ឥណ្ឌាមានផែនការរយៈពេលវែងជាមួយប៉ាគីស្ថាន

 New Delhi aims to root out cross-border terrorism, but it risks fueling discontent.

India’s Counterterrorism Long Game

Two weeks after terrorists gunned down 26 tourists near the town of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, India retaliated with military action against Pakistan, which it blames for support the militants. (Islamabad denies involvement in the attack.)

Early Wednesday morning local time, airstrikes targeted nine terrorist sites in Pakistani-administered Kashmir and the neighboring province of Punjab, according to an Indian government statement. The statement also said that the strikes had avoided military targets and were intended to be nonescalatory.

Pakistan denounced the Indian strikes as an act of war, saying that they hit civilian facilities, including a mosque, and killed at least 26 people. It then immediately responded, staging heavy shelling across the countries’ disputed border in Kashmir and claiming that it downed five Indian jets. New Delhi acknowledged that at least two of its aircraft had crashed but did not elaborate.

Failing to take military action would have been politically costly for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which prides itself on its tough-on-terror position and faced domestic pressure to respond with muscle given the brutality of the Pahalgam attack. India strongly telegraphed its intention to use force and in recent days test-fired missiles and ordered civil defense drills across the country.

In the coming days, attention will focus on the military dimensions of the crisis: India’s strikes constituted a high-intensity use of force against Pakistan—perhaps the biggest since the 1971 war between the two countries. But the strikes should be seen as part of a long-term plan by India that aims to root out cross-border terrorism once and for all.

Since the Pahalgam attack, India has taken nonmilitary punitive steps against Pakistan, some of them unprecedented. New Delhi cut off all imports from Islamabad, including commerce routed through third countries; closed the countries’ only land border; and suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, a transboundary water management accord, for the first time.

India is also pressuring Pakistan’s international donors to reduce assistance to the country, and it may push an influential global terrorist financing watchdog to scrutinize Islamabad’s record. By targeting its economy, exploiting its water shortages, and isolating Pakistan globally, New Delhi is playing the long game—seeking to raise the costs of Islamabad not acting against terrorists targeting India.

India’s multifaceted attempt to squeeze Pakistan is likely motivated by a realization in New Delhi that earlier tactics to curb cross-border terrorism—including limited military action—were insufficient. Further, given the nuclear deterrent and Pakistan’s conventional force capabilities, India’s military options are relatively limited beyond the types of actions that it carried out on Wednesday.

Ultimately, this long-term strategy will be ambitious. India-Pakistan trade was so limited to start with that cutting it off won’t have major economic effects. And it won’t be easy to isolate Pakistan, since its closest friends (China and Saudi Arabia) and other key partners (the United States, Qatar, the United Emirates, and Turkey) are influential global actors, and it belongs to multilateral forums that have its back.

In cases where India can really inflict pain—such as long-term efforts to build infrastructure that prevents water from flowing into Pakistan—it may make Islamabad more embittered, prompting it to strengthen ties to anti-India actors. Such actions may also galvanize militants themselves: Feared Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba has previously cited Indian “water theft” while threatening attacks against India.

The main takeaway is that India’s relations with Pakistan, after four years of relative calm, appear to be headed for a deep freeze.

The two countries face the immediate risk of a limited conflict—but beyond that, Pakistan will likely be targeted by a multipronged pressure campaign meant to curb a threat that India has struggled to tame.

Foreign policy