The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

kargil war 15 years on
The sheer force of blood & honour
The intrusions in the Ladakh area by Pakistan troops 15 years ago had come as a surprise. India responded with increasing strength as it realised the scale of incursion. The troops displayed valour of the highest order in the face of extreme odds to reclaim land and honour. For Pakistan, it was a complete rout — military, political, and diplomatic.
by Dinesh Kumar

THE start was innocuous, sudden and unexpected. On May 3, 1999, Tashi Namgyal of Gharkhun village, together with another shepherd on the payrolls of the Army's Field Intelligence Unit reporting to the Kargil-based 121 (Independent) Brigade, reported that they had seen intruders 'digging in' and 'building sangars' (bunkers) in the higher reaches of a remote portion of Batalik in Kargil district of Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir. The following day, the Brigade headquarters, with no idea of who they were, despatched a patrol party belonging to 16 Grenadiers to investigate. The response was shocking: Four soldiers of the patrol party were killed and five more wounded by the intruders.

Artillery guns being fired about 15 km beyond Kargil. Due to the dependence on artillery, the Kargil War has also been termed as “artillery war” by some.

That sounded the first alarm. Never before other than in a war had an Army patrol been ambushed in this part of J&K. Not despite India's taking of the Siachen Glacier in April 1984 or even since Pakistani sponsored insurgency and terrorism took root in the Kashmir Valley starting from December 1989. In 1997 and 1998, there had, however, been several incidents of shelling by Pakistani artillery guns in a bid to prevent movement of the Indian Army on the strategically important National Highway-1A, or NH-1A, which connects the Kashmir Valley to Leh via the 11,500-feet high Zoji La (Zoji Pass), Dras and Kargil. In addition, Pakistan had also been shelling Kargil town. So there were clear signs that the Pakistani Army was getting restive and upping the ante in the Kargil sector.

But clearly this was something different and more serious. More foot patrols were sent to investigate. On May 8, an Indian Air Force (IAF) helicopter on a reconnaissance mission established the presence of intruders on Tololing, a hill range just 5 km from Dras and a mere 2 km as the crow flies from the national highway. Presuming these to be limited intrusions by elements of the Mujahideen, the Army's Udhampur-based Northern Command on May 11 asked the IAF's Western Air Command to despatch attack helicopters to vacate the intruders. The IAF declined, saying they were inexperienced and unfamiliar with the local terrain while also correctly pointing out that the IAF's Soviet-origin Mi-25 and Mi-35 attack helicopters were incapable of operating at these heights. Yet, nevertheless, the IAF began a series of aerial reconnaissance missions which later became a prelude to their subsequent participation in the war. (See ‘The air was rare, but the IAF’s feat rarer’, Page 12).

On May 12, a day after the Army approached the Air Force, an IAF helicopter was fired upon in the Kargil area but managed to land safely with a damaged rotor. Then on May 14, a patrol party belonging to 4 Jat led by Lieutenant Saurabh Kalia, a freshly commissioned officer, went missing. They had been sent to Bajrang post (Kaksar area) which had been vacated by the Army only two months earlier owing to heavy snowfall. Clearly, this was getting serious. Much later on June 9, Lieutenant Kalia's mutilated body was returned along with those of the missing five jawans. It was then that the Army discovered to their horror that the Indian soldiers had been captured and brutally tortured to death.

But before then, on May 17, pictures taken by an IAF reconnaissance aircraft revealed the presence of a Pakistani military helicopter flying on the Indian side of the LoC in the Kargil area. On May 18, the Army launched an attack to dislodge the intruders from Point 5353, a towering peak that overlooks the national highway. The Army was beaten back and called off the attempt on the morning of May 19.

Two days later, on May 21, a vintage IAF Canberra PR 57 aircraft while flying on a photo reconnaissance mission in the Kargil area was damaged by a Chinese-made Anza surface-to-air missile (SAM). By May 25, a day before the IAF launched air strikes, 29 Indian soldiers had either been killed or gone missing, and 30 more wounded.

By the time Operation Vijay, the name given to the Army's operations, ended on July 26, India had lost 524 soldiers, including six airmen, with 1,363 more Army men wounded, many of who lost their limbs. In contrast, the exact figure of Pakistani casualties is unknown and vary between 357 killed and 665 wounded (as Pervez Musharraf admitted in "Agnipath", the Hindi translation of his book "Line of Fire" written in English); 453 killed, according to Pakistan Army website Shuada's (martyrs') Corner; 2,700 killed, according to Nawaz Sharif; and between 1,600 and 1,700, with 270 buried in India alone, according to General VP Malik, who was the Indian Army chief at that time, in his book "Kargil: From Surprise to Victory".

