Pakistan, which tried to attack Indian military facilities in at least 24 cities in the northern and western parts of the country, was repulsed. India’s integrated air defence system, with the S-400 missile shield sourced from Russia, played the star role staving off around 500 drones, standing up far better than the Chinese air defence shields that Pakistan deploys.
India’s retaliation as revenge for Pakistan’s flagrant support for terrorism and its military misadventures under a zealot of a general who used to helm the ISI have been of a different dimension than it had been in previous surgical strikes. The hostilities in 2025 have been far more intense than in previous encounters as drone warfare has been raging.
Pakistan has made no attempt to cover its brazen attack on civilians in their homes with cross-border shelling, which too constitutes an act of war, even if it could claim that India’s cross-border strikes on terror infra was one too. India’s focused Operation Sindoor, crossing the border while aiming only at terrorists taking down at least nine Pakistan terror exporting ‘factories’ in Pakistan and PoK, was a calibrated response to the Pahalgam terror attack on tourists carried out by Pakistan.
That India had to step up and unleash its offensive capabilities against Pakistani cities is owed entirely to Pakistan escalating the conflict with its missiles and drones aimed at military facilities and civilian areas in India. The retribution has been overwhelming according to the Indian defence forces. Both countries may have lost some aircraft but, beyond that, it is Pakistan that has come off worse for the exchanges with its main cities taking blows from Indian drones whose payload munitions have hit the ground as opposed to the failure of the Pakistan war machine to make a dent.
There is little world powers can do save advise restraint followed by dialogue and diplomacy.
India is, however, determined that it will not tolerate any more of Pakistan’s minutely-recorded support for terror in Jammu & Kashmir. Pakistan’s honouring of militants lost to India’s strikes with Army brass present and coffins draped with their national flags will not have gone unnoticed either.
It is intriguing that a country, which is on the brink of economic collapse and needing bailouts from global agencies like the IMF and the World Bank, would exhibit the bravado of military operations aimed at a neighbouring country, and can still go around asking for more funds that would presumably bolster its military spending. India’s diplomatic offensive is aimed at stopping this enrichment of bailout bowls with dollops of funding even as the beneficiary flexes its military muscle in responding to the misplaced optimism of military action.
Pakistan might have noticed that along with platitudinous advice on restraint to both sides, America also asked Pakistan specifically to stop supporting terrorism. Will it recognise the message about eschewing terror in exchange for peace is the question as it is on the cards that India may be willing to call off its preemptive operations against terrorist modules if the cycle of hostilities stops at once. But a country that provided a haven for Osama Bin Laden and still does so for proscribed international terrorists may need more than well-meaning advice to change its spots.
The ineffectiveness of its war machine to damage cities by using long distance munitions carried as drone payload might yet convince Pakistan and its armed forces that bluster is not going to get them anywhere. Maybe, it’s time to follow China’s advice to act in the larger interest of “peace and stability”.
