After Pahalgam: Why Retaliation Alone Won't End Terrorism Between India and Pakistan

The Hindu

01-05-2025

Published : May 01, 2025 14:09 IST - 5 MINS READ
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has disingenuously, after a high-profile meeting with service and intelligence chiefs and the National Security Advisor, given them 'operational freedom' for the 'mode, targets, and timing of response' to the April 22 Pahalgam attack that claimed 26 Indian lives. Disingenuous because wars, historically, are only won given a clear political objective. Delivering a 'crushing blow to terrorism' sounds Sisyphean. Perhaps Modi does not want war.
That's good: war should never be an option, if only for the practical reason that war is unpredictable and uncontrollable. Still, many in India are still gripped with war fever, anxious to cross the Line of Control (LoC)/border and turn Pakistan into three of four new nations.
This is absurd. The most powerful USA spent two decades in Afghanistan before handing it back in one piece to the very radicals they fought. After the US wrecked a previously functional Iraq, it remains a single country despite the centrifugal tendencies of the Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds. Yes, Yugoslavia (1918-1992) broke up; but that was from within and led to 11 years of war. Thus, the break-up of Pakistan is currently a pipe dream.
Also Read | Pahalgam massacre and the mirage of control
At least teach them a lesson, some say. While individuals may learn lessons, it is not apparent that countries do. Look at Israel. Despite six million Jews dying in an industrial extermination program a mere 80 years ago, it is now systematically eradicating Palestine. Did Pakistan become a subservient neighbour after being broken into two in 1971?
As our cautious generals remind our anxious politicians, there exists more than one veto in the world, not least Pakistan's 'iron brother', China. (Foreign Minister Wang Yi sprinkled salt in Indian wounds this week.) Even the US will eventually say: enough is enough, boys.
This leaves us with 'surgical strikes' on terrorist camps, as took place after attacks in Uri (2016, 19 jawans dead) and Pulwama (2019, 40 paramilitary dead). Clearly, surgical strikes are useless in deterring terrorism. And after the shock of Pahalgam, few Indians will derive satisfaction from a mere surgical strike.
After the 2008 Mumbai attack, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did not, despite pressure (from Modi, among others), launch a surgical strike. It took eight years after that for Uri to happen, and it has been six years from Pulwama to Pahalgam. A statistician might prefer no surgical strikes to non-surgical strikes.
There is a fresh option: Ukraine's defence against the three-year-plus Russian invasion has seen the extensive use of military drones. Just this week, Ukraine launched hundreds of suicide-drones against Russian targets effectively, according to Western blogs monitoring the war.
India has, over the past three years, been acquiring military drones, many from Israel. Perhaps a hundred or so can be sent to the Lashkar-e-Toiba's headquarters in Muridke, just outside Lahore, unless our Generals veto a targeted assassination attempt as too risky.
More likely is a managed tit-for-tat kinetic action. Our Air Force or missiles hit one of their less populated areas, and they do something similar. Everyone goes home happy. War is avoided. But terrorism will continue. As former Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad, Sharat Sabharwa,l wrote this week, absent of diplomacy, Indo-Pak relations have reduced to deterrence and coercion: '...coercion seems to be becoming an end in itself' (sic). 'Such an environment is prone to volatility and violence,' he says, adding that no matter how effective our security forces, they cannot ensure zero terror.
How can terrorism be stopped?
The key to stopping terrorism, retired Intelligence Bureau (IB) official Avinash Mohananey wrote, is local intelligence. Look it up: in 1965, Pakistan's war plan was upset when two shepherds reported infiltration in Kashmir to Indian authorities.
Yet, local intelligence dries up if you antagonise the locals. 'Keep the Kashmiri happy and on our side,' former spy chief AS Dulat said in Bengaluru. The Jammu and Kashmir Assembly passed a resolution condemning the attack but also noted the attacks on Kashmiris around the country. Demolishing homes (nine so far, though there were only two local terrorists), demonising Kashmiris by the worst instincts media, or beating up students outside the Valley does not help our cause.
What's left is diplomacy. 'We have to move forward with Pakistan,' Dulat said at the launch of his book The Chief Minister and the Spy in Delhi on April 18. Four days later, this prompted an intemperate journalist (formerly with The Hindu) to demand (on social media) an immediate missile attack at various places, including the book-launch venue at the old-world luxury hotel.
The 85-year-old Dulat has thought long and hard about Pakistan and Kashmir all his career, and even the current government sought his active help after the 2019 abrogation of Article 370. If such an experienced man says we must move forward and that there is no alternative to peace, then we would do well to take his word for it.
State Congress chief Tariq Ahmed Karra this week also advocated 'sitting across the table' and talking to Pakistan. Not surprisingly, he was scorned by heroes of the ruling party. One might conclude that there is currently little appetite in India for peace.
Also Read | Revived shadows of Partition fall on Pahalgam
This is in part thanks to the government's policy of not talking to Pakistan at all (Modi's early effort at personal diplomacy, by crash-landing into his counterpart Nawaz Sharif's granddaughter's wedding, proved futile). It is also thanks to the steady drumbeat against Indian Muslims and a media saturated with jingoistic films, mindless shows and propagandist books.
Temperatures have risen during the past 11 years, and bringing them down to make diplomacy with one's neighbour palatable again will take time. But only when the fever breaks can diplomacy properly begin. This government will not be a sobering influence on India; it can't allow Modi's 'brand' dilution.
That means unending, if sporadic, terrorism. For it to end, the bilateral relationship must change. For that, Delhi will need a new government, but in Islamabad, there is little chance of the military ever loosening its grip on power. It looks like a very long haul ahead.
Aditya Sinha is a writer living on the outskirts of Delhi.