Aneela Nike Post: Blunders made by Pakistan during the Kargil war

Blunders made by Pakistan during the Kargil war

It was a smart but crazy plan by the Pakistanis without even seriously considering the Indian response. They expected India to make some noise followed by cease fire due to world pressure and they would hold on to the posts. Their plan was to occupy around 15-20 peaks. Having crossed over into unoccupied areas, the excited young Pakistani soldiers expanded their presence. They ended up with the occupation of 120 peaks. They were now in such a logistical stretch, making themselves vulnerable to Indian military attacks. And the unexpected happened. India retaliated strongly pounding on the Pakistanis. They were easy target for the Indians though it was a tough and difficult terrain. The Pakistanis took a large number of casualties and the rest ran for their lives. It was the result of wrong planning by the Pakistani generals.

Nawaz Sharif who was the prime minister of Pakistan during the 1999 India Pakistani war said, ‘People who were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of your soldiers in Kargil; it was a call by few generals....we were thrown into war. The cause of the war was the infiltration of Pakistani troops— disguised as Kashmiri militants—into positions on the Indian side of the LoC, which serves as the de facto border between the two states in Kashmir.

This particular operation was given the codename Operation Safed Sagar. The cause of the war was the infiltration of Pakistani troops - disguised as Kashmiri militants - into positions on the Indian side of the LoC, which serves as the de facto border between the two states in Kashmir. The 60-day-long Kargil War, from May 3 to July 26, 1999, took place after Pakistani troops were detected on top of the Kargil ridges. Pakistan had started planning the attack in 1998 itself.

During the Kargil War, the gallant soldiers of the Indian Army triumphed over the Pakistani invaders with undaunted courage and determination, tweeted @adgpi. The Indian Air Force (IAF) and Indian Army worked in close coordination, and airpower inflicted heavy damage on the intruders and also reduced casualties on the ground.

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Capturing Indian peaks in Kargil sector was a master plan. Pakistan could have exchanged Kargil with Siachen. But there was a flaw in the plan - Pakistan failed to anticipate Indian response. Pakistan underestimated the Indian response. Pakistan has thought that now they are a nuclear power and India would not dare to start a limited or full war. But India (under a caretaker Government) decided to re-capture those posts irrespective of costs as India felt it was deceived by Pakistan.

Pakistani military kept its political leadership in dark till very end. This proved to be fatal. When things went wrong civilian leadership was able to convince the world that they were not involved in the planning. But this was a secret plan of some Pakistani generals without taking the country into confidence. Pakistan found hardly any support from international community because Pakistani friends were not taken into confidence. Even China didn’t openly support Pakistani action. Indian side claimed the moral high ground in the conflict. Americans later forced Pakistan to withdraw from the remaining posts.

The official position of Pakistan till the very end was that Pakistan was not involved in the operation and it was the work for Kashmiri freedom fighters. Thus, Pakistan was unable to support its troops when these soldiers were facing full might of Indian Army. Even Pakistan didn’t take back the body of its fallen soldiers who had sacrificed their life for Pakistan. The much maligned Bofors gun played a major role in India’s driving out the Pakistanis.

This is what actually happened in Pakistan. Over twenty years ago in May 1999, the ongoing Pakistan-India dialogue, was subverted by Operation Koh-i-Paima (KP), popularly known as the Kargil Operation. In Pakistan, a clique in the military high command had autonomously engaged on a divergent track.

The Kargil clique, comprising four generals — including Pakistan’s army chief, General Pervez Musharraf; the Chief of General Staff (CGS) Lt. General Aziz Khan, Corp commander of X corps, Lt General Mahmud, and the commander, Force Command Northern Areas (FCNA), Major General Javed Hasan - planned Operation KP in complete secrecy. The operational command, covering the geographical area of operation as well as the command and control of troops and heavy artillery, was with the Kargil clique. And, hence, they could move troops and ammunition without involving others and sure of success.

The operation was initiated at the end of November 1998, before the Lahore summit. In August-September, Pakistan-India talks on Siachen had ended in deadlock. In October, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif appointed Musharraf as the army chief. Having served in areas along the Line of Control (LoC), the clique was familiar with the terrain. They all believed negotiations alone would not settle Kashmir issue. A plan, almost similar to one presented by Musharraf to former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was agreed upon by the clique; Pakistani troops would interdict and block NH-1, the lifeline of Indian troops based in Leh. A panicked India would then turn to the international community. Given the nuclearised South Asia, the international community would advise India to engage with Pakistan. This would lead to negotiations on Kashmir, or at least to India vacating the Siachen glacier it had occupied in 1984.

The clique’s planning was dictated by naïve assumptions that were rooted in delusional reading of the Indian and the international response. Equally, they believed India would not be able to militarily get the Kargil heights vacated. For interdiction, the plan was to occupy around 15-20 peaks. Having crossed over into unmanned areas, the excited young soldiers expanded their presence. They ended up in occupation of 120 peaks. They were now in a logistical stretch, making themselves vulnerable to Indian military attacks. That’s exactly what happened. They were hit by the Indian army with full power and literally pounded.

PM Sharif was first briefed on Operation KP months after it had been initiated. On May 17, armed with complicated maps, the army chief and his key commanders briefed Sharif. The CGS, General Khan, told Sharif he would go down in history as the liberator of Kashmir. When his foreign minister, Sartaj Aziz, reminded Sharif of the Lahore summit and the ongoing negotiations with India, Sharif did not agree. After all, conferences and paperwork would not lead to Kashmir’s liberation. Sharif was on board.

Subsequently, as the days passed, the Operation unfolded to India’s advantage. By mid-June, having sized up the military and diplomatic situation, India was fully in command. Having initially suffered huge casualties, India’s unceasing ground and air attacks inflicted heavy casualties on the Pakistani troops, and disrupted their logistics and supply lines. Faced with artillery pounding, especially of the heavy Bofors guns, Pakistan’s soldiers could only fight on but to no avail. Delhi made winning diplomatic manoeuvres. PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s message was clear - my army will fight to get the infiltrators out, but will not cross the LoC, or open other fronts, provided the international community put pressure on Pakistan to pull back its troops.

With Pakistan’s weakened position, mounting casualties, disrupted supply lines, and no deployment of air power, its diplomats were on the back foot as Pakistan was seen as the aggressor. By end-June, there was panic among the Kargil clique. Sharif was indirectly asked to step in to save the situation. When ill-planned back-channels with Delhi proved useless, the PM flew to Washington asking US to intervene and to basically declare withdrawal. The curtains on Operation KP came with the elected PM’s ouster by the cabal of four who had led the country into a difficult strategic space.

Meanwhile over 20 years later, nothing much has changed. Even if there is no known formal review of Operation KP, the word in the barracks and beyond is that it was a blunder. With the Imran Khan government fully backed by the army command looking for a dialogue opening, nothing has worked in his favour. The days for another Kargil or engaging India with talks are now gone. India has made its stand clear with the abrogation of article 370.

Pakistan wants dialogue as it believes genuine peace between the two countries won’t be possible without resolving Kashmir. But India is in no mood for talks and India’s position is clear that Pakistan will have to vacate POK and Northern areas and merge those areas with Jammu & Kashmir.

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Aneela Nike Post

Thursday 9 December 2021

Blunders made by Pakistan during the Kargil war

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