Thread by @safridis

Proxy Management:
Seeing the predicament PTM faces in Pakistan today,its important to understand HOW a movement that grew out of populist initial grievances became largely impotent as the Afghan peace process progressed..
This thread will delve lightly into why this happened..

Any asymmetrically powerful state's the use of political proxies within a weaker rival state to further political narratives comes in three distinct stages;
(a) initial alliance goal-congruence
(b) path management
(c) renegotiating an exit
1/n

In order to succeed in adversely effecting its weaker rival, a state MUST ensure that political proxies are engrained & true to the initial populist grievances.
Proxy-Alliance Bargaining in stage (a) should ALWAYS be proxy-led, NEVER state-led
2/n

Proxy's narrative should NEVER BE HIJACKED (exposes plausible deniability)as this..
reduces proxy's longevity to effectively destabilise the mutual adversary(rival state)..
increases narrative hypocrisy..
reduces proxy to a mere political nuisance(neutralises path dependence)
3/n

Proxy Path Management(both violent & non-violent) should ALWAYS rest with the military-bureaucracy, rather than civil-bureaucracy.. an inability to adhere to this guiding principle renders the proxy’s effectiveness subject to geo-politics, rather than path dependence
4/n

The most common mistake powerful states make (esp with non-violent proxy alliances) under cvil-bureaucracies led management is to hijack the proxy’s narrative, rendering the proxy's raison d’être effectively void.. & cede advantage to the weaker state's military
5/n

This is because the reliance shifts from populist initial grievances to the powerful state's ability to create “narrative exposure” in order to weaken the rival state in the eyes of external opinion, rather than foster internal divisions based on populist initial grievances
6/n

This ties proxy’s success/failure to the powerful state’s media management & kinetic success in the original theatre,rather than populist grievances of the proxy’s support base..
IF the theatre advantage is lost,the proxy becomes all but impotent vs the rival state’s military
7/n

In essence,India managed to make almost every mistake listed above in its proxy-alliance management once the Pashtun Long March morphed into PTM.. eventually leaving the movement impotent once the kinetic theatre (Afghanistan) began coming closer to a negotiated settlement
8/n

Once the Pashtun Long March's populist narrative based on the initial grievances of the tribal belt was effectively 'hijacked' into a narrative driven PTM,its raison d'être was gradually lost..despite exponential resources expended on creating an international media exposure
9/n

It is important to remember that all this happened DESPITE an extremely disjointed & largely poor grievance management process within Pakistan & the myopic management of this process by Pak Military..
Proxy management is not an exact science,but it has some basic principles
10/n

Real losers in all this are the people of ex-FATA.. whose initial grievances were hijacked through the rudderless 'narrative industry' as it continues to rack-up one failure after another under its belt..
Those who had braved the Pashtun Long March stand failed by "ALL"
11/11

For those interested in relevant texts on proxy/alliance management..

'Delegation of War to Rebel Organisations' by Salehyan

'The Security dilemma in Alliance Politics' by Snyder

'Agents of Destruction' by Byman/Kreps

'The Destruction of a Nation' by George Wright