How Pakistan Responded to Operation Sindoor and What Followed

At 1:44 AM on 7 May 2025, India's Ministry of Defence released a statement confirming what the region had feared for two weeks: precision strikes had been executed on nine terror sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The response from Pakistan began almost immediately — and it was going to last much longer.

By the time the sun rose over Islamabad that morning, Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had already gone on camera. His words were unambiguous and delivered with the kind of controlled fury that comes from a leader who knows his every sentence will be broadcast around the world. He called India's action an "act of war." He said Pakistan had every right to give a "befitting reply." He announced an emergency meeting of the National Security Committee for 10 AM. And then he used a word — "cowardly" — that told you everything about the narrative Pakistan intended to build in the hours and days that followed.

This is the story of what Pakistan actually did next. Not the sanitised diplomatic summary, but the real, human, messy, multi-layered response of a nation that woke up to find it had been struck — and had to decide, in real time, how to respond in the most consequential way possible without accidentally starting a nuclear war.

The First Hours: Anger, Claims, and the Question of What to Believe

The morning of 7 May produced a flood of claims from Pakistan's military communications arm, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), that need to be examined carefully — because the gap between what Pakistan claimed and what could be independently verified was significant, and that gap itself became part of the story.

Lieutenant General Ahmad Sharif, the Director General of the ISPR, held a press conference and confirmed that there had been "24 impacts from India on six places." He said eight Pakistani citizens had been killed in the strikes, including a 16-year-old girl, and that 35 others had been wounded. He described the sites struck as civilian in nature, including what he claimed were two mosques.

Then came the contested claims. Pakistan's Information Minister Attaullah Tarar announced that Pakistan's Air Force had shot down three Indian jets and one Indian drone. Hours later, Pakistani broadcaster Geo reported a higher number — five IAF jets downed. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, meanwhile, made the case that India had only hit civilian targets, not the terrorist infrastructure India had named as its objectives.

India flatly denied all of it. India's Air Force confirmed no losses. International intelligence assessments did not corroborate Pakistan's claims about downed aircraft. The question of what happened in the skies over the LoC in those first hours has not been definitively settled in the public domain, and perhaps never will be. But the contested nature of the claims was revealing: both sides understood that the information war — who lost what, who hit what, who was winning — was being fought in real time on television screens and social media feeds around the world.

By the evening of 7 May, the picture was clearer on one point at least: on 8 May, Pakistan claimed to have shot down 25 drones using a mix of defensive systems, suggesting that whatever happened in the first hours, Pakistan was actively engaged in air defence operations for days after the initial strikes.

Defence Minister Asif delivered perhaps the most visceral line of Pakistan's official response that morning: "We will respond with full force. We will pay off this debt in the manner such debt is paid." He added that Pakistan's response would be "kinetic as well as diplomatic," and that it would "not take long."

Shehbaz Sharif and the National Security Committee

The emergency NSC meeting convened at 10 AM on 7 May was one of the most consequential gatherings of Pakistani leadership in decades. Every senior military and civilian figure who matters in Pakistan's security architecture was in that room: the army chief, the air force chief, the naval chief, intelligence directors, and the civilian cabinet members who provide political cover for military decisions.

What came out of that meeting was a posture, not just a decision. Pakistan was going to present itself to the world as the wronged party — the victim of unprovoked aggression by a larger neighbour using a terrorist attack as a pretext. Every public statement, every diplomatic move, every media appearance in the days that followed was calibrated to reinforce that narrative.

Sharif went further with the institutional machinery. State media PTV News reported that Sharif had convened a meeting of the National Command Authority, the body responsible for Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme — a report that caused immediate alarm internationally before Defence Minister Asif clarified that no such meeting had taken place. The back-and-forth about whether the NCA had or had not been convened was itself a form of strategic messaging: Pakistan was reminding everyone, without saying it explicitly.

The ISPR emphasised in every briefing that Pakistan's air defence and retaliatory capability remained intact and warned of a potential "full-spectrum response" if India escalated further. That phrase — full-spectrum — is language that defence analysts read carefully. It is designed to leave the nature of retaliation undefined, creating uncertainty about what Pakistan might actually do. Uncertainty, in deterrence theory, is itself a form of leverage.

What Happened Afterward: Tensions Spread Beyond the Line of Control

Pakistan's military retaliation was real, not just rhetorical. Heavy shelling along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir began within hours of India's strikes. Forward deployed troops on both sides exchanged fire across multiple sectors. Pakistani drones and projectiles began entering Indian airspace — India's air defence systems, including the S-400 and Akash Missile System, intercepted incoming threats, and India's Defence Minister later confirmed that none of India's important assets were destroyed in the Pakistani counter-attack.

