Islamabad, Pakistan – Four days after a May 10 ceasefire pulled India and Pakistan back from the brink of a full-fledged war following days of rapidly escalating military tensions, a battle of narratives has broken out, with each country claiming “victory” over the other.
The conflict erupted after gunmen killed 26 civilians in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, on April 22. A little-known armed group, The Resistance Front (TRF), initially claimed responsibility, with India accusing Pakistan of backing it. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised retaliation, even though Pakistan denied any role in the attack.
After a series of tit-for-tat diplomatic measures between the neighbours, tensions exploded militarily. Early on the morning of May 7, India fired missiles at what it described as “terrorist” bases not just in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, but also four sites in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
In the following days, both sides launched killer drone strikes at each other’s territory and blamed one another for initiating the attacks.
Tensions peaked on Saturday when India and Pakistan fired missiles at each other’s military bases. India initially targeted three Pakistani airbases, including one in Rawalpindi, the garrison city which is home to the headquarters of the Pakistan Army, before then launching projectiles at other Pakistani bases. Pakistan’s missiles targeted military installations across the country’s frontier with India and Indian-administered Kashmir, striking at least four facilities.
Then, as the world braced for total war between the nuclear-armed neighbours, US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire, which he claimed had been mediated by the United States. Pakistan express gratitude to the US, even as India insisted the decision to halt fighting was made solely by the two neighbours without any third-party intervention.
Since the announcement, both countries have held news conferences, presenting “evidence” of their “achievements”. On Monday, senior military officials in India and Pakistan spoke by phone, pledging to uphold the ceasefire in the coming days.
However, analysts say neither side can truly claim to have emerged from the post-April 22 crisis with a definite upper hand. Instead, they say, both India and Pakistan can claim strategic gains even as they each also suffered losses.
Internationalising Kashmir: Pakistan’s gain
The military standoff last week – like three of the four wars between India and Pakistan – had roots in the two countries’ dispute over the Kashmir region.
Pakistan and India administer different parts of Kashmir, along with China, which governs two narrow strips. India claims all of Kashmir, while Pakistan claims the part India – but not Islamabad’s ally China – administers.
After the 1971 war between India and Pakistan, which led to the creation of Bangladesh, New Delhi and Islamabad inked the Simla Agreement, which, among other things, committed them to settling “their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations”.
Since then, India has argued that the Kashmir dispute – and other tensions between the neighbours – can only be settled bilaterally, without third-party intervention. Pakistan, however, has cited United Nations resolutions to call for the global community to play a role in pushing for a solution.
On Sunday, Trump said that the US was ready to help mediate a resolution to the Kashmir dispute. “I will work with you both to see if, after a thousand years, a solution can be arrived at, concerning Kashmir,” the US president posted on his Truth Social platform.
Walter Ladwig, a senior lecturer at King’s College London, said the latest conflict gave Pakistan a chance to internationalise the Kashmir issue, which had been its longstanding strategic goal.
“Islamabad welcomed mediation from a range of countries, including the US, framing the resulting ceasefire as evidence of the need for external involvement,” Ladwig told Al Jazeera.
By contrast, he said, India had to accept a ceasefire brokered externally, rather than ending the conflict on its own terms.
Sudha Ramachandran, the South Asia editor for The Diplomat magazine, said that Modi’s government in India may have strengthened its nationalist support base through its military operation, though it may have also lost some domestic political points with the ceasefire.
“It was able to score points among its nationalist hawkish support base. But the ceasefire has not gone down well among hardliners,” Ramachandran said.
Highlighting ‘terrorism’: India’s gain
However, analysts also say the spiral in tensions last week, and its trigger in the form of the Pahalgam attack, helped India too.
“Diplomatically, India succeeded in refocusing international attention on Pakistan-based militant groups, renewing calls for Islamabad to take meaningful action,” Ladwig said.
He referred to “the reputational cost [for Pakistan] of once again being associated with militant groups operating from its soil”.
“While Islamabad denied involvement and called for neutral investigations, the burden of proof in international forums increasingly rests on Pakistan to demonstrate proactive counterterrorism efforts,” Ladwig added.
