Pakistan's Army Under Scrutiny: India Targets Terror Roots

Pakistan's Army Resorts to Old Playbook of Grey Zone Warfare

After almost six years, Pakistan’s army has once again crossed a dangerous red line, orchestrating a brutal massacre in Pahalgam that left 26 civilians dead. By escalating its grey zone warfare tactics beyond previously respected thresholds, Pakistan has shown it remains trapped in an outdated and dangerous strategy. Yet it must realise that these old playbook tactics of escalation and crossing red lines are a delusion, carrying little to no deterrent value against a far more resilient India.

The Delusion of Red Line Crossings by Pakistan

Pakistan’s persistent grey zone war tactics against India have been deeply shaped by the internal security dynamics and strategic calculations of its army. For years, Pakistan’s army has operated in the grey zone — staging and executing sub-conventional warfare — in an attempt to destabilise Kashmir and fuel Islamic fundamentalist tendencies within India. While the latter objective has gained some limited traction, the former has increasingly failed, particularly over the past year.

Pakistan's obsession with Kashmir has been further complicated by the rising threat of sectarian violence, fundamentalist Islamic forces, and the growing menace of terrorist groups like the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and ISIS-Khorasan Province (ISIS-KP). The toxic cocktail of internal security challenges, combined with the Pakistan army’s inability to effectively address them, has badly eroded the army’s standing and popularity at home. As Pakistan's army struggles with mounting internal crises, Chief of Army Staff General Syed Asim Munir—himself grappling with infighting within the military hierarchy—has adopted a desperate, reckless strategy. First, by reviving the divisive two-nation theory and intensifying anti-India rhetoric, and second, by escalating grey zone warfare well beyond previous thresholds.

Pakistan's Army and the Obsession with Crossing Red Lines

The escalation tactics occasionally employed by Pakistan’s army may still hold some perceived strategic value within Pakistan’s security establishment. For Pakistan’s army, escalation serves three primary objectives: disrupting the growing strategic focus on India in the South Asian subcontinent; reviving the stagnant sub-conventional warfare machinery—its terror networks—in Jammu and Kashmir; and, most importantly, restoring the army’s diminishing credibility by reigniting anti-India sentiment and boosting the morale of the Pakistani public.

Notably, a fourth objective was also attached to these tactics—coercive deterrence—aimed at compelling India to return to the negotiating table and consider reopening bilateral relations. However, this fourth aim has become largely ineffective, especially after India abandoned its earlier policy of strategic restraint toward Pakistan. Despite General Munir’s attempts to present these moves as part of a calculated strategy, the reality on the ground has changed. General Munir’s escalatory tactics are increasingly exposed as desperate acts of a declining institution rather than a coherent well-planned strategy.

The Persistent Delusion of Pakistan's Army

Pakistan’s army did achieve some limited gains from escalatory tactics in earlier decades. For instance, in the aftermath of the Kargil War, the Chittisinghpura massacre took place in March 2000, where 35 Sikhs were brutally killed by Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives. This attack was timed just before former US President Bill Clinton’s visit to India—a visit that marked the beginning of a significant Indo-US strategic convergence, following a period of sanctions imposed after India’s nuclear tests.

President Clinton, recognising the limitations of a sanctions-based approach, instructed his Deputy Secretary of State that India must be placed “front and centre” in US foreign policy for the remainder of his presidency. As the United States began recalibrating its South Asia policy with a stronger focus on India, Pakistan’s army found itself increasingly isolated.

Domestically, Pakistan's army was grappling with serious credibility crises, internal conflicts within the military hierarchy, and deepening strains in civil-military relations. Adding to the turmoil, Pakistan was facing an alarming rise in domestic terror threats, with a series of bomb blasts between January and March 2000, compounding the instability. Economically, the country was in a fragile state, reeling from the aftershocks of the Kargil conflict.

Amid these challenges, Pakistan’s army turned once again to escalatory tactics. The Chittisinghpura massacre was a calculated move to shatter the fragile post-Kargil calm, seeking to coerce India, revive its terror networks in Kashmir, and reassert its strategic relevance. The rapid emergence of the operations of LeT in Jammu and Kashmir at the beginning of 2000 was a clear sign that Pakistan's army was determined to leverage its Kashmir obsession to regain lost ground and restore its dwindling influence.

The Dangerous Delusion of Escalation

Cut to 2001, and Pakistan found itself grappling with one of its first major internal security crises, set against the backdrop of its entanglement in Afghanistan and the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi carried out the Bahawalpur church shooting, killing 18 Christians—a grim reminder of Pakistan’s deepening sectarian fault lines. Just a month later, a significant geopolitical development took place: Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee embarked on a critical diplomatic tour to Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States in November 2001, aiming to enhance India's strategic partnerships.

