Surging Geopolitical Risks In Indian Sub-continent

In a previous article, published on June 20 th, the Author had commended India’s Operation Sindoor as the country’smost meaningful action against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism till date, particularly because of two specific reasons.

The first reason was that India continues to maintain that Operation Sindoor is still ongoing, which, as the Author had explained in extensive detail in his previous article, appears to be intended at revising the threshold for a retaliatory response against Pakistan-based terror attack by removing any notion of casualty count.

To explain briefly to the first-time visitors of this website, if one observes the history of terror attacks inside India by Pakistan-linked terrorist organisations since 2016 and India’s retaliatory responses to these attacks, India only retaliated when the death count of an attack reached double digit figures.

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The lack of retaliatory response from the Indian side to terror attacks with single digit death counts seems to have created an impression among the Pakistani terrorist leaders and their backers in the Pakistani military apparatus that there is this unsaid and unwritten threshold of the Indian government, and only when that threshold is crossed will there be a retaliation from the Indian side.

After all, India’s extensive cross-border strikes inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK) on the opening day of its Operation Sindoor can be categorised as merely an amplified version of the Balakot air strikes of 2019. Also, these cross-border strikes happened only after 26 deaths, and the ensuing rounds of military exchange between India and Pakistan only occurred because the latter refused to take the off-ramp provided by India and instead tried to retaliate.

Commuters undergo security checks after Pahalgam terror attack on April 22nd, 2025. (Image Source: Press Trust India (PTI))

So, from a larger strategic perspective of establishing deterrence vis-à-vis Pakistan, the Author believes that the Indian government has done nothing significant so far except maintaining that Operation Sindoor is not yet over.

This could mean that any future terror attack by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists inside India – which can come after a week from now, a month from now, or a year from now – irrespective of its casualty count may result in the resumption of India’s cross-border attacks inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK).

So, unlike in the past, when India refrained from a retaliatory response when 1) Pakistan-linked terrorists killed three Indian soldiers in an attack on an Indian Army camp less than a week after India’s Surgical Strikes in 2016 or 2) when Pakistan-linked terrorists attacked a CRPF patrol party, killing five CRPF personnel after only four months of India’s Balakot Air Strikes of 2019, any future misadventure from Pakistan-sponsored terrorists could be met with a strong kinetic response from the Indian side.

The second reason why the Author considers Operation Sindoor as the most meaningful counter-terrorism action, is the new red line that India established after the cessation of hostilities with Pakistan on May 10 th, by issuing a declaration that another Pakistan-backed terror attack inside India would be considered an ‘Act of War’.

This declaration implies that any future terror attack on Indian territory that has backing from Pakistan will provoke a retaliatory kinetic response that targets not just terrorist infrastructure but also military installations inside Pakistan as well as PoJK.

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So, overall, India appears to have not only revised its threshold for a retaliatory response against Pakistan-backed terror attack but also widened the scope of its forthcoming retaliatory kinetic action significantly, which if true, increases the potential cost of terrorism for Pakistan exponentially.

In the aftermath of Pahalgam terror attack, the Pakistani military lost several of its offensive and defensive capabilities which will take considerable resources and possibly even time to rebuild, meaning now the Pakistani military leadership will be compelled to consider its own potential losses every time it decides to foment trouble inside India.

In addition to that, India’s revised threshold for a retaliatory response potentially increases the likelihood of recurring conflicts, thereby imposing a significant limit on Pakistan’s ability to foment trouble inside India.

However, the Author, in that article had also pointed out that the Pakistani establishment, in which the country’s military apparatus plays a dominant role, is an ideologically motivated and a determined adversary which heavily relies on use of force to realise its political goals, both at domestic and international levels.

Also, the Pakistani military as well its sponsored terrorists have a very high capacity for enduring losses, particularly because of their ideological zeal that constantly motivates them to act against India until their ideals are realized.

Therefore, it becomes important to gauge the implications of the India-Pakistan dynamic, especially after the commencement of India’s Operation Sindoor, for the entirety of Indian Subcontinent region.

So, let us begin.

Pakistan: A Determined Adversary

A week before the Pahalgam terror attack in India’s J&K region, Pakistan Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, while addressing a gathering of Pakistani diaspora members in Islamabad, made a speech invoking the Two-Nation Theory, in which he said that Hindus and Muslims cannot coexist because of the differences in their cultures, customs and traditions. He also described Kashmir as the “jugular vein” of Pakistan.

