Desiring Enemy: An Ontological Reading of the Military Operations and Small Wars on the North West Frontier

Abstract

In the wake of the War on Terror, Pakistan carried out several military operations on its Northwestern frontier. These operations invited considerable amount of academic and non-academic scholarship. However, much of what was written was from geostrategic perspective. Therefore, the question whether these small wars could be anything more than geo-strategy went unattended. The aim of this essay is to attend to this question by exploring the ontological dimension of war. From the perspective of Hegelian philosophy, states do not engage in wars just for strategic purpose, but also for encountering and seeking alterity in order to maintain their coherent self (the statehood). Alterity is imagined, created and engendered to strengthen the coherence of self, rather than at the outright elimination of the Other/enemy. In this line of argument, the so-called small wars on the Northwestern frontier—of present and of colonial past—can be seen as ontological project of the state maintaining the coherence of state, honor of the army, and “the enlightened moderation” of the people.