Kargil War Thread - VI

Raj Malhotra · Post by **Raj Malhotra** » 01 Jul 2009 09:55

I think that Indian Army casualties per govt report are correct but Pak figures are under-reported as it will high light the incompetence of the brass that was sleeping.

Indian Intel should know the Pak figures from radio and intel intercepts apart from own assessment.

Their was a high power discussion on TV (forgot names) where lot of persons representing various Indian Govt quasi departments were of the opinion that Pak casualilites were around 2000 killed, give or take a few

Vipul · Post by **Vipul** » 04 Jul 2009 21:17

Kargil 10 Years After: A Ringside View.

Jagan · Post by **Jagan** » 04 Jul 2009 22:09

http://features.ibnlive.in.com/videos/v ... 7C499F6C42

IBN Video on the Grenadiers - has Yogendra Yadav PVC and Balwan Singh MVC in it

VinodTK · Post by **VinodTK** » 04 Jul 2009 22:55

India's 'Vijay' at Kargil

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 04 Jul 2009 23:48

RayC, Every one and his uncle is giving ringside accounts. How about one from driver's seat?

Rahul M · Post by **Rahul M** » 05 Jul 2009 00:00

I think RayC would be quite familiar with the above ringside view ! (edit : I mean the sify one)

shravan · Post by **shravan** » 05 Jul 2009 03:17

Raj Malhotra wrote: Pak casualilites were around 2000 killed,

It is above 4000.
-------------

Pakistan suffered more casualties in Kargil than 48, 65 or 71 !

Pakistan suffered more casualties in the Kargil operation than in any of its previous wars with India. But as a reflection of the embarrassment this conflict arouses, the precise number of the dead and wounded remains a closely-guarded secret.

--------

Over 4,000 soldiers killed in Kargil: Sharif
ISLAMABAD Aug. 16 . The former Pakistan Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, claimed that more than 4,000 Pakistani troops and officials were killed in the Kargil conflict.

===

Arun_S · Post by **Arun_S** » 05 Jul 2009 08:58

Today on 4th July, 10 years ago Tiger Hill was re-captured.

Five Indian Army men met "Veer Gati" and 10 Puki pigs were killed and 2 ran away.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 05 Jul 2009 09:30

Arun_S wrote:Today on 4th July, 10 years ago Tiger Hill was re-captured.

Five Indian Army men met "Veer Gati" and 10 Puki pigs were killed and 2 ran away.

Bhaskar · Post by **Bhaskar** » 05 Jul 2009 10:28

shiv wrote:
Arun_S wrote:Today on 4th July, 10 years ago Tiger Hill was re-captured.

Five Indian Army men met "Veer Gati" and 10 Puki pigs were killed and 2 ran away.

I remember watching this when i was a little kid.
I also remember the time when, during this war, there were electricity outages at night (as i live in delhi) and as we were one of the few people in our apartment who had an Inverter, everyone used to come to our house at 12 - 1 in the night to watch every detail of the war, even our security guard

came to our house at 1 when his radio stopped working just to get the good news.

Salute to the soldiers who died 10 years ago, so we can roam every inch of our country freely.

Paul · Post by **Paul** » 05 Jul 2009 12:30

july 3rd is also the day Usman the apeman died due to a direct hit in Naushera during the 1948 ops.

Benjamin · Post by **Benjamin** » 05 Jul 2009 21:00

The paki General trio of Mushraf-Hasan-other wanted to mop up the bodies of Indian soldiers in Siaches, who would supposedly have died due to cut of supplies, but they ended up in a situation where they could not even mop up the bodies of paki soldiers. Their bodies decayed and remained unclaimed.

What an honourable thing it is to work in Paki army!!!!

Kargil was lost in the minds of Pakistani generals.

There was no clear strategic goal.

Still most pakistani's think that they won Kargil...but withdrew only due to international pressure. But the matter of fact is, no soldier worth its salt can withdraw without putting up a fight, especially after so many of their comarades were killed.

Arun_S · Post by **Arun_S** » 06 Jul 2009 06:04

^^^
Add insult to injury, it was the Pakistani Army soldiers that starved and dehydrated to death on Kargil, Drass and Maskoh peaks as their stretched logistics line was made defunct by Indian army fire and IAF bombing.

While Indian troops in Siachen and Leh continued about their task as if nothing has happened.

