Hybrid Warfare: Geopolitics, Sabotage, and Subversive Activities in Baluchistan

Abstract

This research study aims at exploring the textual features representing the hybrid warfare and subversive activities in the Pakistani province, Baluchistan, in both the EU DisinfoLab report and the narratives of mainstream officials of India. In the era of faceless, multi-faceted hybrid warfare, the EU DisinfoLab report is crucial for analysis to witness a state’s policy and interests. In the current study, the discourse of EU DisinfoLab report was critically analyzed from two perspectives, namely as Harold Laswell’s Communication model (1948) and Mahan’s (1890) Sea Power Theory. The results of the study revealed that the discourses produced by the Indian officials represent the identity of the people of Baluchistan in a negative tone and thus, attempt to regulate a false propaganda against the people of Baluchistan and, largely, against Pakistan. The hidden agenda behind their discourses is to misrepresent the Baluch identity separating it from the national identity; in addition to inculcating and strengthening the ideology of Separate Baluchistan or “Greater Baluchistan” in the cognitive structures of the Baluchi people resulting in sabotage and subversive activities against the geopolitics of the state of Pakistan. In the light of the results of the study, the researchers suggest that the real, true and patriotic people of Baluchistan must be taken into confidence by taking their political, social and economic problems into account seriously; hence, protecting them from being misguided by the anti-state discourses produced by the Indian officials

       Keywords: hybrid warfare, international politics, discourse, misrepresentation of identity, economic and electronic war.