Drawing the Line at Kargil

There is, however, a larger issue of policy, information and diplomacy which India has loved to lose for decades and seems intent on doing so again. The fault is at all levels and none can escape blame: the political leadership, bureaucracy, academia and the media.

A Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman is reported to have described the LoC as being ‘‘vague and undefined’’. The statement is suggestive of ambiguity about who might be on the wrong side of the line and therefore guilty of provocation, escalation or aggression.

At worst, it might be a case of innocent Pakistani trespass in an uncharted area of a ‘‘disputed’’ state. At the same time, India is charged with dropping ‘‘bombs’’ on ‘‘our territory’’. This heads-I-win-tails-you-lose double-talk provides the basis for advocating ground verification by the UN through UNMIGOP. Very plausible. Totally wrong.

The LoC is not defined by the Lahore or Shimla declarations but, at root, by the UN-sponsored Karachi Agreement of July 29, 1949, which delineated the Cease Fire Line (CFL) from the Jammu-Sialkot sector in the south to the international border with Sinjiang to the north.

It was described and demarcated sector by sector along named features and high points, with grid coordinates going to the fourth decimal point, and was signed by the Indian and Pakistan military commanders as well as by the then UN Military Observer Group.

There was and is no ground for ambiguity in the Kargil sector as the Line is for the most part well above the zone of habitation and vegetation which precludes the presence of villagers, pilgrims, travellers and tourists or herdsmen searching for alpine pastures with the melting of the snow. Only the military could be there. And both sides know where the Line runs.

Indeed, the CFL was delineated and then demarcated with reference to the ‘‘factual position’’ specifically to preclude any non-man’s land. In the terminal Siachen sector, the Line is delineated as running up to grid coordinate NJ 9842 and‘‘thence north to the glaciers’’. This last segment was left for subsequent demarcation which was not done (presumably because of the extreme inhospitality of the terrain).

However, the CFL in this sector did not disappear and was never abolished. Even a schoolboy can draw a line due north from NJ 9842 to wheresoever it meets the international boundary. And that clearly places Siachen on the Indian side of the Line.

Pakistan sought to assume jurisdiction over the Siachen area by sanctioning nternational mountaineering expeditions for some years while preparing to establish de facto control. The Indian Army preempted this by occupying the glacier and the flanking ridge in 1984.

The CFL was restored to the 1949 position after the 1965 war as a result of the Tashkent Agreement, with both sides surrendering their military gains in J&K. The 1971 conflict saw Indian advances in the Kargil-Siachen sector. This time, it was agreed that each side would retain what it controlled. The CFL with these adjustments thus became the LoC.

Pakistan should not be allowed to do a Siachen in Kargil. But it will be enabled to do so if India is unable even to define the LoC, as it has completely failed to do in Siachen, and is in some danger of doing in Kargil. The post-Independence history of Jammu & Kashmir is so old and complex that Indian policy-makers have tired of speaking of it and have by now virtually forgotten its origins.

Not so Pakistan, which has incrementally defined the geography, history, ethnography, culture and issues in contention to its advantage. It has set the Kashmir agenda and the terms of discourses, both of which the world has adopted because India itself astonishingly has done so. Pakistan acts; India responds.

There is, for example, little knowledge and even less understanding of ‘‘Azad’’ Kashmir and the Northern Areas on the other side of the LoC and how these impact on the Kashmir question.

By sheer fault, American ADIZ (Air Defence Identification Zone) maps, prepared for purposes of civil and military air traffic control, have been widely adopted by international cartographers and governments to define the alignment of the northern (Siachen) segment of the LOC. This join NJ 9842 to the Karakoram Pass, which suggests that India is the aggressor in Siachen and in adverse possession of some 500 sq kms.

The military operations are being carefully controlled and sensibly limited to clearing the intruders from our side of the LoC and no more, whatever the provocation or taunts. Nor should we veer away from the Simla-Lahore framework or dialogue. These talks must be vigorously and sincerely pursued.

It is Pakistan that will find itself in growing disarray and tied up in knots as its deceptions, extreme rhetoric and military adventurism begin to unravel. Pursuing the autonomy package in Jammu & Kashmir as solemnly promised, holding panchayat elections to genuinely empowered urban and rural local bodies (with due amendments to the present statute), and inviting the widest participation in all of these exercises not excluding those in the Hurriyat looking for an exit is the path to follow.

This is a national issue that does not admit of partisan politics for petty electoral gain. Nor need there be recrimination about how the Kargil sector was ‘‘allowed’’ to be penetrated in some depth. The disaster brought on by ‘‘not-an-inch-of-territory’’ armchair strategists on an earlier occasion should not be allowed to be repeated.

There are many lines to be drawn at Kargil.