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 06 Jul 2009 08:45

Army rejoices recapture of Tiger Hills 10 years ago

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 06 Jul 2009 08:58

Saurabh Kalia's parents waging lone battle to highlight war crimes

putnanja · Post by **putnanja** » 08 Jul 2009 06:16

‘I went looking for my lost yak and I saw them building bunkers’

He went up the heights of Batalik to look for his missing yak but what he saw and reported became the 1999 Kargil war. An urgent message by cowherd Tashi Namgyal, whose village Garkon is a few hours walk from the Line of Control, to the local Army unit was the first detection of large-scale intrusion by Pakistani soldiers.

Tashi recalls how he saw six armed intruders busy making bunkers on Indian soil in an area traditionally never manned by the Army. A lost yak, which he says was eventually eaten by the intruders, was key to the discovery.

“I had lost a yak and was out the whole day looking for it. When I reached the mountain ridge (near the village), I saw six armed men dressed in black. They were shifting stones and making some kind of shelter,” recalls Tashi (46).

He informed a local formation of 3 Punjab, based down in the valley, about the intrusion. This led to patrol parties being dispatched by the Army to the heights of Batalik.
...

A decade on, Garkon has shown few signs of progress — it has a hard top road courtesy the Army and a medical care unit. But electricity and phones are missing. The only phone connection is at Tashi’s house — a military line set up by the Army in recognition of his service to the nation.

Baljeet · Post by **Baljeet** » 08 Jul 2009 23:44

RaviBg wrote:‘I went looking for my lost yak and I saw them building bunkers’

He went up the heights of Batalik to look for his missing yak but what he saw and reported became the 1999 Kargil war. An urgent message by cowherd Tashi Namgyal, whose village Garkon is a few hours walk from the Line of Control, to the local Army unit was the first detection of large-scale intrusion by Pakistani soldiers.

Tashi recalls how he saw six armed intruders busy making bunkers on Indian soil in an area traditionally never manned by the Army. A lost yak, which he says was eventually eaten by the intruders, was key to the discovery.

“I had lost a yak and was out the whole day looking for it. When I reached the mountain ridge (near the village), I saw six armed men dressed in black. They were shifting stones and making some kind of shelter,” recalls Tashi (46).

He informed a local formation of 3 Punjab, based down in the valley, about the intrusion. This led to patrol parties being dispatched by the Army to the heights of Batalik.
...

A decade on, Garkon has shown few signs of progress — it has a hard top road courtesy the Army and a medical care unit. But electricity and phones are missing. The only phone connection is at Tashi’s house — a military line set up by the Army in recognition of his service to the nation.

Bravo to Tashi. India is saved time and again by sons of soil not by any Politician, Neta.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 09 Jul 2009 11:25

Who is this author?

The Effects of Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons on Civil-Military Relations in India

Paul · Post by **Paul** » 09 Jul 2009 11:32

That scene is replayed in "Lakshya" when a shepherd is looking for missing goats.

kidoman · Post by **kidoman** » 09 Jul 2009 20:03

ramana wrote:Who is this author?

The Effects of Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons on Civil-Military Relations in India

From her Home page
"Ayesha Ray is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at King's College, Pennsylvania. "

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 09 Jul 2009 20:10

I can do that. What I wanted is whats her background? She claims to be a Ind Army brat.

putnanja · Post by **putnanja** » 10 Jul 2009 03:53

The hills grow distant - K. Subrahmanyam

After the end of the Kargil war, a veteran Pakistani journalist and confidante of Field-Marshal Ayub Khan wrote a series of four articles in the Pakistani daily Nation titled “Four wars, one assumption.” The four wars he referred to were the the Kashmir conflict 1947-48, the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965, the war of 1971 and the Kargil war. He asserted: “The point is that all these operations were conceived and launched on the basis of one assumption: that the Indians are too cowardly and ill-organised to offer any effective military response which could pose a threat to Pakistan. Ayub Khan genuinely believed that as a general rule Hindu morale would not stand more than a couple of hard blows at the right time and place.”

