WHILE the Balochistan insurgency has been simmering for many decades, in recent years, it seems to be spinning out of control. In July this year, Balochistan became the country’s most violent province, replacing KP for the first time. Some sources say there were 176 terrorist attacks, killing 438 people, including 127 security personnel, the highest ever in a month. This consistent increase in the insurgency’s lethality and spread implies a major mismatch between the threat and the measures taken to counter it. One major weakness is the imbalance between using armed force to address the challenge and subordinating the political dimension that sustains it. This begs the question: why do we continue to rely totally on the use of force to combat this insurgency, knowing that it has not worked for decades?

Historically, COIN (counter-insurgency) strategies have succeeded only when they struck the right balance between armed force and political measures. At best, force can create the right conditions to end an insurgency, but only politics can use that opening to bring about peace through negotiations. In fact, David Galula, in his book Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, argues that a successful COIN strategy is “80 per cent political and 20pc military”. His “First Law of COIN” is that “the support of the population is as necessary for the counterinsurgent as the insurgent”, and that this support can be achieved only through political measures. Similarly, Rupert Smith, in his book The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, defines insurgency as “a war amongst people”. He points out the........

© Dawn