THE KARGIL CONFLICT

Now, the cover-up

The Army and the political leadership have begun to deploy formidable alibis to repulse criticism of the initial failures in the Kargil campaign.

PRAVEEN SWAMI
in Kargil

THE last remnants of Pakistan's forces continue to defend the debris of their summer campaign on the Kargil heights. Indian forces are engaging nine positions that continue to hold out west of the 5,353-metre peak, Marpo La, and some 2 km inside the Line of Control (LoC) from what used to be Pakistan's principal supply base in the Batalik subsector, Muntho Dalo. Some 70 Pakistani irregulars are believed to have dug in at Muntho Dalo and perhaps an equal number near Marpo La. Skirmishes have broken out a round the Tiger Hills in Drass and occasional exchanges of artillery fire still punctuate the days, but villagers are making their way back to their homes, hoping to salvage whatever they can before the winter sets in.

But if this war is over, none of the questions asked of its conduct and its origins seems any closer to being answered. Basking in the warm saffron-suffused glow of victory, both the top Army leadership and politicians of the Hindu Right are using patrio tism to strengthen their armour against uncomfortable questions. Although the A.B. Vajpayee government has ordered an inquiry (the government prefers to call it a review) into the events that led to the Kargil conflict by a panel headed by defence analys t K. Subrahmanyam, there are more than a few signs that the guilty need have no reason to lose sleep. The massing of formations of troops in Kargil looks set to be replaced by the deployment of equally formidable alibis and falsehoods, enough to repulse the most determined critics.

Perhaps the largest emerging area of controversy is why specific intelligence warnings of an intrusion last autumn were not acted upon by the 121 Brigade at Kargil and the command structure in Srinagar and New Delhi. Congress(I) spokesperson Kapil Sibal on July 22 made public the contents of a letter written on August 25, 1998 by Brigadier Surinder Singh, who commanded the brigade, to his superiors. The letter warned of an increased threat perception and asked for the use of remotely piloted surveillanc e aircraft to monitor movements along the LoC. The letter was written in the wake of sharp artillery exchanges between July 27 and August 4, 1998, which resulted in the death of 31 civilians, 10 soldiers and six Border Security Force (BSF) personnel.

Surinder Singh, who was unceremoniously ejected from his command in the middle of the war and attached to the 15 Corps Headquarters, has now reportedly been posted as a sub-area commander in Secunderabad. Many military observers have read the move as an attempt to buy the Brigadier's silence. As reported in the Frontline issue dated July 30, Major K.B.S. Khurana and Major Bhupinder Singh, who led the 121 Brigade's Intelligence and Field Security Unit and Brigade Intelligence Team respectively, ha d warned of a summer intrusion in two alerts put out in September and December 1998. Their reports were based on information from the Intelligence Bureau's field operative in Kargil. It is unclear whether Surinder Singh or anyone else reacted to this inf ormation, but independent scrutiny of the 121 Brigade's files may give some interesting insights into subsequent events.

More than a few questions have emerged from the disclosure of Surinder Singh's letter. For one, the Brigadier did not need clearance from his senior officials to intensify vigil along the LoC. One plausible explanation of his letter is that he merely sou ght to create a defensive paper trail, deferring to the general climate of post-Pokhran political and military complacency. It has now become clear that the 121 Brigade's forward posts along the LoC were indeed vacated in the course of the winter of 1998 -1999. Speaking to the Press Trust of India on July 22, Defence Minister George Fernandes perhaps inadvertently debunked claims by the Army in a letter to Frontline denying that any forward posts had been left unheld. "Of course the LoC needs to b e manned round the year," he said. "We must take quick steps to make sure the entire area is secure."

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY
On alert in Kargil on July 23, after guns had fallen silent in the area.

ARMY officials now claim that the occupation of LoC posts in the Kargil area, where temperatures are known to drop to -60§C, will cost up to Rs.15 crores a year. The Army believes that the winter posts will have to be supplied by helicopter and that expe nsive high-altitude equipment will have to be purchased to sustain troop presence there. Engineers are busy building new tracks through the area, while specially bred mules will be used to push up equipment before the first snow falls. Between 8,000 and 10,000 soldiers from the 8 Mountain Division are expected to be deployed in the region until the summer of 2000. Officials routinely describe this winter enterprise as a "second Siachen", with some claiming that conditions in the Kargil sector will be mo re brutal than on the glacier.

Yet, this high-cost response to the Kargil war answers none of the questions on forward deployments. Troops of the BSF assigned to Marpo La before 1987 routinely stayed on the heights through winter without the help of massive air back-up or special equi pment. Indeed, the Channigund area west of Kargil and Chorbat La to its east were spared of Pakistani incursions because BSF troopers held their posts this winter, as before. BSF positions on Chorbat La were supplied without air support. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) also holds the punishing Daulat Beg Oldi heights, looking out on to the Karakoram range, with minimal air support. There has been no cogent explanation as to why the Army could not hold winter positions if the BSF and the ITBP, orga nisations with relatively thin resources, can.

