India, May 14 -- The rabid speech of Pakistan army chief General Syed Asim Munir on April 16 may have been the green signal for The Resistance Front, a proxy of the Pakistan-based terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), to massacre tourists at Pahalgam. With Munir reiterating that Kashmir was the jugular vein of Pakistan and the unfinished agenda of Partition, the terrorists struck to demolish the normalcy restored in the Kashmir Valley post abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. The plan was to weaken the Union government's argument about a return to normalcy, stall the huge flow of tourists, and keep the Kashmiris economically deprived, disgruntled, and frustrated. The place of massacre was chosen after reconnaissance to ensure that the terrorists could cross over to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), thus ensuring total deniability for their handlers in Rawalpindi. At a time when India's Parliament had passed the Waqf Amendment Act, the terrorists deliberately targeted Hindu tourists after segregating them (24 of those killed were Hindus) in a bid to polarise people on religious lines. The Pahalgam attack was designed to restore the popularity of Munir and his army in Pakistan, which was in decline after a series of reverses in Balochistan and skirmishes with the Taliban over the recognition of the Durand Line as the international border with Afghanistan. It was expected that India's diplomatic and military retaliation would be limited to a firefight including artillery duels across the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir. Rawalpindi did not expect that India would respond in Punjab and Sindh as it believed its declared nuclear capability would act as deterrence and force the international community to intervene to the advantage of Islamabad. Munir's K-Plan was a limited success except that Indian national security planners have been war-gaming military retaliations post-terror strikes for over two years. As many as 35 terrorist camps had been identified in Pakistan and PoK, and they were continually graded on seven parameters for maximum impact. Indian national security planners and the armed forces were prepared for both horizontal and vertical escalation and ready to call Pakistan's nuclear bluff. After the Pahalgam massacre and Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi declaring his intention to avenge the women who had lost their husbands, Indian planners returned to the list of targets and whittled it down to nine terror camps including the headquarters of LeT and the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) at Muridke and Bahawalpur, respectively. Employing strategic deception, with specific target location and precise weapons, the Indian Air Force (IAF) hit the nine terror camps. JeM's Masood Azhar was in Bahawalpur when India struck the seminary, Markaz Subhan Allah, but the missile missed his house. Azhar, a UN-designated terrorist, was seen crying after 11 of his family members were killed. LeT's chief Hafiz Saeed was not present in Markaz-e-Tayyeba when the missile struck the terror factory; India could not target his Lahore residence because of likely collateral civilian damage. Indian security planners were ready for Pakistan's retaliation. Though the Pakistan air force targeted the Indian fighters after being surprised by the scale and intensity of Operation Sindoor on May 7 - the two sides are reported to have downed around the same number of each other's jets, and while India has not denied this, it has reiterated that all its pilots are safe - IAF acquitted itself commendably during the three days of strikes and counterstrikes that followed. It blew up a Chinese HQ-9 air defence system (a copy of the Russian S-300 system) in Lahore and as many as 11 Pakistan air bases were made non-operational following missile attacks on runways and hangers. The hits severely degraded Pakistan's air capability as the latter was short on strategic depth due to the Baloch insurgency and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) offensive in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Pakistan could not move the Rawalpindi-headquartered X Corps from Balochistan to the eastern borders with India due to severe logistics issues, including the Indian missile strike at Nur Khan airbase at Chaklala in Rawalpindi. Munir's problems were exacerbated by the Pakistan army's distrust in its Baloch and Pashtun soldiers; Indian intelligence saw many army posts abandoned once it raised the heat across the LoC and the IAF targeted Pak air defences at forward air bases in Rahimyar Khan, Pasrur, and Bholari. While Pakistan fired Turkish armed drones including Bayraktar, Chinese drones, and Fatah II long-range rockets into India, the Indian air defence served as an effective firewall. No missile or drone reached Delhi or its vicinity even as Pakistani drones unsuccessfully tried to target the Indian S-400 air defence system at Adampur. After India launched the missile offensive against air bases, including Sargodha, Chaklala and Rafiqui, the Pakistan attack folded up and its director general of military operations (DGMO), Kashif Abdullah, sought a cessation of hostilities from his Indian counterpart, Rajiv Ghai, on May 10, in the afternoon. This perhaps took India's military planners by surprise: The speed at which Pakistan folded left them holding the plans for the Indian Navy to target Karachi and IAF to hit more sites. The May 10 understanding reached between the two DGMOs may continue, but the decimation of Pakistan's air and terror capabilities could encourage Munir to join hands with a weak Shehbaz Sharif to keep the electorally popular Imran Khan (currently in jail) out of power. Even though PM Modi has stated emphatically that any future terror attack will be treated as an act of war, Indian security planners have returned to the drawing board as they believe the 87 hours between the first strike and the cessation of hostilities were only the first round of Operation Sindoor. Pakistan's response, Bunyan al Marsoos operation, was a strategic failure. India has made it clear to the global community that talks with Pakistan will be only about terror and the vacation of PoK. Given India's move to exit the Indus Waters Treaty, Munir's thirst for an Islamic war has raised the spectre of a water war in Pakistan....