...
In the Kargil war, Pakistan presumably set out to test a number of its assumptions. After becoming a declared nuclear power, they wanted to try out what the US strategists termed in the fifties as “salami slicing” tactics, as holding good in the sub-continental context. When the US was excessively focusing on building up nuclear arsenals in the fifties, the then US army chief of staff, General Maxwell Taylor, raised the issue whether nuclear capability could succeed in preventing a similarly armed nuclear adversary to salami-slice one’s territory through limited actions under a mutually deterred nuclear situation, discouraging escalation on the part of the attacked nation. The Pakistanis were already committed to their basic assumption that India would be deterred from escalating once they had occupied the Kargil-Dras heights. They relied on their assessment that the NDA government in New Delhi was relatively inexperienced and in the previous few years, under Narasimha Rao, the defence budgets had been cut in real terms. They were already wedded to their basic assumption that the Indian response would be inadequate once presented with the fait-accompli. They expected the matter to go to the Security Council and with a consequent ceasefire leaving them in possession of the captured territory. Kashmir would also have been brought to the international agenda since the secretary-general was for removing Kashmir from the UN agenda as it had not figured in any discussion for decades. Lastly, even a nominal victory in terms of altering the line of control in their favour would have been a big morale booster for the jehadi terrorists in Kashmir.
...
...
It speaks volumes about the gullibility of our political leadership that they continued to believe in Sharif’s innocence for quite some time thereafter. Our leaders should have heard of the Ribbentrop-Molotov or Matsuoko-Molotov pacts where the signatories, even as they signed the pacts, were aware they were going to break them. This experience has some relevance to today’s situation when Pakistan’s political leadership assures India of its intention to take action against jehadi terrorists.

The Pakistanis, as they had earlier, woefully miscalculated. They failed to take note of the fact that mutual nuclear deterrence deters both the aggressor and aggressed from escalating, but the international community was not likely to consider it an escalation if the victim used superior force to evict the aggression and refrained from entering the aggressor’s territory. For this very correct evaluation of the international opinion credit must be given to Vajpayee and his advisers. After the initial delay the Indian armed forces rapidly mobilised to signal to Pakistan that India was ready to use necessary force to evict the aggression. The use of the air force was critical. Kaiser Tufail’s account reveals that the Pakistani air force was not in a position to confront the Indian air force.
...
...
This sense of manifest destiny, and their own myth-making, their overconfidence in their ability to outwit the US, gave them as they did to the Nazis — a sense of their superiority and the inevitability of them emerging victorious. This is not a universally shared feeling in the Islamic world. But this cult intensely believed in by the Pakistan army and the ISI led to the Kargil war and poses an international threat in the Af-Pak region. Kargil was an episode in the campaign of this jehadi cult.
...

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 10 Jul 2009 07:35

Wow!

KS garu also thinks there are similarities between the TSP ideology and Nazis.

kidoman · Post by **kidoman** » 10 Jul 2009 12:29

ramana wrote:I can do that. What I wanted is whats her background? She claims to be a Ind Army brat.

Quoting her education background from her site:

EDUCATION
* The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Government, Ph.D in Political Science, August 2008
Dissertation Title- "Political Masters and Sentinels: Commanding the Allegiance of the Soldier in India"
Dissertation Committee: Robert Harrison Wagner; Robert Moser; George Gavrilis; Ami Pedahzur; David Prindle; Kanti Bajpai

* Jawaharalal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, M.Phil in Disarmament Studies, 2001

*Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, M.A. in International Relations, 1999

*St. Xavier's College, Kolkata, India, B.A. in Political Science (Honors), 1997

RayC · Post by **RayC** » 10 Jul 2009 12:31

The lady has no family connection with me to the best of my knowledge!

Just to put the record straight!

Keerthivasan · Post by **Keerthivasan** » 11 Jul 2009 03:49

In her website, she has given the link to BR in the "Links" section
http://staff.kings.edu/ayesharay/links.htm

She might be reading BRF.

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 12 Jul 2009 19:37

Daughter of Lt. Gen. Arjun Ray?

Raman · Post by **Raman** » 13 Jul 2009 03:39

No. In the Acknowledgements of her PhD thesis, she thanks her parents Lolita and Shanthanu Ray, and her brother Dhruv Ray.

Benjamin · Post by **Benjamin** » 15 Jul 2009 00:56

I recently read some news that point 5353 was still held by pakistani troops in the Dras sector since the kargil war.

I read several links about this but I am not satisfied with the information available. Can anyone here be kind enough to shed some light.

RayC · Post by **RayC** » 15 Jul 2009 09:06

Raman wrote:No. In the Acknowledgements of her PhD thesis, she thanks her parents Lolita and Shanthanu Ray, and her brother Dhruv Ray.

Arjun Ray's brother is Shantanu Ray (I think he is the son from his father's second marraige).

I am not too sure if this Shantanu Ray is the brother of Arjun Ray.

vsudhir · Post by **vsudhir** » 15 Jul 2009 23:52

x-post

Kargil only for NDA to celebrate: Cong MP

Does the Congress consider Kargil as the BJP's war and not the entire country's? Party MP Rashid Alvi seemed to suggest so on Wednesday.

