IN a speech at a seminar in Karachi, as part of the arms expo held in the provincial metropolis this week, chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen Rashad Mahmood touched on the changing threat environment in the world today, a result of both changes in technologies and cracks in the old order.

In essence, the general argued that the old paradigm of strategic stability has to be amended to deal with present-day threats that cannot simply be fought physically with weapons and ammunition, and claimed that a state’s security institutions have seen their mandate widened to include achieving domestic peace and internal harmony.

Know more: ‘Traditional paradigm of strategic stability consigned to the past’

The former argument is true enough: with cyber threats, non-state actors, suicide attackers and overlapping threats across international borders, the old paradigm of state vs state and army vs army has changed significantly.

In many ways, given events in Afghanistan for several decades now, the Pakistani state has had more experience in dealing with a certain kind of non-state threat at least.

Yet, it is the other arenas — domestic peace and internal harmony — that Gen Mahmood mentioned that are far more contentious.

Clearly, the Pakistani military has a major, even fundamental, role to play in defeating the militant threat internally, especially in Fata. Without significant military operations, the militancy threat in Fata would only grow — and the state would never have had a chance to reassert its control.

But this is also where it becomes difficult: a military-led strategy against militancy is probably, in the long run, inadequate to win the fight against militancy nationally. The military leadership itself acknowledges that military operations are a necessary but not sufficient condition to win this war — but then always stops short of explaining how the sufficient conditions will be achieved.

A national strategy with input for all institutions is required, but is the military willing to cede that space to civilian-run institutions and is the civilian leadership of the country able or willing to take the lead?

There is more. For all the talk of the end of any notion of good Taliban/bad Taliban and making no distinction between so-called soft, pro-state militants and anti-state militants, there is also the reality of what is happening far away from Fata and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The Kashmir-centric groups, the militants focused on India, the so-called welfare organisations with vast networks across the country — can anyone really say that they are regarded now as entities that have to be rolled back and whose cadres must be disbanded and reintegrated into society?

Instead, all that seems to be apparent at the moment is the old, half-hearted attempts to mainstream such groups politically and hope that the electoral process smoothes their roughest edges. It is a vain hope, in all probability. So even if paradigms need to be discarded, where is the new policy for a new age?

Published in Dawn December 4th , 2014