Winning in the shadows: Why B Raman's playbook can help India win the proxy war against Pakistan

Indian Express

20-05-2025

'The concept of victory as understood in a conventional war against another state does not apply to the unconventional war against terrorists. There is no definite point in time at which one could say that one has won the war against terrorism. Terrorists are not defeated in the sense of a state adversary being defeated in a conventional war. They are just made to wither away. The objective of the state must be to keep denying victory to the terrorists through better intelligence and better coordination, better analysis, better physical security and better follow-up action. Every time one manages to deny victory to terrorists through prevention or preemption, one makes progress in the fight against terrorism.'
'As the number of terrorist strikes prevented or preempted increases and as the number of successful terrorist strikes decreases, one starts seeing the impact on the terrorist organisation. Success is the oxygen of the terrorists. You keep denying them success, they start withering away. Often, the state becomes aware that a terrorist organisation has withered away long after it has. In India, we fought against externally sponsored terrorism in the Punjab for fourteen years from 1981. The last major terrorist strike was in 1995. Thereafter, the number of incidents steadily declined, and there were long periods when there were no terrorist incidents. We realised much later that the security forces had acquired the upper hand over the terrorists who had started withering away and that the turning point in the fight had come in 1992, without our having been aware of it at that time.'
The above lines were written by the late B Raman, one of India's most illustrious intelligence officers and a globally-renowned expert on the subject of terrorism, about two decades ago. Referring to the category of 'state-directed terrorism' in which terrorist groups operate as agents of a government, receiving substantial intelligence, logistical and operational support from it, Raman, in his book, Intelligence: Past, Present and Future (2002), stressed that nations which let their will and readiness to retaliate when attacked be weakened by misplaced forbearance invite greater aggression. He, therefore, called for the formulation and implementation of a 'credible counter proxy-war strategy' to 'demonstrate to Pakistan that its proxy war against India would not be cost-free'.
A reliable counter-proxy-war strategy against Pakistan, Raman wrote, would have an overt and a covert component. The overt component would consist of extending 'political, moral and diplomatic support' to the alienated sections of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and the Northern Areas (now called Gilgit-Baltistan). The covert component cannot be discussed in public, but certain points could be flagged, based on the 'recognition of certain ground realities'.
Ideas such as the right of hot pursuit, raids on terrorist camps across the LOC would not work. Covert actions against Pakistani interests in PoK and Gilgit-Baltistan would be difficult because of the strong Punjabi-Pathan component, comprising mostly ex-servicemen, in the local population. The covert component of any counter-proxy-war policy would, therefore, have to be largely in areas where we will have the advantage of ground conditions and local support. 'We have to carefully choose the terrain that will hurt Pakistan and hurt it badly,' Raman wrote.
Before drafting and implementing an effective counter proxy-war policy, we have to pose to ourselves certain questions which have been rarely raised, keeping in view the imperatives of national security, Raman further observed. The more important of these questions would include the following: Is it in India's interest to ensure that the law and order situation in Pakistan continues to be as bad as ever, thereby deterring foreign investment? Is it in India's interest to do anything, such as the resumption of bilateral trade, which might help Pakistan come out of its economic difficulties? Is it in India's interest that the unbridgeable sectarian divide in Pakistan gathers momentum? Is it in India's interest that the struggle of the non-Punjabi nationalities of Pakistan for a genuine confederation succeeds? Is it in India's interest that the movement for the restoration of democracy, with the army returning to the barracks with no political role, gathers momentum and succeeds? Is it in India's interest that Pakistan remains inextricably trapped in the black hole of Afghanistan? Is it in India's interest that the clerics and their organisations continue to drag Pakistan back into the past, thereby making it an unwelcome proposition for the rest of the world, either as an ally, a friend or an investment destination?
'You find the right answers to these questions and you will have the right mix of the covert component of our counter proxy-war strategy,' responsibility for the implementation of which is best left to a 'counter proxy-war centre in India's external intelligence establishment,' Raman concluded. From Mumbai in 2008 to Pahalgam in 2025, the trajectories of Pakistan's proxy-war and India's counter-proxy war responses have covered a long distance, but Raman's observations still retain their relevance. Indeed, they might be said to have acquired an added salience at the present moment.
All policies and strategies, overt and covert, require a well-defined end goal as a yardstick to measure the extent of their success. A counter-proxy-war strategy can be no exception. Making Pakistan, and its military-intelligence establishment in particular, renounce proxy war as an instrument of policy is a realistic and achievable goal. The overt component, by definition, requires publicity in ample measure, whereas the covert component has to be conducted in the shadows. This is a fundamental distinction that the Indian media must understand and respect if it is to play a helpful role in its implementation. Both components require the presence of 'objective allies' in Pakistan and the strengthening of their influence. To that extent, approaches that may have the unintended consequence of alienating potential allies or weakening the strength of their constituency may prove counterproductive. The Indian state must now rededicate itself to the steadfast pursuit of such a credible and effective counter-proxy-war strategy against Pakistan and take it to its logical conclusion.
The writer is a former special secretary in the Research & Analysis Wing. Views are personal