Kargil 99: The conflict initiation

We are approaching the twentieth anniversary of the final success of Operation Vijay launched by India in May 1999 to recover its winter-vacated territory occupied by the Pakistan Army at the rocky and snow-laden heights of Kargil. With the low footprint of strategic literature available in India, a special effort is necessary to briefly remind the nation about what befell it in the period May-Jul 1999. It's necessary for public awareness; both our initial failure to read the signals and the subsequent valiant effort at all levels of the political, military and diplomatic domains to recover the situation need highlighting. It is necessary for a number of reasons, not the least being the imperative to benchmark defence preparedness then and twenty years later, now.

The villain of the peace was of course Pakistan and its wayward army. Since 1989, it had waged proxy hybrid war in Kashmir which in 1999 was spreading rapidly into the Jammu sector. Forgotten but very much in existence was the continuing battle at the Siachen Glacier, north of Leh across the Khardungla Pass, where the Pakistan Army was attempting to secure a foothold on the Saltoro Ridge, the treacherous mountain range occupied by the Indian Army in April 1984. The ridge gave depth to the deployment on the Siachen Glacier which had almost simultaneously been occupied. The occupation of Siachen and Saltoro in a swift operation by the Indian Army and Indian Air Force had left the Pakistan Army red-faced and its continuous failure for 15 years to evict the Indian presence had deeply hit its self-esteem. In fact, it had never admitted to its own people then nor has it officially admitted till date that it remains deployed far from Siachen, from where it does not even have a peep on the glacier.

General Pervez Musharraf's elevation to the position of Pakistan Army Chief in 1998 gave him the opportunity to play out his ambition which he had in mind for long – to force Indian vacation of Siachen. His own efforts to achieve this as a Pakistan Special Forces officer had come to nought in the face of the Indian Army's continued resilience. A perfunctory idea of the geographical lay will help appreciate the how and why of Musharraf's intent once he came to head the Pakistan Army. 

The road from Srinagar to Leh crosses the Zojila pass at a height of 11,500 feet and enters the Ladakh plateau, running virtually parallel to the Line of Control (LoC) until Kargil via Dras, for a distance of approximately 100 kilometres. Thereafter, it runs to Leh largely away from any observation from the Pakistan side. Large parts of the Zojila-Kargil road are visible from the heights where the LoC exists to the north but to facilitate active observation for interference by Pakistan artillery, the heights on our side needed occupation by the Pakistan Army. As a norm, both armies withdrew troops in winter from the heights above Dras due to very heavy precipitation and snow pile-up. It was Musharraf's intent that beating the routine Indian reoccupation of their vacated heights in spring would bring the Pakistan Army to dominate the road Zojila-Kargil by fire and observation making it impossible for the Indian Army to logistically maintain its large force in Ladakh. The spin-off effect would be India's inability to remain in occupation of Siachen which was dependent on the lines of communication through Leh and partially on air maintenance through the Thoise airfield. The alternative logistics artery via Manali was appreciated to be unstable and thus unsuitable.

Musharraf nursed this ambition even before he became the Pakistan Army Chief in October 1998. On being appointed, he kept his plan secret from his corps commanders and his political bosses and did not incorporate even the PAF into the evolving plan. Several obstacles kept cropping up even before his elevation. First, was India's overt nuclear test at Pokhran in May 1998 followed by the Pakistan response through its nuclear test. The overt nuclearisation of the subcontinent increased the risk of general war should any of the sides cross a perceived rubicon; Musharraf's plan threatened the rubicon. Second, the visit of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Lahore in February 1999; the famous Bus Yatra, to demonstrate India's quest for peace. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was kept in the dark by Musharraf on his intent of initiating indirect threats to Siachen through occupation of the Kargil and Dras heights as early as the winter of 1998-99. In fact, even as PM Vajpayee visited Lahore in a historic first Musharraf who had refused to salute him, was moving his troops from the Northern Light Infantry (NLI) to treacherously occupy the heights vacated for winter by the Indian Army. The plan was to stealthily occupy the heights without giving away signatures, project the NLI troops as Kashmiri freedom fighters, deny any hand in the operation and plead innocence to the world. He did not expect a rapid and ferocious response from India in the light of the newly declared nuclear parity. There was a secondary intent too. It was to force India to redeploy troops from Kashmir to Kargil, open voids and give the flagging separatist terror movement a fillip.

The discovery of Pakistani troops' presence at the heights was an accidental event, reported by local graziers who had started moving up to feed their livestock.

None of the other plethora of intelligence sources could discover anything unusual until the probing patrols commenced post the graziers' report. Even then none could fathom the magnitude of intrusion; these were from Mashkoh adjoining Kashmir's Gurez, across Dras, to Kargil and even Batalik, along 120 kilometres of the LoC. 

The Indian response, slow to start but rapid thereafter, never lost momentum but it took the better part of almost three months to clear the intrusions and that too not entirely. That narrative is a separate explanation. What is important to know here is the prime reasons why India could not assess a potential Pakistani plan and take precautions accordingly. Many reasons have been extended but in my perception the one which stands out most is the virtual relegation of the Kargil sector to the lowest priority. The Army's Headquarters 15 Corps remained responsible for the Kashmir LoC, the counter-terror operations in the hinterland, the management of Siachen and Eastern Ladakh (with a Chinese threat), besides Kargil. The focus remained on Kashmir's LoC and hinterland, allowing threats to build up undetected in Kargil. Musharraf's conflict initiation was masterly but he had no termination plan, displaying his poor generalship which enabled India to bounce back.

The author commanded the 15 Corps in J&K