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Kargil and questions of war

Praveen Swami

Was the Kargil war the outcome of just intelligence failure?

SINCE THE end of the Kargil war, the ghosts swirling over the battlefield have refused to go away. Two inquiries, the Kargil Review Committee set up by the Union Government and Lieutenant-General A.R.K. Reddy's internal investigation for the army, laid few questions to rest. At the heart of the debate that has broken out in recent weeks is a simple question: was the Kargil war the outcome of an intelligence failure? Or was it, instead, a failure of the collective intelligence of India's strategic establishment?

In his recently-released book on the 1999 war, Kargil: From Surprise to Victory, the former Chief of the Army Staff, General V.P. Malik, has asserted that Pakistan's successful intrusions were the outcome of "a major deficiency in our system of collecting, reporting, collating and assessing intelligence." India's covert services have hit back, though, saying they had given successive warnings about Pakistan's offensive plans in the 11 months before the fighting in Kargil.

General Malik's nuanced insider account of the Kargil war focusses on the complex counterpoint of diplomatic, political and strategic issues that drove Indian decision-making. Failures of surveillance, and the many controversies on the conduct of the war at the ground level, constitute only a small part of the narrative. However, the furore the book has provoked necessitates a close examination of just what information India's covert services provided on Pakistani intentions — and the responses made.

Perhaps the first, and most important, warning was a June 2, 1998, note, personally signed by the then Intelligence Bureau Director, Shyamal Datta. Based on intelligence provided by the Intelligence Bureau's Leh station, Datta's note warned of the training of large numbers of Pakistani irregulars in the Kargil sector, who it said were being prepared for a renewed wave of infiltration after the May 1998 nuclear tests at Pokhran. While such preparation was not unusual, the second part of Datta's warning was.

Increased Pakistani military activity, it recorded, had been noticed along the Line of Control in the Kargil sector, notably along posts code-named Chor, Hadi, Saddle, Reshma, Masjid, Dhalan, and Langar. All these posts, it is now known, functioned as base camps to feed the intrusion, which India was to detect only a year later. Datta's unusual decision to personally sign the note indicated the seriousness with which he took this information — and the credibility of the intelligence asset who provided it.

Other warnings too

Over the next several months, other warnings were issued. In July, IB informants reported the deployment of M-11 missiles on the Deosai Plains and new mine-laying activities. RAW, for its part, said that new Pakistani troops — the 164 Mortar Regiment, the 8 Northern Light Infantry, and the 69 Baloch Regiment — had been pumped into the area and were being given special commando training. In effect, the reports suggested, a full brigade had moved in, a posture indicating offensive intent.

Even the military's own covert services made similar determinations. In June 1998, the Kargil Brigade Intelligence Team reported that supplies of ammunition were being dumped, and that terrorists had been seen in Skardu, Warcha, and Marol, awaiting infiltration through the Kargil sector. Again, in August, the BIT and the Intelligence and Field Security Unit reported the presence of terrorists preparing to cross the LoC. Pakistani artillery flowed in as winter approached, a reversal of the normal practice.

By October, RAW was sufficiently concerned about developments to issue an express warning about the prospect of a "limited swift offensive," pointing in particular to the "constant induction of more troops from peacetime locations like Mangla, Lahore, Gujranwala, and Okara into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir." Its assertion that a war was possible provoked an immediate challenge by the Director-General of Military Intelligence, and an inconclusive verbal discussion followed.

For reasons that have never been explained, RAW's next assessment made no mention of the possibility of war. It did note, however, that Pakistan had made "some hard decisions" on maintaining an aggressive posture along the LoC. Northern Command, in its own internal assessments, recorded that the month of November in 1998 saw a three-fold increase in Pakistani troop movement in the Kargil sector, compared with November 1997. Vehicular movement doubled, while pack-animal movement increased nine-fold.

As late as November 1998, the IB's Leh station issued warnings that Pakistan was "training Taliban who were undergoing military training as well as learning the Balti and Ladakhi language." These irregulars, the warning stated, were likely to be inducted into the Kargil sector during April 1999. While the Intelligence Bureau did not realise these `Taliban' were in fact Pakistani troops, its assessment was in general proved correct by subsequent events.

It is hard to see just what further intelligence could have been provided to India's strategic establishment on the prospect of hostile Pakistani action, short of a signed order from now-President Pervez Musharraf, who took over as Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff in October 1998. Bar one RAW assessment, no intelligence suggested that an actual war was likely. But the totality of the warnings ought to have made clear the need for an enhanced defensive posture even to the most opaque minds.

Who, then, was responsible for the failure to assess the threat? For the full truth of what happened, historians will have to look far beyond the army or, indeed, the covert services. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had, in the winter of 1998-1999, persuaded himself that he was destined to make an historic peace with Pakistan — a delusion founded on the Bharatiya Janata Party's conviction that the Pokhran II nuclear tests had brought strategic stability to the South Asia and made conventional war impossible.

Prime Minister Vajpayee's regime, had it been paying attention to the evidence its covert services were providing, would have found good reason to re-evaluate this premise. It was after October 1998, the record shows, that RAW became concerned with the prospect of a limited war, and the Intelligence Bureau began to note the presence of `Taliban' facing Kargil — an unprecedented development. The Northern Command's observation of massive Pakistani troop and gun movements ought also have been a red flag.

In a letter to The Hindu, General Malik argued that these intelligence warnings, with their references to infiltration and the Taliban, had led to a "jihadi militants bogey," and thus a weak and uncertain response in Kargil. Leaving aside the fact that reports referred specifically to a Pakistan army build-up, his assertion does open a major question: confronted with warning after warning on large-scale infiltration just what did the XV Corps do about the `jihadi bogey'?

Part-II of this series will show that the answer to the question is: very, very little. Mid-level commanders had in the summer of 1998 begun worrying that their defences were inadequate to deal with a serious challenge. Nothing was done. General Malik's work does not address the depressing military failures that preceded the war, perhaps for the good reason that he as Chief of Army Staff had no direct role in them. But most of those responsible walked away with medals and honours for actions that had cost lives.

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