July 12, 1999

As the war slips painfully into its third month, the army realises that it is only half through its task of clearing the heights of intruders.

By Harinder Baweja in Kargil

He is a prized possession. The sight of him motivates the men and gears them for the next round of battle. Seeing him at the make-shift army headquarters in Drass sends their adrenaline pumping. The dead Pakistani Army regular -- hung on a tree before his body was buried and a grid reference made on the map in accordance with the Geneva Convention -- was a morale booster. More than the 439-odd Pakistani casualties so far.

In Kargil, where thousands of Indian troops are fighting a treacherous terrain and a determined enemy, the battle has only been intensifying since the intrusions were first discovered. Two months into the war, the army has realised that it is not even half way home. It's only now that the army has met with some success and the body on the tree gives consolation to many. To the jawan from 18 Grenadiers who saw his officer, Major Rajesh Adhikari, fall to a Pakistani Army regular's AK-47. To another soldier from 18 Garhwal and to many more from 2 Rajputana Rifles which suffered 23 casualties on June 29.

Up in the Kargil mountains, the highs are short-lived and moments of celebration few. For both, the 18 Grenadiers which fought for 20 days to clear the Hump and Point 4590 and 2 Rajputana Rifles which finally cleared the Tololing Top, the taste of victory turned sour when they were tasked to clear the heights leading to Tiger Hill. They had managed to change the slogans of "Allahu Akbar" to "Bharat Mata ki jai". But soon they were back: to a new peak, a new battle, the same slogans and more losses. And to the familiar routine of holding havans and prayers on the 13th day of every death. Even before the reconnaissance drills for Tiger Hill could start, 18 Grenadiers had lost 25 men. Another 42 had been injured. The night 2 Rajputana Rifles made its way towards Point 5100, it lost three officers and 12 men. The total toll of soldiers then stood at 207 dead, 389 wounded and nine missing.

Army chief General V.P. Malik's "unit citation'' to 2 Rajputana Rifles for meritorious and gallant performance is an indication of the odds the troops are fighting against. Of a war that is painfully spilling into its third month. A war which a senior army officer says has reached "35-40 per cent if you assess it by value and is only one third over if you go by the number of locations that are still with the enemy".

When Defence Minister George Fernandes said it would take until September to throw the intruders out, he was not exaggerating. That, in fact, is the minimum time the task would take. There have been major successes like the capture of Tololing in the Drass sub-sector. But Drass is the only area where the army has made any headway. "There are still 25 to 30 locations which have to be recaptured," says a brigadier involved in the Kargil operations.

Besides the battle does not stop once a location has been recaptured. If anything, it only intensifies because the recaptured ridges are positions known to the Pakistanis, positions which they fortified and occupied for the last four to six months. Take Tololing for example. Even though the Indian flag is now flying at Point 5140, soldiers are still getting injured because the Pakistani Army is pounding the height with shells. Troops still have to take shelter behind rocks because the infiltrators had laid mines near the bunkers before they retreated. One soldier lost his leg when he bent down to pick up the body of an officer killed a few days before the final assault party reached the top: the officer's body had been booby trapped.

Two months into the battle, the army is still discovering fresh locations, still finding out the strength and intention of the enemy. The capture of Point 4700 led to the recovery of an anti-aircraft gun but that came as no surprise. What surprised officers of 18 Garhwal were the sackfuls of dal, rice and atta -- the infiltrators could have survived for six months without calling for fresh supplies. They were also comfortably entrenched in well-insulated fibre-glass huts having separate toilets. Similarly, the capture of Point 5100 saw heavy casualties because unlike previous locations where the army was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the intruders this time they were pinned down by a group which fired simultaneously from 13 universal machine guns. "Normally, they use two or three,'' says an officer.

The difficulty of the task can also be gauged from the fact that the army had to use 120 artillery guns simultaneously to prepare the ground for the final assault. The army will have to put 140 artillery guns into motion before the ground troops can start advancing towards the bunkers atop Tiger Hill where 50-60 infiltrators are estimated to be holed up. An officer revealed that Bofors guns are being flown in from Rajasthan to augment the artillery in Kargil.

The sheer numbers of men and machines that are needed for every ridge, every point -- five brigades and para commandos are involved in a sector where one brigade was in operation before May -- lend a time frame to the war. That is perhaps the reason why the other sub-sectors of Mashkoh and Kaksar are classified as "low priority'', which means that the fight is yet to begin there.

For strategic reasons, Drass was a priority. The intruders on the heights here were threatening the Srinagar-Leh highway, the only route through which the army carries out what it calls "advance winter stocking". Since Kargil and Ladakh are cut off between October and early June, all civilian and army supplies have to be stocked by September. This time, they will have to stock up for five brigades. For, even if the heights are cleared of intruders by September, they cannot be left unocuupied. Unlike previous winters, when the army retreated and the heights were referred to as unheld areas, this year a strict vigil will have to be kept.

But before that, there will be more assaults, more losses and more bodies. Indian as well as Pakistani.

Issue Contents | Write to us | Subscriptions | Syndication

BUSINESS TODAY | INDIA TODAY PLUS | COMPUTERS TODAY
TEENS TODAY | NEWS TODAY | MUSIC TODAY |
ART TODAY | SYNDICATIONS TODAY

© Living Media India Ltd