COVER STORY

A long haul ahead

India's strategic paradigm for engaging Pakistan's intervention in Jammu and Kashmir, of which the Kargil offensive is just the latest phase, requires serious consideration.

PRAVEEN SWAMI

AT night, the skies across the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir light up with the colours of war. The war that began in Kargil now sprawls from there to Uri, and then down south to Akhnoor and Chhamb. The wrenching noise of artillery fire has f orced thousands of villagers of Akhnoor to leave for safer areas. Aircraft have been scrambled from Jammu to intercept Pakistani intrusions in Jammu. The battle for Kargil is getting rapidly transformed into a war for the future of Jammu and Kashmir, one that could have profound consequences for the future of the State. And there are signs that the fighting will continue for several weeks, perhaps months.

Indian soldiers have reached positions that are at small-arms fire range from Pakistan-held posts in some Kargil areas. The 4,950-metre summit in the Tololing mountains in the Drass sub-sector has finally been taken by Indian troops; elsewhere in the are a Indian troops are now so close to Pakistan-held positions that air support is impossible. The bodies of 11 Pakistanis were recovered after the June 13 assault. Fighting in the area had earlier claimed the life of Lieutenant Colonel R. Vishwanathan, but the fact that his body has not yet been recovered suggests that the mountain spur from which he launched his assault on Tololing remains exposed to Pakistani fire. The summit above Tololing, at 5,140 metres, continues to be heavily defended by Pakistani troops and irregulars.

The most bitter fighting has centred on the Batalik area, some 50 km east of Kargil. Indian Army officials say that they have seized several Pakistani positions, but losses in the process have been severe. As troops seek to move up the mountains, as in D rass, positions held by Pakistani irregulars and troops have been receiving massive artillery and mortar support from across the LoC. And there are disturbing signs that contrary to official claims, Pakistan's resupply and reinforcement lines remain ope n in several areas. Indeed, reconnaissance photographs and field patrols have reported several new Pakistan-held positions, at least three of them in the Turtok area alone.

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY
An artillery position of the Indian Army in the Kargil sector. The battle for Kargil is getting rapidly transformed into a war for the future of Kashmir.

There is reason to believe that Indian troops have not been able to advance much in these areas over the last 10 days. The body of Major M. Saravanan, who was killed in combat on May 28, continues to lie at a height of 4,250 m on a mountain in Batalik. T he fact that it has not been recovered means that Indian troops have been unable to gain secure positions on heights above that. The body of mechanised Infantry officer Major Rajesh Adhikari, who was killed in the Mushkoh Valley at above 4,000 m on May 3 0, also lies in the snow. Attempts to bring down the body, too, have been met with heavy fire. As in Turtok, the Mushkoh Valley has seen several new Pakistan positions emerge in recent weeks. Although air strikes have been at their fiercest in the area, their effect has at best been limited.

On June 10 came the direct evidence that the Pakistani irregulars and troops are able to reinforce their positions. That day, troops of the 12 Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry and the Desert Scorpions Paracommando unit took a commanding position on the Yardol ridge. Pakistani irregulars and troops on Yardol, however, had evidently asked for reinforcements before vacating their positions. Late that night, Indian troops found themselves sandwiched between two lines of attack. At least 15 Indian soldiers and 23 Pakistani irregulars and troops were killed in the battle. Officials say that the incident illustrates just how bloody the conflict will be as Indian troops move higher up the mountains.

Further evidence that Pakistan is strengthening its presence in the area has emerged from surveillance. The ridges between Chorbat La and Turtok have been under heavy pressure ever since Pakistan moved up a brigade-strength force along the Mian Langpa gu lly on the LoC last fortnight. There have also been large movements of infantry units from Pakistan's 11 Corps at Sialkot, as well as of artillery from the Skardu area, Pakistan's military headquarters for the Kargil region. Large-scale movement of ammun ition has been reported from the Pakistan Army's Sheikh Khan dump near Kohat, and intelligence reports suggest that fresh personnel have gathered at Pakistan's forward headquarters, Olthingthang. Olthingthang was the base from which Pakistani irregulars and troops were launched in early May.

As the discovery of eight new forward helipads across the LoC suggests, Pakistan appears determined to hold on to the positions it has occupied on the Kargil heights. There is also growing evidence that Pakistan intended to generate terrorist activity i n Kargil, the only predominantly Muslim area in Jammu and Kashmir that has remained unaffected by secessionist violence. On June 7, the Jammu and Kashmir Police arrested 10 terrorists from the Diskit area in Turtok. Their sustained interrogation led to t he recovery of 19 Kalashnikov assault rifles, a light machine gun, a rocket launcher, grenades, ammunition and high explosives. The interrogation, sources told Frontline, suggested that future assaults across the LoCby Pakistani irregulars and tro ops would have been supported by terrorist activity in the Kargil area itself.

