India has launched a retaliatory strike against the Pakistan-based groups responsible for a terrorist attack in Indian Kashmir two weeks ago.

The Indian government released a press statement announcing that the armed forces had launched Operation Sindoor in the early hours of 7 May. The operation targeted terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. According to the Indian government, nine terrorist sites were hit.

The government also noted that it has engaged in a ‘focused, measured and non-escalatory’ manner to ensure that the strikes were controlled. The statement also outlined that India exercised ‘considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution’ and didn’t target any Pakistani military facilities.

After the strikes, India briefed the US, British, United Arab Emirates and Russian governments.

The strikes were retaliation for a terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Indian Kashmir, in which 25 Indians and one Nepali civilian were killed. Previous major terrorist attacks in Kashmir in 2016 and 2019 targeted Indian security forces. The Pahalgam attack, however, specifically targeted civilians, resulting in widespread anger in India and leading the government to respond.

According to initial reports, the Pahalgam terror attack was carried out by the relatively unknown Kashmir Resistance Front, which India maintains is a proxy for the better-known Pakistan-backed terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba. While it is unclear which group was responsible, the fact that it was a Pakistan-based group—with extensive support from Pakistan military—is undisputed.

This is not the first time that India and Pakistan have engaged in such clashes. In the past decade, India has suffered two major terrorist attacks resulting in retaliatory strikes against Pakistan. For a long time, India has struggled to develop an effective response to Pakistan’s use of cross-border terrorism as a state policy. Such attacks are clearly designed to keep India off-balance, but India’s response has also slowly become harsher.

Traditionally, India hasn’t responded with military force. The December 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi led to a military mobilisation, but no clashes. In 2008, the Indian government ruled out any military response to the terrorist attack on Mumbai. But the September 2016 Uri terrorist attack, which targeted an Indian army infantry base and killed 18 Indian soldiers, led to a change in India’s response. This attack came in the wake of another major terror attack in January 2016 on the Indian air force base in Pathankot. After two major strikes, the Indian leadership was presented with a dilemma, and it responded with what was called a ‘surgical strike’—a commando attack—on Pakistani terror hideouts.

In 2019, India suffered another major terrorist attack in Pulwama, killing dozens of Central Reserve Police Force personnel. This showed Pakistan escalating the strikes, not only in scale; it was also an escalation in messaging, considering the bold, open claim by Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based terrorist group, that it carried out the terror strikes. Worried that its 2016 surgical strikes didn’t have the necessary deterrence effect, India escalated, launching air strikes on a terrorist base in Balakot, Pakistan. This was the first time that Indian combat planes had attacked Pakistani territory since the 1971 India-Pakistan war.

This radical shift was the result of India’s conclusion that non-military measures were having no effect on Pakistan. India had previously responded to terrorist attacks with diplomatic punishment, including curtailing talks or limiting diplomatic interaction with Pakistan. In addition, New Delhi usually sought international diplomatic pressure to constrain Pakistan. Such policy measures failed to change Pakistan’s policy on state-sponsored terrorism. India’s lack of effective and forceful options led Pakistan to dangerously misread India’s possible responses.

Now that India has carried out retaliatory strikes on Pakistan, there is a strong likelihood that Pakistan will respond in some limited fashion to satisfy its domestic constituency. But it is highly unlikely that the two sides will intentionally escalate the current crisis to a prolonged series of clashes.

Though both states are nuclear-armed powers, nuclear weapons are unlikely to play any direct role in these clashes. Nevertheless, given their proximity to one another, one cannot rule out escalation dynamics. Pakistan will likely try to leverage this, invoking such scenarios to put international diplomatic pressure on India. This may have worked in previous conflicts, but as tensions heighten globally, foreign powers are unlikely to be as invested in talking the two sides down.