Opinion Operation Sindoor is an apt and timely response to Pahalgam

Here, it bears mention that the euphemism “cross-border terrorism” coined by India’s national security establishment to describe what were clearly “acts of war” has repeatedly come back to haunt us. Training and arming fighters in Pakistan/PoK territory and then launching them across recognised boundaries to wreak death and destruction had always constituted acts of war and demanded an appropriate riposte. This was compounded by describing the perpetrators as “non-state actors”, providing an alibi for Pakistan, which claimed that they were Kashmiri “freedom fighters”. Let us also recall that following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, then US President Bush declared that the terrorists’ actions were acts of war and gave America the right to act in self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Secondly, no matter how spectacular or satisfying an act of “retribution” may seem to the public, it can only be classified as a tactical-level response. What the Indian state actually needs to establish (or re-establish) vis-à-vis Pakistan is “conventional deterrence” as part of a well-thought-out strategy. Mutual nuclear deterrence has held for 26 years on the Subcontinent (despite India’s “no-first-use” commitment), since neither side has employed nuclear weapons. But India’s significant conventional superiority over Pakistan was eroded when, (a) A “second front” became a reality, with the emergence of the China-Pak axis and (b) Pakistan deployed tactical nuclear weapons and switched to a doctrine of “flexible response” as a response to India’s putative “Cold Start” doctrine. In this context, it became apparent in the wake of India’s post-Uri surgical strike of 2016 and the post-Pulwama air strike of 2019, that although we had called Pakistan’s bluff of a lowered nuclear threshold, we had failed to deter it in the conventional domain.

Consequently, Pakistan has continued to raise, train and infiltrate terrorists across the LoC from Kathua to Kupwara and everywhere in between. Infiltrated under Pakistan army’s cover into the challenging wooded and mountainous terrain of the Pir Panjal and Karakoram ranges, small, mobile, teams of armed Pakistani intruders have managed to survive for long periods with minimal sustenance. Employing hit-and-run tactics, these mobile terror modules have been able to evade and tie down large numbers of Indian troops.

The only way of re-establishing conventional deterrence at the level of this so-called “asymmetric warfare” is to inflict pain and punishment on those who conceive, support and operationalise it – the Pakistani “deep state”. This is the unholy nexus of the army’s General Headquarters (GHQ) and the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, which exercises oversight and full control of Pakistan’s dummy political executive. Having incarcerated popular politician Imran Khan, the military/deep state guides the foreign and domestic policies of this benighted country. Lately, Pakistan’s public has demonstrated increasing evidence of its deep resentment against the military’s involvement in governance, contributing to a fast-deteriorating economy and mishandled domestic insurgencies.

An inflammatory and unsoldierly public talk recently delivered by the Pakistan army chief General Asim Munir seems to be evidence of the military’s hope that a showdown with India may serve to restore some of its lost sheen. Against this backdrop, India’s response to the Pahalgam carnage has been apt and timely. When General Munir inappropriately referred to Kashmir as “Pakistan’s jugular vein”, he obviously forgot that its actual jugular vein are the five rivers controlled by an upper-riparian India.

India can thus re-establish conventional deterrence vis-à-vis Pak provided Indian security planners are mindful of two factors. First, the initial wave of kinetic strikes may need to be followed up with more, and the public should be prepared for attrition, loss of life and the distinct possibility of escalation. At the same time, while public opinion may demand a “jaw for a tooth”, our military leadership should remain wary of the “escalation” ladder — easy to step on but difficult to jump off. Given the nuclear shadow that hangs over the Subcontinent, Indian planners have taken care to send clear signals of India’s non-escalatory intent by using only aircraft-launched weapons and not ballistic missiles, and also, by avoiding Pak military units/establishments and targeting only terrorist hubs. Additionally, we must convey — internationally as well as across the border — that our aim is limited to a commitment from the Pakistan deep state to dismantle the terror network, and guarantee cessation of cross-border armed activity.

However, such threats need to be firmly rejected for a number of reasons. Any nuclear detonation on the sub-continent will have grave regional and even worldwide environmental implications. Therefore, Pak nuclear forces would be under close scrutiny, and major powers may take early action to pre-empt any nuclear adventurism by Pakistan. We should also believe that, notwithstanding their maladroitness in past Indo-Pak wars, Pak generals are smart enough to duck being incinerated in a retaliatory Indian nuclear second strike.

The last word: It is the dream of every DG ISI to exploit India’s ethno-religious fault-lines, in an effort to reduce it to a mirror-image of the Islamic Republic. We must not let that happen.

The writer is a former Indian navy chief and chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee