Kargil War Thread - VI

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Aditya_V
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by Aditya_V »

Bajwa is doing a Musharaf and Ayub Khan entertaining Nehru. They are waiting for weakness, complacency and if possible a favourable dispensation in India in 2019. They use all the leverage to get maximum help from 3.5 friends- reality has not hit them. The plan to raid and get Jaziya, so they dont really care about economics, they use the entire nations wealth to run their military, in fact one advantage is that their decision making is very short.

Lets hope in all another 1971 like opportunity comes and we are at that sufficiently well armed to take advantage.
manjgu
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by manjgu »

well..no use debating wether reality has hit PA or not. My only test of 'reality has hit them' is true when they can stop chanting Kashmir Kashmir and lock up the terrorists else ... we can agree to disagree. my post was more about questions raised by nam.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by chetak »

manjgu wrote:well..no use debating wether reality has hit PA or not. My only test of 'reality has hit them' is true when they can stop chanting Kashmir Kashmir and lock up the terrorists else ... we can agree to disagree. my post was more about questions raised by nam.
precisely,

Kashmir Kashmir is their money raising mantra and chant it constantly they will.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by nam »

My theory is it was a simple land grab excerise on the northern part of LoC, which went haywire. He was a Mohajir, superseded two Punjabi Generals for PA chief position. He had to do something to stamp his authority. Kargil was set in to motion within months of him becoming chief. Even today he is been blamed liberally for Kargil for his Mohajir background and most of the pointing figures are from Punjabi officers.

Dras, kargil areas were target of opportunity, to stretch any Indian counter offensive. Mushraff mentions about "over-reaction" in his book. The over-reaction comment, indicates Mushraff planed only limited offensive. Interdicting NH1 is not a limited ops. It was a target of opportunity and he got greedy.
manjgu wrote:q1) I dont think so. If IA had detected the intrusion there is no way ABV would have gone to NaPakistan. It would have finished ABV and BJP's political future.
It would be about what Mushraff was thinking rather than ABV. Our leader would go anywhere, if it makes them look like the good guy.
q2) Those were the winter months..what was there to interdict?? there was no worthwhile military target on NH1. For 7 months they were consolidating their positions..u have to also remember that there side is also snow bound, glaciated and its not so easy to consolidate..bring in supplies during the winter months. The real movement of supplies, reinforcements would have started once the snow melted / reduced on their side.
This thought occurred to me. If we can live without having access to a road for 7 months of a year in normal times, then frankly it is not a lifeline. Morever NH1 is closer to LoC only in the Dras & Kargil area and it is may be 10% of the entire road. An alternate road could have been built, if push comes to shove.

It also does not explain why they intruded in to areas like Turtuk and Northern Batalik, which is no where near NH1. IA first cleared Dras and tiger hill first, securing NH1. IA had to secure this area, before any offensive in the North. The intrusion around Dras would have been to delay this to winter, making it extremely hard to recapture the areas at 18k feet.

Mushraff wanted it to be a deniable ops. If he had limited his ops to Northern Batalik and such difficult to reach places, it would have probably succeeded.

The Neelam valley road which is right next to LoC, despite been hammered for years, PA never made/succeeded in/a major attack to dislodge us from the heights. Did Mushraff believe we will be restricted as well?

Code: Select all

Question for members: What if PA had not intruded in to Dras & tiger hill near NH1? Would we have still launched such a major counter attack?
[/b]
Aditya_V
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by Aditya_V »

Or the worst case , did Musharaf know through Track II contacts in Lutyens circuit about a certain Tea party in Delhi will lead a shaky cartaker Govt in Delhi and if he held for 1 summer he could keep the territory gained as there will a new Govt with Shaky coalition in Delhi?
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by nam »

Here is a report, on the hammering that was given to Neelam valley areas. The Paks still this date could not dislodge us.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-40927163
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by manjgu »

a) I dont think ABV would have gone to Pakistan is the intrusion had been detected ...its politcal suicide !! no way he would have gone. Politicians know what is political suicide. b) I dont believe builiding a alternative road was a possibility given the geography of the area..atleast in the near to medium term. c) it is a lifeline even if its closed for 5 to 7 months... the 5 months are used to stock for the remaining 7 months !! i think more than 10% of the road was under observation though military traffic moved on inspite of shelling. There was shelling on the highway a few kms ahead of zoji la pass..right from where a stream comes out of amarnath cave area...
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by manjgu »

to ur question..depends on extent of intrusion... the local commanders would have ensured such a intrusion does not get publicity and they would have tried to clear it locally..failing which large scale ops would have started..
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by Lalmohan »

if NH1 can be interdicted even across a few km's, it creates a supply choke point which makes operations unsustainable
once combat operations started (and it was fighting season) then essential to keep the highway open
ramana
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by ramana »

nam, Could you put a timeline?
first Dras sector
Second....
Third....
And when detected....