What was going on

A year earlier, in May 1998, both India and Pakistan had exploded nuclear bombs and declared themselves nuclear weapon states, much to the surprise and condemnation of the West that had been quick to impose sanctions. Both countries took polemic stands against each other. But then less than a year later and just three months prior to the detection of the intrusions, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee became the first Indian prime minister to travel to neighbouring Pakistan in a bus, where on February 21 he signed a major agreement with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that was aimed at confidence building and resolving disputes between what were now two overtly nuclear weapon states with a long history of conflict and hostility. Known as the Lahore Declaration, the agreement had been hailed as path-breaking and acclaimed worldwide much to the relief of the western world, especially the US, which regards the nuclearised South-Asian region as a dangerous flashpoint. The two countries seemed well on the path to a détente. Or so it seemed.

Then what went wrong? Sometime in October 1998, well before the Lahore Declaration was signed, Pakistan Army Chief General Parvez Musharraf, formerly from the Special Services Group (SSG), the army's commando wing, approved an earlier plan involving stealth and deception. The plan, believed to have been first conceived in 1987 when General Zia-ul-Haq, an India baiter, was in power and subsequently refined by Musharraf as director-general, military operations (DGMO), in 1993-94, involved entering the Indian side of the LoC in the Kargil area and occupying the high peaks both overlooking and dominating India's sole line of communication, the NH 1A, linking the Kashmir Valley to Ladakh.

The infamous four

As later revealed, the planning was largely a four-man show. The infamous four who in addition to General Pervez Musharraf planned, plotted and executed Operation Badr, as it was named by the Pakistani Army, comprised the Chief of General Staff (CGS), Lt General Mohammed Aziz; the Force Commander Northern Areas (FCNA), Lt General Javed Hassan; and the General Officer Commanding (GOC) of 10 Corps, Lt General Mahmud Ahmad. Even the DGMO, Lt General Tauqir Zia, learnt of it later. The remaining military leadership was informed about the operation only after it began, by which time the media had begun reporting the intrusions, as subsequently revealed by Lt General Shahid Aziz (retd), who was director general of the analysis wing of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at that time and later became CGS.

The Pakistan Army's move, extremely well planned and carefully executed, succeeded in achieving complete surprise, leaving an ill-prepared Indian Army and intelligence agencies red-faced and pointing fingers at each other. Starting gradually sometime in February and March of 1999, an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 well-armed, trained and acclimatised Pakistan Army soldiers and supported by three to four times more soldiers, most of them from the Northern Light Infantry (NLI) and some from the SSG, had by mid-April intruded 8 to 10 km into the Indian side of the LoC along a 160 km long stretch and established about 130 pickets on peaks ranging from 14,000 to 18,000 feet in the Mushkoh Valley, Dras, Kaksar and Batalik sectors of Ladakh. (See ‘Pakistan planned in advance, in detail,’ Page 13)

The interception

Well into the war, India went on to publicly release a recording of a telephone call between General Musharraf (then on a visit to China) and his CGS, Lt General Mohammed Aziz (in Rawalpindi), first intercepted on May 26 and then on May 29, a day after the IAF lost a Mi-17 helicopter to a shoulder-fired Stinger missile near Tololing (Dras). The call, intercepted and recorded by the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), revealed not only the Pakistani Army's deep involvement but also its sinister designs and recourse to subterfuge and deception.

To state that the terrain in this region is harsh is an understatement. It is dominated by high-altitude peaks touching up to 18,000 feet and ridgelines that exceed 16,000 feet. The terrain is marked by freezing gusts of wind with temperatures plunging as low as minus 50 degrees Celsius in winter in what is essentially a mountain desert. The low oxygen content puts a premium on breathing, makes walking, let alone climbing and running, difficult and carrying heavy weights an agony. Unlike many other high-altitude areas, the mountains in this region loose snow cover rapidly as summer progresses exposing in the process loose rocks that makes climbing arduous. The advantage clearly lies with those who first occupy the peaks and ridges.

On account of the inhospitable terrain and even otherwise, the Pakistan plan was both strategically and tactically brilliant and yet very simple. Had they managed to pull it off, the Pakistan Army would have ended up serving a stunning blow to India. In one stroke they would have gained geographical territory by slicing a portion of J&K, changed the alignment of the LoC to their tactical advantage by cutting off India's vital line of communication between the Kashmir Valley and Ladakh and entrapping Indian troops on the Siachen Glacier, emboldened the terrorist movement in Kashmir and further internationalised the J&K issue.

