‘Operation Sindoor’ and the end of Pakistan’s Strategic Impunity

India’s post-Pahalgam strike into Pakistani’s Jihadi heartland marks a turning point in the country’s counterterror doctrine.

In the pre-dawn hush of May 7, India abandoned its old strategic playbook. With swift, calibrated precision, it launched ‘Operation Sindoor’ - a volley of missile strikes on nine terror hubs inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), targeting infrastructure belonging to the Jaish-e-Muhammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba and their proxies. India’s message, in its long-awaited retaliation to the Pahalgam barbarity, was clinical: cross the line again, and the retaliation will be harsher still. More than 70 militants are said to have been eliminated in the strikes while their logistical networks decimated.

It is widely believed the strikes are a mere trailer of something bigger to follow. The symbolism of ‘Sindoor’ (the red powder worn by Hindu married women) was not accidental. It was mournful, defiant and politically pointed; the strikes were a ‘tribute’ to the 25 Hindu women widowed in the April 22 Pahalgam massacre, when the terrorists had lined up tourists at Baisaran, separated them by religion, and gunned down the men in front of their families.

Coming back to the operation, this was the first time India publicly struck targets inside Pakistan proper, including in Bahawalpur and Muridke, long regarded as the ideological and operational wombs of Pakistan’s jihadist enterprise. For decades, these facilities thrived under the protective shadow of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Muridke, just 40 km from Lahore, houses the headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its front organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD). Spread over roughly 200 acres, the Muridke terror complex includes training camps, logistical facilities, propaganda units and religious schools.

This is where Hafiz Saeed, a UN-designated global terrorist and mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, is said to have built his empire. What ‘Operation Sindoor’ has laid bare is the brazen fiction behind Pakistan’s denials, long cloaked in diplomatic sophistry and half-truths. The fiction that these are charitable organisations, or that they operate autonomously, has been incinerated in the early hours of May 7.

The choice of Bahawalpur was equally significant. The dusty city in southern Punjab has long been home to the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), another ISI-backed outfit, whose leader Masood Azhar masterminded not just 26/11 but a slew of attacks from Pulwama to Pathankot. For decades, Bahawalpur has functioned as a de facto jihadi garrison town, complete with training camps and weapons stockpiles. It was among the options considered even in the aftermath of Pulwama in 2019, when India struck Balakot instead.

For decades, Pakistan maintained a doctrine of ‘plausible deniability’ by supporting jihadists while denying their control. With ‘Operation Sindoor,’ India has now publicly called that bluff.

Strikes were also carried out in Kotli and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. India’s Ministry of Defence said the operation was a precise and restrained response to the barbaric Pahalgam massacre. Though the attacks were deep and deliberate, no Pakistani military, far less civilian, facilities were hit. India’s unequivocal message to the world was that the strikes were a just retribution with limits.

Significantly, for the first time since the 1971 war, all three branches of the Indian Armed Forces - the Army, Air Force and Navy - were involved in the precision strikes, thus sending forth a clear message of deterrence. Islamabad, as expected, is responding with bluster and denial. But few across the world are buying it. The ISI’s symbiotic relationship with these groups has long been known to global intelligence agencies.

Yet, the message of ‘Operation Sindoor’ is far deeper. Today, Pakistan’s internal cohesion is at its most vulnerable. Economically battered, diplomatically isolated and politically unstable, Pakistan is under acute strain. Nowhere are these tensions more visible than in Balochistan and Sindh, the country’s two most restive provinces. Against this backdrop of potential Balkanization, could ‘Operation Sindoor’ be the start of a doctrine that leverages Pakistan’s own internal contradictions?

The Baloch insurgency has simmered since 1948, when Pakistan forcibly annexed the princely state of Kalat. Since then, successive waves of rebellions in 1958, 1963, 1973 and post-2005 have challenged the legitimacy of Pakistani rule. The Baloch grievances are manifold: rampant military suppression, economic exploitation, enforced disappearances and political marginalisation on part of Pakistan’s Punjabi elite. Though rich in gas, gold and rare earth minerals, Balochistan remains desperately poor. Its people see the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a resource grab by Punjabi elites and the Chinese state. The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the most active insurgent group, has recently expanded its targets to include Chinese nationals and infrastructure.

Then there is Sindh. The Sindhi nationalist movement, long overshadowed by Baloch and Pashtun resistance, is rooted in deep historical grievance. The Sindhudesh movement, founded by G. M. Syed, had argued for a secular, independent Sindh separate from Pakistan’s Islamic identity. Periodic protests, enforced disappearances of Sindhi activists, and crackdowns by the ISI have kept the ember glowing. The Punjabi-centric structure of the Pakistani military has fuelled a sense of alienation.

Thus, India can now play a long game in which ‘Operation Sindoor’ is merely the opening gambit.

At the end of ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’ (1970), which scrupulously dramatizes Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbour during World War II, a famous apocryphal quote attributed to Admiral Yamamoto reads: ‘I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.’ With Pahalgam, Pakistan has done just that to India.