I agree with manjgu that ABV would no have gone to Lahore if he knew about the intrusion.

Reading memoirs of Clinton, Reidel, Talbott, Jaswant and TPSrinivasan its clear that Lahore was a CBM implicit in the ST-JS talks.
This means even if US knew from the various contacts with TSP they won't tell India.
Also recall Zinni made many visits to TSP and met the Generals.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by ArjunPandit »

Another thing to be noted Was Kargil was taken from napakis during 71, might be a way of avenging the loss hi mush
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by Aditya_V »

ArjunPandit wrote:Another thing to be noted Was Kargil was taken from napakis during 71, might be a way of avenging the loss hi mush
Kargil town has always been with us, only the alignment and a few villages was liberated in 1971
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by Kashi »

We liberated 4 Turtuk villages in 1971, is this what the posters are referring to?
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by ArjunPandit »

[url=http://storyofpakistan.com/the-story-of-kargil}The story of kargil[/url]
The whole area of Kargil belonged to Pakistan. It was captured by India in the war of 1965, but restored to Pakistan under Tashkent Agreement. In the 1971 war, Kargil was again occupied and retained by India by dint of force.
Not that napakis are beacon of truth, but such large admission of mushkick is more likely to be true..
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by Aditya_V »

Not true, Kargil Town and much of the areas around it has been with us a days after we got Zoji La pass at the end of Nov 1948 and Pakistan were on the run, Pakistan was doing well in the war until about August 1948 when it seemed they would get all of Ladakh. When Pakis were finally on the run and it became apparent that contuing the war that India could possibly get all of Kashmir the powers that be mysteriously agreed for a ceasefire.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by Kashi »

Aditya_V wrote: When Pakis were finally on the run and it became apparent that contuing the war that India could possibly get all of Kashmir the powers that be mysteriously agreed for a ceasefire.
I suspect it was that time when someone started whispering "words of advise" in the head-honcho's ear.

Though Katare sahab would have us believe it was based on inputs from the forces and a careful evaluation of ground realities.

Reading this it almost seems that some were happy with the war as long as Pakistan was in with a chance to grab the state, but once the roll-back began, a hasty termination was called for.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by nam »

Lalmohan wrote:if NH1 can be interdicted even across a few km's, it creates a supply choke point which makes operations unsustainable
once combat operations started (and it was fighting season) then essential to keep the highway open
Ofcourse it is true. However we do have a alternate (longer) route in the East to Leh. IA secured Dras & NH1 by taking back Tiger hill and totoling. PA would have put more effort if it really wanted to hold on to tiger hill.

It took us longer to secure tololing top compared to tiger hill. And Tololing top is right next to NH1.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by nam »

ramana wrote:nam, Could you put a timeline?
first Dras sector
Second....
Third....
And when detected....
This is something I don't have. I could not find material about which area did PA intruded first. It would have given us a better idea.
There is info on which area was detected first. Batalik by the sheperd, Dras/kargil by Capt Saurav kalia's patrol.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by Aditya_V »

nam wrote:
Lalmohan wrote:if NH1 can be interdicted even across a few km's, it creates a supply choke point which makes operations unsustainable
once combat operations started (and it was fighting season) then essential to keep the highway open
Ofcourse it is true. However we do have a alternate (longer) route in the East to Leh. IA secured Dras & NH1 by taking back Tiger hill and totoling. PA would have put more effort if it really wanted to hold on to tiger hill.

It took us longer to secure tololing top compared to tiger hill. And Tololing top is right next to NH1.
PA put all the effort it could, there is a Valley in between LOC and Tiger Hill, while attacking Tololing IA was not sure if it was only PA or PA + Mujahadeen but it was very critical since Pakis were right on top of NH 1, it was the Tololing victory which gave other victories.

All in PA had all the advantages but still lost, thats why they tried to spin a military defeat as a US mandated withdrawal. In fact we were follish with the ceasefire, at the same time NATO put no booby trap conditions etc. on the Serb's, we accepted PA withdrawal without conditions.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by nam »

Mushraff become chief in Oct 98. In the same month, the ops were kicked off and NLI starts moving in. It is difficult to believe an ops of intruding over 6-8km in such height across a heavily militarized line would be ready in a month!

I digged oround and found these

http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/may/05raman.htm

https://www.hindustantimes.com/nation-n ... R6ihK.html

The preparation was probably going on even before Mushraff.

One of the important aspect is why did Pakistan insist till the end that PA was not involved. You cannot stop traffic on NH1 using small arms. "Freedom fighters" would need have skill to direct artillery fire. Even NLI was paramillitary. Pretty sure they wouldn't have the skill either. Fundamentally you cannot hide attacking NH1 with artillery and say PA is not involved.

