(Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. Learn to take a joke; you’ll live longer.)
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION – The analysts, experts, writers and opinion-makers whose work largely centers around the subject of fifth generation warfare, has recently entered the third generation, The Dependent has reliably learnt.
According to a thorough investigation by The Dependent, as the world touched on the turn of the decade and enters the 2020s in the three months’ time, the moment in time would mark the analyses on fifth generation warfare to enter the third generation of human kind.
While the term ‘fourth generation warfare’ was first used in 1989 by US analyst William S. Lind, describing warfare’s return to decentralisation, intriguingly, investigations have revealed that the term ‘fifth generation warfare’ was first used in 1979 – ten years before the fourth.
The leading analyst who first used the term was one Zaid Zaman Hamid, who found evidence of fifth generation warfare, in the US, at the peak of the Cold War that Hamid was personally waging while against the Soviet forces, as described in his memoirs From Indus to Oxus.
“Before personally engaging in first generation warfare in Afghanistan, I was sent to the US as part of intelligence to gather what is going on. It was there that I saw the first bidet toilet seat – this was before Muslim showers had become common in the Muslim world. And I said to myself ‘by God this is fifth generation warfare,” writes Hamid.
Following Hamid’s coining of the term in the 70s, two more generations have now investigated fifth generation warfare as part of war theories. Earlier this year, Hamid had found evidence for sixth generation warfare in Indian airstrikes in Balakot. As of now, Hamid remains the first and only person, and generation, of sixth generation warfare analysts.
