Pakistan is paying the price for not taking the off-ramp that India graciously offered – Firstpost

In an extraordinary counterattack on the intervening night of May 9 and 10, India
struck three Pakistan Air Force (PAF) bases in Murid, Rafiqui Shorkot and the Nur Khan base at Rawalpindi a logistic hub for the PAF and also the
headquarters of Pakistan army. The attacks were carried out with clinical accuracy.

Footage indicates that these bases, deep inside Pakistan, were struck with air-to-surface missiles, sending shockwaves throughout Pakistan.

Before the carnage, earlier around 2050 GMT (2.20 AM IST) Pakistan’s army spokesperson confirmed that India has fired six ballistic missiles but levelled a bizarre accusation that all the missiles bar one fell in Amritsar itself, a clear attempt at stirring up communal discord within India while keeping the domestic audience confused and in the dark. Gripped by panic at India’s offensive, the Rawalpindi generals seemed to have lost the plot.

Alongside, there were reports and several
unconfirmed video clips of Islamabad city and Islamabad airport taking
visible damage,
drone attack on
Lahore Jalalpur Jattan, Sheikhupura, Narwal and Sialkot.

Drones visible in the night sky at Sialkot of Pakistan’s Punjab earlier tonight. pic.twitter.com/Y8pZB4kkn9

— Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) May 9, 2025

It is important to underline that India’s move to strike military targets deep inside Pakistan was an act of retaliation. New Delhi showed considerable patience and was forced to match Pakistan’s provocations after withstanding a barrage of drones and UAVs for two consecutive nights that targeted India’s civilian areas as well as military installations.

India, that had been controlled and calibrated in its aggression all through Operation Sindoor, was forced to escalate due to two distinct developments.

One, consecutive nights of drone and UAV rain from Pakistan. On Friday night alone, Pakistan’s drone swarm rained over 26 locations ranging from the Baramulla in the North to Bhuj in the South, along both the International Border and the LoC, according to a statement by India’s ministry of defence. While the swarms were intercepted through kinetic and non-kinetic means, several locations including Baramulla, Srinagar, Avantipora, Nagrota, Jammu, Ferozpur, Pathankot, Fazilka, Lalgarh Jatta, Jaisalmer, Barmer, Bhuj, Kuarbet and Lakhi Nala came under attack.

One armed drone, according to reports, targeted a civilian area in Ferozpur resulting in severe injuries to members of a family.

Second, Pakistan, in a fit of hubris, made an audacious attempt to strike India’s Sirsa Air Base under Western Air Command with a Fatah-II long range surface-to-surface missile that was successfully intercepted and destroyed by India’s missile defence system, possibly through Barak-8. The Pakistani long-range missile was headed towards New Delhi.

Amid the fog of war it is impossible to clarify whether Pakistan attempted one ballistic missile attack or several (as some have
claimed) but it is clear that Pakistani attacks, whether drones on missiles, were all successfully neutralized by India’s integrated air defence system as I type this piece.

However, the extensive damage that Pakistan suffered in India’s massive counter-offensive – unconfirmed reports say multiple blasts were heard across Pakistani air bases leading to several casualties with flagship Nur Khan base suffering extensive damage – make it imperative for the Rawalpindi generals to attempt escalation dominance.

In this day and age, millions of mobile phones make controlling of information nearly impossible. We are perhaps looking at a full-scale war between two nuclear-armed adversaries.

At the time of writing, Pakistan has already launched Operation ‘Bunyan ul Marsoos’ against India possibly compelled by strong domestic pressure to attain a face-saver. In the meth-fuelled dream that Pakistan’s all-powerful military sells to Pakistani polity, Rawalpindi khakis are an impregnable force of macho men who habitually dominate ‘weak’ Indians.

Obviously, that supernatural force cannot be seen to be taking a beating from the “Mudi regime” in Hindustan. It is a measure of the bubble of delusion that Pakistani generals reside in that they declined several off-ramps offered by India and chose to climb the escalation ladder.

On Friday evening, the MEA press conference carried an unmistakable signal that India was willing to let things slide if Pakistan did not provoke India any further. The night before, Pakistan attempted to strike a number of military targets in northern and western India including Awantipura, Srinagar, Jammu, Pathankot, Amritsar, Kapurthala, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Adampur, Bhatinda, Chandigarh, Nal, Phalodi, Uttarlai, and Bhuj, using drones and missiles, according to India’s ministry of defence.

These attacks were neutralised by India’s Integrated Counter UAS Grid and Air Defence systems. In reply, India took out Pakistan’s air defence radars at different locations while making it clear at the presser that “Indian response has been in the same domain with same intensity as Pakistan. It has been reliably learnt that an Air Defence system at Lahore has been neutralised.”

When asked about India’s response to Pakistan’s provocations, foreign secretary Misri said at the presser on Friday evening that India “has already given an appropriate response”. It was as honorable an exit as Pakistan Army chief Asim Munir was likely to get. It suggested that unless Pakistan escalates further, India won’t.

The trouble with Pakistan that it cannot de-escalate unless it is able to show to its qaum that it has landed the final punch, a favour that India is in no mood to extend. As Pakistanis launch their operation to wrest the upper hand, they have already lost two fighter jets in a dogfight and the war is under way.

This is a war that India didn’t want but was imposed on it. This is a war that India didn’t begin, but will finish. Down to the bloody end.

The writer is Deputy Executive Editor, Firstpost. He tweets as @sreemoytalukdar. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.