India has been trying a new strategy to deter terrorism from Pakistan. Is it working?

War drums are beating in India and Pakistan for the third time in 10 years, while the world watches anxiously.

As the nuclear-armed rivals engage in attacks and counterattacks, it’s a good idea to revisit how things have played out in the recent past, and evaluate whether India’s policy of muscular retaliation is working.

India has, for decades, struggled to deter terrorist attacks from across the border in the disputed Kashmir region.

Though Pakistan has always denied involvement in these incidents, the denials largely fall on deaf ears in India and internationally, given the country’s self-admitted history of supporting terrorism in Kashmir.

India’s relationship with its north-western neighbour has been marred and twisted over the decades by repeated attacks from terrorists.

Many times, those attacks came as the two governments tried to conduct peace talks and normalise relations, forcing India to abandon those efforts.

Prior to 2014, under successive governments, India had followed a policy of restraint.

When an attack by militants occurred, killing soldiers or civilians, India would take largely diplomatic actions, like suspending dialogue, expelling diplomats, and issuing public condemnations.

But military action was considered too risky under the nuclear umbrella.

It is hard to overstate just how much the Pakistan problem influenced India’s domestic politics.

The desire to respond strongly to these attacks became a central plank in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election campaign in 2014 and beyond.

After witnessing years of Indian self-control, much of its public now believe the risk of escalating into war is worth it — because no country can go on absorbing terrorist attacks forever.

Under Mr Modi’s government, India pursued a bold new policy against cross-border terrorism in Kashmir — one where it isn’t too afraid to escalate.

So, how have these conflicts provoked by terrorism played out under the new strategy?

2016: ‘Surgical strikes’

In September 2016, 19 Indian soldiers were killed by terrorists from Pakistan-based group Jaish-e-Mohamed (JeM).

The attackers hit an army brigade headquarters in the town of Uri in the wee hours of the morning.

The Indian government was under pressure to retaliate.

India undertook “surgical strikes” in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir in response, in what was considered a serious escalation.

It claimed “significant casualties” were dealt to “terrorist launch pads” along the de facto border, but never officially released numbers.

Pakistan denied such an incursion happened, claiming that only small arms fire was exchanged across the border, and that only two of its soldiers were killed.

Many news outlets jumped the gun, reporting that commandos had crossed the Line of Control, which divides the disputed Kashmir region between India and Pakistan, and killed large numbers of terrorists after being airdropped from helicopters.

Independent analysts and reports in the days after, suggested limited action had been taken across the border with ground forces, and did not penetrate deep into Pakistani territory.

Indian opposition politicians then came out and said that these strikes were actually no different to what previous governments had carried out, they had just not been as widely publicised.

But the publicity was part of Mr Modi’s new strategy of dealing with terrorists in stronger language.

In this new formulation, “soft” responses by India to cross-border militancy, like suspending dialogue and issuing condemnations, did nothing to deter future attacks.

With these “surgical” attacks, the public’s appetite to see something done, was sated.

2019: Escalation to air strikes

Again in 2019, JeM terrorists attacked a convoy of vehicles carrying Indian security personnel in the town of Pulwama in Kashmir.

Forty personnel were killed by four terrorists who crossed the border.

This time, India responded with more force than before: it launched air strikes deep into Pakistani territory at Balakot, for the first time since their 1971 war, alarming international observers.

India claimed it had struck JeM’s “biggest training camp”, and killed a “very large number” of terrorists, trainers and “groups of jihadis”.

While the government did not provide figures, India’s home minister put the number at 250 during a speech at an election rally.

The air strike was praised in Indian media as a strong message to Pakistan. But there was a hitch.

Pakistan launched retaliatory air raids on Indian territory the next morning, capturing an Indian pilot after an aerial dogfight.

It was an ignominious development for the Indian government, which had billed itself as the unquestionably superior military power.

Pakistan eventually handed the pilot back to India unharmed after his much-publicised capture, giving both countries a face-saving measure they could each declare victory over, and the conflict fizzled out.

Independent analysts, including the foreign policy think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute, later said there had been little evidence of India killing large numbers of people in the Balakot air strikes, but suggested this was a deliberate decision to avoid further escalation.

In the elections that followed, Mr Modi’s party was rewarded with a landslide victory.

