Pakistan's military establishment is visibly unsettled by Discovery Channel's two-part documentary titled 'Declassified: Operation Sindoor', which premiered on 15 August and has since drawn an aggressive rebuttal from Islamabad. The film, featuring Indian military commanders and personnel directly involved in the cross-border strikes, offers a detailed account of the planning and execution of Operation Sindoor — the Indian armed forces' precision campaign launched in response to the Pahalgam terror attack.

ISPR Fires Back

The official Pakistani response came from the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of the Pakistan Army. The ISPR dismissed the documentary as India's own depiction of events and publicly questioned India's claim of 100 per cent operational success. According to Indian officials, the ISPR has been specifically instructed to mount a sustained campaign against the documentary and challenge its authenticity.

'Although it makes no difference to the Indian people, those in Pakistan will once again begin questioning the establishment,' an Intelligence Bureau official said, explaining the rationale behind Islamabad's aggressive pushback.

What the Documentary Exposes

The two-part series delves into the operational mechanics of Operation Sindoor, including the targeting of infrastructure linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and Hizbul Mujahideen — the three terror outfits that, according to officials, bore the heaviest losses. All three groups reportedly lost a significant portion of their infrastructure, including training facilities, headquarters, and key personnel.

Analysts tracking Pakistan say the documentary has 're-opened a wound' that the Pakistani military would prefer to keep buried. 'The experts say that the documentary has just rubbed salt to the wounds. It has hit a nerve centre and once again raked up a sensitive issue,' one official noted.

Pakistan's Post-Sindoor Information War

Indian officials allege that since Operation Sindoor, Pakistan's Army and its intelligence directorate, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), have operationalised a coordinated disinformation campaign against India. Multiple social media handles, reportedly created and managed by Pakistani military and intelligence operatives, have been used to spread fabricated narratives and manipulated visuals aimed at discrediting the Indian armed forces and the Union Government.

'These were aimed at both spreading lies and also trying to demoralise the forces,' an official said. Indian intelligence agencies are reportedly maintaining close surveillance of these handles. The ISPR's latest offensive against the documentary, officials say, is a continuation of this broader information warfare strategy — designed to seed doubt among international audiences about the true outcome of the operation.

The Broader Fallout in Pakistan

Pakistan watchers note that the domestic political fallout from Operation Sindoor has placed the Pakistani military under sustained pressure. The establishment, they argue, faces the difficult task of explaining operational losses not just to its civilian population but also to the very terror groups it has long patronised. The aggressive posture adopted by the Pakistani military in regions including Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), Balochistan, Afghanistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) is, according to Indian officials, a deflection strategy to mask the loss of face suffered during the Indian operation.

As the documentary continues to circulate globally, the ISPR's countermeasures are expected to intensify — making the information battle around Operation Sindoor as contested as the operation itself.