5 min readMay 8, 2026 06:20 AM IST
First published on: May 8, 2026 at 06:20 AM IST
After Pakistan’s brutal terror attack near Pahalgam in April last year, India launched Operation Sindoor. The Indian Air Force struck nine key terror targets in Pakistan and PoK and caused damage to several Pakistani military airfields. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a new normal comprising a fitting reply to every terror attack and not tolerating Pakistan’s nuclear blackmail.
Questions were raised about India’s narrative management in the wake of Operation Sindoor. Nonetheless, the operation was a tactical success on more than one count. It was a well-publicised payback for Pakistan’s terror crimes. It validated the efficacy of some of India’s weapon systems and demonstrated India’s capability to carry out precision strikes deep inside Pakistan. Finally, it expanded the space for military action against Pakistan under the nuclear overhang.
But has Operation Sindoor moved India any closer to its strategic goals vis-à-vis Pakistan?
Strategic success can be assessed in relation to an endgame and India has no clearly defined endgame concerning Pakistan. The army-led establishment in Pakistan has regarded existence in opposition to India as an end in itself. In recent years, the Indian public discourse, while claiming a global role, has tended to be a mirror image of this approach and seems to be in a zero-sum competition with Pakistan. It is heavily swayed by wishful thinking. Thus, there has been a perennial expectation of Pakistan’s collapse as well as a strong pitch on isolating Pakistan internationally.
Pakistan is nowhere close to a collapse and no major power wants this outcome in a highly radicalised region with nuclear weapons. Far from being isolated, Pakistan has registered a significant geopolitical recovery due, inter alia, to US President Donald Trump cosying up to his favourite field marshal, Asim Munir, and co-opting Pakistan for his designs in West Asia. Ironically, this process picked up post-Operation Sindoor. Pakistan’s role of a peacemaker in the US-Iran conflict has further refurbished its image. The era of Pakistan-linked terrorists surfacing periodically all over the globe is behind us. Therefore, our terror concerns do not register as well with international partners as in the past.
Another, perhaps less satisfactory, approach to assessing strategic success is in relation to the goals that diplomacy was charged with not achieving before they were abandoned some years ago: Putting an end to Pakistani terror and transforming the hostile posture of the Pakistani state.
That Operation Sindoor has not put an end to Pakistani terror is evident from the reports of the continued existence and activities of anti-India terror groups in Pakistan; infiltration bids and encounters involving Pakistani terrorists in J&K; and the emphasis on cross-border terrorism in our bilateral and multilateral diplomacy. The egregious Lal Qila terror attack in November 2025, though blamed officially on anti-national forces, was at the very least a byproduct of Pakistan-sponsored radicalisation in Kashmir.
Pakistan’s posture towards India has, if anything, worsened. There was a surreal sense of triumphalism in Pakistan after the May 2025 hostilities. Pakistan’s good equation with the Trump administration has boosted the confidence of its establishment. Overconfidence has in the past prodded it towards adventurism against India. These factors, together with the need to reinforce deterrence, seem to be behind the Indian political and military leadership asserting that Operation Sindoor was a trailer and not the full movie. In any case, the limitations of the approach of bringing an adversary to his knees militarily are evident from the recent conflict between the mighty US-Israel combine and Iran.
The ingredients of a durable peace between India and Pakistan have been clear: No place for terrorism and violence; a pragmatic and forward-looking agreement on Kashmir without redrawing borders (the only feasible peaceful solution); grant of transit through each other’s territory in a bilateral or regional arrangement; and across-the-board mutually-beneficial cooperation. However, the Pakistani establishment has all along baulked at adopting a constructive approach. In India, too, the justified anger of people at Pakistan’s conduct and its recent leveraging for political ends has all but eliminated the space for diplomacy. Consequently, coercion, overt and covert, is the currency of this relationship. Unless its gains are leveraged by diplomacy to nudge the adversary towards a constructive path, coercion risks becoming an endless journey of conflict and crises.
Without a change in these dynamics to create some room for diplomacy alongside deterrence and coercion, the full movie may unfold sooner than later with all its deleterious consequences. The trajectory of wars, whether resulting from accident or design, is extremely difficult to control.
The writer is former high commissioner to Pakistan and author of India’s Pakistan Conundrum: Managing a Complex Relationship
