Conflict in the present day and age is characterised more and more by a strategic use of force and influence below conventional thresholds rather than formal declarations of war. This evolving landscape of security challenges has given rise to the concept of Hybrid Warfare, which includes the integration of military, irregular, cyber, and informational tools to achieve strategic objectives, all while maintaining plausible deniability. In areas like South Asia, where nuclear deterrence avoids incidents of large-scale military action, such approaches have become especially prominent.
Security frameworks in South Asia are largely focused on interstate conflict and territorial defence, based on long rivalries and periodic crises. However, the reality is much more complex, with persistent border tensions, contrary narratives, and non-state activities. Non-state actors are increasingly relying on unconventional means like proxy engagement, information and misinformation operations, and economic leverage to exert influence without triggering an escalation. At the same time, governments in South Asia are left spending huge sums of money and resources without being able to find a long-term answer to their security issues.
This article argues that hybrid warfare is not just an extension of traditional forms of conflict in South Asia but also a new feature of its evolving security architecture. With the blurred distinctions between war and peace, internal threat and external threat, and state and non-state actors, hybrid strategies challenge the existing policy responses and demand a more adaptive and integrated approach towards the regional security of South Asia.
The Concept of Hybrid Warfare
Hybrid warfare has become one of the central analytical concepts for understanding modern conflicts, especially in environments where conventional escalation is constrained. Hybrid warfare refers to the synchronised use of military and non-military instruments like irregular tactics, cyber operations, economic pressure, and manipulation of information, to achieve strategic objectives, while avoiding direct confrontation. Rather than a whole new form of warfare, it is an evolution in the manner of conducting conflict, which is characterised by the deliberate blending of different methods across domains.
Closely linked to this concept is the notion of the “grey zone”, which describes interactions that come between routine statecraft and open warfare. These activities are intentionally calculated to remain below the threshold of triggering a conventional military response. Instead, they rely on ambiguity and incrementalism. Such strategies are effective precisely because they exploit the limitations of the existing legal and institutional frameworks, most of which are ill-equipped to respond to actions that lack clear attribution.
The practice of hybrid warfare is defined by three interrelated features:
- Strategic Ambiguity- This enables actors to avoid both intent and responsibility, which in turn complicates the deterrent response.
- Actor Hybridity- Which reflects the blurred distinction between state and non-state actors, with proxies and informal networks, frequently playing even operational roles.
- Multi-Domain Integration- This allows simultaneous engagement through land, maritime, cyber, and information spheres, resulting in an amplified strategic impact.
A lot of the foundational literature on hybrid warfare draws from Euro-Atlantic experiences, but these are relevant in South Asia as well. The presence of a nuclear deterrent has significantly raised the costs of conventional war, while encouraging alternative approaches that allow sustained conflict without escalation. Moreover, rapid digitalisation across the region, combined with uneven governance and constant socio-political fragmentation, has broadened the scope for information or misinformation operations along with other forms of non-kinetic pressure and influence.
Hybrid warfare in South Asia should be understood not as an external import but as a framework that captures the region’s evolving security dynamics, where conflict is increasingly conducted through layered, indirect, and deniable means.
Regional Analysis: Manifestations of Hybrid Warfare in South Asia
The act of hybrid warfare is most visible and prominent in South Asia’s borderlands and peripheral spaces, where authority is often contested, and strategic competition or small-scale conflicts take place below the threshold of conventional conflict. While the concept is a global phenomenon, its manifestation in South Asia stems from age-old rivalries, uneven governance, and constraints imposed due to nuclear deterrence.
This is most evident in the relationship between India and Pakistan. The two nations have been involved in patterns of unconventional engagement for decades. Analysts have documented the use of proxy actors and irregular forces as instruments for strategic influence. This practice allows exertion of pressure without triggering a full-scale war. Governments on both sides have repeatedly accused each other for supporting cross-border insurgency. However, such claims are politically contested and difficult to verify. What is clear is that the presence of nuclear weapons has significantly reduced the chances of a direct military conflict, which, ironically, promotes indirect and deniable forms of engagement.
Moving away from the west, towards the eastern peripheries of South Asia, a different but equally significant set of dynamics is visible. Along the India-Myanmar border, as well as the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, security challenges are largely shaped by a combination of insurgencies, cross-border movement, and humanitarian crises. The displacement of Rohingyas from Rakhine State into neighbouring territories has created complex security concerns over militant infiltration and pressure on local government structures. Although evidence of coordinated, state-driven hybrid campaigns is limited in this context, the overlap between humanitarian flows and security concerns demonstrates how hybrid effects can come up even without a deliberate strategy.
The scope of hybrid activities is not just limited to the land border domain, but extends to the maritime domain as well. The Bay of Bengal, particularly, has witnessed increasing concerns over illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, trafficking networks, and the strategic implications of port infrastructure development. These activities often take place in legally ambiguous areas, which complicates attribution and enforcement. Over 80% of global trade is seaborne, so it is not surprising that regional economies become dependent on maritime trade, due to which the security of these waters is of great strategic importance.
Finally, the rapid expansion of digital connectivity across South Asia has introduced a critical cyber and informational dimension to hybrid warfare. Digital networks and social media platforms are increasingly being used to manipulate information in an attempt to shape public narratives, increase political divisions, and influence internal discourse. Such methods offer cheap, yet high-impact means of exerting influence, often without clear attribution.