Perhaps the biggest problem in dealing with such sustained pressure, particularly as the harsh winter sets in in Kargil, will be in ensuring that the morale of the troops remains high. Soldiers and junior officers are incensed by what they see as an ill- defined and erratic strategic paradigm for Kargil. The sustained fire of contradictory and confusing statements from New Delhi has not helped matters either. The handover by Pakistan on June 11 of the severely mutilated bodies of Lieutenant Saurabh Kalia and five soldiers, who were members of the first patrol which was sent out in the Kaksar area (Frontline , June 18) and went missing, has provoked anger and frustration. Kalia's body showed signs of severe torture, with a sharp object having been pushed through his eye. The other soldiers' bodies, too, showed signs of brutal treatment before they were shot.

Some confusion remains about just when Kalia and his patrol went missing. Army officials first said that the patrol went out on May 5, but Kalia's mother now says she received a letter from him dated five days later. Officials now say that the patrol wen t missing on May 14, but if this was indeed the first patrol sent out, that would suggest that the military leadership in Kargil was even slower to respond to the summer thaw than had earlier been believed earlier. The bodies of an officer and a soldier, members of a second patrol of nine troops that was sent out shortly after Kalia went missing, have been sighted but are still to be recovered. Seven soldiers returned safely from that patrol.

EVEN as the war on the heights continues, the release of the transcripts of conversations between Pakistan's Chief of the Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf and the Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Mohammad Aziz Khan has cast light on Paki stan's broad strategic objectives. These conversations took place while Musharraf was in Beijing, where he arrived for a formal visit as the crisis broke out in Kargil. The tapes are believed to have been made by the United States' Central Intelligence A gency (CIA) and routed to the Indian Government through the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). The CIA possesses the technological means to monitor traffic through a plethora of communications satellites, although this is not the sole route through which the conversations could have been intercepted.

In the first released conversation, which took place on May 26, Aziz Khan discussed with Musharraf the diplomatic outcomes of India's air campaign. Musharraf made clear that Pakistan's enterprise in Kargil had the support of its political establishment. In an apparent reference to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Musharraf told his junior "so many times we had discussed, taken your blessings". He continued: "And yesterday also I told him that the door of discussion, dialogue must be kept open and (as for th e) rest, no change in ground situation." Aziz Khan also made clear that Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmed had been briefed to claim that all the bombs dropped by Indian Air Force aircraft on the first day of the air strikes had fallen w ithin Pakistani territory.

Musharraf made explicit Pakistan's objectives in a second conversation on May 29. This time Aziz Khan told Musharraf that he would ensure that Pakistan Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz would give "no understanding or no commitment on (the) ground situation" during talks with New Delhi. Aziz would be instructed to argue that "we have been sitting here for long... Like in the beginning, the matter is the same - no post was attacked, and no post captured. The situation is that we are along our defensive Line o f Control. Aziz Khan concluded: "On this line, we can give them logic, but in short, the recommendation for Sartaj Aziz sahib is that he should make no commitment in the first meeting on the military situation. And he should not even accept a ceasefire, because if there is ceasefire, then vehicles will be moving (on the Srinagar-Leh route)."

Pakistan's military leadership clearly understood that sustained pressure on India along the LoC would bring about rapid international intervention. That, in turn, would offer Pakistan its best prospects since 1971 of a Western intervention in Jammu and Kashmir. In the May 26 conversation, Aziz Khan reported that Nawaz Sharif was "confident, just like that. Shamshad Ahmed as usual was supporting. Today, for the last two hours, the BBC has been continuously reporting on the air strikes by India. Keep usi ng this - let them keep dropping bombs. As far as internationalisation is concerned, this is the fastest thing that has happened. You may have seen in the press about United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's appeal that both countries should sit and talk."

SAURABH DAS /AP
A moment-of-impact picture of a Pakistani shell hitting a television relay centre which also served as an Indian Army bunker in the Drass sub-sector, on June 8.

