Islamabad, May 12 (IANS) India exercised significant restraint during Operation Sindoor last year, targetting high-value terror infrastructures and terrorists across Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) and Pakistan, despite being aware of military assets concealed within civilian areas. Indian forces chose not to target those locations to avoid civilian casualties, underscoring New Delhi’s emphasis on adhering to the laws of armed conflict — a standard Pakistan’s military has repeatedly failed to uphold.

According to a report in ‘Eurasia Review’, in the context of modern conflict, the Pakistani military has developed and refined a troubling operational approach involving the deliberate positioning of lethal weapon systems within the civilian-populated areas.

“This is not an act of desperation or logistical necessity. Evidence gathered over decades of observation along the Line of Control (LoC), as well as during major military operations, strongly suggests that this is a calculated, premeditated strategy — one designed to exploit the moral restraint of the adversary while simultaneously manufacturing a propaganda narrative. The pattern is consistent and unmistakable,” the report detailed.

“Mortars, artillery guns, rocket systems, air defence units, and drone-launch infrastructure have repeatedly been identified as being positioned inside or adjacent to villages, towns, residential localities, schools, and civil airports. The tactic rests on a cynical logic: place weapons among civilians, and the enemy either refrains from striking — thereby allowing these assets to operate with impunity — or strikes and faces the international condemnation that inevitably follows the killing of non-combatants,” it added.

According to the report, when Pakistan launched Operation Bunyan um Marsoos in May 2025, as a response to Operation Sindoor, multiple civilian localities across the country and PoK were converted into active military sites within just a few nights.

It highlighted that drones were launched from sites situated adjacent to civilian zones, including one near a government girls’ high school in the Kotli district of PoK. Using the surroundings of an educational institution as a military launch site, the Pakistani forces’ actions represent not merely a “tactical choice” but a “moral failure of the highest order”.

The report noted that residents of Pakistan and PoK must recognise the grave risk they are being exposed to in such situations.

“Under international humanitarian law, any site actively used for military purposes — whether a village home, a school, or an airport — becomes a lawful military target. The Pakistan Army, by embedding its weapons among civilian populations, is not protecting those civilians. It is placing them directly in the crosshairs of any potential retaliatory action,” it mentioned.

–IANS

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