India and Pakistan May Have an Offramp After Their Clash. Will They Take It?

For two weeks, as India promised a forceful response to a terrorist massacre that it linked to Pakistan, the only real question seemed to be just how hard it would strike.

The answer came in the wee hours of Wednesday, as India sent jets soaring through the air to hit several sites in Pakistan, and as the Pakistani military mobilized its own fleet to try to shoot the Indian planes out of the skies.

By day’s end, long after the missiles had stopped flying and the killing had come to a close, both sides took stock and found that they had enough to claim victory — or to further escalate the conflict.

India struck deeper into Pakistan than it had at any point through decades of enmity between the two nuclear-armed rivals. The damage by all accounts was extensive, with more than 20 people killed in dozens of strikes across six to nine locations, including in towns long known to harbor terrorist leaders wanted for carnage inflicted on India.

But there was also growing evidence that Pakistan, too, had delivered serious blows. Two or three Indian planes went down on the Indian side of the border, according to Indian officials and Western diplomats, as well as local media reports and eyewitness descriptions. It was exactly what India had hoped to avoid after having suffered a similar embarrassment the last time it exchanged military strikes with Pakistan, in 2019.