Nearly three weeks after the end of a brief but intense conflict between India and Pakistan, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has issued a stern warning against future terrorist provocations, reiterating that India will not hesitate to strike back regardless of location.
“If they are deep in Pakistan, we will go deep into Pakistan,” Jaishankar said in an interview with POLITICO during his official visit to Brussels for high-level trade talks with the European Union. The remarks reflect one of the Indian government’s strongest stances on cross-border terrorism in recent months.
“It [Pakistan] is a country very steeped in its use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy. That is the whole issue,” Jaishankar told POLITICO. When asked whether the conditions that triggered last month’s hostilities still existed, he said, “If you call the commitment to terrorism a source of tension, absolutely, it is.”
The conflict erupted in early May following a deadly terrorist attack in an Indian-administered region that claimed the lives of 26 civilians, mainly Hindus. India blamed Pakistan for sponsoring the attack, a charge Islamabad has denied. The clash saw days of missile exchanges and aerial strikes between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, culminating in a ceasefire declared on May 10.
While both countries claimed victory, their versions of events varied. India initially rejected Pakistan’s claims of downing several Indian fighter jets. However, a senior Indian military official later acknowledged aircraft losses without providing specific details. Images circulating online suggested that at least one Mirage and one Rafale — both French-made — had been downed. According to POLITICO, U.S. and French officials indicated Pakistani forces used Chinese technology to take down one of the jets.
Pressed on the aircraft losses, Jaishankar did not confirm specific details but said the matter would be addressed by the appropriate authorities at the right time.
Jaishankar emphasised that Indian air strikes had severely degraded Pakistan’s military infrastructure. “As far as I’m concerned, how effective the Rafale was or frankly, how effective other systems were — to me, the proof of the pudding is the destroyed and disabled airfields on the Pakistani side,” he told POLITICO.
“The fighting stopped on the 10th for one reason and one reason only, which was that on the 10th morning we hit these eight Pakistani airfields, the main eight Pakistani airfields and disabled them,” he said. “And don’t take my word for it, these are images which are available in Google. You can look at those runways and those hangars, which have taken the hit.”
Jaishankar also accused Pakistan of continuing to train and deploy terrorists across the border. “Pakistan is training ‘thousands’ of terrorists in the open and unleashing them on its southern neighbour,” he said.
“We are not going to live with it. So our message to them is that if you continue to do the kind of barbaric acts which they did in April, then there is going to be retribution, and that retribution will be against the terrorist organisations and the terrorist leadership,” he said.