Alvi said he saw no reason to celebrate the Kargil victory. "Kargil isn't a thing to be celebrated. The war was fought within our territory. We didn't even come to know when the Pakistani army crossed over and built bunkers inside our territory. It's only the NDA which may celebrate," he said.

If Alvi's views were shocking, former minister of state for home Sri Prakash Jaiswal couldn't even remember when the Kargil war was fought and won. Asked about Vijay Diwas, he wanted to know when the day was celebrated.

vera_k · Post by **vera_k** » 16 Jul 2009 09:55

ramana wrote:KS garu also thinks there are similarities between the TSP ideology and Nazis.

Bad idea to go down this road I think. TSPians and their allies in the West have the initiative in this regard as a result of their efforts to equate BJP/Hindutva with Nazism / Fascism.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 16 Jul 2009 10:23

vera_k wrote:Bad idea to go down this road I think. TSPians and their allies in the West have the initiative on in this regard as a result of their efforts to equate BJP/Hindutva with Nazism / Fascism.

Nazis were preoccupied with the hatred of the Jews, a sense of superiority of their race and Germanic culture, massive militarization of the society, a sense of historic victimhood and a propensity to use violence to further their core beliefs.

I agree. Pakis are not Nazis. Nazis industrialized Germany on a massive scale and did not thrive on handouts. Pakis have a long way to go before they become Nazis. First they have to make a bicycle chain. Then maybe the wheels. After than an entire bicycle and then in a century or two they would have industrialized.

arun · Post by **arun** » 17 Jul 2009 14:53

vsudhir wrote:x-post

Kargil only for NDA to celebrate: Cong MP

Does the Congress consider Kargil as the BJP's war and not the entire country's? Party MP Rashid Alvi seemed to suggest so on Wednesday.

Alvi said he saw no reason to celebrate the Kargil victory. "Kargil isn't a thing to be celebrated. The war was fought within our territory. We didn't even come to know when the Pakistani army crossed over and built bunkers inside our territory. It's only the NDA which may celebrate," he said.

If Alvi's views were shocking, former minister of state for home Sri Prakash Jaiswal couldn't even remember when the Kargil war was fought and won. Asked about Vijay Diwas, he wanted to know when the day was celebrated.

Simply disgusting behaviour by the Congress led Government.

Kudo’s to Col. (Retd) V. N. Thapar, father of Kargil hero Capt. Vijayant Thapar, for rubbing the truth in the Congress led Governments face and also in the Congress MP, Rashid Alvi’s face :

“My son did not die for the BJP or the Congress. He laid down his life for the country. Why are these leaders trying to politicise the armed forces?”

Meanwhile former COAS, Gen. V.P. Malik really ought to know that his comment is wasted breath given that it is our unfortunate fate of being governed by a present ruling political elite that would much rather be feted by the French then celebrate the sacrifices of our soilders

:

“ I am disappointed the country’s political elite is not celebrating with the soldiers. It is disappointing that nothing is being done on the national level to commemorate 10 years of victory in Kargil’’

From here:

Siasat

Hari · Post by **Hari** » 17 Jul 2009 15:51

Kargil only for NDA to celebrate: Cong MP

I would like to remember what Field Marshal SHFJ Manekshaw said about our political bosses

"I wonder whether those of our political masters who have been put in charge of the defence of the country can distinguish a mortar from a motor; a gun from a howitzer; a guerrilla from a gorilla, although a great many resemble the latter."

Baljeet · Post by **Baljeet** » 17 Jul 2009 20:06

ARun
Here is the Gem from same article.

Ironically, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh took out time to participate in Bastille Day celebrations in Paris on July 14.

Stateman PM has time to go celebrate some other countries victory but has no time to celebrate his own country's victory. Well Mr. Statesman PM, I have been embarrassed many times in life, but never been humiliated like this. Do you care to explain what shall I tell teenage son of my cousin who lost his father in kargil war. Why this nation does not want to honor his sacrifice? Do you have any decorum, dignity, self respect?

Alvi said the Kargil anniversary was not an occasion to celebrate as India did not cross the Line of Control and win the war

Does that mean our independence is also a farce since we never crossed our borders into Britania for Satyagrah. Does that mean Azimullah khan was not a desh bhakt when he raised his sword to protect his beloved nation against british.

Mr. Rashid Alvi grow out of your ummah inferiority complex. There is a life beyond tijori Bahro.

Absolutely Disgusting.

RayC · Post by **RayC** » 17 Jul 2009 21:44

Baljeet has a point!