However, as events subsequently proved, General Musharraf had severely miscalculated and much to his subsequent discomfort did not take into account that the Zoji La opened early because of unseasonal melting of snows and a swifter and more aggressive than expected military action, including employment of air power. Equally significant was the severe disapproval of the Pakistani action by the international community, including the G8 and also, most surprisingly, its close ally, China, which called for a peaceful settlement and, most significantly, respect for the LoC that had been delineated by the two sides following the July 1972 Simla Agreement. It was Pakistan's diplomatically most isolating moment.

Not a first

But then it was also déjà vu. Wasn't this how Pakistan wrested control of 35 per cent of J&K in the first place - by surreptitiously sending 'razakars' and troops into the state in October 1947? In 1965, the similarity was even more stark. As in May 1999, in 1965 too it was a shepherd that had been the first source of information about Pakistan's surreptitious intrusion into the Kashmir Valley. This was the third time that the Pakistani Army had resorted to deceit and stealth in J&K with India being caught off guard each time.

For several weeks, the Army did not realise the gravity of the situation. They learnt as the days rolled on that contrary to their perception, the intruders were regular Pakistani soldiers and not Mujahideen. Many Pakistani Army soldiers, as has been later revealed by Pakistani officers themselves, had been dressed in civil clothes and had cleverly played pre-recorded tapes in Pashtu and Balti language on their radio networks to mislead the Army into believing that the intruders were Afghans and other irregulars. Such was the lack of appreciation of the ground situation that even a fortnight after the first detection, the GOC of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps, Lt General Krishan Pal, held a news conference on May 19 to announce that the intrusion was of a localised nature and would be dealt with locally.

The realisation

Realising that something was seriously amiss, the Army began moving troops into the area. It gradually began to dawn upon the Army, which was in denial mode in the beginning, that the situation was much graver than they initially thought. As realisation dawned, the Army moved in even more troops and artillery guns, most of them the Bofors 155 mm Howitzers, which were to prove to be the most effective and cause sections of the Army to term it an 'artillery war'.

In all, the Army ended up deploying two Divisions that included 42 artillery units, 19 of which were medium and heavy units, comprising a total of about 250 artillery guns, and fired a staggering 2.5 lakh shells, mortars and rockets in the two month long border war with a daily average of 5,000 rounds. Such rates of fire over long periods may be without precedence since World War-II. The IAF, which participated in such high-altitude operations for the first time, flew a staggering 7,631 sorties, including 1,730 sorties by fighter aircraft alone.

Challenges, innovations

Indeed it was a war with many firsts and some extraordinary records. Such a long duration high-altitude war was arguably unprecedented in post-World War-II history. Both the Army and the IAF were instructed by the government to vacate the intrusions without crossing the LoC, a severe constraint in a geographically inhospitable and difficult-to-access area. For the first time, the government authorised employment of the IAF in a limited war that comprised intensive and sustained high-altitude strikes.

It was also for the first time that India and Pakistan fought a war as overt nuclear weapon states, sparking off an alarm among the more powerful western nations. Significantly, it was also for the first time that international mediation worked in India's favour with Pakistan being clearly seen as the aggressor. Nawaz Sharif's historic meeting with US President William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton in Washington DC on July 4 at the former's request resulted in his being told in no uncertain terms to vacate the intrusions. The meeting was preceded by National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra's meeting with his US counterpart Sandy Berger, during which Mishra said India was running out of patience and may need to escalate the war if the intrusions were not completely vacated. Following this meeting, General Anthony Zinni, Commander-in-Chief of the US Central Command, was sent to Islamabad to prevail upon General Musharraf. Eventually, on July 2 Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif sought a meeting with President Clinton. That President Clinton agreed to meet him on July 4, America's Independence Day and a national holiday, reflects the seriousness with which the US government treated the Kargil issue.

Even so, in the end it was not a victory. It was at best restoration of honour and territory by brave soldiers who displayed exceptional valour as they regained lost territory yard by yard, peak by peak at considerable expense - of soldiers and airmen killed and wounded; aircraft lost; guns, ammunition, and other war fighting equipment expended; a huge financial cost and, very importantly, a loss of image of a country that prides in being an old civilisation and which, forever, is seeking its 'rightful place' in the world.

