6 min readMay 9, 2025 12:24 PM IST
First published on: May 9, 2025 at 07:09 AM IST
The public outrage following the barbaric Pahalgam terror attack and the kinetic punitive action taken by India after the Uri and Pulwama attacks had made such action inevitable this time. In the event, Operation Sindoor turned out to be qualitatively different from the shallow surgical strikes of 2016 and the Balakot strike of 2019. The latter was aimed at a single target and the lack of evidence of the damage caused had resulted in some doubts about India’s narrative. Operation Sindoor, on the other hand, hit nine terror targets, including the nerve centres of Pakistani terror — the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) headquarters in Muridke and Bahawalpur — both in the Punjabi heartland. India produced ample proof of the damage caused, which Pakistan has largely acknowledged. The operation also demonstrated India’s capability to carry out precision strikes deep inside Pakistan. The LeT and JeM headquarters had stood all these years in full public view as a symbol of Pakistan cocking a snook at the international community’s counter-terror campaign. Operation Sindoor was a just payback not only for Pahalgam but also for the countless innocent lives lost in earlier Pakistan-sponsored terror attacks.
As in the official statement after Balakot, India asserted this time, too, its right to pre-empt any terror attacks planned from Pakistani soil. It described Operation Sindoor as “measured, non-escalatory, proportionate and responsible”, adding that no Pakistani military facilities were targeted. It reiterated that any attack on military targets in India would invite a suitable response.
Pakistan has resorted to heavy cross-LoC firing, causing civilian casualties. On May 7, their National Security Committee — a top civil-military body — said that Pakistan reserved the right to respond to the Indian strikes. Subsequent Pakistani media reports quoted Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister, Ishaq Dar, as saying that the NSAs of the two countries had spoken after the Indian strikes. However, in a sign of continued military activity, India has said that on the night between May 7 and 8, it neutralised Pakistan’s attempt to engage several military targets in northern and western India; on the morning of May 8, the Indian
Armed Forces targeted air defence radars and systems in a number of Pakistani locations. One can only hope that the two countries find an off-ramp early to get off the escalation ladder.
It would be premature to assess the full strategic implications of Operation Sindoor in the presence of continued military activity. However, some trends have been clear.
First, as in the case of earlier egregious terror attacks, there was widespread condemnation of the Pahalgam attack and expressions of sympathy by international partners. However, the international community remains averse to the two nuclear-armed neighbours moving up the escalation ladder. It is equally clear that Pakistan’s major partners are not about to abandon it because of our terror concerns. However, within these limitations, there is scope to work with our partners and build pressure on Pakistan to change its behaviour by, inter alia, trying to bring it again under greater scrutiny of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
Second, though not a party to the post-Pahalgam standoff, China has been a constant presence on the sidelines. It has supported Pakistan’s right to defend its sovereignty and legitimate security interests and its diversionary proposal for an “impartial” international probe. It has expressed regret at the Indian strikes. Around 80 per cent of Pakistan’s major arms imports come from China and interoperability between their armed forces has grown. The Chinese presence could become more direct in a future standoff if our military actions are seen as harming their China-Pakistan Economic Corridor assets.
Despite India successfully hitting nine terror targets, we may find ourselves no closer to our goal of zero terror and, much less, a resolution of our larger Pakistan problem once the curtain falls on the ongoing crisis.
Pakistani terror against us has gone down significantly from its heyday. Operation Sindoor may put paid to the brazen existence of terror centres overground and result in some restraint on Pakistan’s terror machine. However, Pakistan is not about to give up the instrumentality of terror. So, our counter-terror grid should always remain in top gear. Further, our security forces cannot prevent the adversary from slipping through our defence lines occasionally. Therefore, the goal of zero terror is unrealistic. There is no end in sight to the Pakistan army’s stranglehold on the state and its institutional interest in keeping the India bogey alive. This rules out a major shift in Pakistan’s posture towards us.
The role of diplomacy in our relationship with Pakistan eroded progressively after the Mumbai terror attack and is practically nonexistent today. This leaves both sides dependent on deterrence and coercion to manage the relationship. A belief had also taken hold in sections of our strategic community in recent years that an internally preoccupied Pakistan was a diminished threat, best left alone. The ongoing crisis has shown that Pakistan needs to be managed with all the instrumentalities at our disposal to reduce the volatility of the relationship.
Already beset with serious internal challenges, Pakistan is in a messier situation after the Pahalgam attack, its terror face exposed starkly to the world, a military confrontation with India ongoing and its water security in jeopardy. We, too, have this mess on our doorstep with no way forward other than a long journey of coercion with the volatility it entails. The LoC ceasefire has all but collapsed. We may again be in for a prolonged period of heightened volatility on our western frontier.
Sabharwal is a former high commissioner to Pakistan and author of India’s Pakistan Conundrum: Managing a Complex Relationship
Army soldiers inspect a building damaged by a suspected Indian missile attack near Muzaffarabad. (PTI Photo) 
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