Land around LoC is captured using shallow Salami slice tactics. It works because it is shallow and can be denied. It also prevents major counter offensive by the enemy. Mushraff and his cronies would have known, attacking NH1 would result in a major response. They tried to explain this by saying LoC is not properly defined.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by nam »

Aditya_V wrote:
PA put all the effort it could, there is a Valley in between LOC and Tiger Hill, while attacking Tololing IA was not sure if it was only PA or PA + Mujahadeen but it was very critical since Pakis were right on top of NH 1, it was the Tololing victory which gave other victories.

All in PA had all the advantages but still lost, thats why they tried to spin a military defeat as a US mandated withdrawal. In fact we were follish with the ceasefire, at the same time NATO put no booby trap conditions etc. on the Serb's, we accepted PA withdrawal without conditions.
We would have known it was PA regular, as Mujahadeen/NLI cannot direct artillery fire. The first artillery attack was on Kargil ammo dump on May 9. Once PA is confirmed, it wouldn't matter who was with PA.

They agreed for a withdrawal as they were not ready for a expanded war. They tried as much to deny involve PA involvement to the extend of not taking in their soldiers bodies, so not to give India the excuse to expand the war. Once no one in the world believed it, it was a lost cause.

Personally I don't believe loses caused them to retreat. They did not care about causalities.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by Lalmohan »

I read somewhere that 'operation topac' (based on tupac amaru the Andean resistance leader) had been in the works in pindi for some time as a standard planning exercise. mushy picked it up off the shelf and operationalised it
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by Aditya_V »

When most PA men on our side were dead And most important miltary positions retreat was more of a facesaver. I agree they don T care about lower level causualties who are treated as cannon fodder
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by manjgu »

a) additionally the mujahid angle could also have been a local commanders face saver...to deny PA involvement and claim its low level mujahid intruson ..a very local affair which they can handle on their own , which also hides their incompetencies?? b) Benazir Begum had forbidden this operation in her time..so it was something which was worked upon in their institutions long before 1999.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by ramana »

Manjgu, I think some operation in Kargil sector was always planned. I think Mushy dusted off an old plan and implemented it.
LM, Operation Topac was a planning document created by Indian military. A retired Maj General wrote about it.


After all is said and done it was the Indian Army practice of vacating bunkers for winter that led to the Paki Army occupying the vacated bunkers.
Intelligence about Pak supply missions in Austria buying winter clothing in bulk was not understood.
Rest of the matters aggravated the situation: Local Brig. not conducting aggressive patrols, not realizing the significance of missing patrol, cognitive dissonance between infiltration and intrusion, Gen. Malik in Poland, ACM. Tipnis as acting COS
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by Prasad »

As for bunker vacating thing - VP Malik says http://www.claws.in/images/journals_doc ... r_2009.pdf
There has been a lot of misinformation about the practice of the Indian
Army vacating posts along the LoC during winter. That indeed was the practice in
the past. As Pakistan had attempted to capture some of our posts in the Siachen
Glacier thrice in 1997 and eleven times in 1998, all field formations deployed
along the LoC had been directed to be extra vigilant. HQ 15 Corps had ordered
that no posts were to be vacated during the winter of 1998–99.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by ramana »

Then how did the Pak troops ambush the patrol led by Captain Kalia?
What happened there?
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by ramana »

Prasad, Thanks for the Kargil report from CLAWS

nam, Please read Kanwal, "Pakistan Strategic Blunder at Kargil' from pages 53 to 72 and the notes. Gives maps and times in the text and notes.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by manjgu »

nam ..the claws article also answers ur q ..a) would ABV have gone to Pakistan if intrusion was detected. b) majority of troop intrusion took place in April 1999 and not so much during the winter months.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by ramana »

Vikram Sood book rebuts the 'intelligence' failure at Kargil.

https://twitter.com/SushantSin/status/1 ... 78592?s=19
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by RKumar »

ramana wrote:Vikram Sood book rebuts the 'intelligence' failure at Kargil.

https://twitter.com/SushantSin/status/1 ... 78592?s=19
I heard the same Directly from the pan supplier. Good to hear another confirmation after a looong time.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by nam »

