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15 years after the
Kargil war, the Army hasn’t forgotten anything. It’s now better
prepared with its men, machine & surveillance
Dras (Kargil), July 25
The Dras valley, which starts eastwards from the base of Zoji La and located 150 km from Srinagar city, was the epicentre of the 1999 Kargil war. Lost in the wilderness of its rugged surroundings , Dras is a tough place to live and a hard-to-imagine site of India's fourth war with Pakistan when a massive military mobilisation of infantry and artillery units snaked over an arduous mountainous track, crawling to an altitude of 11,649 feet to cross the Zoji La — a pass of blizzards. The people here —believed to be of Central Asian ancestry who speak Balti and Dardi — live a simple life, which has remained unchanged with the changing times. The fight is for survival, to live through a winter which cuts off this region from the entire world and restricts its residents to their thick-walled mud and stone houses. The place is now witnessing the first glimpses of development. It has got macadam roads, a poor cellular network provided by only one service-provider and some slow speed Internet cafes frequented mostly by tourists. Dras has become a transit point for bikers on way to Leh and its handful of motels and eateries serve visitors very basic cuisines. There’s a tourist reception centre with no one at the counter. The only noticeable feature in the town is a signpost which points towards Tiger Hill, the famed souvenir of Kargil war, and eight minarets of four mosques. Nearly 12 km from Dras town is Mushkoh - a narrow valley of wild yellow flowers with a strong enchanting fragrance. Mushkoh valley, also a battle site during the 1999 war, is less than a km wide and nearly 20 km long before the road ends at a forward artillery camp and becomes a no-go zone for civilians. Pak’s attempt to ‘do a Siachen’ on India In the summer of 1999, when the snow had started to melt throwing open the Zoji La, mountainous tracks and a few roads, including the highway to Leh district, an army patrol which was dispatched towards a remote post in Kaksar sector of Kargil district went missing. Soon, the extent of the Pakistani intrusion was revealed and it resulted into the outbreak of the Kargil war. It was Pakistan’s attempt to “do a Siachen” on India by severing the link between Kashmir and Ladakh and forcing a withdrawal from Siachen. India had in 1984 with Operation Meghdhoot wrested control of the glacier. Pakistan had code-named the intrusion by its paramilitary Northern Light Infantry and irregulars into sub-sectors of Kargil district as Operation Badr while India code-named its offensive to retake its lost posts and prestige as Operation Vijay. An intense combat erupted in the high altitude mountainous terrain posing tactical and logistical problem for the Indian Army, which had launched its operations from “a position of distinct disadvantage”. The war, however, ended with the defeat for Pakistan on all fronts: military as well as diplomatic. Fighting a new battle In a parallel world within Dras exists a disciplined and rigorous life of soldiers, who have to acclimatise on several stages before getting stationed on their bases and forward posts. The altitude acclimatisation is the process of allowing the body to get adjusted to low oxygen levels. The soldiers are stationed everywhere in Dras and up to Kargil and further ahead to Batalik to prevent a repeat of 1999, when they had abandoned some forward posts during winter to find them occupied by Pakistani soldiers and irregulars in the summer. Stationed round-the-year on the frozen frontier, the soldiers have to fight extreme weather and inhospitable terrain. “The (major) challenge is surviving and performing in minus 30 to 40 (degrees Celsius),” said a young artillery officer from central India, where winters are hotter than the summers of Dras. Better preparedness In the years of consolidation that have followed the Kargil war, when there was little infrastructure available to support the large deployment of troops, the Army has enhanced its operational capability in the entire area. “We are now better prepared in terms of our surveillance and firepower capabilities. We are better prepared in our training, habitat and reaction capabilities. To sum it all, we have progressed a lot since 1999 and are ready to face any eventuality,” Brigadier Gurbir Pal Singh, a Special Forces officer who is commanding the 56 (Dras) Brigade, told The Tribune. The Army has acquired terrain and task specific weapons and material to meet its “operational requirements” and enhanced the training manual of its soldiers. “A soldier is trained in mountain craft and ice craft. He also gets some special and advanced skills training, primarily to meet all operational requirements which we foresee or which he needs for deployment in this area,” the Brigadier said. After the Kargil war ended, soldiers have remained housed in the forward posts – located at steep ridges of mountains where they face freezing cold, blizzards and a lengthy winter - with no physical linkup with their bases and no contact with the world. The ration and ammunition remains stocked in these posts to survive up to nine months - six months of routine winter and nine in case of a worst case scenario of a more lengthy winter or the outbreak of violent hostilities. “Last winter was severe in terms of the heavy snowfall, but because of our preparedness things went off well. We are preparing for the next winter now,” said the Brigadier.
