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Subject: Kargil Episode - A Commentary
chupooey    10/21/2006 4:22:32 AM
Kargil: what might have happened By Javed Hussain THE Kargil topography is characterised by craggy peaks, steep slopes, narrow gorges and deep ravines. The arid and rocky features vary in height from 15,000 to 20,000 ft. At these heights, the average temperature during the warmest month is below freezing, while during the winter months it drops to minus 25 degrees C. Rarified air, intensive solar radiation, strong winds and varying daytime temperatures are characteristic climatic features of the area. The Siachen glacier is also situated in this region. The main Srinagar-Leh road which is the lifeline of Indian forces in Ladakh, runs through Kargil (a tehsil headquarters of Ladakh district) and Zoji La Pass on to Leh. The Kargil heights dominate this road. In October 1947, following the announcement of Kashmir’s accession to India, the Gilgit Scouts, a predominantly Muslim force raised by the British for internal security, revolted against the Dogras, and in a series of daring actions in1948 captured Kargil, Drass, Zoji La Pass and Skardu. However, in November 1948, Zoji La Pass and Kargil were recaptured by the Indians while the Kargil heights remained with the Gilgit Scouts. During the Rann of Kutch conflict, these heights were captured by the Indians for the first time on May 17, 1965, for use as a bargaining counter in the negotiations. As a result of the agreement reached, the heights were returned to Pakistan in June 1965. In the first week of August 1965, Operation Gibraltar was launched. One of the areas used by the infiltrating force was the Kargil heights. To block these routes, the Indians captured the heights for the second time in the third week of August 1965. But after the signing of the Tashkent Agreement, the heights were once again returned to Pakistan. On the outbreak of war on the western front on December 3, 1971, the Indians captured the heights for the third time on December 9, 1971. This time, however, they retained the heights in line with the Shimla Agreement under which the violable Cease Fire Line (CFL), created in December 1948 on cessation of hostilities in Kashmir, was converted into an inviolable Line of Control (LoC), on the basis of actual possession of territory at the time of the ceasefire in December 1971. When the Indians captured the heights on three different occasions, the Pakistani force that was overwhelmed, consisted mostly of lightly armed, inadequately equipped Karakoram and Gilgit Scouts, both paramilitary outfits. In the following years, the Indian troops on Kargil heights routinely vacated their posts in the winter months due to sub zero temperatures, while maintaining the minimum presence required for security. Each year in May they would return to their posts. But in May 1999, when they returned they were greeted by hostile fire. A patrol sent to investigate did not return. It was ambushed. Thereafter, traffic on the Srinagar-Leh road was continuously interdicted by accurate artillery fire from the heights, as a result of which movement was restricted to the hours of darkness. In the following days there was massive confusion at all levels of command. Who was the enemy, the Pakistan army or the Mujahideen? Where were they deployed and what was their strength? Questions were being asked but no one had the answers, least of all the Kargil brigade, 15 corps headquarters in Srinagar (responsible for the theatre), the Northern Command headquarters in Udhampur (responsible for Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh), and the army headquarters in Delhi. Yet, orders were issued down the line to the infantry battalions to “go up there and throw them out”. This decision by the high command must have been influenced by the ease with which the heights had been captured on three previous occasions. The fact that on those occasions the enemy on the heights was a small paramilitary force, thinly spread and lightly armed, must have been overlooked by them. In May 1999, the losses suffered by the Indian troops returning to their posts, as well as the shelling of the Srinagar-Leh road, should have told the high command a great deal about the frontage and depth of the penetration and also about the enemy on the heights. It is clear that they not only overlooked this, but also the fact that the combat effectiveness of attacking soldiers is significantly reduced at high altitudes and that it gets accentuated when the soldiers are without proper equipment and clothing, as the Indian soldiers were. In their haste to restore status quo ante they also overlooked the fact that attacking in the unknown (without knowledge of the enemy), and that too frontally, is courting disaster. Ask the officers and men of the infantry battalions who went up the precipitous slopes, and in 11 weeks of high altitude battles lost over 600 men while 1800 were wounded. Add to this the emotional scars that the survivors would carry for the rest of their lives, and the los
 
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Jawan    Kargil Aggresion by TSP!   10/24/2006 10:34:36 PM
FROM DAWN!!

