Drones Over the Home Front: Civilian Fear Signals and National Identity Narratives in the India–Pakistan May 2025 Crisis
Karadeniz Technical University, Türkiye
Abstract
In May 2025, India and Pakistan fought what several analysts and journalists
described as the first drone war between nuclear-armed states. This paper asks a
specific question: how did the language used to frame drone conflict during that
month shape civilian fear signals and national identity narratives in the two
countries? The aim is not to establish what happened on the battlefield but to
explain what the framing did. Drawing on ontological security theory and using
structured qualitative content analysis of a purposively selected corpus of 29
sources (official statements, media reports, and policy analyses from both sides),
the study codes 144 units across five code families and identifies ten recurring
patterns. The findings are consistent and specific. Listing many drone-targeted cities
dispersed risk into everyday geography and unsettled the spatial routines that make
ordinary life feel secure. Shoot-down counts and procedural ceasefire talks
performed state competence while keeping the sense of threat high. Unity and duty
language turned the crisis into a test of collective identity. Civilian-protection claims
hardened enemy images by casting the other side as a danger to ordinary people.
Sovereignty and counter-terror frames recast drone events as proof of lawful
nationhood. The paper's contribution is to show, in a case that existing drone
scholarship has not examined, how a new weapons technology reshapes the
language through which states narrate fear and belonging during acute conflict,
and to argue that fusing security claims with identity claims raises the political cost
of de-escalation independently of the military situation. All claims are treated as
narrative evidence, not operational fact, and elite framing is not equated with public
opinion.
Keywords
How to Cite
Syed Saqlain Hussain Naqvi. (2026). Drones Over the Home Front: Civilian Fear Signals and National Identity Narratives in the India–Pakistan May 2025 Crisis. The Rest: Journal of Politics and Development, 16(2), 312–329.
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