The aptly named Operation Sindoor was essential and inevitable. The Pahalgam attack crossed many lines. Pakistan’s link was beyond doubt. Prime Minister Narendra Modi clearly laid down the objective and gave full operational freedom to the Indian Armed Forces to execute it. For all the strategic restraint, the government’s resolve, backed by strong national unity, has been unwavering. There was an expectation of visible retaliatory outcomes. The operation was specifically aimed at the terrorists and their infrastructure, while avoiding collateral civilian damage. It is also consistent with a nation’s right to defend itself.
Military operations, especially against a capable adversary, entail huge political responsibility. The scale of the attack, which hit nine sites simultaneously, including the long-standing nurseries of terrorism in Pakistan, Muridke and Bahawalpur, is unprecedented and reflects an extraordinary level of planning, preparation and daring. The evidence is visible. It is in line with the strategy to achieve security and political objectives swiftly, with minimum risks, tolerable level of retaliation and escalation, tacit international acceptance and minimal economic impact. Pakistan’s aim is to inflict enough damage on the Indian military and launch an intense information campaign to satisfy its domestic audience and trigger international mediation.
The morning after India’s strike, we dominated the battle of perception. Wars escalate from unanticipated developments. If this escalates into one, we would need to prevail unambiguously and dominate in our communications. We will also have to watch out for massive cyber-attacks both from Pakistan and elsewhere.
Diplomacy’s strongest hand would be needed. While accepting India’s case, international attention could shift from terrorism to preventing war and the associated proclivity to equate the victim and the attacker. As in the past, under US pressure, Pakistan may act, but without substantive measures. Broader international diplomatic and economic strictures will be limited. Solidarity doesn’t always lead to concrete support. As of now, our partners in the West will not impose costs on Pakistan as they do on designated state sponsors of terrorism. American and European aid to Pakistan always had mild conditions — usually waived — regarding terrorism against India.
The Army is seen as a guarantor of Pakistan’s cohesion and stability, and a useful ally for American and European counter-terrorism objectives. There has been an astonishing lack of international reprimand for Pakistan’s bluster on nuclear threats. We will face resistance from China and, perhaps, an ambivalent Global South. Now, more than ever, the world must show its commitment to zero tolerance for terrorism.
Beyond the immediate action, we will have the even more complex task of ending the regular cycle of attacks from Pakistan. Each major attack from Pakistan has consequences beyond lost lives and the impact on the nation’s psyche. It reinforces a sense of impossibility of a geographically integrated, rivers-linked and culturally similar people to co-exist peacefully. Each one turns the scars of Partition into fresh wounds and creates new stress on our social fabric. It triggers a disproportionately large mobilisation of the military for a conventional retaliation while keeping an eye on the tense northern border. It consumes enormous diplomatic energy and imposes significant economic cost.
From Afghanistan to the Middle East to the Sahel in Africa, we have seen the limits of force, even against militarily weaker adversaries. In Pakistan, the groups have the shield and the sword of one of the world’s most powerful militaries. Besides, an idle and indoctrinated youth in a nation of nearly 250 million can become an infinite pool for recruitment for a low-cost enterprise that is easy for the military and religious groups to finance. And, as human contacts between our two countries reduce and rupture, and the estrangement grows with succeeding generations, the narratives that encompass life-sacrificing causes will be easier to promote.
Coercive public measures can either force change or reinforce hostility. In Nepal, the impact of the so-called Indian blockade in 2015 still lingers in the public imagination. Notwithstanding legal issues, India has justifiable political, security and technical reasons to keep the Indus Water Treaty in “abeyance”. Pakistan will turn water into a new casus belli to unite a nation behind hate and violence against India. At times of heightened tensions, as in 2009 and 2019, Pakistan raised false international alarm about India waging a water war. Water is a deeply emotional subject. The Monarchy in Nepal used the Gandak and Kosi Agreements of the 1950s to fuel lasting animosity against India. On Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s May 2015 visit to Bangladesh, a Dhaka daily carried a front-page photo of a boat sitting on the dry bed of Teesta River.
Counter-terrorism strategy involves a sequence of Ps – the capacity to predict a possible terrorist attack; security measures to prevent it; pre-empting an imminent attack; if that fails, protecting potential targets, especially civilians, and punishing the perpetrators; and finally, persuading the international community to support retaliatory measures. However, terrorism’s asymmetry is that security forces must win each day of the year. Terrorists need to succeed once.
Therefore, in the face of unremitting hostility from Pakistan, the biggest long-term deterrence is to reduce terrorism’s chance for success. For this, we must reinforce the three Ps. Predictive capacity needs more than just hi-tech surveillance equipment and a close watch on Pakistan’s internal and external developments. It also requires building the broadest constituency of support in every village of Kashmir, and avoiding painting all Kashmiris with the broad brush of culpability and complicity; or letting these incidents deepen social fault lines in the country. In the past, back channels have served as a useful, if not always effective, mechanism to inject some stability into the relationship.
Preventing and preempting terrorist attacks requires augmenting a well-equipped, well-trained and highly mobile counter-terrorism force as well as the capacity for asymmetric reach in an adversary’s territory. The right kind of equipment and unmanned systems are needed for the terrain and the task. Protocols on security and movement should be unfailingly observed. We should rapidly build our military for overwhelming dominance against Pakistan in a conventional war, while keeping our northern border safe. And, secrecy should not become a cloak against accountability, or parliamentary and public scrutiny, of our defence and security forces for corrective steps to be taken.
Finally, the challenge of Pakistan needs attention, not the oft-heard declaration of its absence and irrelevance in our discourse. We rightly avoid re-hyphenation, but we should persistently leverage our growing global standing and influence to persuade the world to fully endorse our position on Jammu and Kashmir; make Pakistan pay the price as a state sponsor of terrorism; and, work to change the internal political dynamics of Pakistan. And as South Asia’s largest and strongest, we need a long-term vision to reshape its future.
Even as we focus on the era-defining global power shifts, we continue to face old challenges in our neighbourhood. Both need equal priority. A secure Bharat is indispensable to realising the vision of Viksit Bharat.
The writer is a retired Indian ambassador
