It began not with a warning but with a missile. On the morning of May 7, 2025, India launched Operation Sindoor which was an air and missile campaign that tore into Pakistan-administered Kashmir. It was not a response. It was not justice. It was a calculated act of unprovoked aggression against a sovereign state, dressed up in the language of counterterrorism. The targets were not just military installations. Civilian homes, mosques, and critical infrastructure were struck. Twenty-six Pakistani civilians, including women and children, were killed. And among the ruins, a child’s body was pulled from the wreckage of Bilal Mosque in Muzaffarabad. The world gasped, but only for a moment.
India claimed its strikes were precise, aimed at those it held responsible for the April 22 Pahalgam attack that killed 26 Hindu tourists. But to this day, no public evidence has been presented. The Resistance Front retracted its initial claim of responsibility. US Congressman Brad Sherman has openly stated that India lacks proof linking Pakistan to the attack. Yet, instead of investigation, New Delhi chose escalation. Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval rushed to frame the assault as preemptive self-defence. In reality, it was a breach of international law and an outright act of war.
Pakistan responded, invoking jus ad bellum – its right to defend itself from armed aggression. According to security officials, Pakistan’s air defences downed five Indian aircraft and one Heron drone that had entered its airspace. The Heron, supplied by Israel, is no reconnaissance toy. It is built for war. Pakistan’s counteroffensive was limited to Indian military positions, yet even then, three Indian civilians lost their lives. This is the nature of modern warfare – unpredictable and indiscriminate, once the first line is crossed.
But let’s be clear – India crossed it first. Not in reaction, not in defence, but in pursuit of a narrative. It weaponized the tragedy in Pehalgam to justify an assault that had more to do with political optics than national security. And it did so knowing the region sits between two nuclear powers, knowing the human cost would be immense. This was not a defensive measure. This was aggression. And aggression, under international law, is a crime.
The strikes hit three mosques, damaged an ambulance, and crippled parts of the Neelum-Jhelum Hydropower Project – a critical source of electricity in Pakistan’s north. These were not hardened militant bases. These were protected sites under the Geneva Conventions. India’s claim of surgical precision is contradicted by footage from the ground. Civilian infrastructure was not collateral. It was the target.
Friendly nations have taken note. Azerbaijan and Turkiye have come out in support of Pakistan. Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry condemned India’s strikes ‘We condemn military attacks against the Islamic Republic of Pakistan that killed and injured several civilians’, calling for the protection of civilians. Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke by phone on Wednesday with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to convey his solidarity after India hit Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir with missiles, the Turkish presidency said.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation condemned India’s actions unequivocally, reaffirming its long-standing support for the right of self-determination of the Kashmiri people under international law. China, while urging restraint, called the strikes “regrettable” and emphasized the need to avoid unilateral military escalation. Yet key Western powers, including the United Kingdom and Israel, either quietly endorsed India’s narrative or remained pointedly neutral. The United States, despite its influence and previous involvement in Kashmir-related diplomacy, has issued only muted statements urging “both sides to de-escalate” – a phrase that erases the distinction between aggressor and victim. These asymmetries in global response underscore a recurring problem: in international politics, the weight of a violation often depends not on the severity of the act but on the identity of the actor. Some states commit breaches and are sanctioned. Others do so with impunity.
India’s actions mark not just a political escalation, but a legal one. By launching air and missile strikes across the Line of Control and into Pakistan-administered territory, India has unilaterally violated Pakistan’s sovereignty – a direct breach of Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. The Indian government has justified the strikes under the guise of counterterrorism in response to the April 22 Pehalgam attack, yet no verifiable evidence has been publicly shared linking the attack to Pakistani actors. The lack of substantiation means the action fails to meet the threshold for anticipatory self-defence under international law, which demands both necessity and immediacy. In essence, India has set a dangerous precedent – normalizing cross-border strikes on the basis of allegation alone.
This shift is not just strategic; it is structural. By framing its aggression through a counterterrorism lens, India is attempting to blur the line between non-state actors and state responsibility. Such conflation has been criticized by jurists and rights advocates, as it enables states to target foreign territory without accountability. Moreover, the reported use of Rafale fighter jets, acquired from France and equipped with precision-guided munitions, suggests a calculated effort not only to strike deep into civilian-populated zones but also to test the limits of international tolerance. The targeting of civilian infrastructure – including the Neelum-Jhelum Hydropower Project, a protected asset under Article 56 of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions – raises serious concerns about proportionality and distinction, two cornerstone principles of International Humanitarian Law.
The economic reverberations of this escalation are also telling. Bloomberg reported a sharp uptick in the stock prices of Indian and Chinese defence firms in the immediate aftermath of the strikes. While ordinary citizens face the consequences – airspace closures, rising fuel costs, food shortages in border areas – arms manufacturers and defence conglomerates enjoy windfall profits. Companies like Dassault Aviation, which produces the Rafale jets used in the operation, stand to gain materially from each new round of escalation. This is the perverse logic of conflict capitalism: when diplomacy is side-lined, the weapons industry steps in.
Pakistan, for its part, has framed its limited retaliation within the framework of jus ad bellum, the legal doctrine governing the right to self-defence. The downing of five Indian aircraft and an Israeli-origin Heron drone was described by Pakistani officials as a targeted response to incursions launched from Indian airspace. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif reiterated that the Pakistani response aimed to neutralize immediate threats and to signal deterrence without crossing into a broader war posture. India has denied these losses, except for acknowledging a single aircraft crash near Srinagar – illustrating the fog of information warfare that now surrounds even the basic facts of this conflict.
Beyond the battlefield, the propaganda war rages. Indian media and social media platforms have been flooded with jingoistic memes, doctored footage, and unverified claims, amplifying a single narrative while suppressing independent scrutiny. This distortion extends to everyday discourse. In drawing rooms and digital spaces, instead of meaningful dialogue, there is now a culture of passive interrogation – people ask questions not to understand, but to reinforce their biases. “Then why were mosques hit?” “What about the terrorists?” These are not inquiries but rhetorical shields. When presented with evidence, such individuals pivot or disengage. This epistemic dishonesty – confirmation masquerading as curiosity – has hollowed public understanding and allowed falsehoods to gain the veneer of truth.
Yet the legal and moral stakes remain unambiguous. This is not a grey-zone conflict. This is a clear violation of the foundational norms that govern state conduct. Sovereignty, proportionality, and the principle of distinction between combatants and civilians are not optional values – they are binding principles that uphold the international order. If India’s actions are left unchallenged, they risk legitimizing a model of cross-border aggression based solely on internal claims, without independent verification or multilateral oversight. Today it is Pakistan. Tomorrow it could be any state whose adversary feels justified by unproven suspicion.
Pakistan’s call for an independent investigation into the Pehalgam attack and its restrained military posture must not be misconstrued as weakness. It is, in fact, a reaffirmation of international law at a time when the laws of war are being cynically bent. The damage done to Muzaffarabad’s Bilal Mosque and to civilian energy infrastructure will not be easily forgotten. Nor should it be. These are not only tactical violations but moral ones, and they demand accountability.
Ultimately, this is no longer about Kashmir alone. It is about the rules of the game – who gets to follow them, who gets to break them, and who pays the price. If the world chooses silence over justice, it becomes complicit in what follows. The stakes are not regional. They are global.
