International Crisis Group Statement / Asia 08 May 2025 - 8 minutes Pulling India and Pakistan Back from the Brink

 International Crisis Group 

Statement  / Asia 08 May 2025  -   8 minutes

Pulling India and Pakistan Back from the Brink

India and Pakistan are embroiled in their most dangerous confrontation in decades. With further escalation looming, it is imperative that these nuclear-armed adversaries seek an off-ramp and, with outside help, explore ways to ease bilateral tensions. 

India and Pakistan are caught up in their most serious hostilities since last waging war on each other in 1971. Two weeks after militants massacred 26 tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, India launched Operation Sindoor in the early hours of 7 May – a series of cross-border missile strikes on nine sites that New Delhi branded “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan’s Punjab province and Pakistani-administered Kashmir. Pakistani authorities denounced an “act of war”, saying India had killed 31 people, including women and children, and promising reprisals. Pakistan’s military also said it had downed five Indian fighter jets in India’s Punjab state and Indian-administered Kashmir, though it has offered no proof of these claims. India, for its part, acknowledged the loss of at least two warplanes inside its borders, but it did not elaborate on what caused them to crash. Heavy artillery fire continues across the Line of Control that divides the Indian- and Pakistani-administered parts of Kashmir, leaving scores of civilians killed and wounded on both sides. As night fell on 8 May, there were unconfirmed social media reports of drone attacks by Pakistan on various northern Indian cities. With further escalation between these nuclear-armed adversaries looming, it is crucial that both shift to showing restraint and, with international backing, explore avenues to dial down the tensions between them. 

India’s Case for Strikes

New Delhi insists that strikes on Pakistan were fully justified following the UN Security Council statement on the 22 April Pahalgam attack, in which the 26 tourists were killed. Government officials highlighted the resolution’s call “to hold perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors of this reprehensible act of terrorism accountable and bring them to justice”. Having long accused Pakistan of sponsoring and harbouring anti-India militant groups, New Delhi presented the decision to hit targets deep inside Pakistan territory as a response not just to the Pahalgam massacre, but also to a string of terrorist acts dating as far back as the attack on the Indian parliament in 2001. 

Officials asserted that Operation Sindoor was “focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”, exclusively targeting “terrorist infrastructure” connected with Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Hizbul Mujahideen, groups at the forefront of attacks on India over the last two decades, rather than any Pakistani military installation. All nine sites hit on 7 May were “terror camps”, according to New Delhi, which were “carefully selected to avoid damage to civilian infrastructure and loss of civilian lives”. This account is at variance with reports from Pakistan indicating that the strikes destroyed mosques and other buildings, killing a number of civilians.

Expectations that the Indian military would mount an attack on Pakistan were high after the massacre of mainly Hindu tourists in Pahalgam.

Expectations that the Indian military would mount an attack on Pakistan were high after the massacre of mainly Hindu tourists in Pahalgam. With most victims shot at point-blank range in front of their families, the killings stirred a public outcry throughout India. Immediately afterward, senior officials in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government blamed armed groups backed by Pakistan. Since then, the neighbours have traded diplomatic punches, frozen bilateral trade and closed their shared border. India also suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, which has governed the sharing of water from the Indus River basin between the two countries since 1960. The ceasefire to which both countries recommitted in 2021 lies in tatters, with forces on both sides firing and shelling across the Line of Control every day since the bloody Pahalgam events. 

Modi has repeatedly declared that India will pursue and punish the Pahalgam perpetrators, as well as those who orchestrated the massacre, and said he has given the Indian military free rein to decide on the best way to achieve these objectives. After spending much of the past decade projecting himself as a strongman at home, and India as a robust Asian power, the prime minister has been under intense pressure from his support base to respond forcefully. By naming the operation Sindoor, his government appears to have had appeasement of this audience in mind: sindoor, the Hindi word for vermillion, refers to the red powder Hindu women wear on their foreheads as a sign of marriage, thereby associating the strikes with revenge on behalf of the widows of the Hindu men killed in Pahalgam.

Pakistan’s Possible Responses

Islamabad responded to news of the Pahalgam attacks by rejecting allegations of involvement, expressing condolences for the victims while describing the killings as the work of homegrown Kashmiri militants. India’s operation, however, represents a definitive displacement of bilateral tensions into the domain of military hostilities, with little certainty as to what the repercussions for international peace and security may be. A combination of bellicose rhetoric, domestic agitation and the remorseless logic of military one-upmanship have heightened the risks of escalation, particularly because for some time there was no diplomatic communication between the sides.

For now, it seems that Pakistan will answer the 7 May strikes with at least some military action of its own. Pakistani officials have warned that India’s violation of Pakistani sovereignty gives Islamabad the right “to respond appropriately at a time and place of its choosing” in self-defence. Reports that Indian fire hit mosques and killed civilians have undoubtedly bolstered anti-India sentiment across Pakistan and spurred calls for a riposte in kind. On 8 May, Islamabad claimed to have shot down twelve Indian drones in various locations, and that evening, reports came in of Pakistani drones hitting sites in India. 

