When terrain is the winner

Balochistan is 44 per cent of Pakistan’s landmass and houses 5 per cent of the population, of which around 3 per cent are ethnic Baloch. The population density is 36 people per square kilometer which for the rest of the country is 450 persons to a square kilometer. In Balochistan the terrain rules. Any amount of people that you throw in there, inhabitants, Baloch, Pashtun, law enforcement, levies, military or police, are simply gobbled up by the terrain. Look back in history and see how terrain has sucked in armies and reduced them to oblivion — Hitler in Soviet Union, the British in the vast wastelands of Afghanistan and surely so many more who were eaten away by the expanse of terrain that they dared to venture in and then were lost to its vastness.

Czarist Russia and its successor the Soviet Union, and now Russia, have always prided themselves in how terrain acts as their surest defence against any aggressor with an evil intent. In warfare there are three domains that will determine the outcome of an undertaking: time, space and terrain. These three interact in a dependent equation whereby any side that can dominate a space faster than the other will exhibit a superior relative correlation of force and thence be the probable victor. Space here is notional interregnum of time and not strictly a geographical definition. Terrain defines geographical denomination and is a fixed precinct. Space is the ‘when’ part of decision-making; time is ‘how fast’ was the decision made. Time and space reside in the mind of a decision-maker, a commander or a leader — corporate, political or military. So any amount of massing that Hitler was able to generate when he invaded Russia far outdid the Soviet response to it which pitched him against the only other leveler — the terrain (and the weather; nature). It dealt Hitler’s army the first blow while the Soviet citizen-soldier waited for him at the gates of St Petersburg. Terrain melted Hitler’s army emaciating it to the point of submission.

The 36 per KM population density is an averaged out figure, else populations so sparse tend to congregate at places where sustenance and survival are possible. Hence Balochistan has spaces for hundreds of miles together where no human may exist. A large part of the province is hilly, mountainous and barren towards its north-west and west which borders Afghanistan and Iran respectively. Balochistan per se spreads into the eastern Sistan province of Iran and south and south-east Afghanistan where tribal and ethnic similarities provide the people of these three disparate national definitions succor and survival. Composite cultures as in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan thus have sub-cultures with their own traditions and proclivities. That should explain how and why dissidents from neighbouring states in this region can so easily and freely ensconce with each other. That brings into equation the tensions that easily ruffle between the states when one’s dissidents find refuge with the other. The Regi brothers, the Quetta Shoora, or the Baloch dissidents from Pakistan, have thus always found a helping hand from the neighbouring states frequently lending themselves to those meaning to spawn strife and instability in a sub-region.

Repeated incidents of terror and insurrection in Balochistan are a manifestation of such cross-border support and encouragement. States looking to indulge in cross-border insurgencies lend them their soil for bases engendering inter-state conflict. This is how relations between Pakistan and the neighbouring Afghanistan got defined under the Ghani and Karzai orders. These incidents of terror have found a 38 per cent uptick since the Taliban have assumed control in Afghanistan. It has more to do with keeping up the pressure on the state of Pakistan to desist from fencing the borders and to force a retreat on it as these groups seek to carve out greater liberty of action on both sides of the border to continue with their malfeasance and trade of terror, extrapolation and illicit trafficking. That CPEC too suffers may be an additional bargain for the insurrectionists and hence may help them market their malfeasance to the highest bidder.

This can be a perpetual pain if not shut out right away. There is simply no space for such delinquency to persist. The mismatch of the operational area under threat and the resource required to mount perfect defence is the key to why the insurgents seem to strike every now and then, it seems at the moment and manner of their choosing. Similarly a continuously negative newsfeed after each of these attacks can dampen the national spirit and unnecessarily sow doubts on the ability of the armed forces to defend against such heinously targeted acts of manifest terror. The vast terrain complicates the defence-only option while what is needed is active pursuit to nip such evil in its bud. Even where defence alone is an imposed choice it cannot be on a limb without support, complementarity and appropriate firepower.

Pervasive human presence is costly, impossible and playing to the pitfalls of an engorging terrain. Instead, resort to electronic presence is the need. How it comes about is for the planners and the operators to determine but it will need a combination of surveillance — electronic and visual — coupled with the means to bring decisive force at the point of application to neutralise a possible threat. Drones with associated operational support can turn into an efficient killing machine. We will need to transverse from human force to force of technology to reconnoiter and defend what is too vast and expansive. Till then the deployed human resource must be exceptionally equipped and provided layered security especially in remote locations to successfully thwart what is becoming a repeated nuisance and embarrassing loss of precious human lives. The key is to engage a potential aggressor timely by bearing decisive force at the point of application before he becomes an actual threat. This force cannot be only in the number of souls that we commit to a task but also firepower and lethality which must be woven into the capability.

Why Balochistan continues to simmer and never gravitates into something more devastating? Just as terrain has kept Moscow from falling ever to any adventurist so is Quetta secured by the vastness of its surrounding terrain. In such vast spaces the domination is symbolic in the falling of a capital. Quetta is well garrisoned as well has the safety of its surrounding terrain. Thus the Baloch rebels have been unable to build momentum into their resistance — neither there are numbers nor does the terrain permit it. The perpetual presence of the army too, spread throughout Balochistan, does not endow them the capacity to dominate terrain. Just as the rebels cannot convert their resistance into a movement say like Mao’s Long March the state too finds it difficult to completely dominate the physical space. Terrain thus is the only victor. Saving lives though is incumbent and needs attention forthwith.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 4^th, 2022.

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