There was a mood of extreme anticipation on this day—May 6, 2025, exactly a fortnight after the Pahalgam massacre of April 22 in which Pakistan-sponsored terrorists had snuffed life out of 26 civilians, mostly tourists from other parts of the country. It is also the night of Operation Sindoor, launched initially to avenge the brutal act of terror in the serene valley of Baisaran, admired as mini-Switzerland for its unmatched beauty, near Pahalgam, a world-famous tourist resort in South Kashmir.

Operation Sindoor, a military action that served several purposes all at once, though it is counted and hailed as a counter-terrorism operation against the terrorists based in Pakistan. It was an operation that stood out against the backdrop of the firm resolve of Indian leadership to inflict unimaginable punishment on the perpetrators and backers of the gruesome terror attack in Pahalgam, where tourists were shot dead on the basis of their faith in front of their wives and other family members, holidaying amid the cool and beautiful environ. They committed an unnatural act in the region blessed by Mother Nature.

Today, a year after the launch of Operation Sindoor, it is very critical that what all has been achieved and what new challenges have surfaced. What is done is done. Pakistan is aware of the consequences of any Pahalgam-type misadventure; it has started changing its strategy. It is more in cyberspace, and its terrorists coming from across the Line of Control, and even via some foreign countries, are trained in jungle and mountain warfare. That poses a new challenge. The Indian Army is now stretched to the borders and also high in the mountains. That is a requirement of the situation, but it also adds pressure. Terrorists are carving out new enclaves, like the ones they had before they went in for the Pahalgam massacre. The Army is aware of these activities, but mountain warfare within the Himalayan territory is a high-risk challenge which needs to be converted into opportunity.

Immediately after the Pahalgam attack, there were many questions floating in the air. The primary one being: What will India do now?

This question dominated minds as they were looking back at previous cross-border counter-terrorism operations—surgical strike after the terror assault on soldiers in Uri in September 2016, and aerial strikes after the Pulwama terror attack in February 2019.

The cross-LoC surgical strikes were launched 10 days after the terror assault in Uri, a border township very close to the Line of Control that divides Jammu and Kashmir between India and Pakistan. The Indian Air Force carried out aerial strikes against Pakistan on February 26, 2019, 12 days after the Pulwama terror attack of February 14, 2019. This was one step ahead of the cross-LoC surgical strike of 2016, because this time India had struck hard at terror camps in Balakot in the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Numerically, 14 days had passed and the wait was on for military action against Pakistan. Though India had taken one of the greatest steps in history: suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty (on April 23, 2025) itself, yet the military action was what the nation was looking for. In between, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir government had declared emergency, giving a firm indication of its anxiety about the Indian strikes. That spoke of their guilt.

Then came the night of May 6, 2025. This part of the world was sleeping, when all hell broke loose on the terrorists and their infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). Indian missiles had hit hard and fast, decimating terror assets of Pakistan in the first 22 minutes of the launch of the military action against terror networks across the border and LoC.

Then came the big announcement that India had launched Operation Sindoor with a tagline “Justice is served.”

And the wait was over. India had done its act with finesse. More than 100 terrorists were killed and all their infrastructure, including that of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad.

The Indian Army had blown up the headquarters of Jaish-e-Mohammad in Bahawalpur, Lashkar headquarters in Muridke, also known as Markaz Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa, hiding its real job of training terrorists and motivating them for “jihad” against India. Other camps destroyed in the operation were Sawal Nala camp in PoK capital Muzaffarabad, where LeT terrorists received training in mountain warfare; Gulpur camp, Kotli in PoK, from where Jaish staged its terrorists for cross-LoC infiltration and subversion on the Indian side of Jammu and Kashmir, especially in the Rajouri-Poonch belt; Abbas camp in Kotli (PoK), housing LeT terrorists, again using it as a launching pad in the Pir Panjal region of Jammu division.

Other camps that were destroyed in PoK were Barnala camp in Bhimber, a place where terrorists were trained to hide in jungles and rocky mountains; Sarjal camp, a key facility of Jaish-e-Mohammad; Mehmoona Joya camp in Sialkot, located just outside the Suchetgarh area of Jammu, which was used by Hizb-ul-Mujahideen for its terror training and motivation activities.

India had done its job and informed Pakistan’s Director General of Military Operations (DGMO), Major General Kashif Abdullah. Indian DGMO Lt. Gen. Rajiv Ghai told his Pakistani counterpart that only terrorist camps had been targeted and destroyed; no civilian, military or government infrastructure was targeted in the first 22 minutes of the operation. Pakistan failed to understand the message that India had only cleansed its soil of terrorists; instead, it chose to open fire and shell civilian areas in Jammu and Kashmir and military assets. It succeeded in killing more than 30 civilians and damaging their homes, schools and places of worship. All its drones and missiles were intercepted by the Indian defense system.

Pakistan’s audacity in defending and avenging the loss of terrorists had to be responded to. India did exactly that. It also started targeting the military assets of Pakistan, and this blitzkrieg opened after Pakistan started retaliation to the decimation of terror infrastructure. Indian attacks that lasted till May 10, 2025, destroyed and damaged Pakistan’s air defense system. Its airbases at Nur Khan, Bholari and Murid were targeted and damaged. It was after all this that Pakistan beseeched for a ceasefire.

That ceasefire is holding on. But, as has been stated by the Indian leadership—Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh—that the operation was suspended, not halted permanently. The operation, as such, is on.

This does not mean that everything is quiet. India is aware that Pakistan has not desisted from its terror plans directed against India, particularly Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan has heightened its propaganda on air; it is injecting bigger doses of radicalism into the day-to-day curriculum of vulnerable minds in J&K, and it is exploiting each and every incident to mislead the people. Alongside, it has increased drone droppings of arms, ammunition, cash and drugs. That is sustaining narco-terrorism in J&K and also funding informal networks to fuel radicalism.

The infiltration attempts too are being made. Terrorists continue to trickle in. The Indian Army has mounted strict vigil along the LoC and international border, but the terrain of these border lines has many loopholes that neither the human eye nor high technology can detect. That remains a big challenge. / DAILY WORLD /

( The writer is Consulting Editor (Jammu & Kashmir), Daily World.)