Introduction

The Kargil War, also known as the Kargil conflict, was an armed conflict between
India and Pakistan that took place between May and July 1999 in the Kargil district
of Kashmir. The cause of the war was the infiltration of Pakistani soldiers and
Kashmiri militants into positions on the Indian side of the Line of Control, which
serves as the de facto border between the two states. During and directly after the
war, Pakistan blamed the fighting entirely on independent Kashmiri insurgents, but
documents left behind by casualties and later statements by Pakistan's Prime
Minister and Chief of Army Staff showed involvement of Pakistani paramilitary
forces. The Indian Army, supported by the Indian Air Force, attacked the Pakistani
positions and, with international diplomatic support, eventually forced a Pakistani
withdrawal across the Line of Control (LoC).

The 1999 Kargil War took place between May 8, when Pakistani forces and
Kashmiri militants were detected atop the Kargil ridges and July 14 when both sides
had essentially ceased their military operations. It is believed that the planning for
the operation, by Pakistan, may have occurred about as early as the autumn of 1998.

After the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, there had been a long period of relative calm
among the two neighbours - notwithstanding India's preemptive assault and capture
of most of Siachen Glacier and the resulting high altitute warfare in the 1980s. But
during the 1990s, escalating tensions and conflict with separatists in Kashmir as well
as nuclear tests by both countries in 1998 changed the scenario. Despite the
belligerent atmosphere, both countries signed the Lahore Declaration in February
1999 to provide a peaceful and bilateral solution to the Kashmiri issue. However,
elements in the Military of Pakistan covertly trained and sent troops and paramilitary
forces, some allegedly in the guise of mujahideen, into the Indian territory. The aim
was to sever the link between Kashmir and Ladakh, and cause Indian forces to
withdraw from the Siachen Glacier, thus forcing India to negotiate a settlement of
the broader Kashmir dispute. Pakistan also believed that any tension in the region
would internationalise the Kashmir issue, helping it to secure a speedy resolution.
Yet another goal may have been to boost the morale of the decade-long rebellion in
Indian Administered Kashmir by taking a proactive role. Some writers have
speculated that the operation's objective may also have been as a retaliation for
India's Operation Meghdoot in 1984 that seized much of Siachen Glacier.
Indian territory occupied by Pakistan
Because of the extreme winter weather in Kashmir, it was common practice for the
Indian and Pakistan Army to abandon forward posts and reoccupy them in the
spring. That particular spring, the Pakistan Army reoccupied the forward posts
before the scheduled time.

In early May 1999, the Pakistan Army decided to occupy the Kargil posts,
numbering around 130, and thus control the area. Troops from the elite Special
Services Group as well as four to seven battalions of the Northern Light Infantry (a
paramilitary regiment not part of the regular Pakistani army at that time) backed by
Kashmiri guerrillas and Afghan mercenaries covertly and overtly set up bases on the
vantage points of the Indian-controlled region. Initially, these incursions were not
spotted due to the heavy artillery fire by Pakistan across the Line of Control, which
provided cover for the infiltrators. But by the second week of May, the ambushing of
an Indian patrol team, acting on a tip-off by a local shepherd in the Batalik sector,
led to the exposure of the infiltration. Initially with little knowledge of the nature or
extent of the encroachment, the Indian troops in the area claimed that they would
evict them within a few days. However, reports of infiltration elsewhere along the
LoC made it clear that the entire
plan of attack was on a much bigger
scale. The total area seized by the
ingress is generally accepted to
between 130 km² - 200 km²;
Musharraf however, stated that 500
square miles (1,300 km²) of Indian
territory was occupied.

The Government of India responded

with Operation Vijay, a mobilisation
of 200,000 Indian troops. However,
because of the nature of the terrain,
division and corps operations could
not be mounted; the scale of most
fighting was at the regimental or
battalion level. In effect, two divisions of the Indian Army, numbering 20,000, plus
several thousand from the Paramilitary forces of India and the air force were
deployed in the conflict zone. The total number of Indian soldiers that were involved
in the military operation on the Kargil-Drass sector was thus close to 30,000. The
number of infiltrators, including those providing logistical backup, has been put at
approximately 5,000 at the height of the conflict.This figure includes troops from
Pakistan-administered Kashmir that were involved in the war providing additional
artillery support.