Enemy defeated

For Pakistan, it was an all-round defeat - militarily, politically and diplomatically. Indeed, a serious loss of face and credibility in its own eyes and that of the world community. The Army of a very diplomatically isolated Pakistan was made to bite the dust and retreat at the behest of a not-so-amused international community. Yet the irony is that the architect behind this seriously irresponsible misadventure, Pervez Musharraf, who played rogue and behaved like a cowboy general at the very end of the 20th century, became that country's President after dramatically ousting a democratically elected Nawaz Sharif three months after the war. Even more ironically, a subsequently somewhat chastened Musharraf went on to arrive at an agreement with India to maintain ceasefire along the disputed borders of Jammu and Kashmir just four years later. The agreement continues to be in force, although since 2013 Pakistan has begun violating on occasions and in parts.

The war led to considerable changes being made on the ground and in structures. (See ‘Defences stronger, but concerns persist,’ Page 14). Permanent deployment of the Army in this inhospitable terrain has led to the 'siachenisation' of this 160 km length of the LoC and some changes have been made in the higher defence and border management structure. But changes have been incremental, minimalist and reactive. India will need to forever beware of sections in the Pakistani establishment that harbour compulsive hostility towards India. The question is whether the Indian establishment has learnt and imbibed its lessons? The answer is, probably not.

Factfile

Battleground: About 160 km along the LoC through Mushkoh, Dras, Kaksar, Kargil and Batalik in J&K, at heights up to 18,000 ft

Duration: May-July 1999

Operation names: Op Vijay (Indian Army); Op Safed Sagar (IAF); Op Talwar (Indian Navy); Op Badr (Pakistan)

Reason: Pak troops' occupation of about 130 vacated posts on the Indian side of the LoC

Aim: Pak objective was to interdict the NH-1A, thereby cutting off Ladakh from Kashmir

Result: Pak troops evicted; tactical, diplomatic victory for India

No of troops

India: 2 divisions with seven brigades (about 30,000 troops); 60 combat aircraft

Pak: Four brigades and irregulars (about 5,000 men)

Gallantry awards

Param Vir Chakra 4

Maha Vir Chakra 8

Vir Chakra 51

Battle/theatre honours 23

kargil war 15 years on
The air was rare, but the IAF’s feat rarer
by Dinesh Kumar

Starting from 6.30 am on May 26, 1999, Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter jets carried out six attacks in quick succession. The attack comprised two aircraft each of the Soviet-origin MiG-21s, MiG-23 BNs (since phased out) and MiG-27 Ms. The target was material dumps and supply routes overlooking the Dras, Kargil and Batalik sectors. With this, the IAF had set into motion Operation Safed Sagar, the name given to its air operations.

A page from the diary of a Pakistan Army officer recovered from a captured post.

The only time IAF bombers had carried out high-altitude bombings was in December 1971 when British-made World War-II vintage Vampire jets dropped bombs on Pakistani bunkers in the Kargil sector. But that was a limited operation by relatively slower moving aircraft. But what the IAF did and achieve with all its limitations has been arguably unprecedented in the history of military aviation.

The IAF initially refused to carry out air strikes by helicopters, as demanded by the Army. On May 18, the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) rejected another Army request for air support. It was on May 24 that the CCS authorised employment of air power but with the stringent rider that the aircraft were not to cross the Line of Control (LoC).

This was an extraordinary constraint placed on the IAF (and also the Army). Aircraft would have to fly at a tremendous height over high mountains in only two directions - east to west or west to east - imposing severe limitations on their effectiveness. They could not afford to fly south to north lest they crossed the LoC and risked being shot down, leading to an escalation of the war. Neither did it make military sense. For, it could not degrade Pakistan's war effort by attacking supply dumps located on the Pakistani side of the LoC.

The odds

But that was only one set of limitations. Terrain and altitude posed their own set of constraints. Aircraft were required to fly well above 20,000 feet, as the occupied peaks ranged between 14,000 and 18,000 feet. At these heights air density is 30 per cent less than at sea level. The implications are manifold. It causes the aircraft to carry less payload (meaning bombs and ammunition) than otherwise permissible. It also reduces the aircraft's ability to manoeuvre as the radius of turn is more than what it would be at lower levels. This means an aircraft will need to cover greater distance and therefore take more time while turning. Aircraft speed is also reduced as there is less mass of air entering the engines. All this in turn combines to affect the trajectory and therefore accuracy of weapons. And add to that the fact that targets on mountains are smaller and dispersed over a vast and undifferentiated snow background, and therefore difficult to spot, more so since it flies at high speed. Not an ideal situation for a fighter pilot.

An M17 helicopter firing bunker-busting rockets and a Mirage 2000, which precision-bombed targets.

