What We Gained From Op Sindoor, And What We Must Prepare For Next Time

The dramatic and unexpected end to what looked like an escalating matrix of kinetic options being exercised by Pakistan, followed by more restrained Indian retribution, will come as a huge disappointment to Indians who would have liked a more decisive outcome in our favour after the unspeakable horrors perpetrated by Pakistan-backed terrorists in Pahalgam on 22 April. 

Operation Sindoor, conducted by India with terrific aplomb in the wee hours of 7 May, blasted nine known terror hubs and killed many known terrorists, some even wanted by global powers.

It punctured Pakistan’s sense of invulnerability by virtue of being a nuclear state, forcing it to launch mindless provocations using drones and missiles, most of which were countered by Indian air defences.

What followed was even worse for Pakistan, as India bombed several of its defence airfields and knocked out a Chinese air defence system guarding Lahore. There are credible reports that the Trump administration had to step in to ask Pakistan to sue for a ceasefire after Indian missiles struck a place close to the terror state’s nuclear assets.

The big questions are: What did India ultimately gain beyond some psychic satisfaction in giving Pakistan a bloody nose and a blow to its ego? More importantly, did India buy only temporary peace by giving up on a battlefield advantage, or did Pakistan accept a face-saver by allowing Uncle Sam to announce a ceasefire, thus allowing the generals to tell the Pakistani public that the US is now in mediation mode on Kashmir (fat chance).

This was the make-believe consolation prize Nawaz Sharif got from Bill Clinton when the latter got him to agree to an unconditional withdrawal from Kargil. Nothing of that kind happened, and nothing of that kind will happen now. India won’t accept any mediation on its core national interests any time.

The coming days will give us at least partial answers to the questions raised above, but here is a partial listing of India’s gains, losses, and the unfinished business that remains a to-do list for the future.

India’s gains: Operation Sindoor was an unqualified success, and has raised the threshold for Pakistani terror. Striking deep inside Pakistan without actually crossing the border would have sent a huge message of vulnerability to Pakistan’s generals, especially since they knew, and China knew, India would retaliate. Their preparations did not help, and, in fact, they faced an ever greater blow to their prestige with several known terrorists biting the dust and their most important defence airfields coming under attack by Indian missiles.

India managed to inflict a Balakot raised to the power of nine despite Pakistani preparations. Pakistan’s nuclear stance was shown to be hollow, and vulnerable to boot.

There is now a new doctrine on cross-border terror, that terrorism from Pakistan will be treated as an act of war in future. 

While the ceasefire came a bit too soon, India does not seem to have agreed to roll back some of its punitive measures after Pahalgam. The Indus Water Treaty remains in abeyance; restrictions on visas and trade with Pakistan stay. 

India’s air defence system, both the indigenously-developed solutions and the S-400 system bought from Russia, appear to have delivered in spades by neutering Turkish drones and other missiles sent towards us.

The nation closed ranks despite its underlying fractious politics. 

Most important, the orchestration of Operation Sindoor, with two women, Col Sofiya Qureshi and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh, giving the daily defence briefings, sent a powerful message to the world, and especially the Punjabi generals obsessed with their own macho image. The final coup de grace was delivered by the three directors of military operations representing the army, air force and navy, complete with satellite photos of the damage inflicted by India on Pakistan’s terror hubs and airports.

The concerns: On the downside, we have to reckon with these realities.

First, Pakistan has proved once again that it can do reckless things, but it will ultimately not pay a big price for them. There are limits to how far India can go to punish it. The world will try to intervene when two nuclear nations look likely to come to blows. This implies that Pakistan can continue to indulge in terrorism in the foreseeable future, unless the country splits and weakens itself. 

Second, India’s strength is also its vulnerability. India’s economy is one of the fastest growing ones in the world, and by 2030 we will be the third biggest after the US and China.

In other words, we have a lot more to lose if we allow war to escalate to the point where the government is more focused on the western front than growth and reforms.

In an unpredictable escalation matrix, our economic opportunity costs rise exponentially. On the other hand, Pakistan is a basket case, with nothing to lose. This factor would have played a big role in forcing us to accept a less than wholesome ceasefire.

Third, there is a huge domestic peace lobby that will always try to weaken the government’s resolve in dealing with Pakistan. For the last few days, social media has been flooded with messages from peaceniks and anti-India forces calling for a de-escalation. One wonders how far these forces would have gone to undermine the national effort if the war had escalated to the point where we could have delivered a more decisive blow (but below the nuclear threshold) to Pakistan’s Islamist-terrorist complex. 

India has to rein in both the anti-nationals and the hyper-nationalists, for the latter can do as much damage to India’s war effort as the former, if they needlessly provoke the minorities to become anti-national too. Calling for an immediate annexation of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is also fantasy, and to believe that the Modi government betrayed India by not doing so through Operation Sindoor is not helpful in building the national will for the challenges that lie ahead.

India has to worry and deal with the half front within India, and not just the two fronts of Pakistan and China. The government had to get several handles on X blocked, and also some websites. A longer confrontation would also have enabled more of these anti-India voices to do real damage to internal cohesion.

It now appears that the brilliantly-executed Operation Sindoor was intended to strike deep and send a message, but not necessarily to wound that terror state. And that is a good enough objective for now.

The lessons and the future: But the main lesson to learn from Operation Sindoor and its aftermath is that Pakistani terrorism will not end. You cannot permanently deter plain-vanilla jihadis who dream of martyrdom and 72 virgins, or jihadi generals like Asim Munir, who want to hold on to power in Pakistan in the name of deterring India.

While Pakistan and its sponsor China may have misjudged India’s responses this time, next time they won’t be so. China is sure to arm Pakistan with even more lethal missiles and better air defence systems. This time Pakistan probably expected another Balakot, and hoped to down an aircraft or two that crossed the border to deliver payloads. It was not expecting multiple Balakots delivered without crossing the border or missile strikes to cripple its military airfields. The next time it won’t make that mistake.

India cannot go back to business-as-usual. The lull—and, be assured, it is only a lull from the Pakistani side—should be used by India to aggressively rearm after learning the lessons from the limited engagement with that terror sponsor.

India should re-evaluate its options now that two things are clear: in today’s warfare, drones and missiles will do more of the talking, and even modern aircraft, including the versatile Rafales, cannot be considered fully safe without stealth capabilities. We need better missile shields and stealth aircraft ASAP.

Since our own indigenous development will take up to a decade, buying two or three squadrons of readymade stealth aircraft from Russia or America (or even France, if it can deliver them soon) can be considered. But the one thing we cannot do is give the supplier the option to delay supplies to suit its own geopolitical interests.

Second, we should consider paying back Pakistan in its own coin: use more sub-conventional threats to tie it down.

The only logical successor to Operation Sindoor is Operation Sind-Baloch-Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, or support for independence movements to separatist forces in these regions of Pakistan. 

And yes, we should also use some of Donald Trump’s techniques - but without his foolishness - to get China to reduce its trade deficit by voluntary reductions in exports or by shifting parts of its supply chains to India - of course, with strong security checks on our side. China is too important a manufacturing power to just be shunted out of India. We have to intelligently engage with this enemy for our own progress.

And last, we should not forget developing cutting-edge cyber and information-warfare capabilities. Here China is the real threat, not just Pakistan. China is unlikely to try to inflict another 1962 on us, or even a regular conventional war, where they are simply not good enough. However, they hold all the high cards in cyber warfare. This is the capability gap we must close.