Fortress under invisible assault |
Pakistan today is choking not only under an incalculable policy lapse (read: betrayal) but also facing a multi-pronged economic warfare that many in Pakistan believe is being waged by its arch-rival. The country is reeling from internal incompetence and indifference to national interests as well as an external assault through proxies, like never before.
Little did those in power realise that decades of political hostility — rooted in the Kashmir dispute — and recurring military stand-offs actually gave birth to a stealthy but lethal war as a harsher punitive measure i.e. a protracted, shadowy war of economic sabotage.
Now, there are two ways to look at the consequences. For Pakistan's present day rulers, including the Chief of Defence Forces (CDF), Asim Munir, the May 7 Maarka-i-Haq victory, fortified Pakistan's image as an unconquerable stronghold, much like Austria's legendary Hohensalzburg Fortress, which resisted military capture for a thousand years.
The CDF links further fortification with modernising defence forces i.e. mastering technologies (cyberspace, electromagnetic spectrum, use of outer space, AI, information operations and quantum technologies). No two opinions about the criticality of technologies as the drivers of progress and shields against enemies; but as things stand today, our most serious vulnerability arises — not from military inferiority — but from internal socio-economic erosion.
Yet, the most potent threat to this stems - not from........