Armchairs across India are engaged in such a frenzied back and forth in the aftermath of the Indian airstrike on a specific target in Pakistan that I can hear them squeak here in Chicago. Every clueless social media warrior has suddenly gained access to some of the most guarded intelligence and tactical planning maps as they go about making such hilariously knowing assertions without ever having set a foot either in Kashmir or a military-intelligence establishment. Credulity is overflowing across the social media India. The reality on the terra firma is bound to be much more nuanced.
I had an indication of an impending airstrike last evening before I went to sleep but also had enough sense not start spouting fake knowledge about the operation which by its very nature would have been and will be known to a very few people in all its complex details. I am as far away from that knowledge as one can be. I have zero idea about the intricacies of the operation and how deep the airstrike went beyond the Line of Control (LoC) or even into the official, undisputed Pakistani territory. However, reading and watching some of the comments/observations/fulminations/triumphalist verbal high-fiving it would seem that almost every social media Indian was inside the situation room where the airstrike was first planned.
All that is being discussed on social media is necessarily third or fourth hand and, in some cases, pulled straight out of an unmentionable orifice. It is a good thing that India’s military establishment has been historically sober, rational and deeply calibrated and is loath to responding to ignorant claims. Having had some measure of its operations in Kashmir for close to a decade between 1989 and 1997 I know that its actions are generally never less than precisely structured and consciously disengaged from any emotional content.
New Delhi has been specific in describing the strike in the early hours of February 26—according some reports 3.30 a.m. local time—as aimed at a non-military target. Its top diplomat, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale called it “non-military preemptive action”, which focused only on a Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorist training facility in a location called Balakot.
“India struck the biggest training camp of JeM in Balakot. In this operation, a very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and groups of Jihadis who were being trained for Fidayeen action were eliminated,” Gokhale said.
Which Balakot and how far into Pakistan has quickly become a source of very knowing social media speculation among those whose knowledge of geography is generally very challenged. Gokhale has remained studiedly unspecific as to the specific coordinates of Balakot. It seems there are two Balakots, perhaps spelled somewhat differently. One of them is said to be very close to the working border known as the Line of Control (LoC) and the other some 50 miles or 90 kilometers away and well into Pakistan’s official territory. This is an important question because it goes to the heart of whether India went into the Pakistani territory for the first time since the 1971 war to strike at a target or it destroyed some camps close to the LoC without having to violate the border.
If it is the Balakot in the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, then it constitutes a very significant escalation in India’s willingness to take on the relentless terror attacks, the latest being the one that killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel in a car bombing in Pulwama, Kahsmir on February 14. I find it instructive that Gokhale called the strike an intelligence-led operation to make a subtle distinction that it was not necessitated by the thirst for revenge after the Pulwama attack.
As is always happens between India and Pakistan during such strikes, the claims about how significant was what was destroyed are diametrically opposite. In the Pakistani narrative the strike merely flattened some forest cover and cratered some ground in a useless area near the border. However, as Gokhale explained the damage was specific and significant.
It is not altogether inconceivable that the choice of a Balakot was deliberate given the ambiguity it afforded because there are two of them. This is pure speculation on my part because I have no first, second, third or even the fourth-hand knowledge.
Like I said sitting some 9,000 miles from the action I have zero clue about how significant the strike was but the Indian military is not generally known to engage ridiculous claims over its operations. If it says the strike was a significant, albeit specific, one, then there are very high prospects that it was. Whether a strike like that degrades the enduring terror threat to an unprecedented degree is a matter of debate. What it does do is to put Islamabad in a particular quandary over whether to retaliate or not. If there is retaliation of any significant nature, then it would be tantamount to admitting that the Indian strike was indeed inside its official territory and a big one. If there is no retaliation, then it is the tacit admission of not having the stomach to engage in a matching fashion.
The fact that its default response was to dismiss the Indian claim by showing some flattened trees and cratered ground would suggest there may not be a response. Once again, I have no special insight into the Pakistani thinking merely because I have a functioning brain and fingers. I am watching rather keenly what happens next if anything at all other than some frenzied armchair rocking.
On a tangential note, I was quite amused by how a typical American expression has seeped into South Asian militaryspeak as well. Both India and Pakistan have spoken in terms of responding “at a time and place of our choosing.” This is an expression, which is mostly heard among American politicians and military leaders.
I have always found it superfluous because it goes without saying that we all choose a time and place of our choosing in order convey that we are in full control of our lives which we often are not.