But then something happened that changed the intensity of the conflict sharply. In the 24 hours before the ceasefire, India's response to Pakistan's retaliation escalated. Indian strikes hit Pakistani air bases. Runways were destroyed. Hangars were hit. The physical infrastructure of Pakistan's air force at specific locations was damaged in ways that became undeniable.

This is what gives the subsequent Pakistani claims about "victory" their complicated character. At the UN General Assembly in September 2025, Sharif claimed victory for Pakistan in the conflict — a claim that India's diplomat Petal Gahlot refuted with a line that has since become widely quoted: "If destroyed runways and burnt-out hangars look like victory, as the prime minister claimed, Pakistan is welcome to enjoy it."

The ceasefire itself tells the most honest story. At 17:00 IST on 10 May, fighting stopped. It was first announced by US President Donald Trump on social media, and later confirmed by the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers. But the sequence that led to the ceasefire was later confirmed by India's Defence Minister: Pakistan's DGMO had contacted India's DGMO and appealed for a halt to military operations. Pakistan asked for the ceasefire. India agreed. Both sides claimed victory.

The Diplomatic Track: Every Channel Activated Simultaneously

While the military exchange was happening, Pakistan's diplomatic establishment was operating at a pace it had not matched since the Kargil crisis of 1999.

Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar went on X within hours of the strikes, calling them a "flagrant violation of Pakistan's sovereignty, the UN Charter, and international law." He described the action as having "jeopardised regional peace." The language was precise and legalistic — designed to form the foundation of international complaints rather than just express outrage.

Pakistani diplomats moved immediately to summon Indian High Commission officials in Islamabad and formally lodge a diplomatic protest. But the more substantive work was happening in Beijing, Riyadh, Ankara, and New York simultaneously.

China responded quickly and carefully. Beijing called for restraint and offered to mediate — a framing that Pakistan welcomed and India rejected. The Chinese position was, as it often is in India-Pakistan confrontations, calibrated to support Pakistan without overtly condemning India in ways that might damage Beijing's own bilateral relationship with New Delhi. Turkish President Erdoğan expressed support for Pakistan and offered mediation, joining a chorus of voices that Pakistan was actively cultivating. The OIC issued a statement calling for de-escalation.

At the United Nations Security Council, Pakistan's ambassadors pressed for an emergency session and accused India of violating international norms and UN resolutions on Kashmir. The UNSC response was characteristically inconclusive — China raised Pakistan's concerns while Russia and Western nations broadly supported India's right to defend itself against terrorism. No resolution emerged. But the attempt to internationalise the conflict was consistent and sustained.

Pakistan also made a move that was striking for its symbolic weight: it announced the suspension of trade and diplomatic ties with India and threatened to revoke commitments under the Simla Agreement — the 1972 bilateral framework that had governed India-Pakistan relations for over five decades. The Simla Agreement's suspension would have removed the diplomatic architecture that both sides had long used to manage their relationship. In the end, it was not formally revoked, but the threat was made loudly and publicly.

The Media War: What Pakistani TV Was Telling Its People

Inside Pakistan, the media environment that week was unlike anything in recent memory.

ARY News, Geo News, and Dunya TV — the three dominant private news channels — ran wall-to-wall coverage from the moment the strikes were confirmed. Analysts filled screen time with assessments of Pakistan's military response, maps of the LoC, diagrams of claimed jet interceptions, and interviews with retired generals who spoke with varying degrees of certainty about what had happened and what would happen next.

The framing was consistent: India had attacked Pakistan without justification. India's claim that it was targeting terrorist infrastructure was a lie constructed to justify aggression. Pakistan's military had responded effectively and was prepared to escalate if necessary. The term that appeared repeatedly across channels was "Modi's election stunt" — the suggestion that the strikes were politically motivated, timed for domestic Indian political advantage rather than genuine security imperatives.

That framing was not without a domestic audience. Pakistani social media lit up with #IndiaAttacks, #PakArmyZindabad, and #StopIndianAggression within hours. Civilians gathered outside mosques to pray for soldiers. Nationalistic sentiment surged in the way it always does when a nation feels itself under attack — with a mixture of genuine fear, genuine pride, and the kind of collective solidarity that difficult moments produce.

A minority of voices — liberal commentators, academics, retired diplomats — appeared on some channels to urge restraint and warn about the consequences of escalation between nuclear-armed states. They were heard, but not loudly. The dominant register was defiance.

The Nuclear Shadow: How Close Did It Get?

This question hangs over everything that happened in those 88 hours, and it deserves direct engagement rather than being treated as background noise.

