What did we learn from the Kargil War?

“Freedom is not free, everyday soldiers give their lives so that we can live ours.”

15 years ago, in the summer months of 1999, the Pakistan army with aid from terrorist groups had launched a military attack across the Line of Control (LoC) in the Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and had threatened India’s territorial integrity. The Pakistani military establishment had become frustrated with India’s success in containing the militancy in J&K to within manageable limits and could not bear to see its strategy of ‘bleeding India through a thousand cuts’ evaporating into thin air. Its military aim was also to sever the Srinagar-Leh National Highway (NH) 1A and to isolate Kargil district and cut India’s lifeline to Leh and possibly occupy it. It is said that another aim was to infiltrate into the Kashmir Valley over the Amarnath Mountains and the Doda regions and physically occupy some territory on the Indian side of the LoC in Kargil district to use as a bargaining counter to seek an Indian withdrawal from Siachen Glacier.

India then launched a firm but measured and restrained military operation to clear the intruders. 'Operation Vijay’ was finely calibrated to limit military action to the Indian side of the LoC and included air strikes from fighter-ground attack (FGA) aircraft and attack helicopters of the Indian Air Force. The counter attacks, fiercest in the annals of military history to take back high altitude mountain peaks from the aggressors, were completely unrelenting in its resolve to evict every intruder from the Indian territory. A demoralized Pakistan army had to even disown its dead soldiers. Facing an impending military defeat Pakistan's PM Nawaz Sharief had to request the United States to broker a ceasefire. Pakistan then agreed to pull out its troops from Kargil unconditionally. On July 26, 1999, the Indian army declared that all Pakistani intruders had been evicted from Kargil district. Though this was a resounding victory for the Indian Army and our country, we lost 527 of our bravest soldiers and more than 1300 were wounded.

Why were the intrusions not detected?

While the Army should be commended for the hard fought victory, the Kargil War showed us the lacunae in our intelligence and military setup. Intelligence inputs failed to alert our forces in time and some inputs were ignored. When terrorist Azhar Shafi Mir was interrogated by the BSF after his capture in Poonch in 1998 December, he indicated that action was imminent in Kargil. Officials say the tapes were sent to Delhi, but no follow-up action was taken.

Based on the Kargil Review Committee report of 1999, the NDA govt. constituted 4 separate task forces to make recommendations to improve and restructure the management of the country’s borders, internal security, intelligence gathering capabilities and defence management. But little implementation took place took place immediately due to which the nation had to face the ignominy of its parliament being attacked by terrorists in December 2001 and seven years later, undergo the trauma of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. The 26/11 Mumbai attacks showed that even after almost a decade our intelligence and bureaucratic setup were as lethargic and rusted due to which we lost hundreds of civilian lives.

Once during the Kargil war, Vajpayee asked a senior and highly respected retired intelligence officer as to why the Kargil war happened. The officer said in anguish, 'Chowkidar sow gaya tha, ab shikayat kar raha hai humko sone kyon diya!" (The army was asleep on the borders and now it is asking why was it allowed to sleep by intelligence!) Also, till today no healthy debate has taken place on why the government was taken by surprise. The real tragedy of the Kargil conflict is this.

Do we have adequate arms and ammunition?

Even as the Kargil was on, India had to go shopping for 50,000 rounds of Bofors 155mm artillery ammunition from South Africa. This showed the pathetic state of our arms and ammunition industry. Our Air Force had done a creditable job during the war by providing close air support to the army. However, it lacked the ability to strike accurately at narrow mountain ridge-lines as it did not have the right precision guided munitions (PGMs). Only Laser- and TV-guided bombs can provide the necessary accuracy.

Former Chief of Army Staff Gen. V P Malik had said that the lack of modern equipment and weaponry affects the performance of a soldier. During the war he had said 'We shall fight with whatever we have' which showcased the lack of arms and ammunition. Gen. Malik had said that the country was far too much dependent on imports for equipment for the armed forces. India imports nearly 70 per cent of its arms and ammunition.

But more than a decade later nothing much seems to have changed. The martyrs and their families and those wounded in the icy heights of the Kargil-Drass region have been forgotten and ignored. And to add insult to injury, in the same period, the Ministry of Defence has returned almost Rs.50,000 crore (over $10 billion) as money unspent from the amount allocated for acquisition and modernization of the Indian military inventory. 

Thus the reality is that in the post- Kargil decade, India’s trans-border military capacity has shrunk and no one in the political spectrum seemed to be really concerned.

In March 2012, then Army Chief General V K Singh wrote to the then PM Manmohan Singh which painted a grim picture of the operational capabilities of the 1.13 million strong army. In his letter to the PM, he wrote that the army was grappling with tanks running out of ammunition, obsolete air defence systems and lack of adequate weaponry for infantry and special forces battalions. Gen. Singh also blamed the cumbersome arms procurement process and the stubborn bureaucracy for it. Further he wrote that the existing air defence systems cannot effectively protect against enemy air attacks since they are "97% obsolete".

There has been a slowdown in several military modernization projects, especially the ones connected to the Army. Navy and IAF, in turn, are better placed on their modernization paths. India still needs to acquire state-of-the-art military satellites, aerial and ground surveillance systems to guard against repetition of the Kargil intrusion or a similar situation. There is an immediate need for military satellites with a sub-one meter resolution and with optical, infrared and radar photography capability, so that they are effective both by day and night.

Lessons for Nations Security

A virulent neighbor’s capacity to damage our security interests should never be underestimated. India must remain on guard against such sinister operations being launched in future by the vengeful and devious military leadership of Pakistan that has a pathological hate-India mindset. It would be futile to hope that internal instability, international pressure or economic compulsions will dissuade the Pakistani Army from embarking on such ventures in future. The Indian government must tell the Pakistani leadership that there is a limit to India’s patience and tolerance and that India will consider harder options if there is no let-up in the relentless proxy war being waged from across its border by the Pakistan army and its notorious agency the ISI.

The most important lesson that India must learn from the Kargil imbroglio is that the unavoidable requirements of national security cannot be compromised. Successive governments in Islamabad have sought with varying degrees of intensity to destabilize India, wreck its unity and challenge its integrity. In international politics, the policy of mutual friendship and co-operation with one's neighbors has to be balanced with strict vigilance. Like Chanakya says in his 'Neeti Shastra', “Security of the citizens is very important because state is the only savior of the men and women who get affected only because of the negligence of the state”, it is the solemn duty of the government not to neglect the security of the country and its citizens at any cost.

PS: All images taken from the internet and dont claim any ownership