PAK USES PROXIES AS IT CAN'T MATCH INDIA'S MILITARY MIGHT

UNLESS AND UNTIL THERE IS A DRASTIC SHIFT IN PAKISTAN'S MILITARY STRATEGY FROM PROXY WAR TO OPEN NEGOTIATION, THE SPECTER OF PROXY WAR IS GOING TO HAUNT SOUTH ASIA.

- PIRZADA REHAN

Between nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan, both were the outcomes of the violent partition of 1947. Although each country has engaged in conventional wars in the past 1947, 1965, 1971, and 1999 since the late 1980s, there has been a change of policy on the part of Pakistan.

Unable to match India's expanding military strength, Pakistan resorted to unconventional conflict, utilizing stateless agents and militant proxies for pursuing strategic aims, specifically within Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. In the 1980s, under the banner of combating Soviet troops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, aided by the United States, nurtured and armed Afghan Mujahideen. The campaign served not only short-term geopolitical purposes but also established the infrastructure to carry out proxy wars in the future. Islamabad's concept of gaining strategic depth in Afghanistan had come during that period with a view to ensuring a friendly Western border freeing up Pakistan to focus on India. After the departure of the Soviet Union, these same proxy mechanisms and ideologies had been diverted in the direction of Kashmir. Early in the 1990s, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had a key role in nurturing groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) apparently to aid the liberation of Kashmir.