Pakistan and India are both nuclear-armed states. Pakistan has a first-use doctrine — it has never committed to not being the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. The Pahalgam-Sindoor crisis was the most intense direct military confrontation between the two countries since Kargil in 1999, and it went further geographically — India struck Pakistani Punjab province, the political and military heartland, not just border territories.

The US administration grew concerned enough about the possibility of nuclear weapon involvement that Secretary of State Marco Rubio began making calls from 4:00 AM PKT on 10 May — the morning of the ceasefire. This was not routine diplomatic management. This was the United States engaging directly because people in Washington were genuinely worried about where the conflict was heading.

The NCA confusion — the state media report that Sharif had convened Pakistan's nuclear authority, which the Defence Minister then denied — was either a miscommunication or a deliberate piece of strategic ambiguity. Either way, it raised international alarm. The message Pakistan was sending, whether intentionally or not, was: we have options you do not want us to use, and we are not sure yet whether we will need to.

That alarm is what brought the United States in forcefully. And Pakistan's decision to allow the ceasefire — to have its DGMO make the call to India's DGMO — was ultimately a decision that the nuclear dimension made inevitable. A conventional military exchange between two nuclear states has an escalation ceiling that both sides understood, even if neither said so publicly.

What Pakistan Claimed After the Ceasefire — and What the Record Shows

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif designated 16 May as Youm-e-Tashakur — Day of Gratitude — in honour of its armed forces. He addressed the nation with language of triumph. Pakistan had defended itself. Pakistan had demonstrated military resolve. Pakistan had proven it could not be intimidated.

At the UNGA in September, Sharif stood before the world and claimed that Pakistan had won. India's young diplomat, deploying a right of reply with devastating economy, pointed to the destroyed runways and burned hangars and invited Pakistan to enjoy its version of victory.

The honest accounting is more complicated than either side's public position. Pakistan inflicted real costs. Indian territory was struck. Civilians in border regions lived through nights of genuine fear. The conflict was not costless for India.

But the military balance of what actually happened — whose air bases were intact at the ceasefire, whose DGMO made the call to stop — is not ambiguous. Pakistan asked for the ceasefire. The physical infrastructure of its air force had been damaged in ways it could not publicly acknowledge without undermining the victory narrative it had already committed to.

A year after Operation Sindoor, a detailed analysis noted that Pakistan's international profile had improved — aided by its warm ties with the Trump administration and the churn in global geopolitics — but that it faced serious ongoing challenges at home. The boost to national morale and international standing from presenting itself as a wronged but resilient nation proved to be one of the more durable consequences of the conflict for Pakistan. Whether that represents a genuine strategic gain is a different question.

What the Response Revealed About Pakistan

Pakistan's response to Operation Sindoor was, by any measure, a sophisticated and multidimensional performance — the word "performance" used here without any pejorative intent, to mean a carefully constructed presentation of national posture across multiple simultaneous stages.

The military response was real and caused real damage. The diplomatic response was rapid and comprehensive. The media management was effective in sustaining domestic morale and building international sympathy in specific quarters. The nuclear messaging was calibrated to deter further escalation without crossing lines that would have triggered global intervention on India's behalf rather than calls for restraint from both sides.

What the response also revealed was the essential tension at the heart of Pakistan's strategic position: a country that is simultaneously claiming to be a peaceful victim of aggression, threatening full-spectrum retaliation, asking its allies for support, denying it harbours the terrorist groups India struck, and managing the risk that its own military actions could escalate a confrontation it has already characterised as potentially existential.

Navigating all of those simultaneous imperatives, in 88 hours, without a catastrophic miscalculation — that is, whatever else one thinks of Pakistan's role in the events that preceded the conflict, a genuine feat of crisis management.

The world did not end. The ceasefire held. Both sides claimed victory. And the subcontinent returned to the particular kind of tense, unresolved standoff that has defined its geopolitics for the better part of eight decades.

A Final Word

On 16 May 2025, when Pakistan declared its Day of Gratitude, citizens in cities across the country gathered, prayed, and told themselves that their country had stood firm and prevailed. In the mosques where soldiers were honoured and on the television screens where generals explained what had happened, a national story was being told — the story of a small country that faced aggression and did not break.

Stories nations tell themselves about their own resilience are not nothing. They shape how people feel about their country, their military, and their future. Whatever the military ledger actually showed, Pakistan emerged from Operation Sindoor with its national narrative reinforced in ways that mattered domestically.

Whether that narrative corresponds to reality, and whether the underlying conditions that led to Pahalgam and Sindoor have changed at all, is the question that neither country's official version of events fully engages.