Aziz Khan spent considerable time in this conversation gloating on the secrecy with which the Kargil operation had been planned. He recounts an official saying at a meeting on behalf of the Army that only Nawaz Sharif had been briefed before the operatio n began. Pakistan Army Corps commanders and politicians, he said, had been told of the assault only on May 19, well after fighting had broken out. "The reason for the success of this operation," Aziz Khan said, "was this total secrecy. Our experience was that our earlier efforts failed because of lack of secrecy. So, the top priority is to accord confidentiality, to ensure our success. We should respect this and the advantage we have from this would give us a handle."

CURIOUSLY, these tapes are the same as the ones Defence Minister George Fernandes used to claim that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Pakistani political establishment were unaware of the Kargil offensive. Just how he arrived at these conclusions is unclear, for the tapes make clear that precisely the contrary is true. Nawaz Sharif's endorsement of the military offensive is made explicit. Some dissonances are indeed evident, with a Malik sahib and the official who occupied Aziz Khan' s previous office offering alternative strategic visions. But these differences were extremely narrow. "Those two's views," Aziz Khan reported, "were that the status quo and the present position of General Hassan, no change should be recommended in that. But he was also saying that any escalation after that should be regulated as there may be a danger of war."

Perhaps most significant, there is no reference to any ISI reservations on the broad parameters of Pakistan's Kargil offensive. Since Aziz Khan never occupied a command position in the ISI, the position of the officer who succeeded him was clearly milita ry. There is no reference in the conversations to the position of the ISI's Director-General, Lieutenant General Zia-ud-Din, on the offensive. Fernandes' claims appear to have been driven more by a desire to defend the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalitio n government's Pakistani partners in the Lahore dialogue than by a dispassionate strategic assessment. Indeed, the Union Government will have a few questions to answer on the errors of judgment that opened the way for the Kargil war.

So too will the Indian Army. For one, while officials have repeatedly claimed that it is near-impossible for them to hold on to mountain posts all winter, Border Security Force (BSF) and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) troopers have been doing exactly that. The BSF position in Chorbat La, which has been under sustained attack, has managed to fight off Pakistani attacks precisely because its personnel were on the heights through the winter. The ITBP, in a separate sector, stays on the crucial Daulat Be g Oldi post through the winter. Neither Chorbat La nor Daulat Beg Oldi are helicopter-supplied. Retired Army officers have carried out something of a propaganda offensive claiming that the Army will have to execute near-impossible logistics in maintainin g high-altitude posts through the winter.

Military Intelligence (M.I.), too, will have some explaining to do. The Brooks-Henderson Report, authored in the wake of the 1962 defeat, specifically charged M.I. with the task of gathering information inside a 10-km belt on either side of India's borde rs. The organisation failed to detect the build-up of Pakistani irregulars and troops at Olthingthang, and appears to have paid little attention to reports by the Intelligence Bureau's Leh office, issued in the third week of October 1998. In January 1999 , M.I. again failed to pay attention to reports that Pakistani helicopters were surveying Indian positions in the Kargil area. M.I.'s evidently casual perceptions of the threat to Kargil appears to have rubbed off on ground troops, some of whom are even believed to have left ammunition in the positions they vacated last autumn.

It appears possible that M.I., like the military establishment at large, chose to be guided by the political perceptions of the BJP leadership on the integrity of the Lahore Process. The Army's outrageous decision to send senior serving officers to brief the BJP National Executive illustrates the disturbing linkages that the Union Government has succeeded in engineering between its political establishment and the military leadership. These linkages are, at the core, responsible for the failure to execut e dispassionate military assessments of Pakistan's objectives this summer. The Army's sole move to bring about accountability has been to dismiss two low-level officials, 121 Brigade Commander Surindar Singh and his Drass-area subordinate, Colonel Pushpi nder Singh. This ritual witch-hunting is no substitute for serious introspection.

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY
Army personnel undergoing combat training at the High Altitude Warfare School at Sonamarg last fortnight.

EVEN more serious thought will be required on India's future strategic paradigm for engaging Pakistan's war in Jammu and Kashmir, of which the Kargil offensive is just the latest phase. A senior intelligence official said: "The fact of the matter is that they have inflicted very great costs on us at very little cost to themselves. Indian Army strategies were traditionally built around the idea that any major Pakistani offensive in Jammu and Kashmir would meet with massive retaliation in Sindh and Punjab . But in a post-Pokhran South Asia, scenarios of Indian armour sweeping through the plains of Punjab are unrealistic. For several years, voices within the Indian security establishment have been calling for the development and institution of an effective , covert counter-offensive capability.

Pushing Pakistan's troops and irregulars off the Kargil heights will be the easy part of the battle ahead. Finding new and unconventional ways to fight unconventional wars will be the real challenge.