Yet the IAF was able to launch its operations in less than 48 hours of the CCS authorising air strikes. The reason was that all through the fortnight preceding the beginning of the air strikes, the IAF had been gradually carrying out reconnaissance missions and building a profile of the area. British-made Jaguar aircraft, British-origin Canberra PR57 aircraft and Soviet-origin MiG-25 strategic reconnaissance aircraft (since phased out) had been carrying out tactical photo reconnaissance and electronic intelligence missions.

Loss at outset

The IAF got off to a disastrous start. On May 27, the second day of the air strikes, it lost two fighter aircraft. A MiG-27 M, flown by Flight Lieutenant Nachiketa Rao experienced engine failure soon after a strike mission. He managed to eject with some effort only to be captured by Pakistani Army soldiers soon as he landed. He was later returned. But Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja flying a MiG-21 in the same mission met with an unpleasant fate. While descending low to try and locate Flt Lt Nachiketa's location of landing on ejection, his aircraft was hit by an infra-red surface-to-air missile. He ejected safely, only to be captured and executed. His body was later returned with bullet wounds and clear signs of brutalisation.

The IAF's disastrous start did not end there. The very next day, on May 28, a Mi-17 helicopter was shot down by a heat seeking shoulder fired Stinger missile. The Mi-17, a Soviet-origin transport helicopter, had been retrofitted with four rocket pods each with air-to-ground rockets as these were the only helicopters that could fly at those heights. But these were slow-moving and noisy, which gave the Pakistanis adequate warning time. It so happened that the Mi-17 helicopter in question was the last of a fleet of four helicopters that was returning after carrying out a strike mission and also the only helicopter that had not been configured with a self-protection flare dispenser to draw away any incoming heat-seeking missiles. The incidents was greeted with 'undiluted elation' by the Pakistan Army, as was later revealed by Air Commodore Mohammed Kaiser Tufail (retd), who was then a serving Pakistan Air Force (PAF) officer.

An initially demoralised IAF took several measures and then went on to innovate with some brilliance, as brought out by Benjamin Lambeth in his path-breaking study titled "Airpower at 18,000: The Indian Air Force in the Kargil War" published in 2012. The IAF immediately halted helicopter operations in attack role as they were slow and vulnerable. It equipped all fighter aircraft with flares as a counter-measure to infra-red missiles and directed them to attack from outside the range of shoulder-fired SAMs by maintaining a distance of 6,000 to 8,000 feet from the mountains. This meant carrying out air strikes from 25,000 feet. Even so, over 100 SAMs were fired in vain at IAF aircraft during the conflict.

Click to enlarge photo

All strike missions were thereafter also accompanied by MiG-29 and other air defence fighters to ward off any attack by PAF aircraft. The PAF in turn flew their US-supplied F-16 multi-role aircraft, which, however, maintained a respectable distance of 10 to 12 miles on the Pakistani side of the LoC. These came within an 8-mile distance on a few occasions and there were some isolated incidents of IAF MiG-29s and PAF F-16s locking on to the other with their onboard fire control radars. As Air Commodore Tufail records, the beyond visual range or BVR capability of IAF fighter aircraft served as a major deterrent to the PAF. In all, the PAF recorded 37 'technical violations' of the LoC by the IAF's reconnaissance aircraft, with one incident of an IAF aircraft intruding 13 miles inside Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

As was later revealed, a week into their combat air patrols, the PAF first downscaled and then discontinued F-16 combat air patrols owing to problem of spares due to the post-nuclear test US sanctions. All other aircraft in the PAF's inventory were incapable of interdicting any of the advanced IAF aircraft such as the Mirage-2000s and MiG-29s.

Innovation under fire

The IAF resorted to GPS-assisted high-altitude bombing by MiG-21s, MiG-23s and MiG-27s. Interestingly, only one squadron of the world's fourth largest air force was fitted with GPS (Global Positioning System). So the IAF acquired hand-held GPS sets from the open market and fitted them in the aircraft. It was an ad hoc arrangement that worked.

The most effective innovation was done on the French-made Mirage-2000 multi-role aircraft that the IAF had purchased in the mid-1980s in response to the F-16s supplied by US President Ronald Reagan's Administration to Pakistan in the early 1980s. On May 30, just four days into the air strikes following problems of inaccuracy in strike missions, the IAF decided to induct the Mirage-2000 capable of delivering laser-guided bombs.

The Mirage-2000s were eventually inducted into the war on June 12 after carrying out major innovations. Israeli made Litening electro-optical targeting pods were integrated into the Mirage-2000s (and also Jaguars) and 'married' with US-made 1000-pound Paveway-II laser-guided bombs. The function of the targeting pods is to 'acquire' the target with a laser beam that then serves as a guiding path for a bomb.

