Unmarked tombs, grieving families nail Pak’s Great Kargil lie

There are over 500 flags flying across the entire Northern Areas, home to the Pakistani Army’s high-altitude warriors. The tombs are those of the heroes of Kargil who fought valiantly in a war that seems to have many losers but no winners. Behind each of these tombs lie tales of struggle and valour, of neglect and disavowal, of betrayal and unfaithfulness.

The body of Kargil’s first martyr arrived in the Northern Areas (NA) as early as mid-October 1998. At the time, few people knew about the activity in the snowy peaks of the Kargil-Dras sector, overlooking the Srinagar-Leh highway in Indian-held Kashmir.

Haider Khan, a sepoy of 5-Northern Light Infantry (NLI), fell in the Hamzagun sector on October 13, 1998, probably due to an accident because the war was still some seven months away. This, in fact, was the time when the Pakistan government says it had started to respond to the Indian build-up in the region. Haider Khan’s body was brought home by four NLI soldiers. “They did not say if Haider was killed in action,” recalls the martyr’s cousin, Altaf Hussain. “They did not even tell us how he died.” But when Islamabad decided in late June 1999 to acknowledge the Kargil martyrs as their own soldiers, Haider Khan was included in the list.

By February 1999, the area was rich with its own version of events. The people of the area were loathe to accept the government’s claim that militants had infiltrated deep into Indian territory. For the residents of Ghizer, Hunza and Baltistan, which supply the bulk of NLI’s manpower, it was only the NLI soldiers who were involved in these heroic deeds. “Most of our relatives and friends are in the NLI, and when they came home on leave, they told us what was was happening,” says Zarawar Khan, a cousin of Havaldar Major Lalik Jan who earned the Nishan-e-Haider, the highest military award, for bravery in the Kargil war. “They were excited that they had advanced deep inside enemy territory without firing a shot.”

These were also tense moments for the soldiers’ families. “When my brother wrote to me in February that he deep inside Indian territory in Shakma sector (Dras), we were worried,” says Ghafoor Khan, a resident of village Hamardas. Ghafoor’s brother, Sepoy Shakoor Jan of 12-NLI, was martyred three months later, on June 8.

The uncertainty gave way to panic in early June last year when dead bodies of soldiers started arriving more frequently. Hamardas was to receive the first body in the Gopis subdivision of district Ghizer on June 5. Over the next month, some 105 dead bodies passed along the jeep track that leads up to Yasin, Punial and Ghizer valleys.

Residents claim that the NLI soldiers who accompanied the bodies took care to move them at night to avoid publicity. As a rule, only one soldier accompanied a dead body. Shakoor Jan’s body, for instance, was brought by two soldiers in a private jeep which also carried the body of Sepoy Ibrahim, Lalik Jan’s cousin and colleague in 12-NLI. Both Ibrahim and Shakoor Jan were in tracksuits. One soldier delivered Shakoor Jan’s body at 4:00 a.m., while the other rushed off with Ibrahim’s body, which was delivered at the martyr’s native Hundur village before sunrise.

In both cases, there were no military honours at the funeral, no hoisting of the national flag and no gun salutes. “The soldier who brought the body did not even offer a simple salute much less a gun salute. He was not in uniform,” says Zarawar Khan of Hundur village.

The miseries of the locals were compounded by stories of starvation and ammunition shortage at the frontline. Gul Sambar Khan, father of Muzaffaruddin Begana, says, “My child spent seven days up there without any food. One of his colleagues told me that they only had about five kgs of sugar at the post. Muzaffar fought bravely and used up all his ammunition. Then he died, with only some sugar in his mouth. I saw it when I saw his face in the coffin.”

According to circles close to top military authorities in the NA, by mid-June 1999 almost the entire strength of 6-NLI on the Kargil front had been wiped out, while 12-NLI also suffered heavy casualties. Though the Indians took more casualties than the NLI, they were able to clear the heights commanding the Srinagar-Leh highway by June 26, thereby taking the sting out of the Kargil operation.

“I suspect the magnitude of the casualties took the planners by surprise,” says Major (retired) Hussain Shah, president of the Muttahida Quami Party and a veteran of the 1965 and 1971 wars. “Perhaps they believed that by holding the heights, our troops would not suffer much damage. They did not realise that the Indians had a sophisticated airforce that could specific targets, and against which the glaciers offered no cover.”

Others blame the militants for their role in the conflict. The government’s decision to claim that the militants alone were involved in the conflict, according to relatives of some martyrs, ended up demoralising the NLI personnel. Others accuse the Pakistani air force of failing to provide air cover to the troops “When I first heard on the Pakistani media that the Kargil war was being fought by the mujahideen, I was shocked,” says Hussain Shah. “My children were being killed, but the laurels went to Qazi Hussain Ahmad.”

(Tomorrow: The price of martyrdom)