Taken together, these dynamics suggest that hybrid warfare in South Asia is not confined to any single domain or actor. Rather, it represents a persistent and evolving mode of competition, shaped by regional specificities but increasingly integrated across land, maritime, and digital spaces.
Underestimation of Hybrid Threats
Although there is an increasing prevalence of hybrid tactics, these threats are still underestimated across South Asia’s security frameworks. One of the major reasons for this is that the perception of conventional threat is still strong and focused on large-scale military conflict rather than sub-threshold conflicts. Since more attention is poured towards countering or strategising for large-scale military action, such sub-threshold attacks often get ignored as a broader strategic pattern and are categorised as isolated incidents.
The question of attribution raises another challenge because hybrid or unconventional attacks often take place through proxies, informal networks, or digital platforms, which makes it difficult to identify the responsible actors clearly. This ambiguity ends up complicating both domestic policy responses and international legal justification for countermeasures. In South Asia, where political sensitivities are high, governments frequently end up accusing one another of involvement in destabilising activities. Unsurprisingly, such claims are often contested and rarely supported by publicly verifiable evidence.
Another reason for the underestimation of unconventional sub-threshold attacks is institutional fragmentation. Border management, intelligence, maritime governance, and cyber security are responsibilities typically dispersed across multiple agencies, which results in limited coordinated responses. Hybrid threats operate within, as Michael J. Mazarr puts it, the Grey Zone, which exploits the gaps between military and civilian domains, and ends up receiving insufficient attention.
More often than not, the absence of overt warfare or large-scale military action is misinterpreted as peace or stability. However, in reality, this reflects a shift towards a persistent low-intensity conflict where the cumulative impact of hybrid actions can be as consequential as conventional warfare over time
Policy Responses
To address hybrid threats, South Asia needs to shift its security approach from reactive and siloed towards more integrated and multi-domain strategies. Traditional frameworks largely focus on territorial defence and conventional deterrence, but they are insufficient for responding to threats that strategically operate across institutional and judicial boundaries. As such, the first priority lies in strengthening inter-agency coordination, particularly between military, intelligence, law enforcement, and cyber authorities. Fragmented institutional responses significantly reduce the effectiveness of counter-hybrid strategies, especially in complex threat environments.
The second critical area concerns capacity and skill development. Hybrid warfare is increasingly reliant on digital tools, data manipulation, and information/misinformation operations, which necessitate investments towards cyber capabilities, data analytics, and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). Unfortunately, capacity-building efforts are often constrained by a lack of resources or an underestimation of hybrid capabilities. There needs to be a strategic shift in security thinking. Hybrid threats will need defences that move beyond rigid distinctions between internal and external security, as well as between military and civilian domains. This shift will also include developing doctrines that specifically address unconventional threats operating at sub-threshold levels, by integrating non-traditional actors such as regulatory bodies and technology platforms into security platforms.
Finally, there is scope for selective regional cooperation, particularly in areas such as maritime security, counter-trafficking, and information sharing. While political tensions in South Asia often limit formal collaboration, functional cooperation on non-traditional security issues has shown some potential.
Taken together, these measures suggest that responding effectively to hybrid warfare is less about singular solutions and more about building adaptive, coordinated, and forward-looking security architectures capable of addressing the ambiguous nature of contemporary threats.
Future Risks and Strategic Implications
If not addressed properly, hybrid warfare risks becoming the default mode of conflict in South Asia, which may cause tensions or undermine regional stability. One of the most immediate concerns is the normalisation of sub-threshold competition, where persistent low-intensity actions gradually erode state authority without triggering decisive responses.
A related risk lies in the increased role of non-state and proxy actors, whose activities may operate beyond effective state control. As hybrid strategies rely on ambiguity, these actors can escalate tensions unpredictably, raising the possibility of miscalculation between states. In a nuclearised environment, even limited escalation carries disproportionate risks, particularly in crisis scenarios where attribution remains unclear.
The expansion of digital and information domains further complicates these challenges. Cyber operations and disinformation campaigns have the potential to undermine public trust in institutions, which exacerbate societal division and influence the outcome of local political decisions.
Ultimately, the failure to adapt to hybrid threats may result in a chronic state of instability, where the boundaries between war and peace are increasingly indistinct. Addressing these risks will require not only technical capacity but also sustained political recognition of hybrid warfare as a central, rather than peripheral, security challenge.
Conclusion
Hybrid warfare has become one of the defining features of South Asia’s contemporary security environment, operating through ambiguity, deniability, and multi-domain integration. This region has the potential to become the breeding ground for sub-threshold conflicts that blur the distinctions between war and peace, due to the structural conditions of South Asia that range from nuclear deterrence and contested borders to rapid digital expansion. These dynamics are not new, however, the rising integration of such dynamics along with increasing sophistication and persistence requires greater analytical and policy attention.
Yet, responses across the region remain fragmented, often constrained by conventional security thinking and institutional limitations. Addressing hybrid threats will therefore require not only enhanced capabilities, but also a fundamental shift in how security is conceptualised and operationalised. Without such adaptation, South Asia risks entering a prolonged phase of low-intensity instability, where conflict is continuous but rarely acknowledged. The challenge, ultimately, lies not in recognising hybrid warfare, but in responding to it with coherence and strategic foresight.