Clinton man recalls Pak Kargil chaos 10/24/2006 12:04:46 AM
- By Anwar Iqbal

Washington, Oct. 23: There was confusion in Islamabad during the Kargil crisis and it was not clear who was calling the shots, says Bruce Riedel, President Clinton’s special assistant for South Asian affairs who played a key role in the US-Pakistan talks on the issue.

Mr Riedel, who was the only person to attend the Sharif-Clinton talks in Washington on July 4, 1999, said in a paper on "America, Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil summit" that the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ‘seemed genuinely interested in pursuing the Lahore process’.

Mr Sharif had argued eloquently with a series of American guests, including Washington’s UN ambassador Bill Richardson, that he wanted an end to the 50-year old quarrel with India, Mr Riedel said.

"His military chief, General Pervez Musharraf, seemed to be in a different mould — he was said to be a hardliner on Kashmir, a man some feared was determined to humble India once and for all."

Commenting on the current controversy between Gen. Musharraf and Mr Sharif, he said, "We will probably never know for sure the exact calculus of decision making in Islamabad. Each of the players has his own reasons for selling a particular version of the process. Gen. Musharraf and Mr Sharif have already put out different versions of who said what to whom.

"What is clear is that the civil-military dynamic between Sharif in Islamabad and Gen. Musharraf in Rawalpindi was confused and tense," he added.

Explaining what worried the Americans most, Mr Riedel said, "The danger was that the Indians would grow weary of attacking uphill (actually up-mountain) into well-dug Pakistani positions. The casualties the Indian forces were taking were mounting. New Delhi could easily decide to open another front elsewhere along the Line of Control (LoC) to ease its burden and force the Pakistanis to fight on territory favourable to India." Mr Riedel’s version shows the former Prime Minister as getting ‘increasingly desperate’ to end the crisis.

He said, "(Mr) Sharif became increasingly desperate as he saw how isolated Pakistan was in the world. He urgently requested American intervention to stop the Indian counter-attack. Washington was clear the solution required a Pakistani withdrawal behind the LoC, nothing else would do."

According to Mr Riedel, by end of June 1999, Mr Sharif began to ask to see President Clinton directly to plead his case. "The President also consulted with (the then) Indian Prime Minister (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee on the phone. The Indians were adamant: withdrawal to the LoC was essential. (Mr) Vajpayee would not negotiate under the threat of aggression." President Clinton "sought to reassure Mr Vajpayee that we would not countenance Pakistani aggression, not reward them for violating the LoC and that we stood by our commitment to the Lahore process, i.e. direct talks between India and Pakistan were the only solution to Kashmir, not third party intervention."

Mr Riedel then explains how before meeting Mr Sharif, President Clinton had asked his advisers to prepare two statements about the results of the meeting.

"The first was a draft statement the President would issue if (Mr) Sharif agreed to pull back his forces to the LoC, the second a statement which would be used if (Mr) Sharif refused. The latter would make clear that the blame for the crisis in South Asia lay solely with Pakistan," he said.
 
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Jawan    Lying MUSHARRAF AND PAKIS ABOUT Kargil!!!   10/24/2006 10:40:55 PM
To the dumb poster of this article and post!!!

""If the Indians had pulled this off, what might have happened to the Northern Areas and Kashmir?

Great captains of war are risk-takers because they know that too much caution and indecision can rob them of opportunity and success. Kargil once again exposed the limitations of the Indian high command — their slavish devotion to orthodoxy and their lack of strategic thought. ""

The author of this article has to be a fool coz in his idiotic assertions he does not understand how closely PAkistan came to be destroyed militarily and diplomatically. 9/11 saved Pakistani skin!!!

Check this out!!! and may be mail it to "JAVED HUSSAIN" too!!!

Musharraf's shoddy attempt to rewrite military history

General Pervez Musharraf's brazen attempt in his memoirs "In the Line of Fire" to whitewash the Pakistan Army's defeat during the Kargil conflict with India has once again focussed attention on the events of the summer of 1999.

The chapter in the general's book on the Kargil conflict is a compilation of gross self-serving lies. It is worth recalling exactly what had transpired seven years ago.

