Kargil War Thread - VI

[Digvijay]

And do read Musharraf's book where he says that his army was supporting jihad mongrels.

C'mon, you really dont believe everything Musharraf wrote in his book . do you?

Ofcourse not. But there is definetely some truth in the book. Like which divisions were mobilised, when etc. And the line that takes the cake is:
"Indian govt is engaging with Pakis for peace talks because they realised how brave pakis were in kargil"

I am just surprised that when we have seen the pig's claim why are we still engaging them in a peace talk?

-Digvijay

[Harry]

Pak is fighting the proxy war in kashmir with a strategy where they make sure that the impression gets created "that the common man's uprising" is taking place in kashmir. And do read Musharraf's book where he says that his army was supporting jihad mongrels. These jihaad mongrels are nothing but hardened/trained millitia from millitant orgs as well as muslim criminals who are trained by ISI to use arms against India. It is promised to them that there families will get lakhs on there jihaad (but ofcourse not a penny is given).

-Digvijay

From the horse's mouth, Pg 344, "Kargil : From Surprise to Victory", Gen VP Malik,

We also provided evidence such as captured Pakistani weapons, equipment, official letters, parade states and posting orders issued by the Pakistan Army or its formations and units to prove that it was not Mujahideen or Jihadis but Pakistani Army Regulars who were operating within our territory

[JCage]

And he asks, why do these simple guys had to come to the Kargil and die?

Because they are paid professional killers, paid to die on the job, and they swore themselves to an oath to such effect?

I understand what Jagan is saying, but at the same time, sympathy for the Paki soldiers, well even Bitta Karatey was a victim of his circumstances. These guys kill without question or remorse.

[Kakkaji]

Also, if these guys had won, would they have shown any sympathy to the captured Indian soldiers or civilians?

[Yerna]

How can anyone not feel sympathy for the poor soldiers? They are not terrorrists. Even our armed forces are sympathetic to them and that is why they are alive on hospital beds and rotting on kargil heights. We expect the pakis to treat our soldiers the same way. That they do not is a different matter and that is exactly what differentiates us from the pakis. But the pity we show to the pakis should not be considered as weakness. Those poor sods should be treated, fed and then thrown in jail for shooting at Indians.

Anyway, in all the jingo rage some are forgetting that corpses of dead pakis wouldn't have provided the same psy-ops value as these blind soldiers recieving treatment in Indian Army hospitals. Paki H&D is down the drain and this cilp should be posted all over the internet just to rub it in.

[Harry]

If you thought that was bad for H&D, see this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS8cKBgNsOI

Post "reactions" here or in the nukkad thread.

How can anyone not feel sympathy for the poor soldiers?

They are "poor" because they are suffering and under medical care. Can one say the same for the very same people when combat ready?

[hnair]

This discussion is interesting. Those "humble villager fellows", if they had gone back as part of the down-skill skiers group that Nawaz Sharief rescued (after pushing aside Monica Lewinsky's head ), they would have lied about 100s of Indian soldiers they mowed down with a Peeka and "allah-o-akbar".

But then again they got the good end of a bad deal. They got treated well(with world class medical treatment, which the other skiers will never get), learned some new stuff about the Indian Army and learned about their own one as well. Indian Army has already shown their decency and Pak army is yet to show any. Why change that?

[Jagan]

This one is good too (Though it needs some cleaning up)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upl7MRexM3k

[Yerna]

They are "poor" because they are suffering and under medical care. Can one say the same for the very same people when combat ready?

I am trying to find the exact translation of the telugu word 'laukyam', a character which is missing in many Indians. It basically means presenting an acceptable face to the world no matter what your true self is.
During the Iraqi war, US bombed the shit out of a village and in the process killed 10 members of a family. Only a 5 year old kid survived but he lost both his hands and legs. The kid was airlifted to UK and treated. This was trumpeted by US forces as an act of 'kindness', liberation of Iraqis. After the first day the news papers never mentioned that the boy lost all his family and also his limbs. What was mentioned was that a boy was saved by american forces.
God knows how many pakis were killed by Indian soldiers, that number doesn't matter to us or to history, what matters is how many soldiers we saved and how many were captured on camera praising Indian Army's magnonimity. If we kill all the enemies, we would be just another country of savages, pakis. Instead, by taking a 'manageable number' of POWs we both look good and can indulge in psy-ops.

My two cents.

[Digvijay]

Pak is fighting the proxy war in kashmir with a strategy where they make sure that the impression gets created "that the common man's uprising" is taking place in kashmir. And do read Musharraf's book where he says that his army was supporting jihad mongrels. These jihaad mongrels are nothing but hardened/trained millitia from millitant orgs as well as muslim criminals who are trained by ISI to use arms against India. It is promised to them that there families will get lakhs on there jihaad (but ofcourse not a penny is given).

