In symbolic irony, the July 27 visit to India of Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan’s personable and photogenic new foreign minister, was separated by only one day from the annual remembrance services of Kargil Vijay Diwas by the Indian Armed Forces (on July 26) and by a little over a week of the Kupwara intrusion (on August 5) in which three Indian soldiers were killed.
However, the compulsions of the “peace process” with Pakistan required that both be downplayed.
New Delhi audiences were much taken in by the charm and haute couture of Ms Khar, though many conservatives in the Pakistani establishment had vehemently opposed the appointment of a woman as the public face of Pakistan’s foreign policy. For its part, the Indian establishment optimistically highlighted the meeting as another milestone in India’s almost unilateral quest for peace with Pakistan, though it was sometimes difficult, particularly for the media, to correlate a personality as chic as Ms Khar with the seamy realities of Indo-Pak geopolitics.
However, the lady herself left no doubt that she was on a mission, and that the mission would remain unchanged, commencing with a brusque dismissal of Indian objections to meeting Kashmiri separatists at the Pakistan high commission almost immediately on arrival, followed by a broadside that India’s perception of Mumbai 26/11 was “dated”. It was quite apparent that Pakistan’s traditional approach remained unchanged, but India had no option but to wince and bear it. India’s customary diffidence about expressing its views, which has become ingrained after Sharm el-Sheikh and Thimpu, was on display here as well, as reflected in the bland joint communiqué where India agreed to express satisfaction with the progress of Pakistan’s investigation on 26/11. In addition, since India wished to avoid giving offence to Pakistan at all cost, Kargil Vijay Diwas was kept in low focus, and the Kupwara incident was shrugged off.
Kargil Vijay Diwas is a fixture on the national calendar. On July 26 each year, a grateful nation remembers its 527 dead and 1,363 wounded in repelling the major Pakistani intrusion at Kargil in May-July 1999. Kargil Vijay 1999 has passed into India’s folklore but what seems to have slipped into public oblivion are the other battles around Kargil, four of which have been fought in the same areas and often at almost the same locations as the three Indo-Pak wars in 1947, 1965 (twice), and 1971.
Kargil Vijay Diwas is the appropriate occasion to remember the first battles fought around Kargil in 1947 which were, perhaps, strategically most critical for the new republic of India whose post-Partition boundaries were still under challenge in both Jammu and Kashmir and former princely states like Hyderabad and Junagadh. Though Kargil itself did not constitute any centre of operational gravity in the First Kashmir War, it was nevertheless the first time the region featured in the India-Pakistan wars. Without going into the detailed history and background of the entire Kashmir issue, it would be relevant to remember that Pakistan initially intruded into Jammu and Kashmir immediately after Independence in 1947, sending a large number of tribal “lashkars” — of 1,000 men each — led by Pakistan Army officers and junior commissioned officers, in civilian clothes, reinforced by additional ex-servicemen from the tribal areas, demobilised after the Second World War, along with deserters from the Jammu and Kashmir state forces as well as members of the Frontier Constabulary. These had been raised and recruited from the tribesmen in the North West Frontier Province and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas by district collectors and political officers with promises of loot and rapine of the Indian “kafirs”. The entire clandestine project was designated “Operation Gulmarg” under the overall command of Maj. Gen. Akbar Khan (later involved in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy case), and planned under direct instructions from the highest levels of the Pakistan government.
The bulk of tribal lashkars were inducted into Jammu and Kashmir regions of the state, while others were assigned to overrun Kargil, Ladakh and the Northern Territories. The latter were organised around the Gilgit Scouts whose British commandant, Maj. Brown, had proclaimed the loyalty of his force, as also his own personal loyalty, to Pakistan.
Had Pakistan’s designs in these remote and inaccessible Himalayan regions succeeded, it would have overrun the entire Buddhist region of Ladakh and the Shia region of Kargil, leaving them to the tender mercies of the tribal lashkars. In hindsight, it is even possible to visualise a worst-case scenario, where the ultimate ceasefire line between India and Pakistan might well have touched the Amarnath cave itself. The turbulent political circumstances prevailing immediately after Independence greatly delayed entry of Indian troops into Jammu and Kashmir and the situation on the ground which confronted them on arrival was extremely adverse, particularly in the remote and inaccessible northern regions around Ladakh and the Northern Territories. The bulk of these had already been overrun, except for isolated state forces’ garrisons still holding out, like Skardu under Brig. Sher Jung Thapa. The advancing tribesmen were reaching Leh and all linkages with Srinagar had been interdicted at the defile of the 11,480-ft Zojila Pass onwards. To secure Ladakh, it was imperative that the Zojila Pass was forced at all costs. This was achieved at the hard-fought battle of Zojila Pass in November 1948 by tanks of the 7th Light Cavalry and the 1st Patiala Infantry operating at hitherto unprecedented heights, under an extreme combination of high-altitude terrain and the approaching Ladakhi winter. Indian forces thereafter broke out and raced through the Dras-Kargil region, sweeping aside the enemy and linking up with a sortie from Leh.
The New Delhi meeting of the foreign ministers and India’s annual remembrance of Kargil Vijay represent the options of negotiation and armed conflict. India has selected negotiations under all circumstances as its sole option. Pakistan, on the other hand, has opted for both as a calculated choice, alternating peace talks in New Delhi with 26/11 and trans-LoC raids in Kupwara. India has no answers.
Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former Member of Parliament
Source: The Asian Age
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