The airstrike incident
The Balakot strike (2019) was conducted by Indian airplanes on February 26, 2019, in Balakot, Pakistan against an alleged terrorist training camp. Open source satellite imagery has revealed that no targets of consequence were hit. The following day, Pakistan shot down an Indian warplane and took its pilot prisoner. Indian anti-aircraft fire downed an Indian helicopter killing six or seven airmen on board, their deaths receiving perfunctory coverage by Indian media. India claimed that a Pakistani F - 16 fighter jet was downed, but that claim has been shown to be false.
The airstrike was used by India's ruling party to bolster its patriotic appeal in the general elections of April 2019. The airstrike was conducted by India in the early morning hours of 26 February when Indian warplanes crossed the de facto border in the disputed region of Kashmir and dropped bombs in the vicinity of the town of Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan. Pakistan's military, the first to announce the airstrike in the morning of 26 February, described the Indian planes as dropping their payload in an uninhabited wooded hilltop area near Balakot. India, confirming the airstrike later the same day, characterized it to be a preemptive strike directed against a terrorist training camp, and causing the deaths of a "large number" of terrorists. Analysis of open-source satellite imagery by the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensics Laboratory, San Francisco-based Planet Labs, European Space Imaging, and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has concluded that India did not hit any targets of significance on the Jaba hilltop site in the vicinity of Balakot.
The following day on 27 February, in a tit-for-tat airstrike, Pakistan retaliated, causing an Indian warplane to be shot down and its pilot to be taken prisoner by the Pakistan military before being returned on 1 March. An Indian Mi-17 helicopter was brought down by friendly fire in which all six airmen on board were killed; this was acknowledged by India on 4 October 2019. The airstrikes were the first time since the India-Pakistan war of 1971 that warplanes of either country crossed the Line of Control and also since both states have become nuclear powers.
On 10 April 2019, 47 days after the airstrike, some international journalists, who were taken to the Jaba hilltop in a tightly controlled trip arranged by the Pakistani government, found the largest building of the site to show no evidence of damage or recent rebuilding.
Who was the target?
There has been ambiguity among the sources as to what the exact target was, and about whether the madrassa – Taleem ul-Quran run by Masood Azhar's brother-in-law, Muhammad Yusuf Azhar, was an active JeM camp or not.
According to WikiLeaks, a 2004 United States Department of Defence interrogation report stated that Balakot had "a training camp that offers both basic and advanced terrorist training on explosives and artillery." In contrast, military analysts asserted that whilst the area used to host militant camps, they dispersed after the 2005 Pakistan earthquake to avoid detection by the international aid groups providing relief in the area.
Indian intelligence sources claim that the camp was located in a hilltop forest, 20 km (12 mi) from Balakot and that it was a resort-style facility, with space and room for 500–700 militants, including a swimming pool, cooks, and cleaners. The New York Times mentioned western security officials of having doubted the existence of such large-scale training camps, asserting that Pakistan no longer runs them and that "militant groups are spread out in small groups around the country".
The local people varied as to the purpose of the facility. In the immediate aftermath of the strikes, whilst some claimed of it to be an active Jaish training camp, others asserted it to have been a mere school for the local children and that such militant camps used to exist far earlier. On later visits by Reuters, the locals claimed that the school had been shut down about a year back and was no longer operational.
How much damage is caused?
Neutral sources have asserted that the munitions dropped by Indian warplanes appeared to have hit several trees in a wooded area but caused no other damage, nor any casualties in the area where the attack took place.[excessive citations] Some Western diplomats also stated that they did not believe Indian Air Force had hit any militant camp. Western security officials have cast doubt over Indian claims and asserted that there are no longer any such large-scale militant camps in Pakistan.
India has asserted that "a very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and groups of jihadis," who were preparing for launching another suicide attack targeting Indian assets, were killed. Indian media reported that the camp was leveled, and about 200–350 JeM militants were killed though the exact figures varied across media houses. The National Technical Research Organisation had located about 300 active mobile phones in the camp; prior to the strike. In contrast, Pakistan asserted that there were no casualties or infrastructure damage as a result of the attack.
Villagers from the area spoke of four bombs striking a nearby forest and field around 3 am, damaging a building, and injuring a local man. Journalists associated with the Associated Press visited the area on 26 February and saw craters and damaged trees. The villagers they met reported no casualties. A team from Al Jazeera visited the site two days after the strikes and noted "splintered pine trees and rocks" which were strewn across the four blast craters. The local hospital officials and residents asserted that they did not come across any casualties or wounded people. The reporters located the facility, a school run by Jaish-e-Mohammed, at around a kilometer to the east of one of the bomb craters, atop a steep ridge but were unable to access it. Reporters from Reuters were repeatedly denied access to the madrassa by the military citing security issues but they noted the structure (and its vicinity) to be intact from the back. The press wing of the Pakistan military had twice postponed scheduled visits to the site. However, on 29 March 2019, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) took journalists to the site where the strike occurred. There were around 375 students present in the Madrasa. Journalists were allowed to interview the students. They were also allowed to take photos and record videos of the site.
Satellite data assessments
Satellite data analysis by the Australian strategic policy Institute's Nathan Ruser concluded that there is " no apparent evidence of more extensive damage and on the face of it does not validate Indian claims regarding the effect of the airstrike. "
Michael Sheldon, a digital forensic analyst from Atlantic council did another independent investigation on the issue which asserted that no damage was inflicted to any infrastructure around the target site. It concluded that "something appeared to have gone wrong in the targeting process" and that the botch-up was mysterious in light of the autonomous nature of the supposedly used missiles. A Reuters investigation based on high-resolution satellite imagery by Planet Labs noted an unchanged landscape when compared to an April 2018 satellite photo. It noted that "there were no discernible holes in the roofs of buildings, no signs of scorching, blown-out walls, displaced trees around the madrasa or other signs of an aerial attack". Even higher quality imagery, taken from the WorldView-2 satellite, was later also analyzed by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and showed "that all three weapons missed by similar (but not identical) distances" suggesting "that the misses were caused by a systematic targeting error".
European Space Imaging also provided a high-resolution image of the site where the strike took place. The satellite imagery was from 27 February 2019, a day after the strike took place. The image showed that buildings were unharmed and there was no sign of casualties at the site. Managing director Adrian Zevenbergen claimed that "there were no signs of scorching, no large distinguishable holes in the buildings, and no signs of stress to the surrounding vegetation".
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