At the crack of dawn on May 10, Zakir Hussain had just one prayer on his lips -- that he be able to rescue his young children from the intense Pakistani shelling targeting his village of KheriKeran.
Located in the Bantalab area, approximately fourteen kilometres from the Kanachak sector of the India-Pakistan international border, KheriKeran falls in one of the transitional zones where the international border begins to give way to the Line of Control. Zakir's home was among those hit as over thirty shells rained down on the village, which lies deep in the interiors.
The 45-year-old sadly would go on to become one of at least twenty-one civilians killed in the cross-border shelling, with most casualties reported south of the Pir Panjal range. The escalation followed the launch of Operation Sindoor, a retaliatory military campaign initiated by India in response to the terrorist attack in Pahalgam, which claimed the lives of twenty-six civilians.
The intensity of the shelling was not confined to forward posts.
In the interior region of Surankote in Poonch district, around 25 kilometres from the LoC, Pakistani shelling reached unprecedented levels. Residential buildings sustained significant damage and civilian injuries rose. Among the wounded was a young girl with a fractured rib caused by shrapnel.
Even more heart-wrenching was the story emerging from Kulani village in Poonch near the Line of Control, largely ignored by national media. There, a young couple mourned the loss of their 12-year-old twins, Zoya and Zain, who were killed in the shelling on May 10. These accounts reflected the unseen and underreported dimensions of the current crisis.
While strategic analysts and political commentators focus on military maneuvers, international posturing and diplomatic fallout, the human toll has been dangerously overlooked. In the wider discourse on the India-Pakistan military confrontation, these ground-level tragedies deserve far more attention.
A clinical, dispassionate bottom-up assessment of the four-day crisis is essential, not merely to understand the operational dynamics or strategic calculus, but to reflect on the lived experiences of border residents. Their stories must be central to any credible evaluation of the conflict, lest policy be shaped by distortion, political expediency, or selective empathy.
Poonch bore the brunt again
First, the toll of at least fifteen civilian deaths in Poonch during the recent India-Pakistan military escalation raises urgent and uncomfortable questions. No other region experienced casualties on this scale. Poonch town, a historical settlement nestled along the Line of Control (LoC), has once again borne the brunt of cross-border hostilities.
Historically, Poonch was a princely state (or jagir) under the suzerainty of the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir. Though subordinate to the Dogra rulers, it enjoyed a notable degree of internal autonomy. Its strategic location rendered it geopolitically significant.
In 1947, with the first India-Pakistan war, the state of Poonch was bisected by the newly-drawn ceasefire line, which would later become the LoC. Since then, the town has remained one of the most vulnerable civilian centers in any India-Pakistan military flare-up, both for its geography and its tragic geopolitical inheritance.
Anyone familiar with Jammu and Kashmir's topography and the cycles of crisis knows that Poonch is among the worst exposed. Sitting in a low-lying bowl, surrounded by Pakistan-held heights, the town is perilously positioned.
Having observed intermittent border tensions for over four-decades, I was nevertheless struck by the sheer absence of civil preparedness this time. If retaliation, such as Operation Sindoor, was on the table, why weren't defensive precautions in place? Why were no functioning civilian bunkers available? Why was civil defence not preemptively activated? Locals are asking these very questions, and rightly so.
A crisis of this magnitude demands more than military precision. It demands comprehensive protection for civilian populations who are routinely caught in the crossfire. The failure to implement even the most basic protective measures reflects a chronic governance gap: an inability to map known vulnerabilities and build resilience along the LoC.
This is not a matter of hindsight. In 2020, budgetary allocations were reportedly announced for the construction of civilian bunkers across border regions, including in Poonch. Yet, during the recent shelling, civilians were left to scramble for shelter in open fields and fragile homes. A local legislator has flagged this disconnect between financial outlays and on-ground execution as a damning indictment of administrative lethargy.
Civilian safety cannot remain an afterthought in India's crisis response playbook. Military deterrence is only one half of national security; the other half is the ability to safeguard the lives of one's own citizens. As this crisis has once again shown, India's border management remains heavily militarised but insufficiently civilian-focused. Until that balance is corrected, vulnerable regions like Poonch will continue to pay the price.
Drone warfare puts civilians at greater risk
Second, the risk to the civilian areas that had always been prone to any military escalation has enhanced. From Pakistan's Sialkot district, targeting Jammu plains, the highest number of drones were launched along the entire 2,175-kilometer stretch of the India–Pakistan International Border. In one such incident, a drone dropped payloads that led to the deaths of three security personnel, including two from the Border Security Force and one from the Indian Army.
Except on the last day when there were a surfeit of drones in Srinagar, this crisis moved the spotlight squarely to the south of Pir Panjal, where hundreds of drones were sighted in civilian sites in the plains. This is significant not just for its geography, flanked as it is by the Pakistani Punjab, but also its military footprint, housing the Indian Army's Northern Command and the 16 Corps headquarters, among other critical assets. Jammu was always an operational frontline, susceptible to precision probes and symbolic strikes aimed at testing both India's military preparedness and its political resilience.
