Taking the Fight to the Enemy

A TRACK II DISCUSSION between In­dian and Pakistani delegates in Colombo last year took an interesting turn as it turned to India’s accidental firing of a Brahmos missile on March 9, 2022 which landed in Pakistan’s Punjab province, for­tuitously without causing damage. The missile had no warhead and three Indian Air Force personnel were dismissed from service for negligence. At the time, Pakistan asked India to be mindful of likely consequences and prevent a repeat incident. India needs to remember, offered the Pakistani participants, that Pakistan has battlefield nuclear weapons to counter such intru­sions if they were deliberate instead of accidental.

The observation shocked the Indian side which also, like the Pakistanis, comprised largely of former military personnel. The discussion assumed a graver note and the Indians pointed out that any use of such weapons would invite serious consequenc­es. This would be the case not only if a nuclear weapon were used in Indian territory. The response would be just as severe if Indian troops were targeted with a tactical nuke on Pakistani soil. “In a war situation it can happen that our troops are 50-100km within Pakistan, say in the desert sector. It was put across that if battlefield nuclear weapons were used, the retaliation could be massive,” an attendee told Open. The casual reference to tactical weapons was disconcerting and there was a need to disabuse the Pakistani delegation of any notion that India would hesitate to use its nuclear arsenal which is understood to comprise of high-yield weapons.

India’s aptly named Operation Sindoor that hit nine terror targets across the Line of Control (LoC) and in Pakistan’s Punjab heartland between 1.05AM and 1.30AM during the intervening night of May 6-7 was a forceful retaliation for the killing of 26 Indian male tourists in Pahalgam in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) on April 22 after being singled out as non-Muslims. In one stroke, it demonstrated India’s ability to launch pointed strikes powered by significant intelligence and technological capabilities and the political will to stare down Pakistan’s nuclear threats. The sup­posed irrationality of a rogue nation is seen, not without reason, as cause for caution. But sometimes a threat loses its potency with overuse. In the case of Pakistan’s elites, this habit borders on ob­session with nuclear weapons mentioned at the drop of a hat. The scale of the Indian attacks which cannot be denied have left Pakistan with unenviable choices. Any attack on Indian civilian or military targets runs the risk of a second round of Indian strikes that might target not only more terrorist camps but also strategic airfields or the Pakistani army establishment in Rawalpindi itself. “India’s strikes were precise, well spread out, the choice of targets was well considered and the messaging was spot on,” Lt General Harinder Singh (retd), who commanded the 14 Corps, told Open.

If confronting Pakistan’s nuclear talk was essential, the strikes conveyed important messages. The weapons systems used deliv­ered precision hits bound to cause consternation in Pakistan. Take the strikes on the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) headquarters in Muridke and Bahawalpur. The complexes have several big and small buildings and yet the Indian munitions hit the selected ones. This would mean detailed knowledge of the campuses, facilities and their residents. The precise nature of the Indian attacks entails highly accurate target coordinates. The Scalp and Hammer missiles fired by Indian Rafales, Mirage 2000s and Su30 MKIs were bang on target as was the loitering “sui­cide” ammunition that “dropped” on terror camps in Pakistan- Occupied Kashmir (PoK). If India could hit targets in crowded areas abutting military establish­ments accurately, what is to say it could not pick out a general’s residence in Lahore or Rawalpindi? “Operation Sindoor was con­ducted without Indian forces entering Pakistan territory. There was no physical contact between troops. Highly accurate intel­ligence was available. And the government displayed the will to call Pakistan’s nuclear threats and do so with an operation that hit nine targets,” said Colonel S Dinny (retd), editor of Chanakya Forum. General Singh said the Indian response to Pahalgam was relatively risk-free and generated the desired effect. Apart from hitting the fonts of Lashkar and Jaish extremist ideologies, the attacks injected widespread un­certainty in Pakistan.

On May 7 morning, hours after the midnight strikes on ji­hadist targets in Pakistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a meeting of the Union Cabinet that action against terrorism will continue. He meant it in the immediate context in the event Pakistan chose to retaliate and target a civilian or military centre and he indicated the intent to raise the costs for the adversary. In a confident mood, Modi told ministers that the armed forces had done the nation proud. A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader said the political fallout of the decision to launch Operation Sindoor could seriously disadvantage the Opposition, primarily Congress, whose leaders have been mocking the prime minister. Congress failed to read the popu­lar anger at the Pahalgam killings, particularly the segregation of non-Muslim victims and their cold-blooded murder in front of wives and children. Despite Modi’s record of taking decisive action against terrorism, Congress leaders rushed to question the government’s credentials with party President Mallikarjun Kharge even suggesting the prime minister cancelled a scheduled visit to J&K due to a terror alert. Yet, Modi has been consistent in his messaging beginning with a rally in Bihar on April 24 when he deliberately chose to speak in English and pledged those respon­sible for the Pahalgam outrage would be hunted down to the ends of the earth and their sponsors not allowed to go unpunished.