Once again, India found itself under an intensified Western spotlight, working to deepen its diplomatic and defence ties, while Pakistan’s importance—largely rooted in its role in Afghanistan—began to diminish as the United States launched its "War on Terror." Pakistan's army, under the leadership of General Pervez Musharraf, came under severe American pressure to act against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda elements operating from Pakistani soil. US Secretary of State Colin Powell famously conveyed a stark warning to Musharraf: either cooperate or risk being “bombed back to the Stone Age.”

Facing immense pressure on its western front, Pakistan’s army once again resorted to its familiar playbook of escalation. In December 2001, the attack on the Indian Parliament was carried out, leading to Operation Parakram—a major Indian military mobilisation and a tense standoff between India and Pakistan.

Throughout these incidents, Pakistan’s army consistently tried to extract short-term tactical advantages by destabilising the regional order. The goal remained the same: derail India’s ascent, maintain Pakistan’s relevance, and avoid regional isolation. This pattern of thinking—using violence to remain significant—was not unique to Pakistan. A similar miscalculation was seen with Iran two years ago, after the October 7 attacks, when Iran sought to counter growing regional isolation at a time West Asia was witnessing geoeconomic progress through initiatives like the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC).

However, both Iran and Pakistan gravely misread the evolving global dynamics. Though such escalatory tactics might offer momentary tactical reprieve, they inflict long-term damage, harming not just their own countries but the broader region.

For Pakistan’s army, this delusion has proven especially costly. The Kargil misadventure not only isolated Pakistan internationally but also deeply strained its relationship with the United States. It backfired spectacularly, giving India a diplomatic opening to strengthen its global standing and build closer ties with major powers. Pakistan’s repeated reliance on coercive escalation to enforce long-term deterrence against India has yielded negligible results—and today, that approach is virtually irrelevant on the world stage.

India's Strike Back Options: Rethinking Deterrence Against Pakistan's Army

India must come to terms with a hard reality: its existing punitive deterrence strategy against Pakistan—largely through surgical strikes and limited air operations—has, at best, only temporary value and negligible coercive effect on Pakistan's army. The 2019 Balakot air strikes stand as a prime example. Although the strikes were a major symbolic move, Pakistan’s Air Force retaliated the very next day, breaching Indian airspace and challenging India's narrative of deterrence. This bold counteroffensive exposed the limited impact of India's punitive actions in restraining Pakistan’s escalatory behaviour.

The pattern became even more evident when Pakistan’s army once again orchestrated escalatory tactics, sponsoring and facilitating terror attacks such as the one in Pahalgam. These incidents highlight the need for India to rethink its deterrence model—not merely for tactical victories but for sustainable, credible deterrence that maximises India’s leverage and achieves a degree of impunity.

A new approach could involve a shift toward an "Octopus Doctrine"—where India stops targeting only the tentacles of Pakistan's proxy terror networks and instead strikes directly at the head of the octopus: Pakistan’s army and its terror leadership. Drawing inspiration from Israel’s strategy during the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, where Israel has targeted key leaders within the so-called Axis of Resistance, India could implement a similar doctrine to significantly degrade Pakistan’s proxy capabilities and expose its complicity on the global stage.

To operationalise this shift, India has two broad options: either carry out covert offensives targeting high-profile terror masterminds or opt for overt strikes when necessary. In either case, the overarching objective remains the same—escalate the costs for Pakistan’s army and its terror apparatus.

Externally, India has practical pathways to intensify pressure, but equally important is strengthening internal security operations. The counter-terror grid in Jammu and Kashmir must evolve into a more aggressive model, focusing on Search and Destroy (S&D) missions to dismantle terror modules like The Resistance Front (TRF).

This strategy, rooted in historical precedents, was successfully applied during the Malayan Emergency of 1948, when British forces conducted relentless S&D operations against the Malayan National Liberation Army guerrillas hidden in jungle terrain. A similar method was later adopted during the Vietnam War, where the goal was to insert troops deep into hostile zones, identify enemy strongholds, and dismantle them swiftly and decisively.

For India, the success of such an approach will depend heavily on building a strong, reliable intelligence base that can enable targeted, surgical operations. By reconfiguring its deterrence strategy—both externally and internally—India has a real opportunity to push Pakistan’s army to the margins and redefine the balance of power in South Asia once again.

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