.
Indians traced Pakistanis in Indian territory
Tashi Namgyal, Morup Tsering, and Ali Raza Stanba, three shepherds from the tiny
village of Garkhun, had made their way up the Banju heights with their flocks of
sheep. Shepherds in the Kargil mountains routinely pool their livestock together,
assigning groups of two or three villagers by turn to graze the animals on the high
meadows. Namgyal and his friends are a little coy about just what led them up
towards the Jubbar heights quite so early in summer, but the most plausible
explanation is that they hoped to use the time to engage in the region’s favourite
sport, poaching mountain goats. Tsering carried with him a pair of powerful field
binoculars, purchased years earlier in Leh, a tool of particular use for hunting.

By the morning of May 3, Namgyal had moved some 5 kilometres up the Jubbar
Langpa [nullah or mountain stream]. As he scanned the mountain with Tsering’s
binoculars, he saw groups of men in Pathan suits, digging earth and putting up
makeshift bunkers. Although it was possible neither to establish their numbers nor
strength, Namgyal promptly informed officers of the 3 Punjab Regiment, stationed
locally. Initial reactions to Namgyal’s story appear, by local accounts, to have been
more than slightly blasé. According to 15 Corps Commander Lieutenant General
Kishan Pal, two patrols subsequently despatched on May 4 and May 5 to Yaldor and
Kha Baroro detected seven intruders on the Kukerthang ridge and two at Kha
Baroro. Two further patrols were sent up in the night on May 7. The one sent to
Kukerthang lost one man in an ambush, while the second patrol lost two soldiers and
suffered several injured in a second ambush in the morning on May 10. Clearly, the
patrols had not gone out expecting serious resistance.5

Army officials have so far been less than forthcoming about just when patrols were
sent out in other areas of Kargil, and what precisely their fate was. Lieutenant
Saurabh Kalia’s ill - fated patrol is now affirmed to have moved down the Kaksar
Langpa on May 14 although officials had first claimed it had, in fact, left on its
mission ten days earlier. There is as yet no verifiable account of what other patrols
were sent out and just where they encountered or engaged Pakistani units. The scale
and character of military response to the information first provided by Namgyal is
just one of many issues that needs to be established through independent and
rigorous inquiry. All that is known is that by the middle of May, the Army was
discovering fresh Pakistan-held positions on an alarmingly regular basis, spanning
the entire Kargil sector fry om the Mushkoh Valley in the west to Chorbat La in the
east.
The 15 Corps Commander Lieutenant General Kishan Pal has given at least some
indication of the conceptual framework that underpinned the Army’s early
responses. In his first press conference on the Kargil War, called before air strikes
commenced, Pal described the territory occupied by Pakistan as "unheld areas". In a
subsequent interview, he explained just what he meant by this novel formulation. "If
I don’t take notice of them", he said, "it will make no difference…. If they come off
the heights in the summer, they will be slaughtered. And if they don’t leave them in
the winter, they will freeze to death".6 The true significance of these observations
has been little understood. Evidently, the military leadership believed the intrusion at
that stage to be little other than a very localised nuisance, an abortive enterprise to
push in irregulars into an area of Jammu & Kashmir until then unaffected by
insurgent activity.

The middle of May, however, saw at least some degree of unease set in. Pal ordered
helicopters engaged in Wide Area Surveillance Operations [WASO] to fly lower, an
effort to locate small Pakistan units entrenched on the mountains which would be
undetectable from altitude. Three helicopters engaged in WASO were shot at with
machine guns. Two were hit, but mercifully managed to return to base safely. Shortly
afterwards, Cheetah helicopters used for WASO began to be equipped with machine
guns mounted on their skids, a tactic first experimented with in Kupwara in spring.
By most accounts, this tactic was only of limited defensive utility. Given the lack of
a broad appreciation of the strength and purpose of Pakistan’s thrust into Kargil at
this stage, small numbers of poorly-acclimatised troops with thin artillery support
were pushed up the mountains in a desperate effort to vacate its positions. No
weekly breakdown of casualties has so far been made available, but the figures may
cast interesting light on the results of Army strategy during this first phase of its
Kargil operations.

