Introduction
Pakistan, in its continued effort to wrest Kashmir from India, initiated yet another military operation crossing the line of control and occupying several vacant military posts across Kargil hill. Indian resistance to this effort led to an armed conflict between india and Pakistan that took place between May and July 1999 in the Kargil district of Kashmir and elsewhere along the Line of control (LOC). The conflict is known as the Kargil War which is also referred to as Operation Vijay (Victory in Hindi) by the Indian armed forces.
Initially, Pakistan establishment in association with militants assisted infiltration of Pakistani soldiers and Kashmiri militants into positions on the Indian side of the LOC, which serves as the de facto border (Result of 1947-48 war) between the two states. During the initial stages of the war, Pakistan covertly 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, led by General Ashraf Rashid. Indians could recapture positions infiltrated by the Pakistani troops and militants. With the consolidation of Indian forces on the ground, international diplomatic pressure increased on Pakistan and Pakistani establishment was forced to withdraw from the remaining Indian positions along the LOC.
Background
An Indian National Highway (NH 1D) connecting Srinagar to Leh cuts through Kargil. The area that witnessed the infiltration and fighting is a 160km long stretch of ridges overlooking this only road linking Srinagar and Leh. The military outposts on the ridges above the highway were generally around 5,000 metres (16,000ft) high, with a few as high as 5,485 metres (18,000ft). Apart from the district capital, Kargil, the populated areas near the front line in the conflict included the Mushko Valley and the town of Drass, southwest of Kargil, as well as the Batalik sector and other areas, northeast of Kargil.
One of the reasons why Kargil was targeted was that the terrain surrounding it, lent itself to Pre-emptive seizure of unoccupied military positions. With tactically vital features and well-prepared defensive posts atop the peaks, a defender of the high ground would enjoy advantages akin to a fortress. Any attack to dislodge a defender from high ground in mountain warfare requires a far higher ratio of attackers to defenders, and the difficulties would be exacerbated by the high altitude and freezing temperatures.
Kargil is just 173km (108mi) from the Pakistani-controlled town of Skardu, which was capable of providing logistical and artillery support to Pakistani combatants.
It is believed that the blueprint of attack was activated soon after Pervez Musharraf was appointed Chief of army staff in October 1998
As a practice patrolling would stop in February and Indian and Pakistani forces leave the glaciers as they are snow-capped and return in summer to their positions. In 1999 the pakistani forces not only occupied the abandoned positions but also occupied some of the indian positions.
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) covertly and overtly set up bases on the vantage points of the Indian-controlled region. According to some reports, these Pakistani forces were backed by Kashmiri guerillas and Afghan mercenaries.
Detection of Incursions
Indian patrol team led by Capt Saurabh Kalia, who acted on a tip-off by a local shepherd in the Batalik sector, led to the exposure of the infiltration. Subsequent discovery of infiltration elsewhere along the LOC, and the difference in tactics employed by the infiltrators, caused the Indian army to realize that the plan of attack was on a much bigger scale. The total area seized by the ingress was generally accepted to between 130 km² - 200 km².
Operation Vijay
The Government of India responded with Operation Vijay, a mobilisation of 200,000 Indian troops. AirForce supported with Operation Safed Sagar and the Navy blocked the pakistani ports and cut off the supply routs.
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-asministered Kashmir who provided additional artillery support.
As the Pakistani infiltrators has good sight of NH 1D they were inflicting. First thing was to capture lost indian positions and the peaks that had the clear view of the Highway.This resulted in Indian troops first targeting the Tiger Hill and Tololing complex in Dras, which dominated the Srinagar-Leh route. This was soon followed by the Batalik-Turtok sub-sector which provided access to Siachen Glacier. Some of the peaks that were of vital strategic importance to the Pakistani defensive troops were Point 4590 and Point 5353. While 4590 was the nearest point that had a view of NH 1D, point 5353 was the highest feature in the Dras sector, allowing the Pakistani troops to observe NH 1D. The recapture of Point 4590 by Indian troops on June 14 was significant, notwithstanding the fact that it resulted in the Indian Army suffering the most casualties in a single battle during the conflict (which operated in a temp of -11°C to −15 °C ). Though most of the posts in the vicinity of the highway were cleared by mid-June, some parts of the highway near Drass witnessed sporadic shelling until the end of the war.
Based on military tactics, much of the costly frontal assaults by the Indians could have been avoided if the Indian Military had chosen to blockade the supply route of the opposing force, virtually creating a siege . Such a move would have involved the Indian troops crossing the LoC as well as initiating aerial attacks on Pakistan soil, a manoeuvre India was not willing to exercise fearing an expansion of the threat of war and reducing international support for its cause.
Two months into the conflict, Indian troops had slowly retaken most of the ridges that were encroached by the infiltrators according to official count, an estimated 75%–80% of the intruded area and nearly all high ground was back under Indian control
With the possibility of India escalating the war from a “limited war” in Kargil and extending it to Pakistan proper, General Musharraf seemingly goaded the hapless Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to rush to Washington and enlist United States aid to pressurize India for a three-day ceasefire to enable Pakistani troops to withdraw to their side of the LOC.
Moreover, while the army had initially denied the involvement of its troops in the intrusion, two soldiers were awarded the Nishan-E-Haider (Pakistan's highest military honour). Another 90 soldiers were also given gallantry awards, most of them posthumously, confirming Pakistan's role in the episode. India also released taped phone conversations between the Army Chief and a senior Pakistani general where the latter is recorded saying: "the scruff of [the militants] necks is in our hands .
Benazir Bhutto an opposition leader and former prime minister, called the Kargil War "Pakistan's greatest blunder"
The spring and summer incursion of Pakistan-backed armed forces into territory on the Indian side of the line of control around Kargil in the state of Jammu and Kashmir and the Indian military campaign to repel the intrusion left 524 Indian soldiers dead and 1,363 wounded, Indian estimates stand at 1,042 Pakistani soldiers killed .
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