Editorial Board Contents - Bureau of Police Research and ...

violence and destabilisation. This willincreasingly take the world to what is knownas Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW), conflictsin which the civil society will play a primaryrole. The subversive and violent groups disguisethemselves as crusaders of disaffected oralienated sections of the society and indulgein violence and other unlawful activities. Thiswill be a war against the invisible enemy hidingwithin the civil society, stunning to silencethe majority through violence, fear and terrorand making the governance impossible forits inability to protect them. Inability of theGovernments to protect their civil societies andredress their genuine grievances, make themhighly vulnerable to the mechanizations ofhostile intelligence agencies.The future pattern of conflicts would increasinglybe more civil society centric. This fight againstan invisible enemy, conceptualised as FourthGeneration Warfare (4GW), will aim at collapsingthe enemy internally rather than physicallydestroying him through military might. Asobserved by William Lind, “Distinction betweenwar and peace will be blurred to the vanishingpoint.” In this nonlinear war against the invisibleenemy, there will no defined battle fields andthe difference between civil and military targetswould get obliterated. The disaffected andalienated sections of the society will be targetedby the enemies, both within and outside, toprovide cause and the cover for subversive andviolent actions. State security apparatus with highfire power, mobility, technology and logistic basewill find themselves at a loss to fight this battle,where there is no defined territory to be dominatedand visible enemy to be destroyed. Propaganda,skilful use of media and information interventionmay be extensively used by the adversaries todiscredit and delegitimise lawfully establishedgovernments. Actions taken by the governmentto protect law abiding citizens or to enforcerule of law will be portrayed as persecutionand oppression, further eroding government’slegitimacy. American war in Vietnam and SovietUnion’s fight in Afghanistan are illustrative.Intelligence will be the primary instrumentalitythrough which these wars would be fought. Tofight these futuristic conflicts, the intelligenceagencies will have to build an extensive networkof agents of information and influence amongpotentially vulnerable sections of the society.Psy-war capabilities, integrating modern stateof-arttechnologies, will have to be adopted. AUS study paper on ‘The Changing Face of War:Into the Fourth Generation’ has rightly assertedthat “Fourth generation adversaries will be adeptat manipulating the media to alter domesticand world opinion to the point where skillfuluse of psychological operations will sometimespreclude the commitment of combat forces.Television news may become a more powerfuloperational weapon than armored divisions.”India with its social fault lines, economicinequalities and fragmented polity is highlyvulnerable to civil society conflicts that can leadto instability. The external factor in the form ofactivities of hostile intelligence agencies, foreignNGOs with a political agenda, trans-borderideological influence of some radical or extremistgroups etc., can exploit alienated groups to theiradvantage. Though these threats have existedfor quite some time but with revolution ininformatics, accessibility to new technologies andcollaborative networking among anti-nationalforces these may become more extensive andacute in future. Indian intelligence will have todevelop new capabilities to meet these threats.The challenges that Indian intelligence is goingto face in the years ahead will be much moreserious and complex. India’s emergence as amajor power centre, provides it an opportunity,as also adds to its vulnerability. There is a need towork out a long term strategy for transformationalchanges, on one hand and internal reforms, onthe other. Under a time bound programme, aplan of action should be prepared and pressedinto action with full earnestness.The Indian Police Journal, October - December, 2012, Special Issue 37