The results were instantaneous. On June 17, Mirage-2000s successfully destroyed Pakistan's main administrative and logistics base in Muntho Dhalo in the Batalik sector with the American supplied bombs. The IAF pulverised the supply depot and Pakistani casualties in that area alone are estimated at 300. On June 24, two Mirage-2000s destroyed the NLI's command and control bunker on Tiger Hill using two laser-guided bombs (LGBs), the IAF's first ever firing of these bombs in anger. These were the only two LGBs fired by the IAF during the war which had subsequently led to the Army re-taking Tiger Hill on July 4.

Dare pays off

On June 25, the Mirages continued their bombing campaign targeting 25 places in Dras and Batalik sub-sectors. By July 8, the Army had re-taken 99 per cent of the Batalik-Yaldor sub-sector and 90 per cent of the Dras sub-sector. Aerial strike missions ended on July 12. At the peak of its operations, IAF fighter aircraft, which operated primarily out of Avantipur, Srinagar and Udhampur, flew up to 40 sorties a day in direct or indirect support to the Army.

The IAF's success also lay in preventing the Pakistanis from carrying out helicopter operations, including reconnaissance and casualty evacuation. It also successfully interdicted supplies for Pakistani troops on the peaks and targeted mountain features to create landslides and avalanches to affect Pakistani supply lines. This is acknowledged by Air Commodore Tufail who states "round-the-clock attacks had made retention of posts untenable for Pakistani infiltrators. Photo-recce of Pakistani artillery gun positions also made them vulnerable to Indian artillery". Unprecedented in military aviation history was also the fact that the IAF conducted night operations in moonlight in the high altitude region without modern aids and where radars don't operate.

In all, the IAF deployed 60 frontline aircraft, amounting to a quarter of the Western Air Command's fighter fleet. The PAF then possessed only 26 F-16s, compared to the IAF's 70 MiG-29s, 45 (now 51) Mirage-2000s and 30 (now 198) Sukhoi-30 MKIs. The high-altitude Kargil War has served as a wake-up call for what was an otherwise ill-prepared IAF, leading it to re-writing its doctrine manual first published in 1995, just four years before getting involved in the high altitude war.

Timeline

Feb 20, 1999: PM Vajpayee's historic bus trip to Lahore

Feb 21-22: Pacts signed with Pak to resolve bilateral issues

March 18-19: Foreign ministers meet in Dhaka; agree to hold talks on various issues

May 3: Pakistani intrusion in Kargil reported by shepherds

May 5: Indian Army patrol sent up; five Indian soldiers tortured to death

May 9: Shelling by Pak army damages ammo dump in Kargil

May 10: Infiltration in Dras, Kaksar and Mushkoh sectors

Mid-May: Indian Army moves in more troops to Kargil sector

May 26: IAF launches air strikes

May 27: IAF loses MiG-21, MiG-27; Flt Lt Nachiketa taken POW

May 28: IAF MI-17 shot; four crew dead

May 31: Air campaign intensifies

June 1: Pak bombs NH 1A

June 5: Indian Army releases documents recovered from Pakistani soldiers indicating Pak involvement

June 6: Indian Army launches offensive in Kargil, Dras sectors

June 9: Indian Army recaptures two key positions in Batalik

June 11: India releases intercepts of talks between Pak army chief Pervez Musharraf and Chief of General Staff Lt Gen Aziz Khan as proof of Pak involvement

June 12: Foreign ministers meet in New Delhi; no headway in talks

June 13: Indian Army secures Tololing in Dras

June 15: US President Bill Clinton asks Sharif to pull out from Kargil

June 29: Indian Army captures Point 5060, Point 5100

July 4: Indian Army recaptures Tiger Hill

July 5: Indian Army takes control of Dras; Sharif announces withdrawal from Kargil

July 7: India recaptures Jubar Heights in Batalik

July 11: Pak pulls out; India captures key peaks in Batalik

July 26: Indian Army announces eviction of Pak intruders

Pakistan planned in advance, in detail
Had set up fibreglass-reinforced plaster huts, suggesting a plan for the long haul
Dinesh Kumar

Careful planning and subterfuge assisted Pakistan's intrusion. Pakistani troops were dressed as Mujahideen. Selected officers and men dressed as shepherds and without arms were first sent in small groups for reconnaissance between November 1998 and January 1999. As part of an elaborate deception plan, radio transmissions in languages such as Pashto and Balti were carried out to indicate that Mujahideens were in occupation of these areas. Three specific groups depicted were Al Badr, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Hizbul Mujahideen.