-Digvijay

From the horse's mouth, Pg 344, "Kargil : From Surprise to Victory", Gen VP Malik,

We also provided evidence such as captured Pakistani weapons, equipment, official letters, parade states and posting orders issued by the Pakistan Army or its formations and units to prove that it was not Mujahideen or Jihadis but Pakistani Army Regulars who were operating within our territory

A buddy of mine has informed me that Malik was holidaying abroad when all this was going on and his commander in J&K, Khanna was busy building his house , i.e absent from the scene of action. Dagar was busy partying and golfing in Leh. Millitants created outposts from dumps left by our own PWD using local labour!

So ofcourse Malik will have to say that he got outmanouvered by a trained paki millitary. Reality is actually half way between Malik and Musharraf's claims.

-Digvijay

[Lalmohan]

Malik was on an official visit to Poland, a decision was made for him to continue whilst the field commanders continued to deal with the emerging scenario.

in a proper chain of command, that is perfectly reasonable

[Digvijay]

Malik was on an official visit to Poland, a decision was made for him to continue whilst the field commanders continued to deal with the emerging scenario.

in a proper chain of command, that is perfectly reasonable

Lalmohan ,
Could you please elucidate what Khanna and Dagar were doing?

-Digvijay

[Lalmohan]

well, I was helping khanna build his house whilst playing golf with dagar and showing his daughter around the discos of leh, however the more pertinent question is - what did they do after it became clear what was going on

the issue is about threat identification and escalation, not what was happeneing before the threat was identified

[Anoop]

A buddy of mine has informed me that Malik was holidaying abroad when all this was going on and his commander in J&K, Khanna was busy building his house , i.e absent from the scene of action. Dagar was busy partying and golfing in Leh. Millitants created outposts from dumps left by our own PWD using local labour!

Admins, this post is nothing but scurrilous. Please come down firmly on such hearsay; this is getting tiresome.

[Digvijay]

well, I was helping khanna build his house whilst playing golf with dagar and showing his daughter around the discos of leh, however the more pertinent question is - what did they do after it became clear what was going on

the issue is about threat identification and escalation, not what was happeneing before the threat was identified

Jokes apart key decision makers need to be aware of threat perception before it really manifests itself as a threat. So what happens "before" is lot more important compared to what happens after. Because "after" is clearly a war and has to be won even if you loose hundreds of brave men. But if the "before" is secured well, then you kill them with less of your men becoming fodder.

The fact that our PWD dumps were used to create outposts and local labour was being used, did not ruffle a feather. Why?

-Digvijay

[Anoop]

The fact that our PWD dumps were used to create outposts and local labour was being used, did not ruffle a feather.

Source for these contentions, please. Why would Indian PWD (you mean BRO?) dump building materials in these places in the first place when there were no posts to be sustained in winter? Have you seen pictures of the Pakistani sangars? The ones I've seen were made by arranging rocks. What local labour - Indian or Pakistani?

[CPrakash]

These Kargil threads are fast becoming a waste of time - we seem to keep going in circles again and again and again

[svinayak]

A buddy of mine has informed me that Malik was holidaying abroad when all this was going on and his commander in J&K, Khanna was busy building his house , i.e absent from the scene of action. Dagar was busy partying and golfing in Leh. Millitants created outposts from dumps left by our own PWD using local labour!

So ofcourse Malik will have to say that he got outmanouvered by a trained paki millitary. Reality is actually half way between Malik and Musharraf's claims.

-Digvijay

That was part of the psy ops

[Harry]

Digvijay, this is especially for you,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuqINvYALTM

Now tell me again that there were mujahideen in Kargil.

(I don't think Musharaff has seen the videos either)

[putnanja]

RayC, did your interview get published in Telgraph?

[manjgu]

While there are some figures on paki casualties during the Kargil war is there any info on paki casualties prior to ( during the winters) commencent of Indian operations ?

[aditya]

Strangely, about a couple of weeks before the conflict, I remember reading a CNN report stating Paki claims of having killed "70 Indian soldiers". There was no such news anywhere else and the story just disappeared.

Also, wrt Paki casualties, what is the real figure? 900? 4000? 2700?

[Airavat]

Officers question NDA govt not allowing LOC crossing

Two former officers who had commanded forces during the Kargil conflict have questioned the then NDA government's decision not to allow armed forces to cross the Line of Control (LoC) and said it had resulted in considerable losses and operational problems.

