NON-TRADITIONAL SECURITY THREATS IN MARITIME ZONES OF PAKISTAN AND LAW ENFORCEMENT BY PMSA: AN OVERVIEW

The world has gone through major transformation since end of the Cold War, and beginning of the new millennium has witnessed massive transition within international relations and geopolitics. One of the significant transformations which has been witnessed in contemporary era is paradigm shift in the concept of security and modern warfare is from traditional to non-traditional security which has one pertinent factor of spatial dimension which can bring significant change to nature of non-traditional challenges and threat perception of states. This paper is an endeavor to evaluate the nature of non-traditional security threats in the maritime zones of Pakistan and the legal instruments enabling Pakistan for countering these security threats. Being global commons, oceans are taken as shared responsibility which is supported by the international law and there have been established different legal instruments to ensure and facilitate effective law enforcement in the maritime zones of the littoral states. Therefore, in that regard, the undertaken research aims at studying these legal instruments and to seek the role of Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) for securing the maritime zones of Pakistan and ensuring safe navigation in its seas. This research is exploratory for which synthesis of grounded research and case study method is used by utilizing primary quantitative and qualitative data besides secondary resources. The identification of a number of non-traditional security threats in the maritime zones of Pakistan and studying the countering strategies makes this research quite relevant as there is massive reliance of the states over maritime activities, global shipping and commercial activities through Indian Ocean being primary conduit for economic and communication hub for their sustainable socioeconomic development.