Modernise infantry As part of the measures to prevent a recurrence of 1999 intrusion, the Army has deployed two divisions - 8 Mountain and 3 Infantry - in Kargil region and raised a new “task and terrain specific” Corps to look after the entire Ladakh region. The two divisions, constituting an approximate number of 30,000-35,000 troops and officers, guard the LoC in Kargil forming a multi-tier defensive grid which can be optimised into offensive formation in case of a need – another war. The Army has also positioned artillery batteries along the LoC at camps located strategically in the shade of mountains — a natural wall of protection from any incoming fire. It has also done massive acquisition of equipment meant for intelligence gathering and operational requirements, the two lacunas that led to the The new armoury of intelligence and operational machinery, brought in after the 1999 war, includes Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, motion sensors, medium and heavy range artillery guns, night vision devices, and special clothing in which a soldier can survive the deadly winters. Lt Gen (retired) BS Jaswal, who was the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Army’s Northern Command from October 2009 to December 2010, told The Tribune that more needs to be done to modernise the infantry. “We have progressed quite a bit (after Kargil war), but the procedures are so bureaucratic that to induct any equipment it takes at least three years. By the time we get the new equipment, it becomes obsolete,” he said. “There is an urgent need to modernise the infantry and equip it as per the requirement. We must simplify procedures. We want something, we must get it, and that, too, fast,” he said. ‘Truce is temporary here’ Somewhere along the highway between Kaksar and Kargil, river Shingu meanders gushingly to north towards Pakistan. A dirt path, 45 minutes of wobbling drive from this bend, ends at an Indian forward post where Pakistani troops are stationed in their bunkers 50 meters away. The details about the exact location and layout are embargoed and so is any reference to the insignia of the infantry company that is stationed at this post complex and the faces and voices of soldiers and officers here. The posts here are the highlight of six-decades of hostility between India and Pakistan as the two armies face each other in an eye-ball to eye-ball position, along the ridgelines of two mountains that meet at the base. The Army captured this point during 1971 war when they were advancing towards Olthing Thang village and had to stop here after the two countries agreed to ceasefire after the fall of Dhaka. In many ways, this post is the close up of the enmity between India and Pakistan. The drive to the post complex, where only authorised personnel are allowed, is a tiring journey. A terse note is written on the first of several sentry posts which is a warning that has become a part of life of this place: “Post ## is on the LoC (Line of Control) and not on the IB (International Border), the ceasefire is temporary and situation may change at any point of time”. Deceptive calm At the LoC, the old Indo-Pak enmity appears more real. There is a ghost village behind the Pakistani posts and its houses are pockmarked with bullet holes, roofs shelled out with no sign of life around. An infantry officer told The Tribune that the Army had allowed to let the civilians live in this village across the LoC as a CBM - Confidence Building Measure. However, none appears to have agreed to settle down. A deceptive calm prevails here. As a reminder to the continued existence of a war that never ended, Pakistani soldiers waved a red flag — an agreed sign of objection at anything unusual happening at the forward post following which the soldiers can open fire — when reporters were visiting this post. “It was a sign of disapproval and a warning to open fire,” a Captain said. The two armies also intercept each other’s communication on the frontier posts. "We hear them talking sometimes that someone is ill and send medicines immediately. Being in the Army you can figure out that they are talking in codes," the officer said. The Army has also built a tunnel, with an elaborate network of ammunition bays, bunkers for rest and machine gun pickets, at this forward post which currently serves defensive purpose. In case the hostilities turn violent, the infantry officer said, the tunnel can be instantly switched to an offensive mode. The lost people Away from the military installations that dot the landscape of Kargil district, lives a population caught in the quagmire of time and space. Mohammad Hussain and his wife Zahra fled from their village Goshan to a safer Kargil town in 1999. “When we returned, much of the village was damaged, all the cattle had died,” Hussain, now in mid-sixties, told The Tribune. Like many in Dras, Hussain and his family of six had escaped the horrors of the war before it unfolded in full fury and fire. But unlike others, the war would come to haunt this family again. In 2003, a few months before Indian and Pakistani ceased trading fire and mortars along the LoC, a shell landed in Goshan, the village near Dras town. It killed Zakir, the 21-year-old son of Hussain. “What can anger do now,” Zahra, Zakir’s mother, said on being asked if she felt angry at the tragedy. The people here have resigned to their fate and occasionally complain about the four-hour power supply they get in the evening. Electricity and mobile phones are the most modern human inventions these people know. It takes a while for these people to think and list their grievances even as children walk several kilometres to school and men and women wait for hours to get a lift from one village to another, which may be separated by one, 10 or 20 km. Fifteen years later, the young men of Dras have no memories of the war and the old vaguely remember it. In a place like this, memories of a war fade away faster as people are busy fighting a battle to survive in the hostile terrain. They, however, are thankful that no more shells land on their houses and disturb their lives.
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