Even as the Lahore peace process was under way, the Pakistan Army launched 'Operation Badr', an ill-conceived military adventure, across the Line of Control (LoC) into Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir in the summer months of 1999.

By infiltrating its soldiers in civilian clothes through gaps in the Indian defences along the LoC, to physically occupy large areas of ground, the Pakistan Army added a new dimension to its 10-year-old proxy war against India.

Pakistan's provocative action compelled India to launch a firm but measured military operation to clear the intruders from the Indian side of the LoC.

The Pakistan Army's nefarious designs in the Kargil sector took India's military planners completely by surprise. It was a clear failure of intelligence and threat assessment.

However, India's fight back was determined and well planned. Additional troops and artillery units were systematically inducted into Kargil and one by one the mountains occupied by the Pakistan Army were courageously taken back.

Besides a swift army response, air strikes from fighter-ground attack (FGA) aircraft and attack helicopters of the Indian Air Force (IAF) and manoeuvres by the Indian Navy in the Arabian Sea contributed to making Pakistan capitulate.

India's 'Operation Vijay' (victory) was finely calibrated to limit military action to the Indian side of the LoC. The aim was to ensure that the intrusions in Kargil were vacated quickly and Pakistan's military adventurism was not allowed to escalate into a larger conflict.

The primary objective of India's military campaign was to conclude military operations against Pakistani forces as early as possible without enlarging the scope of the ongoing conflict. This was achieved on July 26, 1999, when the last of the Pakistani intruders was successfully evicted.

Finding the Indian government unrelenting in its resolve to evict every intruder from its territory, even as the Pakistan Army suffered one reverse after another, Pakistan's then prime minister Nawaz Sharif rushed to Washington in the first week of July 1999 (at the behest of General Musharraf) and agreed in his talks with president Bill Clinton that Pakistan would pull out its troops from Kargil unconditionally.

India's resounding victory at Tiger Hill, the news of which came even as Sharif was meeting Clinton, contributed significantly to this politico-military decision.

As a face saving device, Pakistan's widely anticipated pullback was couched in euphemistic terms. Pakistan would "appeal to the Kashmiri freedom fighters to pull out from their positions in Kargil", the Pakistan government announced - the same so-called mujahideen over whom it had repeatedly emphasised that it had no control!

Why did the Pakistan Army undertake a military operation that was foredoomed to failure?

It did so because it was becoming increasingly frustrated with India's success in containing the militancy in J&K to within manageable limits. The army saw in the Kashmiri people's open expression of their preference for normalcy, the evaporation of all its hopes and desires to bleed India through a strategy of "a thousand cuts".

Nawaz Sharif's government appeared to be inclined to accept India's hand of friendship, in keeping with the mood of popular opinion within Pakistan, and was committed to opening up trade, liberalising the visa regime and encouraging people-to-people, cultural and sports contacts.

Though it did not feature in black and white in the Lahore Declaration of 1999, the acceptance of the concept of the LoC
 
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chupooey    Re   10/25/2006 6:40:44 PM
i am glad as ever to see the 2 posts by a shoola bayan poster. going through the long script, nothing is mentioned of the subject scenario. which in a way suggests that poster has nothing to contradict. the debate that who was calling the shots, who asked for US intervention is not the topic of discussion here, the food for thought is that, had india missed out on a chance provided by Pakistanis. just for the record, pakistan availed the  chance to full benefit when india exploded the devices.
 
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Jawan    U r nuts!!!   10/25/2006 11:09:20 PM

i am glad as ever to see the 2 posts by a shoola bayan poster. going through the long script, nothing is mentioned of the subject scenario. which in a way suggests that poster has nothing to contradict. the debate that who was calling the shots, who asked for US intervention is not the topic of discussion here, the food for thought is that, had india missed out on a chance provided by Pakistanis. just for the record, pakistan availed the  chance to full benefit when india exploded the devices.


 U need a thorough neurological examination along with a Mental Status Exam. U certainly missed the points of the "TWO" articles. May be too much of reading and too much "FACTS" which ur pea-sized brain is not used too.!!!

I wasted enough time, DUMBASS!!!


 
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