The Many Failures of Operation Sindoor
Even in the best of times it is hard to understand what is happening in a military conflict. Misinformation and disinformation abound. And we all know we are not living in the best of times. Large sections of the news media provide nothing remotely approaching verifiable information. Opposition parties are routinely shut down in Parliament on the flimsiest of grounds – even if they have the courage to ask questions, and what comes across social media is either banned, obscene, or profoundly silly.
How then is an average Indian citizen able to make a judgment about what has currently happened, whether we have achieved any of our stated objectives or not? We are simply asked to believe, to have faith without evidence, to worship at the altar of either the government, or some oracle with a few unidentified and unidentifiable ‘sources’.
Despite all this there is some data in the public domain that are acknowledged by most everybody, and these offer a slim trail that we can walk without falling into the abyss of conspiracy theories.
Four clear facts
The first of these is that Operation Sindoor was launched on May 7, 2025, with missile strikes from Indian airspace into both the part of J&K under Pakistani control and other parts of Pakistan. The Indian government says that 9 places were hit, and nobody seems to dispute this.
The second fact is that Pakistan responded with strikes from its own airspace, using missiles and drones. There is evidence of both deaths and infrastructure damage. Pakistan claims that it shot down multiple aircraft, and while the Indian military has not divulged any figures it has said that all its pilots are safe and that there are inevitably costs to the conflict, implicitly acknowledging that some aircraft have been damaged or destroyed. India has not claimed to have downed any Pakistani warplanes at all.
The third fact is that neither India or Pakistan could declare a victory over the other side. A ceasefire was declared on 10 May 2025, although violations were alleged by both countries.
Fourthly, no significant country unambiguously backed Indian actions, neither in the neighbourhood or in the wider world. In fact, US President Donald Trump put up a social media post claiming that the US had negotiated the ceasefire more than an hour before India or Pakistan publicly acknowledged it.
These four facts, undisputed by any major party to the conflict, are enough to understand that Operation Sindoor was a failure at the tactical, strategic, and diplomatic level.
Tactical, strategic, and diplomatic failure
At the tactical level, India had declared that it would pursue the perpetrators of the Pahalgam murders of 22 April 2025 to “the ends of the earth”. This is both India’s right and duty. The murder of civilians for political purposes is amongst the most heinous of crimes. Ensuring the security of Indian citizens is the highest duty of the government. An organisation called The Resistance Front claimed responsibility for the murders. Indian investigative agencies identified four people directly responsible, and said that the leaders of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba masterminded the attack. Whatever one believes of the investigation – and India has made some serious errors in the past, including a dossier prepared under the direction of none other than the National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval – the most important tactical outcome was the elimination or capture of the people India had identified as perpetrators.
None of those perpetrators were at the locations attacked. While Muridke, one of the locations, is associated with the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba under its renamed successor, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, neither the perpetrators or the alleged masterminds were either injured or killed. The Resistance Front has not been eliminated.
All of this makes the delay between the Pahalgam murders and Indian missile attacks even more glaring. The only good reason to wait fifteen days to respond should have been to track perpetrators. Every hour’s delay allowed additional time for those responsible to get away and hide, and we waited more than two weeks to attack targets that were, at best, only peripherally linked to the crime. If such targets had to be hit, they could have been hit the first day itself and the only reasonable explanation is that just as the government showed its total incompetence in securing civilians in Kashmir, this incompetence was further displayed by a lack of any quickly workable response to such an attack.
One could argue that India’s response was not merely tactical, but strategic: that it was aimed far beyond the direct perpetrators of the Pahalgam murders and designed to deter any further such attacks by any other Pakistan-based militant organisation. India claims that scores of terrorists were killed, but this is neither here nor there. For the last few decades, the state has claimed that there are less than a hundred terrorists in Kashmir, and yet murders and bombings continue. Even against its indigenous Maoist insurgency hundreds have been killed year on year, and there is no clear endpoint. Where is the strategic win?
More importantly, if we were to attack locations to eliminate a few scores of people with animus against India, why the fifteen-day delay? If we are convinced that we know exactly where such atrocities are being planned in Pakistan, we have the right of self-defence even under the UN Charter (Article 51). Again, though, none of the people that India has said were involved in such an attack were targeted. And here is where the further facts of India’s response come into focus. India attacked these targets from its own airspace and suffered at least some damage to the aircraft used, with none to Pakistani aircraft.
The argument that the use of force within Pakistani territory would compel Pakistan to crack down on non-state actors rests on the effective use of force. The loss or damage to our own aircraft within our own airspace while making such strikes demonstrates the opposite. If the Pakistani state can inflict damage to us within our own borders every time we try and carry out an attack, why would they be persuaded to change how the state acts?
Arguably, though, the greatest failure has been diplomatic. Not one country among the many with which India has strategic partnerships or close relations has rushed to support India’s adventure. And, in fact, its most powerful quasi-ally, the United States, has instead rushed to claim credit for a ceasefire between the two countries, putting both India and Pakistan on an even footing. If the attacks were supposed to create greater pressure on Pakistan by generating additional pressure on the country to disband and muzzle any militant groups within its territory, there is zero evidence that this has worked. Instead, both India and Pakistan are spoken of in the same breath as warmongering countries endangering global peace and security.
More details will emerge
This is not the last word on the recent conflict. As more verifiable details emerge in the future, we will receive greater insight into the decision making, achievements, and failures of the recent conflict. That said, the few simple facts that are already out in the public domain, facts that are uncontested by any government, are enough to draw inferences on what we did and what result we had. The government and its propagandists may choose to spin it one way or another, just as they spun India’s COVID-19 response as a great success, counting only about 500,000 excess deaths and waited until the present conflict to release data that showed the number was closer to 4 million. Even then, with corpses in the Ganga and metal grills in crematoria buckling the intense heat of the dead, we had enough data to know the government had failed.
It will likely take years for the full details of the Indian response to the Pahalgam murders to emerge as well. But enough data exists in the public sphere to make a judgement, and no matter how the government spins it, it is well aware that the public can add two and two to get four.
Omair Ahmad is an author. His last novel, Jimmy the Terrorist, was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and won the Crossword Award.
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