Lt Gen (Retd) Mohinder Puri, then General Officer Commanding of 8th Mountain Division, and Air Marshal (Retd) Narayan Menon, then Air Officer Commanding of Jammu and Kashmir, said the decision led to "strategic and tactical losses" for the Army and "considerable problems" for the IAF.

In separate articles on the 1999 conflict in the forthcoming issue of Indian defence review, the two officers said while the Army lost the option of conflict termination in an earlier timeframe and taking large number of prisoners of war by encircling them, the caveat of not crossing the LoC under any circumstances restricted the attack profiles of fighter aircraft.

Asking whether it was correct to politically lay down stringent restrictions of not crossing the loc, Puri said "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 willy-nilly given de facto recognition to the LoC as the international border. Statements made by political leaders that there will be no redrawing of borders merely reinforces this hypothesis," said the officer who was given charge of the volatile Drass sector.

Puri said "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".

This led to prolonging the operations and suffering avoidable casualties while recovering territory by evicting the enemy from the dominating heights of Kargil, he said.

By the time ceasefire was declared, "We had the enemy on the run, but by accepting it we offered them the easy route to withdraw to their country".

"As expected, the enemy did not respect the terms of the ceasefire and planted anti-personnel mines along their route of withdrawal: a route along which we had to move to clear the area upto the LoC," Puri said, adding the army suffered a large number of casualties due to such move which reflected the "unsoldierly qualities of the Pak Army".

In his article, Menon said he had received on May 25, 1999, "the codeword to commence offensive operations from the next day" but with a caveat that under no circumstances should any aircraft cross the LoC.

[Yerna]

If the army were allowed to cross LOC, wouldn't it have to face the full Pakistani Army deployed in POK resulting in more casualities?

[ShibaPJ]

Great post, Airavat. I always felt GoI decision of 'not crossing LoC was stupid', but feels much better to hear from the horse's mouth.

Yerna,
It might not have. It would have led to :

1. Interdiction and severing the Pukis logistics chain
2. Allowed IA/ IAF to deploy their entire war-fighting strategy, and
3. Called Puki's bluff on N-blackmail and threshold
4. Disabuse Pukis of their supposed 10:1 superiority against the evil yindoos.

I would also get more ambitious and call for the severing the Karakoram lifeline to Pukis for good. Think of all the pluses from this one action only.

[Yerna]

ummmm you are only talking about what IA could have achieved by crossing LOC but my question is, wouldn't crossing LOC mean taking on Pakistan's Army head on? I am only talking about Army here, IAF would have violated LOC with impunity as PAF was hiding. But Pakistan has its army deployed near LOC and corssing it would mean fighting a full blown out war.

[prahaar]

The strategic loss the officers are referring to seems to be - giving credence to Paki N-deterrence that India handed on a platter. And making them Pakis nanga of N-deterrence. Mushy would not have any mushlets left in his musharraf. And this thousand cuts strategy by Pakis could have been dealt with a more free hand.

[ShibaPJ]

You have to look at it in it's entirety. Just to sample, If PAF was hiding, then IAF with air-superiority could have done wonders. Also, IN could have repeated blocked Karachi, damaged Gwadar and could have put Puki economy in a tell-spin. and most importantly, this could have shattered some mythical tales which Mushy, shortcut and his chelas keep on telling the Pukis.

Of course, this would have meant a full-blown war, but a one-time surgery is probably less painful than some decades of chemo-therapy and patch-work.

[Lalmohan]

according to Perkovich, Vajpayee was determined to show that a nuclear armed India was not deliberately belligerent and irresponsible, and therefore asked the IA and IAF to not cross the LOC

at the time world opinion didn't give a rats musharraf for the rights and wrongs, pakistan was bleating away, the world was looking for India to follow suit and confirm the stereotypes

therefore by the sacrifice of these jawans, vajpayee sought to elevate India to a new level of respect, one which had been considerably eroded by the nuclear tests. there was now unambigious proof that pakistan was the aggressor and that it was irresponsible and a basket case whose PM was clearly not in control of the armed forces

as it turned out, despite terrible odds, the IA drove the invaders out at the end of a bayonet in savage and highly courageous hand to hand fighting. so much for martial races, tall fair, 1:10 ghazi action... India displayed a superior fighting force too

the H&D of the paks took a bigger slapping than just on the raNbhoomi

[Vivek_A]

at the time world opinion didn't give a rats musharraf for the rights and wrongs, pakistan was bleating away, the world was looking for India to follow suit and confirm the stereotypes

What matters is not what the world thinks of India but what the pakis think of India. Not crossing the LoC and a NFU policy means the pakis think India won't risk a nuclear confrontation. India should have an official first use policy. That's the only way to deter the pakis.

