The Pahalgam terror attack (April 22) has put Delhi and Islamabad into a different trajectory from the past, and is one that should alert the entire strategic community. This was the first such incident on this scale targeting civilians since the Mumbai 2008 attacks. The barbarity in Pahalgam, segregating men from women, identifying them by religion and then executing them is aimed not just at terrorising Indians, and crushing a slowly reviving Kashmiri economy but also of instigating a communal rift in the rest of the country. Unlike the “fidayeen” attacks of the past, where terrorists were sent in as cannon fodder, to continue to kill until eliminated by security forces, this attack seemed more precise, with an exfiltration plan in place. While a deeper inquiry into the lapses that allowed the attack to take place and for the terrorists to leave unchallenged is awaited, the government has announced diplomatic measures, which include the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT). It has also given the defence forces the green light to plan a military operation.
Also read | Has the Pahalgam attack crossed a red line?
A response that is not just revenge
How does one craft a more long-term response, that does not just seek revenge or retaliation, but works as a deterrent in the short term and seeks to change patterns of cross-border behaviour in the long term?
To begin with, it is necessary to analyse India’s varied responses to attacks of a similar magnitude over the past few years for what was, relatively speaking, more effective in securing India’s security interests. While most analyses look at the responses to the Uri (2016) and Pulwama (2019) attacks, at least five different responses should be studied: this includes 2001, after the Parliament attack, when the Indian Army was mobilised during Operation Parakram. After the Mumbai attacks, the government launched an international campaign that pushed Pakistan to admit that terrorists had been raised and trained on its territory, and Pakistan was first put on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey-list for terror financing and money laundering. In 2007 after the Samjhauta Express train attack and in January 2016 after the Pathankot attack, India asked Pakistan to join the investigation, and a Pakistani team was even invited to visit the Pathankot air force base in March 2016. After the Uri attack, the government okayed cross-Line of Control (LoC) surgical strikes to attack terror camps in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK). And in 2019, the Indian Air Force bombed a terror camp in Balakot, outside PoK, which then saw a counter-mobilisation by the Pakistan Air Force, the capture of an Indian pilot, and a helicopter accidentally shot down on the Indian side.
Given that the Pahalgam attack appears to have been a deliberately planned provocation, another similar response from India will be expected, and would have been war-gamed already. This narrows strategic options for a strike that catches the other side unawares. Planners will not only need to eliminate the responses already tried in the past but they also must produce three separate strategies: a counter-terror strategy, a strategy for retaliation, and a strategy to manage Pakistan’s counter-retaliation as well.
Three other areas of misadventure and miscalculation must also be factored in, beginning with Pakistan Army Chief General Asim Munir’s apparent desire to escalate matters with India. A clear indicator of this were two recent speeches: calling for Pakistan to become a “hard state”, underlining religious differences between Hindus and Muslims that fomented the “Two-nation theory”, and the reference to Kashmir as a “jugular vein”. It must be kept in mind that Gen. Munir was commissioned in the Pakistani Army in 1986 during Gen. Zia-ul-Haq’s tenure as the President of Pakistan when the ideological purpose of the Pakistan Army was changed from “Ittehad, Yaqeen, Tanzeem (unity, faith and discipline”) to the more radicalised “Iman, Taqwa, Jihad fi Sabeelillah (faith, obedience of god and struggle for the path of Allah”), and this is likely to have left a lasting imprint. Gen. Munir has been under pressure not only to avenge the Jaffar Express attack in Pakistan in March this year in which, coincidentally or otherwise, 26 hostages, all men, were killed. Another pressure point is the continued popularity of Imran Khan, his biggest critic, who has been in jail for nearly two years. Even so, Gen. Munir, who will remain in the saddle until at least 2027 due to a change in Pakistani law last year, has few challenges to his will at present, and New Delhi must factor this in as well.
The role of China is another wild card, particularly if India’s response to Pahalgam hurts well-entrenched China-Pakistan Economic Corridor interests in any way. The third room for error could come from any hastily -prepared Indian response to the attacks, led by calls by some in New Delhi that it is time for a “definitive war”, and that the time for “map-making” or “cartological changes” by capturing and holding parts of PoK is nigh.
The diplomatic road ahead
At the same time, India’s diplomacy has to double efforts to keep those counselling restraint, internationally, at bay, with the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia joining the chorus and attempting to mediate by calling on Delhi and Islamabad to “de-escalate”. Such calls will only get louder if there is a retaliatory strike by India. In addition, India’s decision to suspend the IWT could see a diplomatic pushback from the World Bank and others including upper riparian states such as China, and lower riparian Bangladesh.
At the UN Security Council (UNSC), India had to suffer a “watered-down” statement issued last month, that omitted references to The Resistance Force (TRF), the group linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) that initially claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam attack, and to the “Government of India” as the relevant authority to cooperate with, as Pakistan is a current member of the UNSC. Despite that, India must bring a listing request for a UNSC designation of the TRF and its leadership — as it did for the LeT after the Mumbai attacks and the Jaish-e-Mohammed after Pulwama — and convince the U.S. and others to list the TRF as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) in their countries. The FATF’s strictures on Pakistan have been an effective tool in the past and must be revisited. A diplomatic campaign for the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) that India first proposed in the 1990s could also be re-energised, possibly using Opposition leaders and the Jammu-Kashmir leadership to head delegations abroad to defend India’s responses, in the manner Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi (1971) and P.V. Narasimha Rao (1994) once did.
LoC as the border
Finally, it is time to reconsider an idea that was prematurely discarded nearly two decades ago — of sealing the LoC into a more formal border. For too many years, Pakistan’s military has used the LoC as a convenient conduit to bring over recruits for training and send over terrorists to carry out attacks in India — using both its permeability as well as its impermanence as a pretext to continue a proxy, asymmetric war. The TRF’s initial telegram message, claiming responsibility for the Pahalgam massacre, was that the attack was aimed at stopping “demographic changes” in Jammu-Kashmir. On its side of the LoC in PoK however, Pakistan has completed demographic change, settling non-Kashmiris, army officers and others in the areas, and hiving off Gilgit-Baltistan into a federally administered area. These areas would be virtually ungovernable by India, even if they were to be taken over coercively.
It is, therefore, vital to call ‘time of death’ on Rawalpindi’s ‘jugular vein’ theory and dreams of unifying the now-disparate regions of Jammu-Kashmir and somehow annexing the Kashmir Valley. New Delhi must revisit the LoC agreement proposals of 2007, that sought to turn the LoC or ceasefire line, into a de-facto border, with a view to making it a permanent International Border in the future. The role of the international community, if at all, would be in ensuring that Pakistan commits to it — if it wishes to ensure a lasting equilibrium in the region.
Published – May 05, 2025 12:16 am IST