There has been a steady step-up in Indian capacities since the surgical strikes of 2016 in response to an attack on an Army camp in Uri, followed by the air raid on a Jaish training camp-cum-seminary in Balakot, to the vastly expanded Operation Sindoor. As speculation mounted about Pakistan’s likely response, India on May 8 afternoon confirmed that Pakistan attempted to engage military targets in northern and western India, including Awantipura, Srinagar, Jammu, Pathankot, Amritsar, Kapurthala, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Adampur, Bhatinda, Chandigarh, Nal, Pha­lodi, Uttarlai, and Bhuj using drones and missiles. “These were neutralised by the Integrated Counter UAS Grid and Air Defence systems. The debris of these attacks is now being recovered from a number of locations that prove the Pakistani attacks,” the govern­ment said, adding India responded with the same “domain and intensity”—meaning by using drones—and Lahore’s air defence system had been rendered inactive.

Addressing the media on May 8 evening, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri iterated that India has been “precise, considered and measured” in responding the Pahalgam attack—the original “escalation” by Pakistan. But any further escalation by Pakistan would result in an Indian response about which there should be no doubt. A network of military and civilian radars paired with missile systems that include additions like Brahmos and the Russian S400 provides an automated and highly effective air defence system. The advantage that Pakistan sought to achieve by a counter-strike the morning after the February 26, 2019 Balakot raid is no longer so easy to achieve.

India’s use of military options against Pakistan through much of the last 26 years has been for defensive purposes or for deter­ring it from using proxies for terrorist attacks on Indian soil. The Kargil War in 1999 was a response to Pakistani infiltration across the LoC. The Uri surgical strikes (2016), the Balakot air raid (2019) and the ongoing response to the Pahalgam terrorist atrocity mark a more proactive response where India has entered and hit terror targets in Pakistan with increasing boldness. All four responses took place under the so-called nuclear shadow. In each case, India expanded the envelope of its military options. While the Kargil War was a full-scale, conventional military operation to oust Pakistani forces from Indian territory, the threat of escalation was evident with Pakistan test firing a nuclear-capable missile in the midst of hostilities. The other three fall in a distinct series. But all reflect a key point: Pakistan’s nuclear bluff was called, in each case.

IN 1999, FROM May to July when the Kargil War was waged, Pakistan made three overt threats to use nuclear weapons against India. The first was by Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad in late May of that year when he said his country could use “any weapon” to defend its territorial integrity. The second threat was made by Pakistan’s Religious Affairs Min­ister Raja Zafar-ul-Haq on July 2 when he said nuclear weapons could be used to defend the country’s territory, sovereignty and security. The third was a casual remark by then Minister of In­formation Mushahid Hussain when he responded to a query on no-first-use of nuclear weapons. He said, “Well, what do they say, ‘Que sera, sera,’ what will be will be. We hope it will not come to the nuclear thing.” It is interesting to note that the last two threats were made by Pakistani ministers in the first week of July when the tide had turned against Islamabad militarily and diplomati­cally. On July 7, India recaptured Tiger Hill and other features in the Batalik sector. By the end of the month it was all over.

Pakistan’s nuclear threats, from the early phase of the conflict in May to its conclusion, were futile. They did not deter India from using conventional operations to reclaim territory on dif­ficult terrain even when observing restraint by not expanding the conflict beyond the LoC. Pakistan did not heed diplomacy until the very end, till Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s humiliat­ing meeting with US President Bill Clinton on July 4 at the White House. Much ink has been spilled on why matters did not cross the nuclear threshold. An obvious answer is that India took care not to cross the LoC. But it was clear that Pakistan’s nuclear blus­ter was firmly negotiated by India’s political leadership which assessed the situation accurately.