Both Union Defence Minister George Fernandes’ glib pronouncements during the
first phase of the Kargil War and the fact that the first meeting of the Cabinet
Committee on Security (CCS) was not summoned until May 25 say not a little about
the chaotic management and poor strategic appraisal that characterised this period.

The meeting of the CCS led to the commencement of the second phase of the Kargil
War. The morning after, Indian combat jets bombed Pakistan-held positions
throughout the arc from the Mushkoh Valley to Batalik. For much of the media and
public opinion, this signalled the real begining of the Kargil War; but the initial air
campaign provided less than illustrious results. The loss of a Mig-21 fighter flown
by Squadron Leader A. Ahuja to a Stinger missile on May 27, minutes after a Mig-
27 flown by Flight Lieutenant K. Nachiketa went down accross the Line of Control
with engine trouble, was followed a day later by the destruction of a Mi-17
helicopter fitted with rocket pods in the Drass sub-sector, resulting in the death of all
four crew. Indian planners had clearly not anticipated the use of Stinger missiles by
Pakistani air defence. In the wake of the losses, combat aircraft were compelled in
general to fly at higher altitudes, using defensive measures to deflect the heat-
seeking Stinger missiles. The use of Mi-17 helicopters as weapon platforms was
subequently severely restricted.
Indian media’s Projection of war
In India, the mood was positive over the nuclear tests. However over
time real concerns of an economic slowdown were worrisome and also the fall of
the BJP coalition caused political problems. When Kargil occured, it had a
predicatable response of anger and outrage at Pakistan and also at the 
government of India. Indians backed the operations of the Indian government 
and military. Indians came together as a country to protest the aggression of
Pakistan and also to support their troops. The names of those who died in the
Kargil conflict, became household names and their funerals and national grief
was public. Ultimately, the Indian public rejoiced over the hard fought military
victory by the armed forces.

The media relied more on the information by the army regarding the help rendered
in the migrant camps at Kargil and elsewhere in Jammu & Kashmir. The Star News
that took the lead in glamourising the war and demonising the enemy, also boasted
of having churned out the humanitarian aspect of the war. It invoked the sensibilities
of the Indian elite and the upper middle class with the saga of martyrdom, coffins
and widows. But the voices of thousands of people uprooted, rendered homeless,
landless and penniless became totally voiceless, as if they did not exist or did not
matter. As if it did not serve the ‘national interest’ to talk about the ugly face of war -
that was neither heroic nor demonising the ‘enemy’.

Though, the regional media was more benevolent, highlighting their plight in shabby
tents, their affected agriculture, homes, perished cattle and plight of education but
there was very little said on the basic question of the justification of the war or how
the warnings of local Kargil people were ignored about infiltrators.

Media played a very positive role right through the operations bringing the latest 
actions into the homes and to every Indian live. This boosted the nations morale and 
prompted everyone to feel part of the war. The media and diplomatic offensive 
helped to bring about a polarization of the international opinion in favour of India.
Times of India
Pakistan misjudged India’s ability

Pakistan lost the Kargil conflict because it 'misjudged' India's 'ability and will' to
fight back besides failing to factor the reaction of major powers.

"The operation also misjudged the Indian ability and the will to fight back and had
assumed that India would never retaliate with an all-out offensive against Pakistan,"
Former Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad has said.

"In other words, it (Pakistan) was not prepared for what Musharraf describes (in his
book In the Line of Fire ) the unreasonably escalated Indian response," Ahmad said
in an article published in Dawn here on Sunday.

In the article written by Former Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad also said that in
whatever way one looks at the Kargil events, the episode did mark a "watershed in
India-Pakistan relations." The major powers, with all the latest satellite monitoring
means, blamed us for the intrusion and were getting restless over the prospect of a
wider conflict in a nuclearised region.With this ominous global dimension, it was no
longer an India-Pakistan affair. The major powers were worried and asked us to back
off. Even our friends publicly urged the need for de-escalation of the crisis and
prevention of a wider war.

On shortfall of Indian Army

The Kargil conflict showed up shortcomings in the Indian Army "in intelligence, key
equipment, and inter-services coordination". The report on political and military
ramifications of the Kargil crisis. The report, said India inducted "ill-equipped
troops" to push back Pakistan-backed intruders who had occupied strategic features
along a 140-km section of the Line of Control (LoC) in 1999.
"After suffering heavy casualties with little success, it took several weeks to build up
the troops and equipment needed to launch an effective counterattack," it said,
adding India's armed force learnt several "hard lessons" about operating jointly at
high altitudes.