[Sadler]

From the horse's mouth, Pg 344, "Kargil : From Surprise to Victory", Gen VP Malik

Can this book be bought in the US?? I looked it up at Amazon but i cannot find this book.

[Harry]

http://www.easternbookcorporation.com/m ... ring=11389

http://www.indiaclub.com/shop/SearchRes ... tock=18696

[svinayak]

[
What matters is not what the world thinks of India but what the pakis think of India. Not crossing the LoC and a NFU policy means the pakis think India won't risk a nuclear confrontation.

Kargil was a geopolitical war
World opinion mattered

[saty]

Of course, this would have meant a full-blown war, but a one-time surgery is probably less painful than some decades of chemo-therapy and patch-work.

Some times I really thank god that our much maligned politicans are what they are....

[RayC]

Officers question NDA govt not allowing LOC crossing

Two former officers who had commanded forces during the Kargil conflict have questioned the then NDA government's decision not to allow armed forces to cross the Line of Control (LoC) and said it had resulted in considerable losses and operational problems.

Lt Gen (Retd) Mohinder Puri, then General Officer Commanding of 8th Mountain Division, and Air Marshal (Retd) Narayan Menon, then Air Officer Commanding of Jammu and Kashmir, said the decision led to "strategic and tactical losses" for the Army and "considerable problems" for the IAF.

In separate articles on the 1999 conflict in the forthcoming issue of Indian defence review, the two officers said while the Army lost the option of conflict termination in an earlier timeframe and taking large number of prisoners of war by encircling them, the caveat of not crossing the LoC under any circumstances restricted the attack profiles of fighter aircraft.

Asking whether it was correct to politically lay down stringent restrictions of not crossing the loc, Puri said "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 willy-nilly given de facto recognition to the LoC as the international border. Statements made by political leaders that there will be no redrawing of borders merely reinforces this hypothesis," said the officer who was given charge of the volatile Drass sector.

Puri said "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".

This led to prolonging the operations and suffering avoidable casualties while recovering territory by evicting the enemy from the dominating heights of Kargil, he said.

By the time ceasefire was declared, "We had the enemy on the run, but by accepting it we offered them the easy route to withdraw to their country".

"As expected, the enemy did not respect the terms of the ceasefire and planted anti-personnel mines along their route of withdrawal: a route along which we had to move to clear the area upto the LoC," Puri said, adding the army suffered a large number of casualties due to such move which reflected the "unsoldierly qualities of the Pak Army".

In his article, Menon said he had received on May 25, 1999, "the codeword to commence offensive operations from the next day" but with a caveat that under no circumstances should any aircraft cross the LoC.

Interesting!

Have they explained how it could be terminated earlier i.e. their plans to do so?

Has Puri explained how we lost strategically and tactically?

[Sharma]

All this was started by Gen malik. Now too many are expressing their "opinions". Unfortunately they are expressing when it matters the least.

Gen Malik has submitted his postscript with us and that is lying in front of me. So soon you will be getting new version of his book in which he added his response to the critical remarks passed about his assesment of intelligence failure. Also he has written an assesment on Mushy's "In Line of Fire" along with some facts against Mushy's frats.

I will write about that as soon I get it printed. It must be available in bookstores by 2nd week of Dec.

[Sharma]

Was Indian Army ready for crossing the LoC?

They did not have the intelligence about one sector and God knows what would have hit them if they had crossed LoC( ofcourse after Govt's permission).

And I think no top official of Army or Intelligence was so daring ( or foolish) to ask for crossing the LoC after that large scale intelligence failure. Even Vajpayee and other political rulers would have become susceptible towards defence and intelligence agencies. This could also be a major reason for not allowing Army to cross LoC.

I do not entirely blame Political top brass for taking decision about not crossing the LoC.

[rajkumar]

Was Indian Army ready for crossing the LoC?

Better question is what did India gain out of not crossing the LoC? Effectively the world treats LoC as the defacto border. Which has been India's stand since 1948.

[Sharma]

Matter is not of better question but situation.

We know and elaborate further what India gained or lost by not crossing the LoC but we need to know that were we in position of crossing the LoC or not.

[ShibaPJ]

Of course, this would have meant a full-blown war, but a one-time surgery is probably less painful than some decades of chemo-therapy and patch-work.

Some times I really thank god that our much maligned politicans are what they are....

Care to explain/ elaborate?

Rajkumar,
The official Indian stand was very clearly enunciated by the Parliament resolution during Kargil that the entire J&K is Indian territory. Has it changed inbetween?