Asymmetric warfare and special operations used in political violence

Abstract

The recent Mubai attacks (November 2008) in India by highly trained gunmen purportedly linked with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), has revealed that militant and terrorist groups are willing to audaciously use asymmetric warfare to achieve their political motives. The Mumbai attacks had demonstrated the value of asymmetric warfare used by small and underequipped groups combine with special operations strategy, would yield profound strategic impact. A small unit of 10 militants had launched a covert surprise attack that left dozens of civilians, police and military personnel dead. It took concerted and exhaustive efforts by some of India's crack commandoes to finally dislodge the attackers and destroy them. This paper looks into how asymmetric warfare is used is by these groups as a strategy to sow terror and how special operations is utilized as a tool to carry out this attacks. It is timely for such an academic study to be done on the employment of asymmetric warfare and special operations strategy by non-state/ sub-state actors that had strongly embraced these tools as a new means to an end. This new method of attack may be repeated by other groups at different countries with more terrible consequences. Therefore it is imperative that an in-depth analysis of this new method of terror attack be conducted.