India's Operation Sindoor Against Pakistani Terrorists

"Pakistan and India have enough nuclear weapons to wipe the other side out several times over."

"Their nuclear weapons create a scenario for mutually assured destruction."

"[The arsenals are a defensive move to prevent and deter further fighting, because] neither side can afford to initiate such a war or hope to achieve anything from it."

Syed Mohammed Ali, security analyst, Islamabad, Pakistan 

"Pakistan has every right to give a robust response to this act of war imposed by India, and a strong response is indeed being given."

"[The] heinous act of aggression will not go unpunished".

Pakistan Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif

 

"Missile strikes by India in Pakistan-administered Kashmir targeted at least nine sites] where terrorist attacks against India have been planned."

"[The strikes - named] Operation Sindoor [were part of a] commitment [to hold] accountable [those responsible for the 22 April attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, which left 25 Indians and one Nepali national dead]."
India Defence Ministry

People inspect a damaged mosque following India's strikes in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir   AFP via Getty Images

"Throughout 2024, violence continued in Kashmir in response to increasing efforts by New Delhi to consolidate territorial control. Attacks specifically targeted Indian travelers and workers in the region. In June 2024, militants opened fire on a bus carrying pilgrims traveling to a Hindu shrine in the town of Reasi. The attack killed nine and injured over thirty. In October, militants killed seven in Kashmir at a construction site for a tunnel project connecting Kashmir to the northern region of Ladakh."

"On April 22, 2025, tensions escalated after militants attacked Indian tourists in Kashmir, killing twenty-five Indian nationals and one Nepalese national. The incident marked the deadliest terrorist attack in Indian territory since the 2008 Mumbai attacks. India blamed Pakistan for harboring the group responsible for the attack and arrested two Pakistani nationals as suspects. Pakistan denied any involvement, and its defense ministry even suggested the attack was a “false flag operation.” Although no group has been officially identified as responsible for the attack, the Kashmir Resistance—an offshoot of LeT—claimed responsibility online."

Global Conflict Tracker

Both India and Pakistan have a stockpile of nuclear weapons, each 'reminding' the other of a guarantee of mutually assured destruction with neither country publicly disclosing their nuclear capabilities. Each is thought to have amassed between 170 and 180 warheads; short-, long- and medium-range. Each country has its own system of delivery to launch and propel their weapons to targets. The arsenals serve as a defense in prevention and deterrence of conflict beyond the conventional. 

 

Each is aware that neither Pakistan nor India could survive a first nuclear strike and be able to retaliate through "second-strike capability"; a sobering perspective for any government. Both lay claim to Kashmir in its entirety. Border skirmishes equate to instability in the region and have for decades. A heavily militarized border divides each country's part of Kashmir where three wars have been fought in the past. Armed insurgents on the Pakistan side of the divide resist Indian rule, with Muslim Kashmiris in support of the goal of uniting Kashmir under Pakistani governance. 

 

The number of border flare-ups and attacks in India's portion of Kashmir, prompted New Delhi toward an increasingly tough position on Islamabad, accusing it of supporting 'terrorism', which more than adequately describes the reality of the situation. India, as the most populous nation on the planet, spent $74.4 billion on defence in the current year; one of the world's largest arms importers.

 

Indian army Trucks on highway leading to Ladakh, Kashmir    Danish Ismail, Reuters

 

Although Pakistan spends a considerable sum -- $10 billion last year -- in arms, India has over double the number of active armed forces personnel than Pakistan. But there is another looming threat that India has that Pakistan doesn't share; its neighbour China, with its aggressive maritime security stance in the Indian Ocean. On occasion both Pakistan and India launch operations into airspace and territories controlled by the other, intended for the most part to damage check-points, installations or sites used by militants. Their lethal antipathy toward one another is religion-driven, not territorial. 

For every step that India takes -- from closing down Pakistan's embassy in India, shutting off a traditional water supply agreement to Pakistan, closing its airspace to air traffic, to targeting sites in Pakistan known to harbour Islamist terrorist groups -- Pakistan follows suit and vows vengeance. Following missile strikes in Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, a heavy exchange of fire between the two nations ensued. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif commended his armed forces for shooting down five Indian jets, hit, he claimed after firing their missiles, while still in Indian airspace.

