Pakistan’s Generals fear peace — It threatens their relevance and rule

'Operation Sindoor’ has been a measured, non-escalatory response to the April 22 Pahalgam killings — in stark contrast to Pakistan’s cowardice in the Baisaran meadow, where trained Islamist terrorists murdered unarmed tourists in front of their families. The retaliatory measures — IAF hit nine terror sites on May 7, and neutralised Pakistani air defence radars and systems at a number of locations, including in Lahore, on May 8 — have come just as a growing sense of impatience was building up in India for some action against Pakistan. On Thursday, Rajnath Singh said at least 100 terrorists were killed in the strikes.

For far too long, Pakistan has been allowed to get away with terrorism. And, far too often, India let it pass, clinging, without reason, to the hope that Pakistani authorities, led by the military and Islamists, would eventually see the futility of attacking India.

Even after Kargil (1999), hijacking of IC-814 (1999), attack on Parliament (2001), serial blasts on Mumbai trains (2006), and the 3-day assault on Mumbai (2008), New Delhi failed to grasp this war on India by other means. For a moment after the Pahalgam attacks, there was silence, as Indians grappled with the horror of a world where humans first seek a victim’s religious identity before shooting him dead. It takes a special kind of depravity to commit such acts.

Imagine the mindset of those who trained these terrorists, and of those who willingly absorbed such hatred. Then, across the country, silence gave way to anger. GoI did not react in the heat of the moment. Its response was coldly calibrated — first, to show Pakistan the cost of failing to be a good neighbour. The decision to hold the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance jolted Pakistan’s complacent Punjabi elite, with fears of drought, flooding and drinking-water shortages sending a clear message across Punjab and Sindh — though Sindh, as ever, remains a distant concern for Pakistan’s Punjabi establishment. Pakistan has vowed to retaliate, with the government on Wednesday pledging to respond ‘at a time, place and manner of its choosing to avenge the loss of innocent Pakistani lives and blatant violation of its sovereignty’. This response will be orchestrated from GHQ Rawalpindi, now headed by a new kind of armychief, Asim Munir. Munir is a rabid Hindu-hater and a staunch Islamist, determined to apply the Quran’s strictest interpretations in dealing with the ‘kafir’.

India must also remember that Kashmir is not Pakistan’s ‘jugular vein’, as Munir and his colleagues would have everyone believe. Balochistan and Sindh are. Kashmir serves merely as an excuse, a narrative to preserve military supremacy at home.

Munir, who became army chief in November 2022, is eyeing an extension beyond November 2025, just as many of his predecessors secured for themselves. A quick, limited war with India, or a major terror attack, might well be his chosen route to achieve that.

Long ago, the Pakistani army appropriated the role of guardian of both the nation’s territory and its ideology. Sustaining animosity with India — and fuelling the Hindu vs Muslim narrative — became essential to maintaining its primacy in an increasingly Islamised country. So, when Munir declared that the two cannot coexist, he was echoing a long-standing doctrine. The army will continue to use jihad as a lowcost policy tool against India. Pakistani political leaders and the army made India the target of their unipolar enmity long ago. Over time, the army not only spoke of ‘crushing’ India but also crafted a perverse logic: that even defeat at India’s hands could be spun as a victory, a sign of standing up to so-called ‘Indian hegemony’.

Having announced that Kashmir is Pakistan’s ‘jugular vein’, the army cannot now take a U-turn with its policies towards India. Pakistani politicians, not to be left behind, have constantly harped on Rawalpindi’s tune that without Kashmir, Pakistan will remain eternally incomplete. Besides, the army fears that should peace between India and Pakistan ever happen, they will lose Pakistan to Pakistanis. In the past, Pakistan sought international relevance through constant delinquency and seemingly irrational behaviour. But the world is changing. Even China, its closest ally, has responded with only a lukewarm statement, offering little comfort.

By its own rules, Pakistan’s strategy once made sense: bluff, bravado and even threats of self-destruction to grab Western attention. This was mirrored by India’s misplaced rationality — a perpetual pursuit of conciliation driven by hope, while Pakistan played a game of pure opportunism. Today, the dynamics have shifted.

We must not be overwhelmed by the argument that war is not an option for India, while Pakistan retains the option to wage jihad under a nuclear cover. Since we cannot reform Pakistan, the wiser course is to largely ignore it for now, and focus on steadily strengthening our capabilities until the day Pakistan is ready to deal with India and the world as a normal nation.