These lessons were not built on for the next 15 or so years and that emboldened Pakistan. In 2008, when the Mumbai terror at­tacks cost 175 lives and left more than 300 people injured, the Manmohan Singh government launched a diplomatic blitz but did not use military options. The reasons, depending on who of­fers them, range from concerns over India’s military capacities and worries about escalation. In any event, the inaction and an impression that India seeks to “buy peace” with Pakistan—bol­stered by hasty attempts to normalise relations—emboldened Pakistan’s deep state. The ill-considered attempt to restart the “peace process” with Pakistan met with predictable failure.

Those were the years when India’s political leadership and its policymaking elite swallowed Pakistan’s claim that there was no stated nuclear escalation ladder. This deliberate absence of red lines was allegedly buttressed by Pakistan acquiring short-range, tactical missiles meant to “plug” the gap against low-level military responses by India. The key lessons of Kargil that conventional operations could be conducted under the so-called nuclear shad­ow were forgotten for deliberate political reasons. While aman ki asha prevailed for Pakistan—with the participation of sections of India’s media and civil society—ordinary Indians paid the price of terrorism.

The Indian calculus of responding to Pakistan’s provocations and terrorist attacks changed de­cisively after 2014 when Modi as­sumed office for his first term. In 2016 India responded to the Uri attack on September 18 by surgi­cal strikes in PoK on September 29. This was preceded by a cross-border raid into Myanmar against Naga rebels in 2015. While the strikes hit terror launch pads and while such operations had been carried out previously, the 2016 raids were more widespread and caused doz­ens of casualties. Some estimates pin them at three-to-five kilometre incursions by Indian special forces and the message was clear: India would respond to Pakistani terror­ism by crossing thresholds once considered set in stone.

That operation brought India some vital breathing room to pursue its economic and developmental goals without fussing about Paki­stan. The uneasy peace was broken on February 14, 2019 at Lethpora in Pulwama district when about 40 Indian paramilitary troopers were killed in a suicide bombing. India’s response on February 26 involved striking terrorist targets at Balakot in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. This was not just another area in PoK from where Pakistan dispatched terrorists into India—it was mainland Pakistan. In taking this step, India breached an alleged redline: no attacks on Pakistan proper. That step led to retaliation but that provided an “off ramp” for Pakistan to de-escalate. The remote location of the attack allowed Pakistan to claim no damage had been caused.

It did, however, give Pakistan much to mull over for the next five years. It also allowed India to undertake constitutional changes in J&K unthinkable for any previous government by scrapping Article 370. This was damaging for Pakistan’s abil­ity to “internationalise” the “Kashmir issue”. The Pahalgam atrocity has radically expanded India’s options envelope. Operation Sindoor, so named to recall the deaths of husbands and fathers and deeply imbued with Hindu cultural symbolism, used air and land-launched missiles and loitering ammunition. It did not use the considerable assets of the Indian Navy which has intimate knowledge of the Arabian Sea waters all the way to the Somalian coast and has a near-permanent presence in the Persian Gulf. Missiles launched from sea are capable of reaching targets in the south and west of Pakistan and the fleet of maritime MiG-29ks operating from carriers have a stand-off capacity too. The navy has the services of highly trained commandos who can be used, like the Indian Army’s special forces, for assignments in coastal areas and even inland. In­dia has also all but consigned the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) to the dustbin. It could be possible, say ex­perts with knowledge of the river system, to reduce or modulate wa­ter flows as a response to a terrorist incident. The technical term used is holding the IWT in abeyance. In effect, this has opened India’s options to divert waters from the western rivers and create storage capacities on a war footing.

The lessons of successive Indian responses to Pakistani provocations are clear: India will expand the zone of military opera­tions into any part of Pakistan. The nuclear overhang has no mean­ing left to it. India always picks its military targets carefully and does not indulge in wanton attacks on civilians, unlike Pakistan. “India is in a position to inflict severe punitive action on Pakistan if it crosses the threshold again while other options are emerging for lesser order terrorist attacks,” said Colonel Dinny. The provocation for Operation Sindoor—segregat­ing non-Muslims, making women and children watch the kill­ings, and asking terror-stricken survivors to “tell Modi”—was severe. But Pakistan observers feel the country’s internal troubles are deepening and social and regional divides and insurgencies in regions like Balochistan are challenging the Pakistan army. Pakistan will need to consider its next steps carefully. It may, once the current round of hostilities blows over, lie low for a while and then look to resume infiltrating jihadists across the LoC and up the ante in other domains like cyberspace or use renewed access to Bangladesh to try revive terrorism in India’s Northeast. But all such options now carry a heavier cost as India has taken its war against terror right into the Pakistani mainland.

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