and perform at same time. According to the
Wardens five ring theory, every state have core of five rings, which are

 Leadership
 System essentials
 Infrastructure
 Population
 Fielded Military

An adversary aiming for hybrid strike, first may hit the population, by creating the sensational
narratives, inducing the populations to agitate against the government, they will protest and
may damage the infrastructure, increasing the violence and will might result in military
confrontation with the government which will result in the overthrow of government hence the
adversary has achieved its goal of regime change. Like we have seen in Syria. And the Arab
spring, orange, blue and yellow revolutions are of its examples. Economic warfare are such
when powerful countries destabilize other countries through money, like US have sanctioned
 Iran and North Korea against dollar and freezing of Dollar for Taliban Government in
Afghanistan. After treaties of Westphalia and WMD, the direct confrontation is no longer
possible as the potential rivals may be equipped with nuclear power, but against non-nuclear
states it is easy to engage in battlefield activities. During engagement in hybrid war there are
whats you might expect from your adversary

 A hybrid adversary uses a combination of conventional and irregular methods of

warfare.
 A hybrid adversary is flexible and adapts quickly.
 A hybrid adversary uses advanced weapon systems and other disruptive technologies.
 Use of mass communication for propaganda.

Jihad;

Jihad is an Islamic term described in Quran which orders for the protection of Muslims from the infidels.
But now a days the jihad is used to achieve collective goals of big fishes around the world. Jihad had
been successively used in terror attacks around the world. Jihad is the war of narrative nowadays. Jihad
is a huge industry of terror with notable organizations such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, TTA, TTP, Lashkar e Taiba
and Houthis. Jihad nowadays is used as sub-ordinate of hybrid narrative war. In Dec 2014, Army Public
School, Peshawar was attacked by 5 terrorists, spraying over kids leaving dead almost 180 kids and 22
staff members. The responsibility of attack was accepted by Tehreek Taliban Pakistan, they claimed that
they didn’t attacked kids but adults, they provided the definition of adults to have puberty hairs, which
grows very quick nowadays, but actual puberty comes through age and development of brain. This is the
war of narrative; however most notable facts are that some locals help them with the attack providing
shelter to those terrorists. Huge populations of Pakistan still believe in Jihadi narratives, savage
terrorists like Osama Bin Laden, Mullah Omar, Hafiz Saeed and Hakimullah Mehsud still enjoys huge
support from clerical community. They spread their message which the refer as Haqq through the
madrassas, like Haqqani. Late Maulana Sami ul Haq, publically affirmed that he is huge supporter of
Jihad narrative and have sent many Talibans for Jihad by training them. Pakistan defense forces with one
of the best intelligence agencies have retaliate them to huge scale in the war of narrative. After APS
Peshawar attack they started operation of Rad-ul-Fasaad, in which for the first time COAS coined the
term jihad, which is the best way to retaliate hybrid adversary. The DDR method which is defined as
Detect, Deter and Respond. When Pakistan Defense forces used the term jihad they started to gain
masses sympathy in their war against terrorism.