You can’t just bomb away terrorism

The horrific attack on innocent tourists in Pahalgam on 22 April 2025, which claimed 26 Indian lives, was an unspeakable act of terror that shocked the nation. The public outcry for decisive action was understandable. India’s subsequent military action across the border in Pakistan brought two nuclear armed neighbours to the brink of a full-scale war — till the Trump administration stepped in to broker a ceasefire, after three days of dangerous escalation. (How the ceasefire was won has also unleashed a war of narratives, but let’s put that aside for now.)

The reality we continue to ignore is that terrorism cannot be beaten into submission by military action alone. From Afghanistan to the villages of Nigeria, history offers incontrovertible evidence that military force not only fails to eliminate terrorism but often exacerbates the conditions that enable it to thrive.

The instinct to respond to terror attacks with overwhelming force is human. When innocent civilians are killed, the demand for retribution is powerful and emotionally compelling. However, this understandable impulse has repeatedly led nations down a path that ultimately strengthens the terrorists’ cause rather than weakening it.

The United States’ catastrophic ‘War on Terror’ following the 9/11 attacks provides perhaps the most glaring example of this dynamic. Over two decades, America spent an estimated $8 trillion, toppled multiple regimes and killed countless militants across multiple continents.

Yet the result was not the elimination of terrorism, but its opposite. Al-Qaeda gave way to ISIS, which in turn spawned affiliates across Africa and Asia. The Taliban, supposedly defeated in 2002, now rules Afghanistan again. The lesson could not be clearer: you can kill terrorists, but you cannot eradicate terrorism with bullets and bombs alone.

Pakistan’s own experience with counterterrorism operations offers another sobering case study. Operations like Zarb-e-Azb in its tribal areas in the last decade were launched with great fanfare, promising to eliminate terrorist safe havens once and for all. While these campaigns did temporarily displace militant groups, they also displaced over a million civilians, destroyed entire communities, and deepened the sense of alienation among already marginalised populations.

Today, Pakistan faces a resurgent and very serious threat from groups like the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), proving that military operations without complementary political and economic strategies achieve nothing more than temporary tactical gains at enormous human cost.

The Nigerian government’s decade-long campaign against Boko Haram demonstrates this vicious cycle with clarity. What began as a local insurgency in the country’s northeast has now splintered into multiple deadly factions, including ISIS–West Africa Province (ISWAP), which has expanded its operations across the Lake Chad basin and even employed drones in its attacks.

This is the fundamental paradox of counterterrorism: when States employ tactics that victimise civilian populations, they become the terrorists’ most effective recruiters.

The French experience in the Sahel region of Africa offers another cautionary tale. For nearly a decade, France deployed thousands of troops, conducted countless airstrikes, and spent billions of euros in its counterterrorism campaign against jihadist groups in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. Yet rather than diminishing the terrorist threat, the violence only spread across the region. Local populations increasingly came to view the French forces as occupiers and their own governments as illegitimate puppets.

By the time France withdrew in 2022, the security situation had deteriorated dramatically, with jihadist groups controlling vast swathes of territory and anti-Western sentiment at an all-time high.

This is not to suggest that nations should passively accept terrorist attacks without an appropriate response. States have both a right and an obligation to protect their citizens from violence. However, the historical evidence demonstrates that sustainable security is achieved not through a reliance on military force but from integration of targeted security measures with political and economic strategies that address the root causes of extremism.

The contrast between Sri Lanka and Colombia is particularly instructive in this regard. Sri Lanka’s brutal military campaign against the Tamil Tigers in 2009 succeeded in crushing the organisation, but at the cost of tens of thousands of civilian lives and without addressing the political grievances that gave rise to the conflict in the first place. Today, Tamil alienation remains acute, and the conditions for future violence persist.

Colombia, by contrast, while far from perfect, has made significant progress through its 2016 peace agreement with FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) rebels. By combining military pressure with political negotiations, land reform and reintegration programmes for former combatants, Colombia achieved what years of pure military confrontation could not — a significant and sustained reduction in violence, though a breakaway faction of FARC is still active.

India would do well to heed the lessons of history, which urges that while military retaliation may provide immediate emotional satisfaction, it has limited long-term strategic benefits. Pakistan’s internal instability and its complicated relationship with various militant groups make meaningful counterterrorism cooperation difficult, but it’s not impossible.

India must pursue a multi-pronged approach that includes strengthening its intelligence capabilities to prevent attacks before they occur, using diplomatic and economic tools to pressure Pakistan to crack down on militant groups operating from its soil, and addressing the legitimate grievances of communities within India that might otherwise provide fertile ground for radicalisation.

Terrorism is not primarily a military problem but a political one. The strategy of terror groups is typically to provoke overreactions that alienate civilian populations, delegitimise government institutions and create new recruits for their cause. When countries fall into this trap, they play into the terrorists’ hands. The United States learned this lesson at enormous cost in Iraq and Afghanistan. India cannot afford to repeat those mistakes.

The path of pure military confrontation is seductive because it offers the illusion of decisive action and quick results. But the lessons of the past 20 years are unambiguous: when nations allow themselves to be drawn into cycles of retaliation, terrorists win even when they lose.

India now stands at a crossroads. It can continue down the well-trodden path of escalation that has failed so many nations before it, or it can chart a new course that offers the possibility of lasting peace rather than perpetual conflict.

Ashok Swain is a professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University, Sweden. More of his writings may be read here