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Resolving the Kargil conundrum

Praveen Swami

Some coherent answers are clearly needed to the question of why troops were thinned at a time when India should have been enhancing its defences.

IN THE course of the renewed debate on the Kargil war, it has become clear that India's covert services provided dozens of warnings on hostile Pakistani action in the 11 months before fighting broke out. What is less well known is that field commanders — none of whom had access to classified Intelligence Bureau or Research and Analysis Wing information — had developed serious concerns of their own.

Among the key documents is a January 30, 1999, letter written by the 3 Punjab Regiment's commanding officer, Colonel Pushpinder Oberoi, calling the attention of the then 3 Infantry Division Commander, Major General V.S. Budhwar, to major weaknesses in Indian defences identified in the course of the war-game, code-named Exercise Jaanch. Exercise Jaanch, it stated, suggested that enemy action could render "some posts untenable." It proceeded to call for forces to be permanently stationed on Point 5165 metres, Pariyon ka Talab, and Point 4660 metres — the peak that later became famous as Tiger Hill.

Colonel Oberoi's letter was written after Maj. Gen. Budhwar failed to respond to verbal pleas for troops, made during his visit to the sector on November 25, 1998. Maj. Gen. Budhwar, sources said, was dismissive of these warnings, which he saw as alarmist. It would, ironically enough, have reached the 3 Division Headquarters — and possibly the offices of the then XV Corps Commander, Lieutenant General Kishan Pal — at about the same time as the first reconnaissance teams of Pakistani troops occupied these features.

Brigadier Surinder Singh himself shared similar concerns. Paragraph 8 of an August, 1998 briefing note he prepared to inform Maj. Gen. Budhwar of what Chief of the Army Staff General V.P. Malik would be told on an upcoming visit to Kargil, was explicitly marked "Enhanced Threat Perception." It laid out the reasons for the 121 Brigade's apprehensions, notably the movements of Pakistani troops and artillery into the sector, which had so concerned the Intelligence Bureau and RAW.

From paragraph 13 onwards, the briefing note detailed "Vulnerabilities [of the] 121 (I) Inf[antry] B[riga]de." It pointed out that "infilt[ration] routes [were] available through Mashkoh [Mushkoh] Valley, from Doda side to Panikhar, Yaldor and through nalas [streams]." Small detachments could be targeted, paragraph 15(b) noted, while paragraph 17 noted the existence of posts vulnerable to "rogue action." Both Maj. Gen. Budhwar and Lt. Gen. Pal, however, dismissed Brigadier Singh's calls for more troops.

When actual fighting broke out in the region soon afterwards, news of the loss of Indian-held territory in offensive Pakistani action was suppressed. On February 9, 1999, troops of the 5 Para Regiment spotted movement on the top of Point 5770, a strategic height in the southern Siachen area on the Indian side of the LoC. Again, on March 4, between eight and ten Pakistan soldiers were seen removing snow from a concrete bunker west of the summit of Point 5770. That evening, fire was exchanged on the area.

Strangely, the Siachen-based 102 Infantry Brigade removed the officer who had reported the intrusion, Major Manish Bhatnagar, not the Pakistani troops who had occupied the position. On the eve of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit to Pakistan, most likely, India had no desire to initiate a bruising fire exchange on Siachen. The 121 Brigade, which ought to have been told that Pakistan troops had demonstrated aggressive intent in an adjoining area, was not even informed of the development.

Troops pulled back

Events in coming weeks were even more incredible. For one, despite both the flow of intelligence on possible infiltration in the Kargil sector, troops were actually pulled out from frontline positions. Soon after the loss of Point 5770, the 9 Mahar Regiment was removed from its defensive positions along the Yaldor Langpa and stationed at a rear position near Leh. The 26 Maratha Light Infantry, which guarded the crucial infiltration route from Mashkoh to Dras, was also pulled off forward duties.

Despite losing a quarter of its troops, the 121 Brigade did act — a fact the Kargil Review Committee suppressed. Troops were withdrawn from the Mashkoh area for just 80 days in early 1999 because of the cold, down from 177 days in 1997 and 116 days in 1998. Yaldor was left undefended for 64 days from February to April, where troops had been withdrawn for 120 days in 1997 and 119 days in 1998. Kaksar, another key area, was undefended for just 38 days, where it was left open for over 200 days in previous years.

While the Brigade ought to have, without dispute, adopted a more effective surveillance and counter-infiltration posture, the question of why commanders in Leh and Srinagar stonewalled the growing worries of their own subordinates has never been answered. That the question needs an answer is self-evident, for hundreds of Indian soldiers paid with their lives for the decision made in the XV Corps and 3 Infantry Division not to upgrade Indian defences along the LoC in Kargil.

In a recent letter to The Hindu, General Malik argued that no troops were withdrawn by XV Corps from the 3 Infantry Division's area of responsibility. His contention is true, since the 9 Mahar and the 26 Maratha battalions remained in a position near Leh. However, General Malik's letter does not explain why Maj. Gen. Budhwar chose to pull back soldiers needed to guard the Line of Control to the rear at a time when both intelligence warnings and field commanders believed threat-levels were escalating.

General Malik also pointed out that the headquarters of the 70 Infantry Brigade was inducted into the Dras area in October 1998, suggesting that the decision showed that the Army was indeed taking the warnings it received seriously. However, he omitted to mention the critical fact that only its headquarters staff, not the fighting force, had been deployed even up to the time fighting broke out in May 1999. As a result, it took several weeks before the Brigade could begin combat operations.

Some coherent answers are clearly needed for the question of why troops were thinned at a time when India should have been enhancing its defences. Just why India chose to overlook the intrusion at Point 5770, or growing evidence of the massing of Pakistani formations, must also be made public. At least two historians of the conflict, Lt. Gen. Y.M. Bammi and Maj. Gen. Ashok Verma, have suggested that Lt. Gen. Pal's counter-terrorism concerns led him to ignore emerging challenges along the LoC.

Amazingly, Lt. Gen. Pal closed his eyes to reality even after the war broke out. At a meeting of the Unified Headquarters in Srinagar on May 24, 1999, General Pal insisted that there "were no concentration of troops on the Pakistani side and no battle indicators of war or even limited skirmishes." Paragraph 4(v) of the minutes of the Unified Headquarters meeting record his claim that the "situation was local and would be defeated locally": a hideous misreading of the situation.

But for the fact that General Malik signed orders granting war medals to figures like Lt. Gen. Pal or the 102 Brigade commander P.C. Katoch, he would have to face no questions about these issues. Neither XV Corps nor the 3 Infantry Division, after all, ever asked the Chief of the Army Staff for greater resources to face the coming storm. To his credit, moreover, General Malik also intervened to put an end to the suicidal tactics XV Corps used in an attempt to bring an early end to the intrusions.

Why, then, were the guilty rewarded? "The truth about what went wrong, where and why should not embarrass anyone," said Defence Minister George Fernandes on August 14, 2002, "and it is a must so that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past." Time perhaps for Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee to translate his predecessor's polemic into action? A full investigation of the failures that paved the way for the Kargil war is needed, so that the ghosts that still swirl over the battlefield can be put to rest.

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