While the temptation to strike back is undeniably strong, doing so would bring huge risks.

While the temptation to strike back is undeniably strong, doing so would bring huge risks. The heights reached in the current conflict are already much greater than the last flare-up of tensions between India and Pakistan in 2019, when the two countries came dangerously close to all-out war after India blamed a suicide bombing that killed 40 of its soldiers on Pakistan-based militants, bombing an alleged militant training camp in response. On that occasion, however, despite claims and counterclaims by both sides, the escalation did not lead to civilian casualties or destruction of civilian property. Furthermore, the fighting involved aerial combat along the border, at some distance from populated areas.

Islamabad was seemingly prepared for Operation Sindoor. In the days leading up to the 7 May strikes, Islamabad launched a diplomatic offensive in major capitals, including Washington, as well as at the UN Security Council (of which it is currently a member). It said it had intelligence pointing to imminent Indian strikes, calling for efforts to restrain New Delhi and warning of retaliation should its arch-rival hit Pakistani territory. But foreign powers appear to have been somewhat indifferent to the prospect that two states with nuclear weapons and a long history of conflict might march into war. Aside from their preoccupation with the multitude of other crises unfolding around the world, many foreign capitals may also have feared contradicting themselves after having expressed support for India’s prerogative to “fight terrorism” following the brutal Pahalgam killings.

The Question of Blame

Islamabad, meanwhile, has rejected outright Indian claims of culpability and called for an independent inquiry into the Pahalgam attack. Pakistani officials have said the Indian missile strikes were driven by domestic frustrations, exacerbated by New Delhi’s anger at seeing its claims of having restored peace in Indian-administered Kashmir repudiated. Without doubt, political conditions in the Himalayan region have become increasingly volatile in the wake of New Delhi’s decision in 2019 to abolish its special status, reclassify it as a union territory run by the federal government and remove safeguards for locals such as restrictions on the sale of land to non-Kashmiris. Fear is widespread among Kashmiris that New Delhi is trying to engineer demographic change by bringing more Hindus into India’s only Muslim-majority region. Several emergent militant groups have explicitly fed off this anxiety, declaring that they will resist any such changes forced by New Delhi. Indian authorities, for their part, insist that these new outfits are proxies of older organisations such as the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, which have been waging an armed campaign in support of integrating Indian-administered Kashmir into Pakistan. 

New Delhi bases its allegations of Pakistani responsibility for the Pahalgam attacks on Islamabad’s history of backing militant groups in Kashmir. Even so, there is still little clarity as to the perpetrators’ identity, with media reports claiming that they were a mix of locals and Pakistanis. So far, in any event, no alleged culprits have been arrested. The same day that India launched its strikes, its National Investigation Agency made a public appeal to anyone who might have information, including photographs or video footage of the killings, in an effort to gather more clues.

Defusing the Dangers

India and Pakistan should both recognise the perils of further escalation. Defusing bilateral tensions and reducing the risks of worsening conflict will require sustained back-channel communications, preferably far from the public eye. The re-establishment of contact between the Indian and Pakistani national security advisers on 7 May is a promising first step. That link could now foster the discreet discussions that are urgently needed to ward off more salvos of fire. While Pakistan should rethink the risks of retaliation, India should respond to any sign of restraint on Islamabad’s part by ending its suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty.

All foreign powers with sway over New Delhi and Islamabad should swiftly exert pressure on both sides to de-escalate. The U.S., but also Gulf Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, are well positioned to help the two sides find an off-ramp. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly nudged the two national security advisers to make contact and has also discussed ways to de-escalate tensions with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud. U.S. President Donald Trump’s most recent comment was simply that he hopes the crisis “ends quickly”. Washington has a major role to play in easing Indian-Pakistani tensions, as it has done on several previous occasions, and it should urge both parties to step back from the edge immediately. Given the level of animosity between the parties and the domestic pressures they both face, the quiet involvement of countries that they consider trusted interlocutors could be key to preventing the outbreak of a full-blown war that neither India nor Pakistan can afford. 

The Indian government, meanwhile, should take heed of these dangers and act with prudence in Kashmir.

The Indian government, meanwhile, should take heed of these dangers and act with prudence in Kashmir. Immediately after the Pahalgam massacre, many Kashmiris, including the region’s entire political class, spontaneously denounced the attack, holding rallies and candlelight vigils in honour of the victims. New Delhi’s heavy-handed approach in the investigation, in which authorities have arrested more than 2,000 Kashmiris – many under stringent anti-terror laws – and demolished homes belonging to suspected militants (at least some of whom were plainly not involved in the Pahalgam attack), has offset local anger at the perpetrators and instead redirected it at India. Handling with care the resentment festering in Kashmir is crucial, but the immediate imperative should be for the two nuclear-armed nations to back down from the brink of war and, with international support, seek bilateral avenues to defuse the tensions between them.