2025: Missiles into Pakistani territory

On April 22, four terrorists attacked mostly Hindu tourists in the Kashmiri town of Pahalgam, killing 26 Indian civilians and one Nepali.

India blamed Pakistan-backed terrorists for the attack and 15 days later, struck nine sites in Pakistan, and in Pakistan’s part of Kashmir.

It deemed the response “non-escalatory” as it hit only “terrorist infrastructure”.

The Indian government hit deeper into Pakistani territory than before, striking nine sites, though it did so from its own airspace.

This week, the flurry of fake news and disinformation online has reached fever-pitch.

Pakistani and Indian news channels and social media accounts are posting videos of strikes and attacks from unrelated past conflicts, capitalising on the global interest, each pushing a nationalist agenda.

Fact-checkers like Indian outlet Alt News have been debunking these posts as they proliferate, trying to keep a lid on the fearmongering and chest-thumping.

The enormous amounts of fake news and unverified claims emanating from both countries make a sensible reading of the risks difficult.

India showed footage in a press conference of its missiles hitting targets in Pakistani territory, showing the “terrorist infrastructure”.

The JeM chief Masood Azhar himself came out and said that 10 of his family members, including children, had been killed in the Indian strikes, while Pakistan claims 31 civilian casualties.

India denies any civilians were killed.

In response to India’s strikes, Pakistan claims it has downed five Indian planes as the two countries battled it out in the skies from their own airspaces.

India has not addressed the claim yet, adding to the general confusion, but US and French officials have confirmed to Reuters and CNN that at least one Indian plane appears to have been downed.

Over the past few hours, each side claimed the other launched drone attacks into their territory, which both say were repelled successfully.

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It would mark the first time India and Pakistan have engaged in drone warfare.

The situation continues to escalate, as reports emerge of both militaries taking action through missile attacks and air operations against the other. 

It could go on in this vein for days.

Has military retaliation deterred terrorism in Kashmir?

The Indian government’s policy around retaliation, despite the risk of escalating into war, was partly based on the idea that this would deter terrorist attacks from across the border.

And the terror attacks that India has responded to militarily over the Modi government’s reign aren’t the only such attacks India has suffered.

Data on fatalities from terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir from the New Delhi-based South Asia Terrorism Portal indicate a complicated picture.

From highs of over 4,000 fatalities per year in 2001, the numbers in recent years are down to 100-200 — a sharp decline.

They began dropping steadily in 2002, and continued on that trajectory for 11 years, dropping to 121 in 2012, two years before Mr Modi took over.

That was the lowest level since 1990.

“The reason for that is the change in the international environment after 9/11,” said Dr Ajai Sahni, Executive Director of the South Asia Terrorism Portal, the largest database on such conflicts in the region.

“The Americans conducted thousands of drone attacks in Pakistan on terrorists and terrorist camps, Pakistan was under a lot of pressure,” he said.

The Modi government came to power in 2014, and the numbers started inching back up, peaking at 452 in 2018.

In 2023, the fatalities dropped again, sitting at 127 in 2024.

There’s little indication in the data that the Indian government’s new policy of military retaliation to terror over the last 11 years has had an effect on the numbers, either directly or indirectly.

Sahni said a different tactic does seem to have an effect in bringing the numbers down since 2023.

“One positive policy was that [the government] started prosecuting people associated with terrorism. There was prosecution for funding terrorism, for associating with terrorists, for facilitating terrorists, not just the primary acts of terrorism,” he said.

Proponents of the muscular Indian policy say the aim is not merely to reduce the numbers in the short-term, but to cause enough political pain and embarrassment to Pakistan in the long-term, that its leadership is forced to give up its support of terrorism.

But whether Pakistan is being embarrassed on the global stage is far from clear.

A lack of clarity around the specifics of these battles leaves a question in the world’s minds as to who has actually come out on top.

All this leaves India in a difficult position.

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Decades of restraint in the face of deadly terrorism incensed the Indian population, helping sweep the ruling party to power.

Now, over a decade of retaliation has given a large portion of the public what they wanted, but it comes with serious escalation risks, and ever-greater scrutiny by the international community.

For a country that wants to be focusing on its competition with China and its play for great power status, India can’t seem to get out of the Pakistan quagmire.

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