The report implicated Pakistan as the aggressor who precipitated the crisis, citing an
instance in which Indian Army units pursuing infiltrators near Kargil town were
confronted by Pakistani troops. While the international community remained largely
neutral publicly, "most nations tacitly acknowledged Pakistan as the aggressor in
Kargil."

The report is dated September 14, 1999, a month before Pakistan's then prime
minister Nawaz Sharif was deposed by General Pervez Musharraf, the architect of
the intrusion into Kargil. India lost some 520 soldiers in evicting the intruders during
a 50-day campaign that saw battles being fought at heights of up to 15,000 feet.
Nearly 1,000 soldiers were injured. "Acclimatising troops for fighting in Kargil was
a stumbling block to operations," the report said, noting "it takes about a month for
troops to acclimatise to the altitude, let alone fight."
The report spoke of how units from the Indian Army's 15th Corps that pursued
infiltrators who attacked the ammunition depot at Kargil on May 9, 1999, into the
heights overlooking the town, were confronted by Pakistani troops.
"Expecting to encounter a ragtag band of Kashmiri militants, the Indian Army
instead faced a well-equipped force of militants and (Pakistan) army units occupying
the high ground overlooking the critical Srinagar-Leh supply route.
"The infiltrators repulsed the Indians, who gradually realised their foes held
reinforced defensive positions on the Indian side of the LoC."
The report said: "Though costly, India's preponderance of manpower and equipment
eventually ensured victory. All the services realised that Kargil was a measuring
stick to gauge the capabilities of their forces.
"India used frontal assaults supported by limited artillery in the first weeks of the
conflict," it said. After suffering heavy casualties in such strikes, Indian forces made
preparations for an effective counterattack.
"The Indian Army began its offensive in the first week of June and, using high
volumes of artillery fire and supported by Indian Air Force strikes, Indian army
troops recaptured the heights in the Drass and Kargil area.

"The uphill, daylight assaults proved costly in casualties," it said, and noted that
consequently, India made "plans to secure more individual night vision devices."
It predicted that at the tactical level India would now deploy more remote ground
sensing systems to monitor the LoC and unmanned aerial vehicles would also help
keep an eye on many infiltration routes "into Indian-held Kashmir."
On the positive side, the report said the Indian Air Force's experiences during the
conflict, especially the difficult targeting conditions and operational constraints,
would help the force to shift its doctrine to a "more modern, flexible, and precise use
of airpower."
It noted how the Indian Navy had taken several proactive measures during the crisis
"to protect maritime interests and send a strong signal of India's resolve to force
Pakistan back across the LoC.
"Although the crisis was primarily an Indian Army and Indian Air Force affair, the
Indian Navy took several steps to prepare for an expansion of the crisis, helping to
prevent a widening of hostilities to the maritime realm.

These shortcomings will "continue to challenge the Indian armed forces to prepare
for future conflicts."

Musharaff begged for ceasefire

Nawaz Sharif, in an interview said that he called for a ceasefire to end the Kargil
war in 1999 after Army chief Pervez Musharraf "begged" him to do so. , also
scoffed at the "pull-out" by the Pakistani troops from Kargil saying they had "lost
everything."

He admitted Pakistan made a "request" to militants to withdraw from Kargil only to

"show to the world" that Pakistani troops had not occupied the icy heights in Jammu
and Kashmir.

Sharif refuted Musharraf's claims that international pressure over Kargil had
demoralised him.

Sharif claims that after the first phase of his meeting with the then US President Bill
Clinton, he came to know that India had recaptured Tiger Hill from Pakistani troops.

"You have lost everything already, now what should I talk about," Sharif claims to
have told Musharraf during a telephone conversation from Washington. Sharif said
that he made the announcement asking the mujahideen to withdraw from the
occupied heights at the advise of his military secretary to show the world that it were
they who had captured the Karil peaks.
India-Today
On Intelligence failure
The cover story on Kargil war said that,57 Indian Army personnel had died
and 203 grievously wounded as the armed forces struggled to push back the
shock invasion of Pakistani-backed Islamic fundamentalists from the
strategic heights around Kargil. They had died doing their duty -- protecting
the territorial integrity of their country. But as thousands of Indian troops
brave a withering storm of artillery and machine gun fire to repulse the
intruders, the country is asking what really went wrong.