There is a lesson as is also evident in the last few years as the bulk of the infiltration has taken place from the plain international border and not Line of Control. The recent India-Pakistan confrontation revealed something far more consequential: a quiet but profound shift in the logic of conflict in South Asia. Unlike other global battlespaces, such as the Ukraine-Russia conflict, where drones have primarily targeted military assets, South Asia's densely populated civilian zones present a far greater risk of collateral damage. In this region, drones hovered over a hospital, religious sites and homes, raising the specter of tragic consequences. The targets, often near sensitive civilian and military node, suggest prior mapping and surveillance. Whether for intelligence gathering, psychological pressure, or strategic messaging, these maneuvers signal a doctrine of ambiguity: applying pressure without crossing the threshold of full-blown war.
Pakistan's lack of strategic depth
Three, the recent escalation has reaffirmed a long-standing structural vulnerability in Pakistan’s security architecture: its lack of strategic depth. Islamabad, the country’s political and military nerve center, lies a mere 100 to 120 kilometers from the Line of Control (LoC), depending on the sector referenced. In strategic terms, this means the capital is well within range of Indian cruise missiles and advanced fighter platforms. This geographical proximity amplifies the stakes during crises, compelling Pakistan to react swiftly and often pre-emptively to perceived Indian military posturing. In contrast, New Delhi benefits from a more buffered geography, sitting significantly farther from the international border and LoC, thus enjoying a greater margin of strategic insulation. This asymmetry in spatial vulnerability introduces a degree of imbalance in crisis decision-making, wherein Pakistan must weigh the risk of decapitation far more immediately than its eastern neighbor. The May 10, 2025 missile strike on PAF Base Nur Khan by Indian cruise missiles with damage to the runway further underscored Islamabad’s exposure.
Situated adjacent to the capital, the base is a cornerstone of Pakistan’s air mobility and strategic command, housing critical refueling and VIP transport assets. The targeting of such a high-value installation was not only militarily precise but symbolically assertive. It served to communicate a clear message: India retains the capability to reach Pakistan’s strategic heartland without crossing the nuclear threshold. For both countries, these dynamics are not new. But what the present crisis illustrated is how geography, deterrence theory, and technological advances in stand-off weapons are converging to make future South Asian confrontations more compressed in time and space. The window for political signaling is narrowing with Pakistani capitals and command hubs within striking distance.
The crisis, which primarily involved force projection, is likely to drive up defence spending in South Asia, as both countries seek to address their capability gaps. Pakistan’s dependence on Chinese-supplied weapons is expected to deepen, while some Western countries and Israel are likely to support India’s efforts to further accelerate its military modernization. At the same time, while success stories such as the air defence system that was able to intercept the majority of Pakistani drones and missiles will be built upon, serious discussions are expected within defence circles about whether certain Western-supplied hardware failed to meet operational expectations.
Lastly, this brings to the question of narrative as the recent India-Pakistan crisis led to collapse of reliable information. Media on both sides issued exaggerated, often contradictory claims that crowded out facts and created a fog through which neither leadership nor the public could navigate clearly. This breakdown wasn’t just a communication failure; it was a strategic liability. In a future conflict scenario, where minutes may separate escalation from catastrophe, the absence of verified information could prove fatal.
In an era of instant communication and real-time verification, narratives disconnected from the site of conflict, particularly those repeated by domestic media, often reinforce entrenched stereotypes but are quickly dismissed by informed global audiences. A credible diplomatic offensive must be anchored in ground realities, shaped by regional nuance, and led by individuals with deep, lived experience of the conflict. This is not the moment for abstract policy commentators, desk-bound analysts, or detached observers offering drawing-room assessments. Data without context, and numbers without narrative, hold little meaning. Such outdated approaches have long been set aside by Western strategic communities, who now prioritize voices grounded in field experience.
The four-day India-Pakistan crisis of May 2025 was not merely a transient flare-up in a historically volatile relationship; it was a revelatory episode that exposed the evolving nature of conflict, deepened humanitarian vulnerabilities, and underscored the systemic lapses in crisis preparedness. While the military calculus and strategic signaling between two nuclear-armed neighbors will continue to attract analytical attention, this crisis must also be remembered for the haunting silence around civilian suffering. From the shattered homes of Poonch to the drone shadows over civilian infrastructure, it was the ordinary lives caught in the crossfire that bore the heaviest cost.
What emerged was not only a glimpse into the new frontiers of hybrid warfare, characterized by precision strikes, drones, and psychological maneuvers, but also a troubling affirmation that civil resilience and information integrity remain dangerously underdeveloped. The absence of civilian shelters, the collapse of verifiable communication, and the growing use of civilian zones for strategic ambiguity are not just operational failures but are policy failures.
(Luv Puri is the author of Militancy in Jammu and Kashmir (Bibliophile South Asia) and Across the Line of Control (Columbia University Press), the latter based on extensive fieldwork in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan.)
