The military action, following a slew of diplomatic steps, among them the decision to keep in abeyance the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, was expected. Two days after Pahalgam, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi, speaking in Madhubani, Bihar, said, “India will identify, trace, and punish every terrorist and their backers. We will pursue them to the ends of the Earth.” Yet, Operation Sindoor marks a paradigm shift in India’s anti-terror response vis-a-vis Pakistan. One, Delhi has raised the threshold of its retaliation, in both scope and scale. Delhi ordered surgical strikes in PoK after the Uri attack in 2016 and aerial bombing of a terrorist camp in Balakot outside PoK after the Pulwama incident in 2019. But Operation Sindoor has targeted terror assets deep inside Pakistan — such distances were covered in military operations last during the 1971 war. It has conclusively showed that nuclear sabre rattling by Pakistan will not serve as a deterrent anymore. Two, Delhi has demonstrated that India possesses the logistics to track and target with precision the so-called Pakistani strategic assets held to foment trouble across the border. The armed forces provided visuals of attacks on the camps inside Pakistan even as foreign secretary Misri said that there was no collateral civilian damage.

Operation Sindoor, which redraws the terms of engagement with Pakistan, is a scale-up forced on India by Pakistan’s criminal evasions and intransigence regarding terrorist attacks. Following its defeat and break-up after the 1971 war, Pakistan invested in militant groups and turned them into strategic assets to be wielded at will to undermine India’s economy and exploit regional and religious fault lines. Jammu and Kashmir, which Islamabad perceives as the unfinished business of Partition, became a playground for this strategy in the 1980s. Pakistan patronised a militant uprising in 1989 that led to the expulsion of Kashmir Hindus from the Valley. Even in the Pahalgam attack, there was a clear design to exploit the religious fault line, which, of course, was soundly defeated by Hindus and Muslims across India. Over the years, Pakistan has funded and trained terrorists who targeted both military and civilian populations in J&K and beyond. Stealth and deceit have marked Islamabad’s response to Delhi’s overtures to build enduring peace between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, who share history and geography: For instance, PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s 1999 peace initiative, the Lahore bus yatra, was hugely welcomed by civilian populations on both sides of the border. But what followed was the Kargil incursions. Pakistan’s deep State, comprising the armed forces and its spy agency, the ISI, seems to perceive the idea of peace with India as inimical to its self-interest and works to sabotage the prospect of a friendly neighbourhood using its terrorist clients. It is a playbook Islamabad has used in Afghanistan also.

New Delhi, in the past, employed various tactics that fell short of military action to force Islamabad to respect the red lines on its national interests. India’s response to the 2001 Parliament attack was Operation Parakram, a mobilisation of the armed forces on the LoC. India showed Pakistan that terrorism has an economic cost when it got Pakistan pulled up by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for terror financing and money laundering. It forced Islamabad to arrest some of the leading internationally designated terrorists residing in Pakistan. Delhi even invited Islamabad to be a part of the probe in the 2007 Samjhauta Express train attack and the 2016 Pathankot attack. Islamabad’s strategy has always been to lie or be in denial, and more recently, wail about being a victim of the same terror ecosystem it has nurtured over the years.

Operation Sindoor suggests clarity on the part of Delhi in inflicting pain immediately when attacked by terrorists. Pakistan’s patrons such as China and Turkey could do well to educate their friend about the new global situation and advise it to behave. Ratcheting up the rhetoric in favour of war will not help anyone — and definitely not a nation that is facing economic distress and multiple mutinies within its borders.