Noreen Niazi Calls Pakistan’s Bluffs, Operation Sindoor Marked Pakistan’s “Battlefield Failures”
NEW DELHI, July 20: Pakistan’s narratives of “victory” over India during the “Operation Sindoor” in May last year has been exposed by one of its senior politician, Noreen Niazi, the sister of the detained former prime minister Imran Khan.
In an interview, Ms Niazi said the Pakistani military fabricated a “victory narrative” around India’s Operation Sindoor to cover battlefield failures. She said the four-day conflict did not unfold the way Pakistan’s generals and leadership portrayed it to the public. She said India’s Operation Sindoor was a massive success and the Pakistan Army was trying to hide its defeat.
The remarks have rattled Pakistan’s establishment. Within hours, the country’s National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) summoned Niazi over alleged dissemination of “false, offensive and inflammatory” social media content targeting the military and state institutions.
“You have been found to have disseminated false, offensive and inflammatory social media content to defame state institutions and spread fake narratives,” said the notice. Niazi made two explosive claims without offering evidence. First, she alleged that India deliberately held back from further escalation due to a “tacit understanding” linked to Israel.
According to her, the episode was aimed at facilitating Islamabad’s entry into the Abraham Accords as Pakistan moved toward recognising Israel. Pakistan is among several countries that do not recognise Israel as a state and does not have diplomatic relations with it. The Abraham Accords are a series of agreements brokered by the US in 2020 which established diplomatic, economic and security ties between Israel and several Arab nations, including the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.
Second, she said the military engagement which the Pakistani establishment termed Maarka-e-Haq was stopped from spiralling after US President Donald Trump personally intervened to provide a face-saving exit for the Pakistani leadership. Leaders of the ruling PML-N government strongly condemned her remarks, arguing they undermined Pakistan’s interests.
(Manas Dasgupta)