Several observers believe that the cost-intensive operation now planned at Kargil is an exercise in deflecting blame. Having first insisted that the Army did not vacate any posts, senior Army officials now claim that the LoC posts were not held last wint er because adequate resources were not made available. Indeed, the Army top brass has resorted to dishonesty in the wake of the Kargil war. In a series of exposes, defence journalist Rahul Bedi pointed out that Chief of the Army Staff General V.P. Malik' s claims that the Army had inadequate battle surveillance and radar equipment were pure chicanery. The lack of Battlefield Surveillance Radar (BSR), which can track enemy gun positions, was cited by Army officials as a major reason for their early failur es in the campaign.

Bedi's reports pointed out that the Army had first begun trials of two BSR systems, from France's Thomson CSF and Germany's Alcatel SEL in 1983. After three rounds of field trials lasting a decade, the Army declared that both systems were technologically comparable, and the manufacturers submitted financial bids. The German BSR bid turned out to be 40 per cent lower than that submitted by Thomson CSF. For reasons that are more than a little opaque, the Army executed a volte-face, declaring that i t had no need for a BSR system after all. The Ministry of Defence, which secured funding for the system after a protracted battle with the Finance Ministry, protested. All that emerged was that the Army displayed a marked preference for the French BSR, d espite having made it clear earlier that the German system was just as good and that price would be the final arbiter.

Frontline found similar strange anomalies in the handling of the Direction Finding (DF) equipment, another case of key equipment deficiency cited by the Army. This equipment allows troops to detect wireless transmissions and thus helps establish t he number of enemy positions as also their geographical location. Army officials say that in the absence of the DF equipment the location of Pakistani troops in Kargil could be established only after prolonged physical surveillance. It is now clear that the DF equipment offered to the Army in the summer of 1997 was rejected on the grounds that it did not, in mountain terrain, achieve its stated objective. Ironically, the same equipment has been purchased in the wake of the Kargil war.

In June 1997, a team from Japan's Taiyo-Musein Corporation had arrived in Jammu and Kashmir to demonstrate a DF system to the Army's 8 Mountain Division at Sharifabad. The Taiyo-Musein DF system was built around a triangular grid of fixed stations which locked into the general coordinates of transmissions. Precise locations were then determined with vehicle-mounted and hand-held DF sets. But 8 Mountain Division officials claimed that the sets were less than accurate. They said that since radio signals r eflected off the mountains, the equipment often gave false locations. The Taiyo-Musein team argued that experienced operators would learn to distinguish between reflected signals and authentic transmissions, but the 8 Mountain Division was unconvinced. T aiyo-Musein had the last laugh: orders for the DF sets landed in June after the war broke out.

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY
Residents of Thasgam working in the fields. The villagers, who had migrated owing to heavy shelling by the Pakistani Army, returned to their homes after two months.

PURCHASE of equipment are not the only curious aspects of top-level military functioning. In key senses, the real reasons for the military failures were political, with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government working overtime to turn Army com mand positions into branch offices of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The disgraceful decision of the Director-General of Military Operations, Lieutenant General M.C. Vij, and the Additional Chief of Air Staff (Operations), Air Vice-Marshal S.K. M alik, to brief the BJP's National Executive about the war on May 30 was the first instance in India's post-Independence history of military officials having briefed any particular political organisation on the conduct of war. Efforts have been made to st rip the Army of its apolitical heritage, an enterprise which has had disastrous consequences.

On March 15, 1999, Vajpayee laid out what was to form India's post-Pokhran military doctrine. "Now both India and Pakistan are in possession of nuclear weapons," he said. "There is no alternative but to live in mutual harmony... It is the kind of weapon that helps in preserving peace." Army officials sympathetic to the RSS world view listened attentively. When the intrusions were first detected, 15 Corps Commander Lieutenant General Kishan Pal proclaimed at the Unified Headquarters in Srinagar that the "handful" of terrorists who had infiltrated would be thrown out in days. Northern Command chief Lieutenant General H.M. Khanna, in turn, told Fernandes on May 12 that the intruders would be evicted "in 48 hours". Gen. Malik, for his part, saw no reason t o cut short his week-long visit to Poland, despite having been informed of the conflict.

Officers and troops of the 1 Naga Regiment, among the first units to be pushed into Drass, faced the consequences of such apathy. "We were told that there were two or three terrorists on one ridge and another couple somewhere else," an officer told Fr ontline. "We went in company strength and without heavy weapons." The first troops were butchered.

Although India's successes in the Kargil campaign are a tribute to the soldiers who fought against all odds, the United States-authored end of the war is no triumph for the government. "In the beginning, the Defence Minister talked about considering the idea to give safe passage to the intruders," former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar pointed out. "It was ridiculed and rejected. Now the same is being implemented. Whatever may be the claim, in reality it is a ceasefire and safe passage."

But with an election campaign just round the corner, the BJP finds it imperative to sustain the myth that the Kargil war has been an unequivocal triumph; some of its luminaries have even claimed that the victory was greater than the one in 1971. The inte grity of Indian defence, the politicians of the Hindu Right evidently believe, is a cheap price to pay for coming back to power.