DeansMusings

I had earlier written about how `unknown gunmen’ were killing off leading figures among Pakistan’s terrorist groups and speculated that RAW was doing things that hitherto were associated only with agencies like Mossad. My reasons for believing that India had contracted out the killing of these high value targets, rather than them falling out with their handlers in Pakistan’s ISI, or inter-group rivalry were: - Several of those killed were among India’s most wanted, protected by the ISI. The loss in morale to the  group was costlier than any gain to the ISI from dispensing with that person. - People across terrorist groups were killed, so it was not as if the ISI was trying to cut one group down   to size. Nor to the groups have a history of inter group killings. - Some of those were low level operatives, but of particular importance to India. For e.g. the abductor     of Cdr. Kulbhshan Jadhav, the person responsible for beheading an Indian soldier etc (who was a...

 I decided to write this after seeing a flood of articles, videos and social media discussion on Operation Sindhoor. A lot of it either focussed on the wrong subject – possible Indian aircraft losses, or does not put the operation in context, or speculates on why we agreed to a ceasefire – with the underlying assumption that Pakistan, or at least its air force, could have been finished off if the conflict had continued. Operation Sindhoor has to be evaluated in terms of its context, what its objectives were, the extent to which they were achieved and what our alternatives were at each stage of the conflict.   Background : In 1991, at the time India started economic reform and Pakistan chose an Islamist path, Pakistan’s GDP was 27% of India’s. At the time of the Kargil war in 1999, it was 20.7% of India. In 2025, Pakistan’s economy is projected to be just 9% of India’s. At current rates of growth, in 2031, Pakistan’s GDP will be 7% of India’s. In other words, India will sta...