June 14, 1999
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THE BATTLE ZONE Peak by Peak Its literally an uphill task for the Indian Army as it inches its way towards the posts held by battle-hardened infiltrators in the high ranges. And it knows it's going to be a long haul. By Ramesh Vinayak and Harinder Baweja
On May 29, as the platoon closed in on the enemy picket at Point 4268, a coordinate on the map, Saravanan moved up ahead of the others. He literally stumbled on the infiltrators and engaged them in a gun battle. Some of Saravanan's men say they saw him fell four infiltrators before he went down to a deadly burst of machine-gun fire. Coming under heavy attack from the other intruders, the Indian platoon had to withdraw to a safe position. Almost a week after Saravanan died fighting valiantly, Indian troops have tried to recover his body but with little success. The intruders continue to rain heavy fire.
No Indian general is willing to say how long the battle will last except for vague replies of "it will take time" and the army will have to tread cautiously. They now put the strength of the infiltrators at 700, almost 300 more than the original estimate a fortnight ago. Almost every day Major-General V.S. Budhwar, general officer commanding-in-chief, 3 Division, discovers newer enemy locations which are then added to the map in the Operations Room at his make-shift headquarter in Kargil. Wireless messages pour in from commanding officers of different units asking for additional troops. Already, four additional brigades estimated to have over 20,000 men have been moved to do battle in Kargil. The army estimates that its troops have killed over 300 infiltrators but has so far showed no evidence to bolster its claims. The Indian Air Force has been pressed into service in a bid
to cut down on the time required to uproot the intruders by at least a month. Since its
first strike on May 26, the air force has been carrying out over 40 sorties daily. On May
31, even Mirage 2000s were used for air reconnaissance and special missions -- to pick out
the radar stations that Pakistan has deployed. The air strikes have reportedly succeeded
in lowering the morale of the infiltrators. Intercepts of the wireless messages of the
intruders -- which is the only way to find out the success rate -- indicate casualties as
well as some distress calls. "There are nine bodies, what do we do with them?"
and "when are you sending reinforcements?" are among the intercepts that are now
being studied. One of the intercepted message which is worrying the army pertains to the infiltrators continuing with their namaz (prayers) even as Indian Air Force fighter planes zeroed in on them. Says a senior army officer, "They even suffered up to 30 casualties, at least that is what the intercept says, but the fact that they continued praying instead of seeking shelter shows their level of motivation." Also, the well-entrenched intruders have a formidable arsenal to keep the troops advancing uphill at bay. They have heavy machine guns, light machine-guns, air-defence guns and mortars, besides possibly plenty of shoulder-fired Stinger surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). Their supplies are constantly replenished by Pakistani troops with the Indian armed forces still unable to choke the links. At Kaksar, the army has made some headway but it is still extremely difficult to uproot the intruders. Initially spread over an area of up to 4 km, the infiltrators have been forced, through air strikes, to an area of about 1 km. This is around post 5299. Besides, it is only one location among at least eight to 12 others which army officers say are strongly-held positions. As one army officer revealed, the difference in height between the infiltrators and the Indian Army is anywhere between 2,000 ft and 4,000 ft. So it will be a while before ground troops can engage them in a battle. "Unlike in Punjab or even the Valley, we can't run our troops like a comb over the enemy," says Major General A.S. Sihota, chief of staff, 15 Corps. At Batalik, where Saravanan died fighting, the army has begun to close in on the well-fortified intruders on 16,000-20,000-ft high peaks. Bolstered by air strikes and heavy artillery fire support, the infantry has begun to engage the intruders in close-quarter battles on the mountain tops. Last week, the army dislodged them from two ridges after hand-to-hand gun battles that led to at least eight army casualties. At least 10 intruders were killed while two were captured alive by a team of crack commandos. Batalik's ridges are less steep on the PoK side, an advantage that helped the intruders breach the LoC and occupy the heights without their movements being noticed. For Indian troops, negotiating these features from heights of 10,000-12,000 ft is a herculean task that requires massive logistics. "As the mountain warfare eats up the troops, building advantages in logistics is the key to neutralising the intruders," says Lt-General Krishan Pal of the 15 Corps. Maintaining the combat soldiers on heights is an arduous task. For instance, four soldiers are required to maintain one fighting soldier. As a result the administrative tail becomes long and accounts for the large number of troops deployed. To speed up movement, the army requisitioned two companies of General Service (GS) and Artillery Task (AT) mules, besides roping in hordes of local mules and porters to ferry supplies -- ration and ammunition -- to the forward locations. The army mules carry 100-150 kg load, transporting even dismantled heavy artillery guns up the mountains. "The strategy is to move the artillery positions up front to force the intruders to keep their heads down and allow the infantry to move up on the heights," says an army official. Neutralising the fortified positions of the intruders has been a time-consuming and nerve wracking struggle. Last week, a company of combat troops helped by night vision devices set out to dislodge a Pakistani picket on a peak at 16,000 ft, named after Bollywood heroine Madhuri by an army officer. Carrying "survival ration" of gur-chana and weathering sub-zero temperatures, they inch their way up even as artillery guns try and pin down the intruders to facilitate their excruciatingly slow advance. "You have to crawl by inches at night. Negotiating the mountains requires tremendous planning and logistic support. From a vantage position on the top even 10 intruders can halt the advance of 1,000 soldiers, " explains a young captain in the company. All across the threatened LoC in the Kargil sector, the Indian Army realises it is an uphill talks to dislodge the intruders quickly.
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He
is now called the Hero of Batalik. Commissioned into the Bihar Regiment just four years
ago, Major M. Saravanan was on a difficult mission. In the high mountains of Batalik in
the Kargil range he led a platoon of 30 men to try and cut the supply lines of the
Pakistani infiltrators who had entrenched themselves on the Jubar ridge at 14,000 ft.
Approaching them was a treacherous task. If they tried climbing up the steep slopes they
were easy targets for the enemy. A few weeks earlier, before the war over Kargil
intensified, Major Rohit Gaur and three of his patrol party were caught by surprise and
killed by the intruders while moving up the slopes. So the platoon had to take a tortuous
route using rocky outcrops as cover to stealthily approach the Pakistani picket at the
top. 
There are a
growing number of such heroics and lives lost as, what Lt-General H.M. Khanna, the
Northern Army commander, calls the "near conventional war" in Kargil enters its
third week. On June 3, the Indian toll stood at 57 killed, including four officers and
three junior commissioned officers, and 203 injured. As the army closes in on Pakistani
pickets dotted all over the towering ridges, the casualties are likely to go up. The
infiltrators are battle-hardened and trained in high-altitude warfare. Fighting was still
intense in four major sub-sectors on the Line of Control (LoC) -- Drass, Kaksar, Mashkoh
and Batalik. The army claimed it had successfully pushed back the intruders from their
original positions 10 km within Indian territory along the 140-km Kargil-Leh stretch where
the battle rages. It now estimates that most of the pickets are barely 3 km inside the LoC
and only a dozen of them are "strongly held". But at many places the army is
still 2,000 ft below Pakistani pickets and would take a while to reach them. 