Indian troops with captured Pakistani ammunition. Tribune Photo: Manoj Mahajan

Stocking of supplies probably started by February 1999, using Chitral and Bajaur Scouts with helicopters and snow scooters, followed by physical occupation. This was done gradually over a period as was also training and acclimatisation of troops so as not to alert the Indian side.

Reconnaissance and stores were essentially carried out through two large gaps that existed between Kaobal Gali and Mashkoh Valley (36 km) and between Batalik and Chorbat La (25 km). The routes of both intrusion and maintenance were away from Indian posts and were not long-known tracks and passes. The Pakistanis took care not to attack any Indian post so as not to alert them.

Some indicators of direct Pakistani involvement came in the form of the destruction of an Indian Army ordnance dump in Kargil on May 9 and 10 in Pakistani artillery fire wherein a massive 5,000 tonnes of ammunition was destroyed.

At many posts, the Pakistanis had established fibreglass reinforced plaster (FGRH) huts, suggesting the intention of long-term deployment of troops. So did the use of large mule trains for stocking of intrusion areas. Bunkers ('sangars') were well fortified and troops well equipped with guns and radios.

The Pakistani Army employed surveillance radars, unmanned aerial vehicles and weapon locating radars which detected Indian artillery positions and led to the destruction of some Indian guns. The Pakistani Army deployed guns in pairs or troops in various gun areas in temporary or roving pattern, thereby portraying a larger number of fire units. This way they were able to avoid giving away locations of the main gun areas.

Pakistani troops also had clearer observation due to the intrusions and were assisted by well trained and equipped observation posts, which included GPS, Laser Range Finders (LRF), high magnification binoculars and night-vision devices.

Key Commanders

Of fudged reports and injustice
Vijay Mohan

IN May 2010, 11 years after the conflict, the Armed Forces Tribunal held that Lt Gen Krishan Pal, then GOC 15 Corps and a key commander overseeing the operations, had fudged some reports relating to the conflict and had shown bias towards a senior field commander.

The tribunal directed that records pertaining to operations by 70 Infantry Brigade in Batalik written by Lt Gen Krishan Pal be corrected and put in the right perspective. This includes portions of the after action report (AAR) of 15 Corps and extracts of Op Vijay - Account of War in Kargil, written by the Army Headquarters. It also directed that in view of the bias of the GOC all ACRs by him of the brigade commander, Brig Devinder Singh, be expunged.

The Bofors gun proved crucial to the Indian victory. Tribune Photo: Manoj Mahajan

The Brigadier had been overlooked for promotion and was awarded a Vishisht Seva Medal, a non-gallantry award, even though he had been cited for the Maha Vir Chakra. Lt Gen Krishan Pal retired as the Quarter Master General, one of the eight Principal Staff Officers at Army Headquarters.

In his petition, Brig Devinder Singh had contended that the AAR had falsely shown four of his most successful battalions under a fictitious headquarters commanded by then Deputy General Officer of 3 Infantry division, Brig Ashok Dugal, which reflected a lopsided picture of his command and battle performance to the Army Headquarters. Though a brigade comprises three battalions, 11 units were placed under his command, out of which seven received battle and theatre honours for their performance.

Playing the role of an enemy commander in a war game held at 15 Corps in April 1999, he had forecasted the pattern of the Kargil intrusions, but his projections were summarily dismissed by the GOC. Later during the actual operations in mid-June 1999, his assessment of the enemy in his sector was 600 regulars, where as the GOC projected it to be only 45 militants.

"It is obvious that the reports of Lt Gen Pal is not an objective assessment and more so the government has already expunged more than 50 per cent of his remarks. A person who writes an ACR in a biased manner cannot be allowed to sustain," the tribunal observed. The matter is now pending before the Supreme Court after the government filed an appeal against the tribunal's orders.

Division Commander under fire

Maj Gen VS Bhudhwar, then GOC 3 Infantry Division at Leh and the commander responsible for the Kargil frontier, came under fire for failing to respond to early warnings and intelligence reports about the intrusions and take stock of the situation accordingly. Reports stated that he was more involved in setting up a zoo housing rare species in Leh, tasking soldiers supposed to be guarding the LoC in the Kargil, Batalik and Turtuk sectors to hunt for birds and animals. He was moved out to a staff appointment a few months later and was the only senior commander in the conflict not to have been decorated.

