Kargil war was a wasted opportunity for India and her Army

20 years ago, this day, the Indian Army won the Kargil war after a long hard fight with the Pakistanis. Sadly, our Indian government and the Army haven't drawn the true lessons from this unnecessary war.




In May 1999, we discovered to our horror that the Pakistanis have made deep inroads into the Drass and Kargil areas of Jammu and Kashmir. There was no option but to fight those intruders.

Win we did, but we lost more than 500 soldiers in this brutal Kargil war. But did we learn the right lessons from this conflict? I am afraid, we haven't; we continue to live in our make-believe world.

Today, I present my POV about the war on Kargil Vijay Diwas.

Kargil war- background

Before I go deep into the lessons-part of this article, let me give you a brief background to this epic war.

The state of Jammu and Kashmir is divided into 3 parts. We control roughly 1/3rd of this state, while Pakistan and China control the rest.

India could have deprived the Pakistanis of the 'Pakistan Occupied Kashmir', but we committed a huge mistake in 1948; we stopped our forces from chasing the Pakistani infiltrators across the 'Line of Control'. I won't talk about that event here in the interests of brevity.

Watch this video about the Indian army won the Kargil war.

Today, Pakistan uses its part of Kashmir to stage murderous attacks on Indian security forces. The Pulwama attacks on our CRPF men were encouraged from across the LAC only.

While China-controlled Ladakh and POK are separated by India-controlled Jammu and Kashmir, both China and Pakistan have been trying to connect with each other through a narrow corridor. This narrow corridor is just north of the Siachen glacier which is held by India.

Why is Siachen glacier so important for India?

Holding this glacier helps the Indian Army. Standing on this glacier, our troops can keep a watchful eye on the movement of the Chinese and Pakistani troops in that narrow corridor. In times of crisis, our troops can also bombard this corridor and stop the enemy movement. The other name of this corridor is Karakoram Highway.

As you can see in the map, Kargil is a bit south-east of Siachen. Image- vayu-sena-aux-tripod.com

Kargil War- A war of deception

What we call as Kargil war was actually based on deception by the Pakistan Army.

Until 1998 November onward, Indian and Pakistani forces used to abandon some of their higher-level posts in the Himalayas during winters. Both sides had arrived at some informal understanding that it was better to come down to lower level posts during the extreme months.

Since it becomes extremely cold in the winters, it made sense to both the sides to lessen their miseries by abandoning their high altitude posts.

But the Pakistanis were playing a game of deception.

While the Indians left their posts and came down, the Pakistanis crept up from behind and occupied those very posts that the Indians had abandoned.

Nobody in the Indian side knew about this deception. I believe that from November 1998 until May 1999, our top Army leadership was blissfully unaware of this dangerous Pakistani trick.

I call it dangerous because now the Pakistanis had occupied many tall peaks along the Line of Actual Control in the Drass-Kargil sector. Now, these guys were threatening the movement of supplies on the super-sensitive Srinagar- Leh highway.

The Pakistanis were also now able to attack our positions in Siachen.

In short, by occupying these strategic peaks in the Drass- Kargil area, the Pakistanis were threatening the whole of Kashmir valley.

There was no option for India but to fight these intruders and everybody knows the result of this Kargil war. I won't go into the specifics of the Kargil campaign here but would limit myself to the main thrust of my article- blunders of the Kargil war.

Kargil War-What we ought to have learned

I guess we should have drawn the right lessons from our Kargil campaign.

Unfortunately, we didn't, and today our Army and the government continue committing the same glaring mistakes.

A casual attitude

First of all, let me ask a basic question.

I have been reading stuff related to this war for many years now but I have never seen even one soldier ask this question.

Why are our soldiers so smug about this event? Why can't they admit that our top leadership blundered big time? What stops our veterans asking some uncomfortable questions about the blatant neglect of our military preparedness?

Don't you also think that Kargil happened because we trusted our enemy too much?

Has Pakistan ever proven to be a reliable neighbor? Everybody knows the right answer yet our military leadership went ahead and vacated those posts during winters!

I don't know whether the then senior leadership was punished or not but I keep seeing the faces of top Army officials of the Kargil war on my Twitter timeline. These guys are ever smiling and so smug! Looks like these chaps were never even questioned for their blunders which cost us 500+lives!

Our self-satisfaction has cost us big time over the past few years. Remember the Pulwama,Uri and Pathankot attacks?

We never learned the right lessons from the Kargil fiasco and that is why the enemy ( terrorists) keeps attacking our military installations.

With impunity.

Had we punished our top military leadership for its incompetence in stopping the Pakistani infiltrators, we would not have seen the Pathankot, Uri and other kinds of attacks.

We could have solved the Kashmir issue?

The Kargil war was a golden opportunity to settle the Kashmir issue once and for all but our then Prime Minister did not have the vision and courage to do so.

We could have attacked Muzaffarabad and other major POK towns while this war was on. Our Air Force jets could have bombed key military installations in those areas and helped our troops capture them. Why restrict the war theater to just Kargil and Drass?

Had we captured some important POK installations while the war was one, we could have forced Pakistan to stop its terrorism in the valley. Today, Muzaffarabad in POK is one of the most important terrorism-centers, and many terrorist training camps are located there.

Alas, our political and military leadership did not have that vision in 1999, else Kashmir today would have been a more peaceful place.

An integrated defense?

Post Kargil, why did we not go for an integrated defense set-up? I mean, why can't we have a single military guy at the top who is responsible for all the overall military strategy of the country.

In this Kargil war, we lost more than 500 soldiers and men and this loss could have been reduced easily.

Right at the start of the war, this top guy could have directed our Navy and Air Force to help the Army in more imaginative ways than just trying to block the Karachi harbor.

I guess, our defense operations are planned in bits and pieces; every arm of our Armed Forces wants to get the complete credit for its success. It's not wrong to want honor and prestige, but in matters of national security, we need to have a unified stance.

Even today, we don't have a unified national defense policy. I wonder who is thinking of our external defense in a holistic manner. The defense minister is a politician first and a minister later. He would first guard his political future and then think of national security.

The same goes for our bureaucrats. These babus do not know a thing about guns, ships, and planes so expecting them to think about national security would be plain silly.

On the other hand, our Armed Forces personnel live in their own cocoons. An Army officer will always think in terms of his unit, tanks, and guns. The same goes for people from the Air Force and Navy.

Today, we urgently need a senior Armed Forces guy who has a holistic view of our external security. He should have the authority to command all the services in critical situations. This Chief of Defense should have a fixed tenure so that he can have a long term view of our national security.

Kargil War- The last word

Early this year, the Indian government made some effort in changing its mindset on national security. The Balakot strikes showed the world and Pakistan that we are very very serious about our borders. Pakistan, hopefully, now understands that under Narendra Modi, India is now a difficult country to deal with.

But we have to still cover a lot of ground so that Kargils don't happen anymore again in the future.