Ajay Basaria, India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan in 2019, claimed how India’s coercive diplomacy in the wake of India’s Balakot attack forced Pakistan to return Wing Commander Abhinandan whose MiG 21 was shot down by the PAF during Operation Swift Retort. The operation was Pakistan’s retaliatory response to India’s Balakot provocation.

In an interview with ANI, Basaria talked about how Pakistani leadership, including PM Imran Khan and General Bajwa, the Army Chief, got cold feet when India threatened to counter the Swift Retort humiliation with a missile attack on Pakistan. 

In his book “Anger Management”, Basaria builds his story around the claim that Pakistan had credible information on “nine missiles India had prepared to launch into Pakistani territory on the night following Operation Swift Retort”. According to Basaria, Modi had termed India’s intended retort to the Swift Retort as “Qatal ki Raat” – the night of killings. Imran Khan, asserts Basaria, tried to contact Modi on the telephone and reassure him about returning the downed Indian pilot. Imran also wanted to add that Pakistan didn’t want to escalate the situation. Modi, writes Basaria, refused to receive Imran’s telephone call.

Some arrogance!

In 2024, near the 5^th Anniversary of India’s strike on an alleged terrorist camp at Balakot, followed by Pakistan’s six retaliatory strikes the next day on India’s multiple military targets, the Indian media came out with and played up a fresh Indian narrative to water down the embarrassment caused by the shooting of Abhinandan’s plane. Pakistan had claimed shooting down two IAF planes, the MiG-21 piloted by Abhinandan, and an SU 30 MKI whose wreckage fell in IOK. What the Indians failed to achieve during the air skirmish on 27 February 2019, they tried to compensate for, five years later, through a reconstructed afterthought wrapped in a cooked-up narrative.

India’s Balakot strike on 26 February 2019, and Pakistan’s response a day later, were caused by the Pulwama incident.

 On 14 February 2019, a convoy of vehicles carrying Indian security personnel on the Jammu–Srinagar National Highway was attacked by a vehicle-borne suicide bomber at Lethapora in the Pulwama district of IOK. India justified the Balakot strike by stating that the IAF conducted it in retaliation to the Pulwama attack. The strike was subsequently claimed to be “non-military” and “pre-emptive” in nature; targeting a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist camp in Pakistan. 

Pakistan responded on 27 February by conducting airstrikes on multiple targets in IOK, including a brigade headquarters and an ammunition depot.  The airstrikes claimed the PAF spokesman, deliberately avoided direct hits and were essentially aimed at messaging the Indian army and air force about PAF’s combat preparedness and capabilities. Indian officials acknowledged that one IAF MiG-21 aircraft was lost. An IAF Mi helicopter was also lost due to a “friendly fire incident”, explained the Indian spokesman. Indians also claimed to have shot down a PAF F-16 aircraft. Pakistan rejected the Indian claim and said that the PAF did not suffer any losses in the dogfight.

 India accuses Pakistan of sponsoring Kashmiri separatists in IHK.  Pakistan counters by holding India responsible for the terrorist activities of the Balochi, Sindhi, and Pashtun separatist outfits operating on its territory. The Indian airstrike on Balakot was not prompted only by its desire to punish Pakistan for its alleged backing of the Pulwama bomber, it had deeper motives. Indian leadership does not say it openly but considers India to have different criteria when interacting with its smaller neighbors. Whereas meddling in internal affairs and destabilizing the neighbors is legitimate for India, it would not tolerate a reciprocal attitude from Pakistan, Bangladesh, or Sri Lanka. As for Nepal, Maldives, and Bhutan, they are simply the duchies of India.

After the Balakot strike, Indian officials and the press declared that such strikes would be the “new normal”. A new normal is a previously unfamiliar or atypical situation that has become standard, usual, or expected. Where did the Indians borrow this idea from?

Keeping in line with its regional ambitions, India justifies its military interventions in its neighborhood, as it did in Sri Lanka.  In 1987, India intervened in the Sri Lankan Civil War by deploying an Indian “Peace Keeping Force”. The Indian intervention in Sri Lanka started with a “Humanitarian airdrop operation” to send food supplies to the Tamil rebels. Operation Poomalai, also known as Eagle Mission 4, was the codename assigned to a mission undertaken by the IAF for airdropping supplies over the besieged town of Jaffna in Sri Lanka on 4 June 1987 to support the Tamil Tigers during the Sri Lankan Civil War.

 For a long time, Indian leadership had nurtured the ambition of imitating Israel by bombing targets located in the territories of its “errant” neighbors”. Israelis do it occasionally by bombing civilian and military targets in Lebanon and Syria. To a lesser extent, the Turkish Air Force also bombs the Kurd separatist hideouts in Iraq and Syria. When the Indians stressed that in the future, bombing targets on Pakistan’s soil would be India’s new normal, they had a covert blessing from the US. However, Pakistan foiled this Indian ambition by counterattacking multiple Indian targets in broad daylight on 27 February 2019. By doing so, Pakistan also sent a message to India that it reserved the right to retaliate in kind.

Pakistan reinforced its stance on its territorial sovereignty five years later when, on 16 January 2024, in response to the drone and missile attacks by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) on Pakistan’s border areas, allegedly harboring anti-Iran militants, PAF, on 18 January, bombed BLA and BLF hideouts in the Iranian Balochistan with killer drones, rockets, loitering munitions, and stand-off weapons.