Five reasons why Indian sub-continent has changed post Operation Sindoor

India Today

2 days ago

Over a month ago, Indian jets and ground-based missile launchers inflicted the most damage on Pakistan since the 1971 Indo-Pak war. India attacked terrorist infrastructure and wrecked Pakistani airbases and radars in a swift series of retaliatory air and ground strikes. India has held the Indus Water Treaty in abeyance for the first time since its 1960 signing.Five reasons why the ongoing Operation Sindoor is arguably India's greatest strategic move since the 1998 Pokharan-2 nuclear tests.advertisement1. ENDS PAKISTAN'S NUCLEAR BLACKMAILPakistan covertly acquired nuclear weapons capability in the 1980s before India did. India tested a nuclear device in 1974 but that device was not a weapon as in, in a form that could be delivered on to target. It is one of the sub-continent conundrums that while India tested first, it began weaponising later, only in the late 1980s after intelligence suggested that the Pakistani nuclear weapons programme was racing ahead.
When the Pakistan military acquired nuclear weapons capability in the 1980s, it changed its mindset. The Pakistan Army believed that India would not punish it for terror attacks using its conventional military superiority because it feared Pakistan would use nuclear weapons. This belief was reinforced when multiple terror strikes on Mumbai, in 1993, 2006 and 2008 went unpunished. In fact, General Musharaff launched the Kargil operation just six months after the 1998 Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests.advertisementHe believed India would not use its army to strike at Pakistan. His point was reinforced by Operation Parakram in 2001-02 when India responded to the attack on India's parliament by deploying its entire military along the borders, but withdrew them six months later. This standoff led to what scholars like Commodore C Uday Bhaskar have called 'Nuclear Weapons Enabled Terrorism' or NWET. This policy has now seems to have reached the end of its life. Prime Minister Modi's government has shown it is not deterred by Pakistan's nuclear weapons or its nuclear blackmail a fact explicitly mentioned by Prime Minister Modi on May 12.2. ENDS DISTINCTION BETWEEN PAKISTANI STATE AND NON-STATEThe Pakistan Army has always used non-state actors as an adjunct of the state. In 1947, it used tribal militias from the North West Frontier regions to invade Jammu and Kashmir. In 1965, it infiltrated special forces disguised as tribals to provoke an insurrection in Jammu and Kashmir. In 1999, it infiltrated its Northern Light Infantry disguised as militants to capture the heights of Kargil. Since the 1980s, the Pak Army and its ISI honed and perfected its terror infrastructure skills in the shadow of the Afghan war (1979-1988), the West-funded proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. When the Afghan War ended, Pakistan used the leftover infrastructure of Operation Cyclone warehouses filled with weapons and tens of thousands of radicalised mujahideen, to wage war against India, first in Punjab, and later in Jammu and Kashmir. All along, the Pakistan Army kept up the pretence of violent groups like the LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed being 'non-state actors', over whom the state had no control over.advertisementLater, when terrorist groups like the TTP turned against it, Pakistan used the attacks to play the victim card. Each time India attempted to point at Pakistan's state sponsorship of terror, Islamabad maintained it was also a victim of terrorism. Pakistan used this stratagem to deceive the West in the two-decade War on Terror in Afghanistan (2001-2021). It deceived the US that it was with them while it was covertly training and sheltering the Taliban. 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden was hidden in a safehouse just a kilometre away from the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul.For India, the mask fell off on April 16, 2025. On that day, army chief General Asim Munir who delivered a highly provocative and communal speech advocating the Two Nation Theory. On April 22, 26 Indian tourists and one Nepali national were massacred by Pakistani terrorists. Post Operation Sindoor, the Pakistan army has accorded military funerals to dead terrorists. Terrorist leaders have openly appeared on platforms with politicians. The mask of deniability has fallen off. The blame for all future terror strikes will be laid squarely at the doorstep of the Pakistan Army.advertisement3. RAISES PAKISTAN'S TERROR SPONSORSHIP COSTSTerrorism was a low-cost option for the Pakistan Army. By spending a few crores on running training camps and terror infrastructure over the years, it tied down entire divisions of the Indian Army in Jammu and Kashmir. Every Indian Army division tied down in J&K, the Pakistan Army believed, was one less than could be deployed against it in a conventional war.The emboldened Pakistan Army continued to inflict what it believed was death by a thousand cuts on India, spreading attacks to the mainland. When terror groups like the LeT became self-sufficient, running their outfits through public donations, the financial burden on the Pakistan Army and its ISI was further reduced.The Operation Sindoor rampage by India destroyed terrorist training camps and military infrastructure inside Pakistan. A bankrupt Pakistan, living a hand- to- handout existence will have to decide where it will need to spend its precious foreign exchange on importing more fighter jets and missiles, or feeding its people. Terror sponsorship is no longer a low-cost option.advertisementWill Operation Sindoor end Pakistan-sponsored terrorism ? It is unlikely. This is because the Pakistan Army defines victory very differently, as the scholar C Christine Fair once argued.Defeat for the Pakistan Army is not when it loses half its country and its military infrastructure is wrecked. Defeat for the Pakistan Army is only when it stops fighting.The Pakistan Army is actually a gigantic business corporation. The military runs a business empire, construction companies, housing corporations, security agencies and logistics firms which benefit a key military elite. This business empire is estimated at over $100 billion. So deeply entrenched is this autonomous state within a state that there's actually a term for it, Milbus or Military Business, coined by Pakistani scholar Ayesha Siddiqa. The Pakistan Army chief is also the MD and CEO of this corporation. What Operation Sindoor has done is to force the Pakistan Army chief to do a cost-benefit analysis before launching a terror strike against India. 'Will this attack deliver more for me than the cost of retaliation from India?'advertisement4. BOOSTED INDIA'S INDIGENOUS WEAPONSOne of the key thrust areas of the Modi government was indigenous weapons systems. This paid off handsomely during Operation Sindoor when indigenously developed solutions proved to be game-changers.The star of Operation Sindoor was the Russian-designed indigenously produced Su-30MKI and the Brahmos supersonic cruise missile. India is the only country in the world with this combination- a fighter jet carrying a heavy supersonic cruise missile with a 200 kg warhead. Because the missile flies at nearly three times the speed of sound, it strikes targets with nine times the kinetic energy of ordinary missiles. This combination was an Indian invention — the product of the Indian engineers at Brahmos aerospace, the IAF and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL). The indigenously developed Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS) knits all of India's ground-based air defences into one network, beating back Pakistan's repeated air assaults. India's startups too supplied drones that were used by the Indian military in strikes against Pakistani targets. Operation Sindoor's lessons will further boost the indigenous defence ecosystem, accelerating the creation of a domestic military industrial complex.5. IDENTIFIED FRIEND AND FOEIn the fog of war, the biggest challenge is to identify who your friends and foes are. For India, Operation Sindoor cleared some of the haze. The Turkiye, Azerbaijan and China nexus was always one that backed Pakistan. This was more pronounced as all three came out in strong support of Pakistan backing it with diplomatic and military support.A mercurial Donald Trump, who claimed to have used trade as a lever to get India to stop shooting at Pakistan, will only reinforce New Delhi's belief that American weapons come with strings attached. A senior MoD bureaucrat explained to me why India would never buy American fighter jets. 'Because they will never allow you to fight the wars they don't want you to.'