Clearly, all three principal agencies -- Research and Analysis Wing (RAW),
Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Military Intelligence (MI) -- must accept their
share of the blame for failing to anticipate the move. raw, whose domain is
external intelligence, should have ferreted out information from its network of
agents and technical means even while the planning for the assault was
going on some time last year. The IB and MI should have detected the arrival
of the intruders across the LoC the moment it happened in February or
March.

Kargil is a massive systemic failure for which India is already paying a heavy
price. The intruders have to be evicted because from their pickets
overlooking the vital Srinagar-Leh highway they can play havoc. Given the
disadvantage in heights, the battle to push them back is going to be long
drawn and costly. The exchequer is already doling out an estimated Rs 15
crore daily. For every soldier who is pressed into battle, four others are
needed to support him. Many more Indian soldiers will be killed in the war to
regain the heights. It is therefore important to know why India's intelligence
failed in Kargil, not just o punish the guilty, but also to recompense the dead
and prevent such serous lapses in future.
International media’s projection of war
In a special report by BBC reported that the Israeli Ambassador in New Delhi, Mark
Sofer, has said his country had assisted India in ”turning around” the situation during
the 1999 Kargil war with Pakistan. Relations between Israel and India did not exist
until 1992 but since then the two countries have developed relationships. India did
not recognise the state of Israel until then for two main reasons. Firstly, although
India belonged to Non-Aligned Movement, it was an ally of the USSR, and yet
followed the general pattern of non-aligned countries with regards to foreign
relations.Secondly, India was a strong supporter of the Palestinian independence.

Israel is now India’s second largest arms provider after Russia.

The BBC has played its role in exposing General Musharraf’s hypocrisy with
regards to the clampdown of emergency in the country. Though he blamed the
judiciary’s interference into affairs of the executive and the media for
sensationalising acts of terror, majority of the people of Pakistan do indeed believe
that the major reason for the proclamation of emergency was not the rising acts of
terrorism and suicide bombings in the country.

BBC

On Kashmir
BBC reported a meeting of top administrators and security officials held in
the Delhi in November 1999.L.K.Advani said that a war-like situation still
exists in the disputed region of Kashmir and India cannot lower its guard. We
cannot afford to be off guard now that the Kargil war is over. In a way the war
is still on.

Appeal for funds

The chief minister of Indian-administered Kashmir, Dr Farooq Abdullah, said
continued violence had weakened the state's economy.

Some 250,000 young, educated Kashmiris were

unemployed and tourism - the state's main source of
revenue - had been affected by the Kargil conflict.

Roads needed urgent repairs and schools and colleges

had no money, he said.

The state government needed at least $200m to meet its

expenses, the chief minister said. He also asked the
federal government to waive a loan of $250m.
Pakistan’s media Projection on war
The public of Pakistan was told by the Pakistani media that the Mujadeddin that
Pakistan gives moral support has captured the heights in Kashmir and were able to
hold of the Indian military,whose casualties were heavy. The public was over joyed,
for their view point, the Kashmir victory seemed right around the corner.

Pakistan received two of the dead bodies of Punjabi and Pathan personnel each from
India, but neglecting soldiers' dead bodies, who were not Pakistani or from Pakistan
Occupied Kashmir (POK). But they did not write anything on this topic, that India
on August 14th, 1999 had announced the release of Prisoners of war (POW) of
Kargil, but Pakistan Government pretended and avoided to receive them. In other
words, they were non-Pakistanis as they belonged to Gilgit-Baltistan. Pakistani
media never wrote anything about the killed, injured, disabled or Prisoners of war
(POW) of Kargil.

The government blocked all transmission early Saturday evening, as President Gen.
Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency rule on Pakistan. There are 30 news channels
in the country. Aaj TV was among the first to be raided late Saturday evening by the
police at the behest of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority.
Journalists tried to prevent the police from taking away their outdoor broadcasting
vans by sitting atop their vehicles and deflating the tyres.