ICYMI #TribuneOpinion: From Pahalgam to Op Sindoor, India showcases evolving military doctrine

Three weeks into the Pahalgam attack, when India was still mourning the barbarity of the massacre, the May 7 precision strikes on 9 terror centres across the LoC in PoK and Pakistan brought some measure of solace to the families of the victims, and it also served as a resolute response and a balm to their enduring pain. Operation Sindoor… couldn’t have been more appropriately named.

Regarding Operation Sindoor, Lt Gen Dushyant Singh (retd) writes in his op-ed article ‘Precision, power, preparedness: India’s new war doctrine’ that without any civilian/military casualties and without crossing the LoC, what more sophistication and precision could we have asked for. He also writes that Operation Sindoor symbolises India’s strategic evolution but the challenge is to sustain the momentum of this transformation in the times to come. Also, in the conflict we saw that Pakistan found that its options were limited as unlike Pakistan, there were no terror camps operating in India, writes Tilak Devasher in his op-ed ‘Tighten the noose around Pakistan’. He also enumerated in his column the elements that constitute the Pakistan narrative since April 22, like Pakistan’s demand of a neutral inquiry into Pahalgam massacre, India trying to suppress rights of Kashmiris to self-determination, etc.

Operation Sindoor also signals a key shift in India’s strategy in dealing with Pakistan — there was a recalibrated restraint but platitudes from the world that equate both countries should be ignored. India is making it clear to Pakistan that there is no distinction between the state and the proxies it sponsors. There is much-more to read in the power-punched op-ed piece of Lt Gen DS Hooda ‘Red alert for Pak on the terror front’.

The initiation of India’s strategic reset, that goes back to 2019 when we used offensive air power in Balakote to strike at a terror camp, which has now materialised into a multi-domain, multi-mode kinetic action with core competence of the three services combined into one. This is what Air Marshal Diptendu Choudhry (retd) pens in his incisive op-ed ‘Role of air power in crossing the Rubicon again’.   

In her column ‘Will Asim Munir fall in line this weekend’ — which he ultimately did by agreeing to a ceasefire on Saturday — The Tribune Editor-in-Chief Jyoti Malhotra writes that Pakistan Army chief Gen Asim Munir faces tough decisions, particularly as Saudi Arabia continues to strengthen ties with India. However, a setback for New Delhi lies in the IMF’s unwillingness to address India’s concerns that the Pakistani military is siphoning off funds meant for the country’s impoverished citizens.

However, earlier in the week, in a critique, Maj Gen Ashok K Mehta in his article ‘No ‘free hand’ is given to army’ writes that the full operational control in the Army is a misnomer; there is no such thing as a free hand and full operational freedom given to the military. The Indian Army works within red lines and tacit political control, while Pakistan army has freed itself from any civilian control. In the same league, albiet the ceasefire now, Lt Gen Vinayak (retd) suggests in his op-ed piece ‘For now, continue with war by other means’ that we need to keep our powder dry for action, keep a cool head and continue with the economic squeeze.

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