The significance of this speech lies in the fact that the Pahalgam terror attack, carried out by Pakistan-linked terror outfit, ‘The Resistance Front (TRF)’ captured the essence of what Munir had said in that speech, as the terrorists of TRF who carried out this massacre, segregated the tourists based on their religion and killed only non-Muslim males among them which included 24 Hindus and one Christian individual.

One local Muslim male by the name of Syed Adil Hussain Shah, who used to work as a pony ride operator was also killed but he was not exactly targeted by the terrorists. Shah was killed because of his heroic attempt to save the tourists by disarming one of the attackers, which unfortunately failed. The Author pays his respect to this fallen hero.

That being said, what is even more noteworthy, is that only four days after the Pahalgam terror attack, Munir made another speech at Pakistan Military Academy’s passing out ceremony, wherein he again repeated the theme of Two-Nation Theory and urged the Pakistani military candidates to wage jihad against infidels.

Also important to consider is the fact that when Pulwama attack had happened in 2019, the incumbent Pakistan Army Chief, Asim Munir, was the Director General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at the time.

Now, considering that India had responded to Pulwama attack with Balakot air strikes, it is reasonable to assume that Munir should have known that any future terror attack would elicit a substantial military response from India, and knowing this, if he still sanctioned the Pahalgam terror attack, then there can be no better example of his extremely hardline tendencies toward India.

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Moreover, the terrorists who were killed as a result of India’s cross-border strikes on May 6-7 th, carried out inside Pakistan and PoJK as a direct response to Pahalgam terror attack, were given state funerals by Pakistan with their bodies wrapped in Pakistan’s national flags and top commanders from Pakistan’s armed services participating in these funerals.1

The images of these funerals took the social media by storm, depicting Pakistani military commanders and senior law-enforcement officers, offering funeral prayers to the deceased terrorists. For instance, one of these images shows senior Pakistan Army Generals standing behind a US-designated Global terrorist, Hafiz Abdur Rauf of the Pakistan-sponsored Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

This level of brazenness in the Pakistani establishment’s sponsorship of terrorism has not been observed before.

That said, it is also important to bear in mind that Pakistan’s capacity as a country to endure pain is limited by its weak economic foundation and periodic reliance on international loan bailouts, despite the high resolve of its military apparatus to act against India, meaning the overall Pakistani establishment cannot realistically hope to sustain a higher frequency of iterative conflicts with India.

So, how then can Pakistan’s military apparatus look to keep the blood flowing through its ‘jugular vein’ while trying to avoid testing the red line established by India through its declaration that another Pakistan-backed terror attack on the Indian soil would be considered an ‘Act of War’?

Now, before trying to answer that question, the Author, in the next section will try and contemplate the meaning of the Indian government’s declaration of another Pakistan-backed terror attack inside India amounting to an ‘Act of War’, for Pakistan’s future acts of terror against India.

Thereafter, the Author will try and postulate the potential way in which Pakistan may look to foment trouble inside India while also trying to avoid testing the aforesaid red line established by the Indian government.

Is India Inching Toward Re-Taking Pakistan Occupied Jammu & Kashmir?

India’s policy for Kashmir and Pakistan-sponsored terrorism has undergone a massive shift under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In the early years of his first term as a Prime Minister, Modi tried to cultivate good relations with Pakistan.

He invited his Pakistani counterpart at the time, Nawaz Sharif, to his swearing in ceremony as a Prime Minister, and a year later, that is in December 2015, he travelled to Lahore on an unscheduled visit to offer birthday wishes to Sharif in person, marking the first visit to Pakistan by an Indian Prime Minister in more than 10 years.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi with former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, in Lahore on December 25, 2015.(Image Source: Press Information Bureau (PIB))

This visit had come only two weeks after Modi and Sharif had already met on the sidelines of the climate change talks in Paris, and shortly after this particular meeting in Paris, India and Pakistan had decided to initiate a comprehensive dialogue, as part of which, the National Security Advisors (NSAs) of both the countries had met in Bangkok before Modi’s surprise visit to Lahore, and this meeting was announced with a joint press release.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) at the time said that the NSAs discussed “peace and security, terrorism, Jammu and Kashmir, and other issues, including tranquility along the Line of Control.”

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