Pahalgam attack exposes Pakistan’s military gambit and India’s strategic dilemma – Firstpost

In a ghastly terror attack in Anatnag’s Baisaran Valley in the Pahalgam region, allegedly orchestrated by Lashkar-e-Taiba-affiliated The Resistance Front, on April 22, 2025, 26 innocent tourists were killed and several others injured. In response to the attack in Pahalgam, the Indian government took diplomatic and non-military measures by suspending the Indus Water Treaty, revoking visas for Pakistani nationals, closing the Attari-Wagah corridor, expelling the Pakistani military attache from its high commission in New Delhi and reducing its diplomatic staff in Islamabad. In retaliation, Pakistan suspended trade and closed its airspace to Indian airlines.

This terrorist act is the worst to hit the state since the car bombing in 2019, which targeted a bus of Indian paramilitary personnel in Pulwama, killing forty people. In addition, this attack was among the worst to target civilians in almost 20 years.

The timing of the latest terrorist attack is also crucial. It happened when US Vice President JD Vance was in India for his 4-day visit, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. There are two possible imperatives behind the timing of this terror attack: the first is to seek international eyeballs during a much-hyped visit of the US vice president on the India-Pakistan conflict on the world stage, and the second is to deflect domestic population attention from the failing state of security and economic situation in Pakistan.

Diminishing Importance of Pakistan as a Geostrategic Real Estate

Pakistan’s location was vital for the US during the Cold War as a frontline state against the Soviets, and after 9/11, again, Pakistan became important as a staging ground for the War on Terror in Afghanistan.

After the withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan and eventually being taken over by Taliban 2.0, the geostrategic importance of Pakistan has plummeted in US strategic calculations in the South Asian region.

The Pakistani Army had been the primary beneficiary of US entanglement in the Afghan quagmire. The US need for the Pakistan army in the Afghan theatre worked as a protective shield against its machinations in Kashmir against Indian interests. This terror attack and possible military escalation between India and Pakistan offer an opportunity for the Pakistan army to rake up the Kashmir issue and fear-monger about nuclear armageddon.

The internationalisation of the Kashmir issue served a dual purpose: first, it legitimises its preponderant position in domestic politics, and second, it keeps Pakistan relevant internationally.

Pakistan: A Praetorian State

Pakistan is a peculiar state where the Pakistani Army holds a unique position in domestic politics, unlike in most democracies where militaries remain under civilian control. In Pakistan, the army calls the shots in strategic matters, particularly in the issues of external security and foreign policy, especially towards India, Afghanistan and the USA. Pakistan is a classic praetorian state (an idea propounded by Samuel Huntington in his seminal work Political Order in Changing Societies, 1968).

Pakistan’s military establishment has long positioned itself as the guardian of national identity, presenting itself as the defender of both Pakistan’s ideological framework of two-nation theory and security interests vis-à-vis India. However, internal security issues — including ongoing militancy, economic challenges, and the growing dissatisfaction within the population over the Army’s failures, as was witnessed during large-scale violence and destruction of military property before Imran Khan’s incarceration — have begun to dent the Army’s image as the saviour of “Riyasat-e-Madina” (the Islamic state ideal).

Moreover, the ongoing economic crisis in Pakistan has accentuated the military’s role as the protector of the Pakistani state from outside forces and fissiparous tendencies within the Pakistani state in the form of separation of Balochistan from Pakistan and incendiary terrorist formations like Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), besides inflation, unemployment, and financial mismanagement leading to widespread discontent among the population.

The prolonged incarceration of Imran Khan on trumped-up charges in the Pakistani jail has also given a legitimacy crisis to the Pakistani political and military establishment, which has propped up the present government jointly led by the Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML(N)) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). As the military fails to resolve these domestic economic and political problems, its credibility as a benevolent protector is being increasingly questioned.

Against this background, the military has always looked for an external threat, less real and more perceived, to deflect public attention and reassert its relevance. The terrorist attack on tourists in Pahalgam, attributed to Pakistan-supported militants, serves the same purpose. Through covert operations like the Pahalgam attack, the Pakistani military can reinforce its longstanding objective of portraying India as an existential threat, thus cementing its role as the primary protector of Pakistan’s sovereignty and its religious identity.

The Army’s ideological and economic interests have always put the civilian population in a catch-22 situation vis-à-vis the political establishment, further bolstered by its control over substantial business enterprises (the “Milbus”), which includes making confectionary products and manufacturing self-loading rifles (SLRs), which ensures that any peace with India threatens to erode its power.

The Pahalgam attack, in this context, highlights how the Pakistani military, unable to resolve internal instability — both in terms of security and economic crisis — resorts to external provocations to deflect attention and maintain its grip on power. In essence, the Pakistan army is grappling with a double whammy. First, its declining geostrategic relevance in the South-Asian region after the US withdrawal, and second, in the face of the ascendance of militant attacks by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and TTP inside the country, erodes its credibility as the ultimate protector of the country.

India’s Strategic Dilemma

The present situation in Pakistan presents a strategic dilemma for India. Even diplomatic overtures are fraught with the risk of undermining efforts by the Pakistani military to preserve its political and economic dominance.

Since the 2016 deadly Uri attack and especially after the 2019 Pulwama, the threshold for retaliation has been stepped up to cross-border intrusions or air strikes. So far, India’s response has been limited to non-military means and diplomatic pressures on Pakistan.

However, a more stern and tactical military action seems possible even though it’s challenging and might disrupt the status quo ante that has prevailed in this decade.

Given the outpouring of emotions and angst among the common public coupled with political rhetoric, it will be hard for the government to act below the last two retaliations. How far an Indian military response will be effective in deterring the Pakistan army’s approach towards India is very difficult to ascertain, given Pakistan’s domestic political landscape. A state of constant hostility towards India serves the Pakistan army’s interest.

China remains another layer in this dilemma. China has extended unstinted support for Pakistan after this incident, labelling Pakistan its ‘all-weather strategic cooperative partner” and advocating for an “impartial probe” into the attack, which in effect questions India’s assertion of Pakistani involvement in Pahalgam and such attacks elsewhere in Kashmir.

This stance is in conformity with China’s long-standing support for Pakistan on Kashmir, complicating India’s efforts to isolate Pakistan diplomatically. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Pakistan’s Dy. Premier Ishaq Dar has criticised “unilateralism” and “hegemonic policies”, expressions directly addressed to India.

A highly likely military escalation with Pakistan risks diverting resources from the Indo-Chinese border, risking diverting resources where the challenges to disengagement persist. China’s massive investment in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) limits India’s options to isolate Pakistan diplomatically, as was the case in the Kargil conflict of 1999.

India’s dilemma lies in navigating a multiple crisis on its borders and neutralising Pakistan-based terrorism while avoiding actions that could embolden China’s territorial, economic and diplomatic assertiveness. The Pahalgam attack has laid bare India’s regional strategy, requiring a delicate balance between deterrence, diplomacy and economic pragmatism to overcome China-Pakistan’s opportunistic collusion.

Amitabh Singh teaches at the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Ankur is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.