Ok read some pages online from the latest book on Kargil, not the entire book. Got lot of answers for the question i was looking for.
  • 1. The first infiltration(recon) happens at Dras + Tololing. Finding the areas around it empty, more infiltration happens. The initial objective was this area only. It was "do something across LoC" ops. Despite lofty ideas, the logs were setup for only 6-10 post capture. Getting Siachen, then Kashmir was ideas, that cropped up when they captured 140 posts.
  • 2. The infiltration started in Oct 98 and the men were in place within the next 3-4 months. By May, 3k-4k men have rotated. What was not in place for logistics for the fight, which they were expecting to be done by June.
  • 3. PA could not get enough artillery in place. We brought in 3:1 in FG & 2:1 in medium guns over Pak. They had to place them in difficult areas and could not be repaired. This is a key point.
  • 4. Batalik was covering op. It was done to stretch our response in Dras. The older plans had a ground offensive on Siachien. This one there was nothing of that sort. So there was not plans to capture Siachien.
  • 5. Pak already had positions overlooking NH1, from their side of LoC. Politicans were told of grand 5 phase plan of inflitrating in Leh/Ladakh once NH1 was constrained, then into Jammu area once IA moves in to Ladhakh and finally Srinagar! NS even said "yeh issue bus se solve nai hone wala". All these after PA found the empty space, they could walk in.
Summary: This was clearly a do something across LoC(FCNA commander) ops, which went horribly wrong. The plan would have worked if they had stuck to their initial plan and prevented it from going to the politicians. Pak agreed for pull back because US was not on their side and if India extended the war, they will in trouble. They lost the nerve after Tololing, which was reported to the PA hierarchy 3 days after it was captured.

Mushraff expected a stalemate if we went for a all out war. Because of the size of area and need to be secret, PA could not arrange for enough logistics.

When NS went to US, Pakistan was not expecting a pull out. It was forced on them by US, who wanted to prevent a all out war! If it was not publicly declared in the joint statement, Mushraff had no plans for pull back!
Last edited by nam on 03 Sep 2018 17:48, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by nam »

On the question, what would have happened if NH1 was under fire. A former PA general overseeing Neelam valley at Keran, built a 10 foot wall, under fire with 3-4k people in 3 months, to block the direct view on the Neelam valley road.

He asked the PA command, why wouldn't Indians do it as well?
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by Lalmohan »

a 10 ft wall will hide what exactly? especially when viewed from 5000 feet higher...?
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by nam »

Lalmohan wrote:a 10 ft wall will hide what exactly? especially when viewed from 5000 feet higher...?
This is in reference to the road which are close to the heights. On the Neelam valley, the road is 500-800 meters from the height. Having a 10 feet wall covers the traffic going through the road. We have something similar on one of our road, where Paks have visibility on it.

Edit: Check 10:43 onwards.

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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by krishna_krishna »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piAk46UonBU

Video of Paki POW's, throw back video, this may have been posted below but somehow I believe it needs to be preserved:

5 NLI, Frontier force and Sindh Regiment


Along with this one, packis accepting bodies of the soldiers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZx0veVbQ6E
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by JayS »

ramana wrote:Vikram Sood book rebuts the 'intelligence' failure at Kargil.

https://twitter.com/SushantSin/status/1 ... 78592?s=19
Let's temper this a bit by noting that this also is an hindsight. This doesn't throw much light on in reality how many reports were submitted out of which how many were were really important. Typically a huge amount of inputs come covering plethora of scenarios. Not all of them can be taken at face value. I think what we really lack is a intel input procesing mechanism which can consolidate all the inputs across all the agencies and synthesize usable specific inputs from them by filtering non-essential inputs and directing them to the correct user agencies. Similar failure has been seen in case of 26/11 as well.

Having said that, its difficult to absolve IA completely, especially wrt the Col Puspinder Singh episode.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by Aditya_V »

Totally disagree with "NAM" viewpoint , Pakistan has completly lost militarily in Kargil, it was the Genrals that sent Nawaz Sharif to Washington to make a face saving retreat in the face of Mounting casualties. India in order to avoid further causualties and to come out of post Pokran sanctions agreed.

After Kargil details were coming out and Altantique shoot down, it was becoming clear some of the PAF and PA propoganda was crap, there was no choice but a coupe to keep a lid on things and Musharaf and his cronies to continue in power. IC814 Hijack, Various attacks like Chittisinghpura in Kashmir, 9/11 and Indian parliment attack were the result of revenge by Musharaf.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by krishna_krishna »

Aditya_V wrote: 9/11 .
Aditya can you please elaborate more on this. I thought this event had no connection to Indian context.
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Re: Kargil War Thread - VI

Post by Aditya_V »

See references, Pakis were in a real tight spot after Kargil and sanctions in 1998 and they wanted a dry. Daniel Pearl was killed for investigating ISI and 9/11 links. The Taliban until the Supposed U turn after 9/11 were Pakistani boys in Afgansitan under whose watch Osama Bin Laden did all the planning for 9/11. In fact where was OBL caught, near Paki academy for OBL. And notice how everything for Pakistan from New F-16 to booming investment happened to Pakistan after 9/11 and they became relevant again to the Americans. Many of the Taliban even today are Pakistani Punjabis looking ffor strategic depth.

Unfortunately Pakistan is in a similair economic situation as pre 9/11, wouldn't put it past them to planning something sinister right now.
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