The spark for the recent conflict between India and Pakistan was a terrorist attack on the Indian side of Kashmir on April 22. India pointed to its neighbor’s history of sheltering terrorist groups and initiated a cross-border military campaign.
It quickly escalated into four nights of clashes in which the two countries hit deeper into each other’s territory than at any time in half a century, and that was unprecedented in how the use of new-generation technology created a dizzying escalation in the skies.
While the damage on both sides will take weeks and months to tally, particularly in a space of media blackouts and extreme disinformation, here is what we know about how the clashes played out.
The First Shots
In its opening round of airstrikes, before dawn on Wednesday, India struck targets deeper inside the enemy territory than it had in decades, and by all accounts hit close enough to facilities associated with terrorist groups that it could claim victory.
It quickly became clear, though, that it had not been a clean strike but more of a protracted engagement between the two air forces — each side’s jets going at the other, with the boundary between them as a line that neither crossed. And India lost aircraft in the exchanges, including at least two of its most advanced fighter jets.
The toll from the strikes was conflicting. India’s defense minister told a parliamentary briefing that they had killed “100 terrorists.” Pakistan put the death toll of India’s initial strikes around 30.
The Escalations
On the second day, as a diplomatic push for an off-ramp intensified, India said it had thwarted a Pakistani attempt overnight to hit military targets across a dozen border cities and towns. In response, it had taken the kind of action that analysts say almost always escalates a conflict: It struck sensitive military targets, particularly air defense systems in the Pakistani city of Lahore.
“A move like that is quite strident and would have concerned Pakistani forces, because in other contexts, taking out air defenses is a prelude to more serious action,” said Kim Heriot-Darragh, a strategic and defense analyst at the Australia India Institute. “You’d knock out defenses to open a corridor through which aircraft could fly and strike their actual target.”
Diplomats and analysts are uncertain about just how the events of early Thursday morning played out, but it is clear that something major had changed and was seen as an important shift in the pattern of escalation. Whether Pakistan was using a mass of drone incursions and missiles to actually try to hit India’s military sites or just to warn India and probe its air-defense systems for something bigger later is still unclear.
Pakistan’s astonishing official response — a complete denial that it had done anything on the second night — left two explanations for the events: that it was just a probing mission that Pakistan did not want to distract from the actual retaliation that was coming, or that it was an initial retaliation that had not succeeded.
But India nonetheless took the opportunity to damage crucial Pakistani military sites, and with that all bets were off. Pakistan vowed it would retaliate. The only way the escalation could be arrested was the way it had always been: with an outside power stepping in to tell both sides to knock it off.
Alarm Over Strategic Sites
On the nights of Friday and Saturday, the situation escalated rapidly to an air war with few holds barred, but in which ground forces had not been moved.
Pakistan launched an immense campaign of drone and missile strikes, targeting military bases across several Indian cities — this time with clear acknowledgment from the Indian side that not only was there damage to some bases and equipment, but also that it had lost security personnel.
There was clear evidence that India had also managed to create damage on the Pakistani side, targeting air fields and more defense systems, and also striking near one of Pakistan’s crucial strategic headquarters.
What alarmed the United States, and intensified the diplomatic push for the cease-fire that was announced late on Saturday, was not only that the two sides were increasing strikes to sensitive sites but also just what the next step in a rapid escalation ladder for two alarmed nuclear powers could mean.
What Is Ahead
While the scores are still being tallied, and damage assessed, the four days may have fundamentally changed the reality of conflict in this part of the world toward noncontact warfare: barrages from a distance until the very last stages of battle, but still leading to escalation and the potential loss of restraint.
The abundance of new-generation technology, particularly cheap drones and loitering munitions, might initially suggest more precision targeting and less human cost. But in this latest India-Pakistan conflict, those technologies still prompted a cycle of escalation that led to concerns that the use of nuclear weapons could be put on the table.
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