Kargil,in hindsight

Before I moved to the safer confines of nearby Matayn,an IAF Chetak helicopter directed coloured artillery shells on a 5,040 metre hill that was contiguous to Tololing ridge. Amidst heavy machine gun firing,the IAF MiG 23 ground attack aircraft dropped 500 pound free-fall bombs on the ridges marked by the artillery shells.

A decade later,today,we celebrate Kargil Diwas as we remember the 527 Indian armed forces personnel who lost their lives and another 1,363 who were wounded in the 45-day conflict. Just like 26/11,the Kargil intrusion was an audacious attack by Pakistani irregulars backed by powerful elements within the Army and the ISI headquarters at Rawalpindi. And just like Mumbai,the Kargil war was marked by brave troopers,poor operational leaders and vacillating political leadership. Yet the patriotic hysteria that swept the country after seeing body bags of the Indian brave ensured that all that was unpalatable was swept under the carpet. On the day when the bravehearts are remembered,one should also give a sobering thought to the lessons learned and subsequently unlearned from Kargil.

Actionable Intelligence

The Indian armed forces and the intelligence agencies still hold divergent view on the so-called intelligence failure at Kargil. The then army chief General Ved Prakash Malik has gone on record saying that there was no prior intelligence on the Kargil intrusions. This has been countered by Ajit Doval,then the Intelligence Bureau’s Kashmir pointsman,who is on record saying that the Pakistani build-up across the Line of Control was brought to the notice of even the Prime Minister’s office.

However,a diary maintained by 12 Northern Light Infantry Captain Hussain Ahmad,resident of Panj Pir village in Swabi district in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province,reveals that Pakistan Army crossed the LoC on February 9,11 days before then Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee crossed Wagah border on the bus to Lahore. The diary was recovered by the Indian Army from Mushkoh Valley during Op Vijay.

The irony is,as Ahmad records it,that on the day Vajpayee shook hands with then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,a Pakistani Mi-17 helicopter crossed the LoC for the first time and dropped supplies to intruders in Mushkoh.

The fact is that the commander,deputy commander and battalion commanders of 121 Independent Brigade,responsible from Mushkoh to Batalik,did find footprints in the snow during aerial reconnaissance in March 1999 but they were dismissed as animal footprints. It was left to a platoon of 3 Punjab to detect black pathan suit wearing Pakistani intruders in Banju area of Yaldor sector on May 3. In the next three days,it was clear that no less than 3,000-4,000 intruders,backed by Pakistani artillery,were sitting on the glaciated features of the over 120 km broad front and some seven kilometers inside the Indian territory.

On May 11,India declared Operation Vijay to vacate the intrusion and the rest is history.

After the K. Subrahmanyam Committee report pointed to lacunae in the Indian intelligence mechanism,the Empowered Group of Ministers recommended sweeping changes. The key changes were the setting up of the multi-agency centre (MAC) and joint task force on intelligence (JTFI) in order to collect and disseminate actionable intelligence. A tri-service defence intelligence agency (DIA) was set up in a bid to synergise the intelligence sharing. Yet,nine years later,this mechanism was found wanting as the post-Kargil institutions were created but neither built or empowered. Suffice to say that the intelligence about an infiltrating Lashkar ship was not shared with Maharashtra by the JTFI or with the Western Naval Command by MAC or with the DIA by Naval Intelligence.

The leadership

Kargil has been referred to as a 45-day border skirmish between India and Pakistan. But the ferocity of the war and the encountered enemy is evident from the chain of events after Major M. Sarvanan of 1 Bihar battalion lost his life on May 29 while trying to clear Point 4268 in Yaldor sector. He was awarded Vir Chakra posthumously and Major Sonam Wangchuk of Ladakh Scouts was awarded the Mahavir Chakra on the war front on June 2 vide a wire message. Though Gen Malik gave instructions to retrieve the bodies of fallen soldiers at Pt 4268 on May 30,even the special forces could not recover the body of Sarvanan due to heavy counter fire. The fact is that Major Sarvanan’s body was recovered by the Indian troops on July 7,1999,after the intruders virtually started pulling out of Yaldor. This was three days after the famous July 4 meeting between then US President Bill Clinton and Nawaz Sharif at Blair House in Washington and the international call for troop withdrawal to Pakistan.

While the Indian soldiers performed creditably during the battles in Drass,Kaksar and Yaldor sectors,the military leadership initially had no idea about the intruders. The Intelligence Bureau and Army Intelligence first identified them as Taliban and grossly underestimated the strength of the intruders. War records show that a battalion of 8 Sikh was pushed up on May 19 to vacate the intrusion at Tiger Hill,only to be repelled by the Pakistanis. One JCO was killed,7 jawans and one officer got injured and 33 others were unaccounted for in this poorly planned operation.

It was only after a series of reverses in May that Malik,the then Northern Army Commander and 15 Corps Commander,directed the troops not to rush into firefight but deliberately plan the operations. It is evident that till the time the 2 Rajputana Rifles vacated Tololing feature at the cost of heavy casualties on June 13,there were hardly any noteworthy military success in Kargil. The valiant Indian soldier fought every inch of territory in spite of the odds in the form of at least two commanding officers reporting heart condition,special forces not living up to their reputation in the Yaldor sector,and the Air Force strikes not as devastating as it was made out to be. The then Defence Minister George Fernandes’s statement in May that the intrusion would be vacated in three days was as much out of sync with the reality as Home Minister Shivraj Patil’s statement on the night of 26/11 attack that the situation was under control.

Lessons from Kargil

Kargil no doubt was a military success but it also highlighted the lacunae in India’s military preparedness,some of which are still to be completely addressed. First and the foremost is defence procurement,which is still mired in corruption,middle-men and political interference. Even though a number of 155 mm guns were cannibalised during Kargil war to keep the Bofors firing in the war theatre,New Delhi has,to date,not found a replacement for the gun. The acquisition process for light howitzers,self propelled howitzers and 155 mm guns has now being going on for the past decade with no resolution in sight. To top it all,defence contractors involved in these acquisitions have been black listed in cases of corruption,indicating that arms dealers are alive and kicking.

Even today,the Defence Ministry does not have the capacity to utilise its defence modernisation budget and Rs 7,007 crore was surrendered in the previous fiscal. Secondly,post Kargil,the GoM recommended the creation of the post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS),a single point military advisor to the government,particularly after the Army and the Air Force missed the finer points of jointmanship during the war,with an integrated staff headquarters under the four star officer. To date,the Integrated Staff headquarters is an orphan with political leadership not comfortable with an all powerful CDS and the three service chiefs do their own thing.

Thirdly,the higher defence management task group had recommended that merit,and not seniority,is the criterion for selection for top military commanders so that only the best make it to the top. Nothing like this has happened. Fourthly,there are hardly any structured decision making processes within the government when it comes to dealing with emergency situations like Kargil or 26/11. Finally,a number of other intelligence tools were created post Kargil (with the present National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan as member of the group),including the apex intelligence coordination group,but to date,intelligence czars like to play their cards close to their chests. This was evident during 26/11 too.

On July 19,1999,Army Chief Malik presented “bravest of the brave” watches to deserving commanding officers at Gansok in Ladakh,with champagne flowing freely,as the last Pakistani intruders returned home. The intrusion was officially vacated on July 26,1999. But Kargil was at best a pyrrhic victory achieved at the loss of some of the bravest officers and men who fought at the roof of the world.