Sacking of Brigade Commander

In the early stages of the conflict, Brig Surinder Singh, then commander of the Kargil-based 121 (Independent) Brigade, was removed from command and posted elsewhere on the grounds that he mishandled classified documents pertaining to operational and the security situation. He had claimed that he had sounded repeated warnings about the intrusions, but these were not heeded by senior commanders. Brig Surinder, who had been given high ratings in his earlier assessments, was posted several times within a short span of time, and in 2001, just a couple of months before his retirement, his services were terminated by the government. He moved the Delhi High Court and the case was later transferred to the Armed Forces Tribunal. The matter is now being heard by the tribunal's Chandigarh Bench.

Performers superseded

There were a large number of brigade commanders and commanding officers who had performed well during the conflict, but were superseded. Of the seven brigade commanders (including the 102 Siachen Brigade), three Brigadiers — Amar Aul (56 Bde), OP Nandrajog (121 Bde) and PC Katoch (102 Bde) — made it to the rank of Lieutenant General. Of the over 16 Colonels who had commanded infantry battalions during the conflict, at times leading from the front and winning decisive battles, most did not make it up the hierarchy. A few of them even opted for premature retirement while some moved the court.

Officers court-martialled

At the end of the conflict, the Army ended up trying three officers of the rank of Major by general court-martial for alleged disobedience of lawful command or showing cowardice. All three were dismissed from service. They later moved higher courts against their trial.

Nailing the lies Pakistan spun
Vijay Mohan

The arrows depict the areas where intrusions took place across a 160-km stretch along the LoC.

THE web of lies and deceit spun by Pakistan, disassociating itself from the intrusions and claiming it to be the handiwork of militants, began unravelling soon after the fighting began. Evidence of Pakistan army's involvement came in with the recovery of uniform livery, documents and weapons from seized bunkers, dead soldiers as well as those taken prisoner, but the clincher was the intercept of conversations between then Pak army chief Gen Pervez Musharraf, who was on a tour to China, and his number two, Lt Gen Mohammad Aziz Khan in Rawalpindi.

The transcript of the conversations, said to be among RAW coups, was released by the Indian Government on June 11 to apprise the world about Pakistan's intentions. About a week before these were made public, copies of the tapes and the transcript were reportedly handed over to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif through a diplomatic back channel.

The conversations included the prevailing situation in the Kargil sector; Pak foreign minister Sartaj Aziz's impending India visit to defuse tension; Musharraf's observations and directions; role of senior military commanders and the Mujaheedin. The tapes also indicated that Sharif was being informed of the events only on a need-to-know basis by Musharraf.

While the transcript left no doubt about the strategic role of the Pakistan army, captured documents provided significant insight into the movement and preparation by enemy battalions tasked with occupying the Kargil heights. The documents also suggested that Pakistan had begun preparations and training about two years before the intrusions and a lot of activity had been undertaken in the winter months preceding the conflict.

A document revealed that 5 NLI, one of the intruding battalions that had lost three officers, had moved out of its location in 1998 to establish a tactical headquarters at Muntho Dhalo in the Batalik sector. The place, which had a major logistics base, was bombed by the IAF. A diary , written in English by Lt Maaz Ullah Khan Sumbal, logs the arrival of three Pakistan helicopters to bring in supplies on January 31 and states that he got the diary the day the choppers arrived. This suggests that he was already at the post.

Letters recovered from the posts reveal the long periods the troops had been away. A letter by a woman to her "bhanoi sahib" dates to October 1996. Another written in 1997 states there was no indication about the whereabouts of the receiver and his family was not sure if he would receive the letter. The letters were written in Persian and Pushto. Another letter in Urdu bore the date "March 14, 1997".

Two receipts in Urdu with English numerals give details about the clothing items to 4 NLI in May 1998. A few receipts of money orders recovered from bunkers were issued by Pakistan’s 135 Field Postal Section in April 1998. Several leave certificates for mid and late 1998 were also found.

Soon after the conflict, the bodies of soldiers from NLI had begun arriving in POK villages in October 1998, but accompanying soldiers (often dressed in track suits) refused to give details about how and where the person was killed. Many bodies were transported at night and delivered hurriedly to families without due military honours. A resident of Hamardas village was quoted as saying that in February 1999 he had received a letter from his brother, a trooper with 12 NLI, claiming that he was deep inside Indian territory in Dras. Hundreds of unmarked graves had come up in POK, the recruiting ground for the NLI.

On July 17, 1997, Musharraf admitted that Pakistani troops were involved in Kargil, after which Pakistan began accepting bodies of its men. Later, Pakistan announced gallantry awards for its soldiers. Eleven years after the "misadventure", the Pakistan army quietly put the names of 453 deceased soldiers and officers on the martyrs' corner on its website.