NEW DELHI, India: As India marked on Thursday the first anniversary since its most serious confrontation with Pakistan in decades, experts said New Delhi’s military response was a failure that isolated the country from the global stage.
The nuclear-armed neighbors saw their worst fighting in half a century last May, triggered by a gruesome April attack near the resort town of Pahalgam in Indian Kashmir, in which 26 people — 25 Indians and one Nepali citizen — were killed.
India had accused Pakistan of backing the attackers, a charge Islamabad strongly denied, leading to intense clashes involving air, drone and missile strikes, as well as artillery and small arms fire along their shared border, until a US-backed ceasefire was announced on May 10, 2025.
India’s Minister of External Affairs, S. Jaishankar, said on Thursday that the country’s military response, codenamed Operation Sindoor, was a demonstration of the “nation’s resolve to defend itself against cross-border terrorism” from Pakistan.
“With its decisive actions, (India) ensured accountability for terrorist actions. And underlined that such a serious threat to peace and security will be effectively countered,” he wrote on X.
Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the country remained “as steadfast as ever in our resolve to defeat terrorism and destroy its enabling ecosystem.”
But political and defense experts told Arab News that India did not gain much from the military operation, despite government claims.
“India has not gained anything militarily and strategically by launching Operation Sindoor,” foreign policy expert N. Sai Balaji said.
“Today, all the blame is being pushed on Pakistan. But who are those people who brought guns and killed those people in Pahalgam? What are those names? Who are those people? We don’t know.”
Maj. Gen. Ashok K. Mehta (retd.) also pointed to Indian military losses during the May conflict with Pakistan, which “have not been transparently admitted” by Indian officials.
“India claims that they have defeated Pakistan, which is not (true), we have not defeated Pakistan. We have only pacified Pakistan,” Mehta said.
“From India’s point of view it was a military success, but it failed to achieve its objective of deterring Pakistan from carrying out cross-border terrorism.”
Indian-administered Kashmir has for decades witnessed outbreaks of separatist insurgency to resist control from the government in Delhi, which accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants since 1989.
Islamabad denies the allegations, saying it offers only moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people in their struggle for self-determination.
Delhi-based writer and journalist Nayanima Basu also said that Operation Sindoor’s objective to “eliminate terror camps has yielded limited results,” with India’s military chief Upendra Dwivedi “himself acknowledging the presence of such groups.”
She highlighted how the specifics of India’s military response last May were “still under wraps” even a year later.
Pakistan’s downing of six Indian jets during the clashes, for example, was only admitted weeks after the fact by Gen. Anil Chauhan, chief of defense staff of the Indian Armed Forces. Though he gave a direct admission, Chauhan still did not specify how many jets India lost.
In the aftermath of the conflict with Pakistan, India also lost its positioning at the global level, while Islamabad gained much ground, especially after it emerged as a key mediator in the US-Israeli war on Iran.
“Pakistan’s success in bringing the US and Iran to the negotiating table, albeit inconclusive, demonstrates its growing clout,” Basu the journalist said.
“India’s failure to win the narrative war has allowed Pakistan to gain the upper hand.”
Balaji, the foreign policy expert, said India has turned into a “marginal” power.
“India is the most isolated country today,” he said. “Diplomatically, we failed to mobilize the world toward India, and it was quite visible … The whole idea to isolate Pakistan through Operation Sindoor as a project … it fails on that principle.”
India should not have gone to war with Pakistan, Balaji added.
“We should have used every other means other than war, to isolate and destroy the funding structures and the terror structures that are impacting the lives of Indians and people … Unfortunately, today, no one can count India as a voice and Operation Sindoor did not change that. It pushed India even to the margin.”
