ON 22 April 2025 at 1445 hours, Indian Main Stream Media (MSM) halted routine transmissions to report an attack on tourists at Pahalgam, about 90 kilometres from Srinagar in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJ&K).
By 1505 hours, before the operation concluded, an X (formerly Twitter) account followed by MSM channels and prominent media personnel blamed Pakistan.
Within minutes, MSM outlets echoed the allegation and over 500 X accounts soon followed.
Indian media portrayed the attackers as infiltrators targeting non-Muslims, wearing Shalwar Kameez and speaking Pashto.
India announced certain non-military measures, while Pakistan adopted a quid pro quo plus strategy, including airspace closure and declaring suspension of the Indus Water Treaty as act of war.
A critical analysis of the incident exposes alarming concerns: the coordinated blame game, rushed media narrative and broader strategic implications warrant serious reflection by sane and thinking minds.
Pahalgam is about 270 km from Pakistan’s border through the mountainous terrain and about 400 km while travelling through road.
The area is surrounded by forests and isolated from the road infrastructure and can be approached either on foot or through a horse/mule ride especially the last about 20 km.
Pahalgam hosts up to 200,000 religious tourists annually from all across India for the religious pilgrimage.
Since 1993, there have been number of incidents of tourists’ targeting often repeated after every few years resulting in numerous deaths.
At the time of tragic incident, there were about 2000 tourists in Pahalgam.
Despite being a geographically isolated yet religiously significant place with a history of tragic incidents, absence of corresponding security arrangements is a criminal negligence, to say the least.
Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJ&K) is home to 700,000 military and over 200,000 paramilitary personnel for a population of 7 million, resulting in the highest security personnel-to-population ratio globally.
This extraordinary setup has earned IIOJ&K the title of the world’s largest open prison.
Indian security experts claim that multilayered security and intelligence measures are in place to counter ‘terrorism.
’ These measures include continuous satellite imagery, day/night CCTV surveillance, drone monitoring and human intelligence through infiltrators.
On the ground, 900,000 military and paramilitary forces are deployed in multiple layers across borders and rural/urban areas, ensuring a constant security presence throughout the region.
In the presence of such elaborate and stringent security and intelligence measures, appearance of 4-6 alleged ‘terrorists’ through the treacherous mountains and forests on motorbikes (270-400 km) carrying AK-47 assault rifles, remained involved in targeted killing of over two dozen pilgrims for half an hour and could walk away unchallenged and unscathed.
If someone to believe this fairy yet dreadful tale then either attackers were invisible super humans or the entire episode was well planned and well-orchestrated under the watchful eyes of the Indian watch dogs.
And suppose if it was a successful and deep infiltration by the foreign hands, then it turned out to be the serious security and intelligence failure by the third largest military of the world.
Unfolding of post-05 August 2024 events in Bangladesh have added another dimension to the Indian security calculus of two and half front war mantra.
India has lost its over 50 years of geopolitical and geostrategic capital in Bangladesh but also added fragility to the security of its eastern seven sister states which are connected with western India through a 22 km wide Siliguri Corridor.
During his recent visit, Bangladesh’s Dr Yunus’s invitation to China to focus on development of eastern seven Indian States has rung serious alarms bells amongst the strategic community of India.
Modi’s India has been a proven case of being the epicentre and exporting terrorism to the NATO member states and its neighbours.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegations in the parliament against the Indian government’s involvement in the murder of Canadian citizen Nijjar, US Federal Prosecutors’ filing of charges in a New York Court against the Indian government regarding a plot to kill a US citizen on the US soil and expressing of fears by the Sikh nationals in Canada, Australia, Italy, the US and the UK to their governments that Indian authorities may crush their political dissent by killing them, Pakistan’s handing over a dossier to the UN Secretary General regarding Indian spy Commander Kulbhushan Jadhav and arrest of eight Indian navy officers in Qatar on charges of espionage are few such examples.
The list goes on and on and on.
Currently, India has serious territorial and political disputes with almost all its neighbours and overall, India’s neighbourhood first and encirclement of China policies have gone terribly wrong.
India’s attempt to go kinetic against Pakistan in February 2019, badly back fired while the results might be worst this time around.
Moreover, standard play book of Indian strategic community suggests brushing away their security and intelligence breaches and lapses under the anti-Pakistan rhetoric which provides political gains and helps to hood wink the accountability.
These developments alongside India’s three and half front war mantra make a strong casus belli for the Indian deep state to stage a false flag operation to accrue benefits in domestic, regional and global domains.
Nevertheless, over and over again, India has been committing strategic blunders and casting doubts in the minds of its western apologists to review their policy of exceptionalism towards India.
—The writer is a retired officer from the PAF and currently serving at the DHA Suffa University (DSU), Karachi. (xahid31@gmail.com)
