After the horrific massacre of civilian tourists in Pahalgam by Pakistani terrorists on April 22, India has adopted several new templates to deal with cross-border terrorism and its sponsors. Before delving into the new templates, let this be known that soon after the gruesome Pahalgam incident, the terrorists belonging to The Resistance Front (TRF), a well-known proxy of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), had given away their identity. TRF took responsibility for this macabre incident. But after some communications with LeT headquarters in Muridke (near Lahore), which was intercepted in India, it tried to disown this responsibility.

The new retaliatory templates adopted by India after the Pahalgam incident were based on our previous experience of dealing with cross-border terrorism. For many years, India’s military response to cross-border terrorism had been to strike at the posts of the Pakistan army and the Rangers which facilitated the infiltration of terrorists into India. Although sporadic cross-border activity was undertaken by the Indian army (including some during my tenure), there was no political mandate or sanction to do so.

The first paradigm shift in such operations took place after terrorists attacked the Uri military camp on September 18, 2016, in which 19 soldiers were killed. On 29 September 29, 2016, the army retaliated with shallow surgical strikes on terrorists’ launch pads. This was our first politically sanctioned proactive strike across the LoC.........

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