One year after Operation Sindoor: a ceasefire that holds, a peace that does not exist

On 22 April 2025, a terrorist attack in Pahalgam killed 26 people. Within two days India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, ended visa-free travel and closed the Attari border crossing; Pakistan closed its airspace to Indian airlines and suspended trade. On 6–7 May 2025 India launched Operation Sindoor, missile strikes on nine targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir that New Delhi described as terrorist infrastructure. Pakistan responded with its own strikes, and after four days of exchanges a ceasefire took effect on 10 May 2025. India has maintained that the understanding to stop military action was reached directly between the two countries' militaries; President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed credit for brokering it, a claim India has repeatedly rejected.

More than a year later, the ceasefire has held in the broad sense, but nothing else has been restored. The Indus Waters Treaty — the 1960 World Bank-mediated water-sharing agreement, often described as the world's most successful — remains suspended, with India saying it stays suspended until Pakistan ends terrorism, and Pakistan's defence minister warning that Pakistan would go to war over water security if the suspension is not reversed. There are no diplomatic channels, no dialogue mechanism and no de-escalation protocols between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, according to assessments published around the first anniversary in May 2026.

The fragility was visible in late October 2026, when Pakistani troops were reported to have opened fire on Indian positions in Jammu and Kashmir's Leepa Valley on the night of 26–27 October, with Indian troops retaliating; the incident was described in Indian reporting as the first major ceasefire breach since May 2025, though an earlier reported firing incident in Poonch in August 2025 had been officially denied by the Indian Army. Meanwhile, the conflict analysis organisation ACLED reported new security risks for both security forces and civilians in Jammu and Kashmir as recently as April 2026, reflecting continuing militant activity and cordon-and-search operations.

The anniversary assessments drew a sobering conclusion: the ceasefire holds because both sides fear escalation, not because anything was resolved. The terrorist infrastructure India struck has had a year to rebuild, the water treaty that survived three earlier wars is suspended, and the precedent of third-party mediation claims — which India spent decades resisting on Kashmir — has been set. For students of security studies, Sindoor is a case study in the difference between war termination and conflict resolution: stopping the shooting is an achievement, but it is not a settlement.