Any different views?

abhiti · Post by **abhiti** » 17 Jul 2009 22:26

Baljeet wrote:ARun
Here is the Gem from same article.
Ironically, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh took out time to participate in Bastille Day celebrations in Paris on July 14.
Stateman PM has time to go celebrate some other countries victory but has no time to celebrate his own country's victory. Well Mr. Statesman PM, I have been embarrassed many times in life, but never been humiliated like this. Do you care to explain what shall I tell teenage son of my cousin who lost his father in kargil war. Why this nation does not want to honor his sacrifice? Do you have any decorum, dignity, self respect?

Sonia seems to have little regard for Indian military. No one has ever humilitaled Indian military like I have seen in last five years.

RaghuKote · Post by **RaghuKote** » 18 Jul 2009 00:06

RayC wrote:Baljeet has a point!

Any different views?

I tend to agree with the Congress MP little bit that as we did not cross LOC to take on the Pakis we should not be celebrating Kargil as a victory as we are just taking back what is ours.
But I am also of the view that we should not stop from honoring the brave soldiers who fought to get the intruders out off our soil esp ones who gave their lives/grievously injured. It will be a dishonor if we do not do so.
I would be more than happy if we crossed the LOC -not whole scale invasion/cross international border- and taken back to atleast part of POK. I would term this victory. We should bleed Pak when ever they do this.

In the words of Lt Gen Mohinder Puri, PVSM, UYSM, Former GOC, 8 Mtn Div in article http://sify.com/news/imagegallery/galle ... gside_View

"Another contentious issue was whether it was correct to politically lay down stringent restrictions of not crossing the LoC. While we may have earned some brownie points, but strategically and tactically we lost more than we gained.

By accepting, under international pressure to restrict operations to our side of the LoC, we have wily-nily given de facto recognition of the LoC as the international border. Statements made by political leaders that there will be no redrawing of borders merely reinforces this hypothesis.

Tactically by not crossing the LoC we closed our options of conflict termination in an earlier timeframe and perhaps lost the opportunity to take a large number of prisoners who would have got entrapped by our encirclement. As a result we had to go through a slogging match to recover territory and evict the enemy from dominating heights, thus prolonging the operations and suffering avoidable casualties. "

As also in the words of Air Marshal Narayan Menon (Retd), PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, was the Air Officer Commanding, J&K, during the Kargil Conflict. who said in
http://publication.samachar.com/topstor ... ver_Kargil

On May 25we received the codeword to commence offensive operations from the next day. But there was a caveat. Under no circumstance could our aircraft cross the LoC.

Given that the known intruded area was about 140km along the LoC with depths varying between 1 to 8 km, the constraint of not crossing the LoC posed considerable problems, the most severe being the restrictions on attack profiles of fighter aircraft. A fighter aircraft must sight the target, get into a dive to achieve weapon release parameters, release the weapons and pull out of the dive while maintaining visual contact with other mission members.Restricting attack direction, as this caveat of not crossing the LoC imposed would lead to sub optimal weapon delivery and our difficulties would be compounded by the irregular alignment of the LoC.

Going by the above there was lot to gain by crossing the LOC than by not doing it.

Also do not get into thinking that I take Congress for what ever it did.
I hated JN when I learnt that he did not take into account/confidence the Army before declaring the ceasefire in 47/48 ops.
I hated JN again when not deploying AirForce early, etc in the 62 conflict.
I hated all the rest who inspite of waging war with Pakis did not get back POK-Shastri-65, IG-71, ABV-Kargil and somewhat Manmohan-Mumbai attacks.
I hated IG for not ensuring all Indians POW while giving back before giving back the thousands of Pak POWs.

Baljeet · Post by **Baljeet** » 18 Jul 2009 06:49

Dude
Why don't you see some good in it. We didn't cross LOC it made our job difficult. But look at the gains we made, we have cemented our reputation that we can fight and win even if our hands are tied behind our backs, in sub zero tempratures, against all odds. Let me tell you something, kargil victory has given pause to the world's leading powers. I know that becuase I have seen this being taught as a tactical course to commanders going in Afghanistan.
It sure as hell scared the crap out of Dragon. In the aftermath of kargil victory all of a sudden our eastern flank became very quiet not a peep from dragon. Get in the know of things before agreeing with losers like Rashid Alvi.

Every year I salute all the jawans of IXth Jat, RajRif, JAKLI, 18th Grenadiers, Naga Scout, Ladakh Scouts, 3rd Gorkha, 3rd Sikh.

Remember this, our boys didn't even have Arctic clothing for first few weeks, yet they fought with everything they got. Pakis are the only people in this world who have perfected the art of back stabbing and be proud of it