Strategic communication

What was lacking in the May 7-10 armed conflict with India was strategic communication — something that is responsible for the prevailing stand-off between Pakistan and India. When the DGMOs of the two countries contacted each other after the ceasefire, it reflected strategic communication between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

De-escalation of the conflict was only possible when the military officials of the two sides entered into strategic communication.

What is strategic communication and how is it essential in the context of de-escalation and consequent talks between two adversaries? Why did the strategic communication, an established phenomenon in the Indo-Pak relations since 1980s, break down in a crisis situation and how can it be revitalised in the months to come?

According to AI, "Strategic communication is a purposeful approach to using communication to achieve specific organizational goals, whether that's influencing stakeholders, driving change, or improving brand perception. It involves planning, executing, and evaluating communication strategies to ensure they effectively reach and engage the intended audience.

This includes understanding the audience, crafting clear and consistent messages, and using appropriate channels to deliver them." According to sompplr.com, "Strategic communications is a specialized approach to distributing and receiving information. It means communicating the best message, through the correct channels, to the right people, at the right time and using feedback from this process to stay focused on company goals."

In his speech before the 22nd Asia Security Summit Shangri-La dialogue held on May 31, Pakistan's Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Sahir Shamshad Mirza said, "Strategic communication matters. Misconception, narrative warfare and information distortion are the oxygen for escalation. Strategic understanding must precede crisis management.

Mechanisms cannot function in a vacuum of trust or amid systemic asymmetries. Durable crisis management requires a foundation of mutual restraint, recognition of red lines and equilibrium, not dominance." Strategic communication cannot take place in isolation and requires 10 conditions: mutual trust, confidence, political will, determination, sharing of information, transparency, monitoring, verification, time-management and mechanism for de-escalation of an armed conflict.

Looking at different conflict zones — Kashmir, Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Iran and Israel — one can say that strategic communication failed to yield positive results because the parties involved lacked proper strategic communication and crisis management mechanism. In conflicts which are not violent but reflecting trade and tariff issues, strategic communication requires dialogue and diplomacy to work out a plausible solution. In the case of Pakistan's intra-state water conflicts, strategic communication involving IRSA, federal government and provinces is essential to deal with misconceptions and misunderstanding particularly between Sindh and Punjab.

Needless to say, strategic communication is an art and science which is used by the stakeholders to prevent and manage a conflict to take a critical shape. India's suspension of Indus Water Treaty is a classic example of breakdown of strategic communication between the two neighbours. Likewise, the Shimla Pact of July 1972 — which transformed the ceasefire line of 1948 to the line of control and contained various elements to establish peace between India and Pakistan following the December 1971 war — was under the threat of unilateral revocation but got saved because both parties wanted to maintain it.

In this scenario, strategic communication is an innovative idea which is useful for the parties concerned to keep a treaty or an agreement in tact alongside ensuring that it also deals with the challenge of crisis management. Henceforth, strategic communication in the context of the May 7-10 Indo-Pak armed conflict needs to be examined from three sides.

First, the breakdown of strategic communication happened when India took an extreme step in retaliation to the Pahalgam terrorist attack of April 22, blaming it on Pakistan. Despite Pakistan's condemnation of that terrorist attack which killed 26 tourists and its proposal to conduct a neutral international inquiry, the Modi government went ahead with its unilateral judgment by launching missile and drone attacks against Pakistan on May 7.

Had there been strategic communication between India and Pakistan, there would have been no escalation in the wake of the Pahalgam attack. One wonders why despite military CBMs between India and Pakistan, like the hotline between DGMOs, New Delhi used military option against Islamabad. It means the Indian side had given up on the option of using strategic communication at the highest level like direct talk between the Prime Ministers of the two countries or military chiefs. That led to the outbreak of a dangerous crisis which only got de-escalated with the announcement of a ceasefire on May 10 by US President Donald Trump through a tweet. It means strategic communication to defuse a dangerous crisis situation added an external power to the situation.

Second, after the ceasefire, India refused to accept there was any external role and argued that the two sides only agreed to stop fighting when their military high-ups decided to cease fire. It means despite its earlier avoidance of strategic communication as a fundamental requirement to manage a military crisis, India opted for that technique. But the question is, for how long will the Indo-Pak stand-off continue and how can strategic communication, which led to the ceasefire, help the process of crisis management, conflict management and ultimately conflict resolution? Given the situation and ground realities prevailing since April 22, the fragility of strategic communication would continue to threaten the holding of ceasefire.

Third, there is no shortcut to ensuring a sustained ceasefire unless the two sides agree to resume the process of dialogue. More than Pakistan, India will suffer because of the prevailing stand-off due to the severe economic ramifications in the form of closed airspace and threat of declining foreign investment in case of resumption of the armed conflict. Only by adhering to basic requirements of strategic communication and crisis management, Pakistan and India can do away with the prevailing stand-off.

It's pertinent to mention here that the stand-off between the government and the opposition in Pakistan is also because of the absence of strategic communication between the two.