There are moments in a nation’s life that define its destiny. In the early hours of May 10, 2025, the Pakistani air force, army and navy unleashed Operation Bunyan-un-Marsoos under the banner of Marka-e-Haq – the “battle of truth.”
What followed was a cascading storm of Fatah-series missiles and loitering munitions that struck dozens of Indian military targets; neutralising BrahMos depots, S-400 batteries and command headquarters from Adampur to Srinagar.
As per Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), planners described a “textbook demonstration of integrated tri-services jointness,” with real-time situational awareness and network-centric coordination across air, land, sea and cyber domains. Pakistan’s armed drones hovered over New Delhi and other cities, while cyber teams crippled Indian command systems. The operation, while calibrated to avoid civilian casualties, amounted to an overnight dismantling of the Indian defence system.
The operation, while calibrated to avoid civilian casualties, amounted to an overnight dismantling of the Indian defence system.
Military historians will parse these details for years. What matters for politics is that Pakistan’s response was more than revenge. It was doctrine in motion. The British American Security Information Council (BASIC) observed that Islamabad’s joint force response was among the most extensive conventional operations in decades. Analysts similarly noted how the armed forces integrated air, land, cyber and space assets, reflecting operational maturity that belied stereotypes of a cash-strapped military. Pakistan’s navy kept maritime surveillance while drones and fighters prosecuted targets inland. This was not the blundering bravado of a cornered state. Rather May 2025 would go down in history books as a calibrated exhibition of cross-domain deterrence, executed with what one military source called “disciplined escalation control.”
India’s political leadership had claimed that its Operation Sindoor would create a “new normal” in which standoff strikes would be risk-free. Prime Minister Narendra Modi told supporters that Indian forces would “strike deep” and “grind our enemies to dust.”
When the dust settled, however, New Delhi found itself seeking third-party mediation as Pakistani missiles illuminated the night sky. According to countries around the world, India’s mischaracterisation of the Pahalgam attack and its subsequent strikes may have served domestic political goals but backfired diplomatically. Instead of dictating terms, Indian officials watched as foreign mediators restored a ceasefire and as Islamabad internationalised the narrative. The image of an Indian government reduced to slogans and buzzwords while its military installations burned was not lost on Pakistanis or on global audiences.
Elsewhere, in a rare public endorsement, U.S. President Donald Trump credited Pakistani Army Chief Munir with averting a nuclear war. During a news conference in December 2025, he said Pakistan’s chief and prime minister had told him he had “saved 10 million lives” and referred to Munir as “my favourite field marshal”. At an October peace summit in Egypt, Trump publicly thanked Munir and placed him beside world leaders. Analysts have since then linked this rise directly to the May conflict, observing how the victory allowed Pakistan to reset its relationship with Washington after years of mistrust.
The shift in Pakistan’s strategic fortunes was most visible in 2026 when the United States and Iran found themselves on the brink of a broader war. With shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz threatened and rocket exchanges between U.S. forces and Iranian proxies escalating, Islamabad offered its capital as neutral ground. Pakistani officials have since then worked frantically to narrow differences between Tehran and Washington, coaxing both sides to prepare for a second round of talks in Islamabad. Field Marshal Munir’s three-day visit to Tehran produced a temporary ceasefire in Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon and a short-lived breakthrough on opening Hormuz.
A diplomatic source told the scribe that Iran trusted Pakistan more than Geneva or Vienna because Islamabad commands the confidence of most permanent members of the UN Security Council and is uniquely placed as the only Muslim nuclear state.
The new role was not without constraints. Pakistan’s economy remained fragile.
Still, Joshua White, a former White House official, remarked that Pakistan had been “sophisticated and obsequious” in engaging the Trump administration, making use of Washington’s personalised decision-making. Elizabeth Threlkeld of the Stimson Centre has already pointed out that Pakistan’s stock in Washington rose not only because of its performance against India but also because of its willingness to join Middle Eastern peace initiatives and sign a defence pact with Saudi Arabia. Islamabad’s challenge now is to translate newfound prestige into sustainable economic reform.
Why does this story matter beyond South Asian rivalries? Because Marka-e-Haq upended lazy assumptions about Pakistan being a reactive, narrowly sectarian state. When India’s leadership treated casualties in Pahalgam as justification for a punitive show and cast Pakistan as the eternal suspect, Islamabad responded with a multi-domain operation that stunned military analysts. When Indian media sought to spin the conflict as a testament to New Delhi’s will, Pakistan turned the narrative into a test case of international law and deterrence. The crisis also showed that middle powers can leverage military precision into diplomatic agency. Most importantly, it forced a re-examination of India’s status as an emerging superpower: strategic autonomy looks less convincing when your adversary’s missiles are cratering your runways and a ceasefire is brokered by outsiders.
Writing closer to home, a nation long caricatured as an international problem child, now being described as the “adult in the room” is more than a rhetorical upgrade. It is an opportunity to reshape its place in the world–one masterstroke at a time.
The writer is OpEd Editor (Daily Times) and can be reached at durenayab786 @gmail.com. She tweets @DureAkram.