India has long accused Pakistan of financing, training and sheltering armed groups that support the secession of Kashmir from India. Pakistan insists it only provides diplomatic and moral support to Kashmir’s separatist movement.
Planes down may be Pakistan’s gain
India claimed that its strikes on May 7 killed more than 100 “terrorists”. Pakistan said the Indian missiles had hit mosques and residential areas, killing 40 civilians, including children, apart from 11 military personnel.
Islamabad also claimed that it scrambled its fighter planes to respond and had brought down multiple Indian jets.
India has neither confirmed nor denied those claims, but Pakistan’s military has publicly shared details that it says identify the planes that were shot down. French and US officials have confirmed that at least one Rafale and one Russian-made jet were lost by India.
Indian officials have also confirmed to Al Jazeera that at least two planes crashed in Indian-administered territory, but did not clarify which country they belonged to.
With both India and Pakistan agreeing that neither side’s jets had crossed their frontier, the presence of debris from a crashed plane in Indian-administered territory suggests they were likely Indian, say analysts.
The ceasefire coming after that suggests a gain for Pakistan, Asfandyar Mir, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera. “Especially, the downing of the aircraft confirmed by various independent sources. So, it [Pakistan] may see the ceasefire as being better for consolidating that dividend.”
Muhammad Shoaib, an academic and security analyst at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, called India’s strikes against Pakistan a strategic miscalculation. “Their reading of Pakistan’s ability to hit back was flawed,” he said.
Ludwig, however, said it would be a mistake to overstate the significance of any Pakistani successes, such as the possible downing of Indian jets. “These are, at best, symbolic victories. They do not represent a clear or unambiguous military gain,” he said.
Further reach across border may be India’s gain
In many ways, analysts say that the more meaty military accomplishment was India’s.
In addition to Kotli and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, Indian missiles on May 7 also targeted four sites in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous state and the country’s economic nerve-centre.
Over the next two days, India also fired drones that reached deep inside Pakistani territory, including major Pakistani population centres such as Lahore and Karachi.
And on May 10, Indian missiles hit three Pakistani airbases that were deeper in Pakistan’s Punjab than the Indian bases Pakistan hit that day were in Indian territory.
Simply put, India demonstrated greater reach than Pakistan did. It was the first time since the 1971 war between them that India had managed to hit Punjab.
Launching a military response not just across the Line of Control, the two countries’ de-facto border in Kashmir, but deep into Pakistan had been India’s primary goal, said Ramchandran. And India achieved it.
Ludwig, too, said that India’s success in targeting Punjab represented a serious breach of Pakistan’s defensive posture.
Will the ceasefire hold?
Military officials from both countries who spoke on Monday and agreed to hold the ceasefire also agreed to take immediate steps to reduce their troops’ presence along the borders. A second round of talks is expected within 48 hours.
However, later that day, Indian Prime Minister Modi said that the fighting had merely “paused”.
Still, the Stimson Center’s Mir believes the ceasefire could hold.
“Both sides face constraints and opportunities that have emerged during the course of the last week, which, on balance, make a ceasefire a better outcome for them,” he said.
Ladwig echoed that view, saying the truce reflects mutual interest in de-escalation, even if it does not resolve the tensions that led to the crisis.
“India has significantly changed the rules of the game in this episode. The Indian government seems to have completely dispensed with the game that allows Islamabad and Rawalpindi to claim plausible deniability regarding anti-Indian terrorist groups,” he said.
“What the Pakistani government and military do with groups on its soil would seem to be the key factor in determining how robust the ceasefire will be.”
Quaid-i-Azam University’s Shoaib, who is also a research fellow at George Mason University in the US, emphasised the importance of continued dialogue.
He warned that maintaining peace will depend on security dynamics in both Indian-administered Kashmir and Pakistan’s Balochistan province.
Just as India accuses Pakistan of supporting cross-border separatism, Islamabad alleges that New Delhi backs a separatist insurgency in Balochistan, a claim India denies.
“Any subsequent bout of violence has the potential to get bloodier and more widespread,” Shoaib said. “Both sides, going for a war of attrition, could inflict significant damage on urban populations, without gaining anything from the conflict.”