 

Three planes fell onto villages in India-controlled territory, although India made no official comments. During the April attack in Kashmir, some survivors informed Indian media that the gunmen singled out Hindu men and shot them dead at close range. Pakistan stands accused by India of being behind the attack by a new militant group, Kashmir Resistance. India has identified the group with links to Lashkar-e Taiba, a Pakistani militant group long accused by New Delhi of being supported by Pakistan. 

Adnan Abidi, Reuters  An Indian soldier stands guard on a highway in Kashmir

 

Beijing, Eternally Busy Causing Strife

"Looking at it in Planet Labs [Earth imaging satellite pictures], it looks like China is constructing roads in the valley and possibly damming the river."
"There are a ton of vehicles on both sides [of the Line of Actual Control -- LAC] -- although there appear to be vastly more on the Chinese side."
"I count 30 to 40 Indian vehicles and well over 100 vehicles on the Chinese side."
Jeffrey Lewis, director, East Asia Nonproliferation Program, Middlebury Institute of International Studies, California

"There is the larger picture of the asymmetries of power." 
"China’s GDP is $14tn, India’s is less than $3tn. China spends nearly $220bn on the military but India spends $52bn."
Srikanth Kondapalli, professor of Chinese studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

An Indian army convoy moves on the Srinagar- Ladakh highway at Gagangeer, north-east of Srinagar, India, Wednesday, June 17, 2020.

From the South China Sea, where Beijing confronts the interests of its neighbours in disputed territories to claim them as their own, to the magnificent and dangerous heights of the Himalaya, wherever the Chinese Communist Party perceives its interests in enlarging its geographic and political territories, it acts with no regard to the outcome. Two of the most populous nuclear countries in the world share a 4,056-kilometre border that runs past glaciers, deserts of snow and freezing rivers where both countries claim sovereignty beyond the border.

Initial, brief skirmishes where both China and India post army stations at 4,300 metres in the western Himalaya have recently taken place by unarmed soldiers on each side. Unarmed, due to a mutual agreement by both sides to keep the prospect of deadly violence to a minimum. Instead, the military personnel on both sides used clubs and improvised weapons and their fists. And given that they're poised on the side of steep mountains, in some instances brute force to send an adversary to his death below.

India has declared the loss of 20 of its soldiers, while China has chosen not to release any information about its losses. "They [the Indian side] deliberately launched a provocative assault, leading to an intense physical clash that caused death and injury", charged Chinese military spokesman Zhang Shuili, insisting that the Indian military was responsible for the hand-to-hand combat, where reputedly clubs covered in nails or barbed wire were used by the Chinese. Which sounds a lot like premeditation.

An Indian military officer on patrol in Ladakh, India, in August.Credit...Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

According to military officials from India, hundreds of soldiers came to fierce clashes with fists, stones and wooden clubs at the tense frontier where the border crosses the cold high-altitude mountain ranges within which are territorial disputes. An agreement dating from1993 between the two sides was meant to constrain either side from the use of deadly weapons, leaving soldiers patrolling the area unarmed. According to the Indian side, their soldiers had encountered a Chinese patrol on the border.

On the other hand, satellite images now make it clear that in days leading up to the border clash China had brought in heavy pieces of machinery, had cut a trail into a mountainside and according to satellite imagery, may have dammed a river. Both countries rely on seasonal glacier melt and rivers for irrigation and potable water as it makes its way down the mountainsides to the valleys below. Any such alterations are certain to have an effect on both sides; one positively, the other negatively.

The Galwan Valley, where the altercation took place, is an arid, inhospitable landscape, with soldiers deployed on steep ridges, but vital since it leads to the Aksal Chin, a plateau claimed by India, and controlled by China. Signs of the landscape being altered, with the valley showing tracks being widened, earth being moved and river crossings are evidence of Chinese actions not shared with their Indian counterparts. Yet a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman claims to be unaware of anything specific occurring.

Zhao Lijian, speaking for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, reiterated that Chinese territory had been penetrated by the Indian Army in several places, demanding their withdrawal. Two Chinese tents and observation towers had been discovered by an Indian patrol, built on its side of the LAC, according to government sources in New Delhi. Although military officials of both sides had reached an agreement to deescalate on June 6, China had proceeded to erect a 'structure' on India's side of the LAC.

The patrol had arrived at a ridge in verification that the Chinese had moved their troops back from the LAC as claimed. In moving back Chinese troops left behind the two tents and observation posts so the Indian party demolished the towers and burned the tests. According to the satellite images no such structures had been seen the week before, on the ridge. The arrival of a large group of Chinese soldiers confronting the Indian troops led to the deadly melee.