In a widely anticipated military response to the April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir, India struck nine locations in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Pakistan in the early hours of May 7.
Among the sites India targeted, four were in Pakistan and five in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. According to the Indian government, the targets were training camps and launchpads used by U.N.-proscribed groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, besides the Hizbul Mujahideen.
India’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement immediately after the conclusion of the operation that India’s actions were “focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature.”
“No Pakistani military facilities have been targeted. India has demonstrated considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution,” the ministry said, adding that it aimed to ensure that those responsible for the Pahalgam attack were held accountable.
The attack in Pahalgam left 26 people, most of them Indian tourists, dead. It was claimed by a little-known group known as The Resistance Front (TRF), which India believes is an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Taiba with links to Pakistan’s military spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri underlined that the aim of the predawn strike by the Indian military was also to “pre-empt” and “deter more such cross-border attacks.”
“These actions were measured, non-escalatory, proportionate, and responsible. They focused on dismantling the terrorist infrastructure and disabling terrorists likely to be sent across to India,” he told reporters in New Delhi.
A U.N. Security Council resolution on April 25 had spoken of the need to hold perpetrators, organizers, financiers, and sponsors of the Pahalgam attack accountable and to bring them to justice, Misri said, adding that India’s actions of May 7 “should be seen in this context.”
The comments underline the message that India’s actions should be seen as a form of self-defense, that India is unlikely to follow up with more strikes unless there is a response from Pakistan, and that New Delhi’s response is limited to striking terrorist targets as opposed to attacking Pakistan’s civilian or military assets. They are also aimed at assuaging international concern that tensions could quickly spiral into a nuclear conflict and add to the already stressed global situation with the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas conflict in West Asia.
Several countries, including the United States, have called on India and Pakistan to avoid further escalation in the wake of the Indian strikes.
But an escalation is likely to happen with Pakistan readying to retaliate. Islamabad claimed that the Indian strikes hit civilian areas and a mosque, killing 26 people, among them women and children. Already, artillery shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) that divides Indian and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, as well as the International Border between the two countries, has intensified, and at least nine people have reportedly been killed on the Indian side so far.
That India would respond militarily to the Pahalgam attack was a given.
On April 22, the terrorists targeted unarmed civilians, most of them tourists. They rounded up the men and confirmed whether they were Hindus before shooting them execution style, in front of their wives and children. That several women were left widowed by the Pahalgam terrorist attack has evoked outrage across India. One of those killed was a newlywed Indian naval officer, whose grieving young widow quickly became the tragic face of the massacre, seen as the worst against civilians since the year 2000.
The May 7 Indian military strikes were codenamed Operation Sindoor. Sindoor in Hindi means vermilion, which married Hindu women dot or smear on their forehead, an auspicious sign of their marital status.
Indian Army social media posts about the strikes included the hashtag #JusticeServed.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has built up a reputation for being tough on terrorism. It has sought to set itself apart from previous governments that dealt with Pakistan-backed terrorist attacks mainly through diplomacy.
A day after the Pahalgam attacks, India announced a slew of measures, including holding in abeyance a 1960 treaty to share the waters of the Indus River and its tributaries with Pakistan. A day later, while addressing a public gathering in eastern Bihar state, Modi said: “India will identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backers. We will pursue them to the ends of the earth.”
This isn’t the first time that India has responded militarily to terrorist attacks by Pakistan-backed groups. The precedent was set about a decade ago.
In 2016, after a terrorist strike on a military camp in Uri near the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir that killed 19 Indian soldiers, the Indian Army launched a cross-border raid into Pakistan-administered Kashmir, targeting terrorist training camps and launch pads. Pakistan denied that the cross-border raids ever took place but admitted that two soldiers were killed in cross-border fire.
In 2019, when a terrorist from the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed group targeted a bus carrying paramilitary troops in Kashmir’s Pulwama district, killing 40 personnel, Indian Air Force jets struck alleged terrorist camps in Balakot in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Pakistan countered with an aerial raid on India, resulting in India scrambling its air force. An Indian Air Force MiG-21 was shot down and its pilot captured by Pakistan, spiking already high tensions. The situation was defused by the safe return of the pilot courtesy of some intense behind-the-scenes diplomacy involving countries like the United States.
India’s latest operation against Pakistan marks a departure from its 2016 and 2019 campaigns.
First, the strike seems to have involved all three services – the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force – which speaks of an operation involving intensive coordination.
Second, it involved targeting multiple locations inside Pakistan and territory held by Pakistan, making it wider in scope than either of the previous campaigns.
Third, after the strikes New Delhi briefed a number of its close partners, including the U.S., U.K., Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. China, a self-described “all-weather friend” of Pakistan and a strategic rival of India with whom New Delhi has an unresolved border dispute, doesn’t seem to have been on the list. Previously, India would have briefed all five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, including China.
Clearly, there is a new resolve within the Indian government with regard to confronting terrorism emanating from Pakistan. It points to a determination in New Delhi to punish Pakistan for supporting terrorism, despite Islamabad rallying international support to pressure India to observe restraint, given that both countries have nuclear weapons. India seems willing to absorb any costs that come along with punishing Pakistan, including the loss of men and assets.
New Delhi is also aiming to expose Pakistan in other ways by pinning the blame for the clashes on Islamabad. By carrying out a terrorist attack against India, it is actually Pakistan that started it all by opening up the possibility of a conventional military conflict with India, academic Happymon Jacob argued in an opinion piece in India’s World magazine.
“The onus is on Pakistan to ensure there is no terrorist attack if it seeks to prevent a military conflict as a terror attack will, in all probability, lead to a conventional response — with the latter being the rule and its non-occurrence being the exception. In other words, the starting point of India-Pakistan escalation is not the Indian use of conventional force, but the Pakistani use of subconventional force. India has put the ball in Pakistan’s court on future escalation,” he wrote.
New Delhi seems to have less patience with those advising restraint after a terrorist attack. “The world must show zero tolerance for terrorism,” India’s Minister for External Affairs S. Jaishankar said in a post on X, hours after Operation Sindoor was launched.
A Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism proposed by India in 1996 at the United Nations is yet to find consensus, as countries have not been able to agree on the definition of “terrorism” and “terrorist.” “One country’s terrorist is deemed a freedom fighter in another country,” an Indian government official told The Diplomat.
New Delhi should rally Kashmiris in its fight against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Protests in Kashmir against the attacks in Pahalgam were the first of their kind in a long time. These are developments that India should highlight to demolish Pakistan’s argument of supporting the “freedom movement” in Kashmir.