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This is followed by a report on the training of militants in Pakistan as reported in Time magazine.
These reports are followed by a piece on the Siachen conflict, rounded off by 2 reports on the consequence of the Kargil war on Pakistan.
I prefer not to comment as I see most of these reports speak for themselves and convey my understanding of the issue.
Happy browsing.
Contrarian
In Enemy Territory: A Soldier's Story
He spent 77 days on Indian territory, fighting and suffering at elevations of up to 5,400 m--on one of the highest battlefields in the world. He is a Pakistani soldier, and this is his own account of the combat near Kargil. His story contradicts Islamabad's official claim that it has never sent troops across the Line of Control that divides Kashmir. The 30-year-old soldier returned to Pakistan in mid-June for reasons he wouldn't specify. Thin, bearded and badly sunburned from exposure in the mountains, he spoke to TIME on the condition of anonymity, for fear of being court-martialed.
http://www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990712/soldier1.html
In February, I was ordered to cross the Line of Control and climb some mountains that the Indians controlled. My commanding officers would not allow me to take my AK-47 rifle. I was against going to an Indian hill without a weapon, but I saw that everybody who was being sent across the LOC was going there empty-handed. We were told it was for the sake of secrecy.
It took us three days of walking and climbing to reach the Indian posts near Kargil. We found they were empty, and our job was to prepare some makeshift bunkers. All we had were tents.
The first five days were hell. The M-17 military helicopter did not come with our food supplies. We just had Energile [a protein-enriched food pack used in high-altitude warfare] and ice. Sometimes we ate ice with sugar. There was jubilation when the helicopter came with real food.
The skirmishes with the Indians started in May. In the early days we mowed down many of them. Those Indians were crazy. They came like ants. First you see four, and you kill them. Then there are 10, then 50, then 100 and then 400. Our fingers got tired of shooting at them. We felt sorry for them. Sometimes they came in such large numbers we were afraid of using up all our ammunition. There is no instant resupply, so you have to be very careful. We were always worried that we would use up all our ammunition on one attacking Indian party and would have none left when a new group came. But God was always with us. You could see lots of bodies strewn down below or in the gorges. They were just rotting there. We also suffered a lot of casualties, many more than officials in Pakistan are claiming. During my stay up there, 17 of my friends died while fighting the Indians.
There is so much exchange of fire that you cannot eat the ice now or drink the water, which is laced with cordite. Even the streams down below the mountains are contaminated. Lots of soldiers are facing stomach problems because of this. We had no proper bunkers, so we dug a 5-m tunnel into the snow. When the Indian shells started landing on us, we would crawl into this tunnel for safety. You don't get enough space to spread your legs in the tents. You always sleep sitting up. Sometimes there is so much firing, you cannot relieve yourself even if you want to.
On the ridges now we have disposable rocket launchers, surface-to-air missiles and machine-guns, including anti-aircraft guns. On one occasion I was positioned on a mountain facing the Drass-Kargil highway. It's fun to target the Indian convoys.
Our officers are very strict. A young soldier from Punjab died in front of me because of altitude sickness. The soldier came from the plains. He fell sick soon after coming up. He offered our commanding officer 200,000 rupees [about $4,000] to let him go down, but the offer was refused. He died four days later. We didn't know his name. I tried to find out, but they refused to tell me. If you die up in the mountains, there is no way to lift your body and take it down. Most of the time we slide the bodies downward. All the men who are fighting on those ridges know that they are in a hole from which they cannot come out alive. You can only return dead. There are a rare few like me, who somehow by fate got the chance to leave the mountains
Under Cover of Night
By GHULAM HASNAIN The Line of Control, Pakistan
Dragging deeply on a cigarette, Major Nadeem Ahmed contemplates his map, which shows more than a dozen Indian gun positions on a 17-sq-km target grid. Each position, marked in blue, has a name laced with hatred: Devil Gun, Kafir (non-believer) Gun, Hindu Gun, Gandhi Gun and so on. The Pakistani officer and his men have just fired 10 shells from their single artillery piece at the Indian positions a few kilometers away across the Line of Control. It is 10 p.m. and Ahmed is surprised that the Indians have not responded. Usually they fire back immediately.
The major turns on a cassette recorder and plays Western pop music, trying to break the tension in his dingy bunker. "I don't think the Indians will fire tonight," he says. "They may fire around 5.30 a.m., and there could be some air sorties." Ahmed asks his batman for his rifle and places it beside his cot; he has been warned by headquarters that the Indians might make a commando assault on his position during the night. He goes outside and in the darkness has a quiet word with his men: "Your eyes and ears should work like a snow leopard's. Do not ignore even the slightest sound of a rolling stone."
The men sleep in a simple bunker with a mud-and-thatch roof; rats rummage freely inside. In the wee hours, an explosion shakes the night. A soldier runs in. "Hurry, the Indians have started firing," he says. It is 1 a.m. Everyone moves to a shell-proof bunker. Fifteen minutes later the barrage stops. After another 15 minutes, some men return to their cots. At 4 a.m., as the major begins his morning prayers, the Indians start another barrage. The major is furious. He orders his men to target each Indian gun on the grid: "Hit all of them, especially Gandhi. Teach them a lesson." This is the routine of the mock war that has been going on for the past 10 years along the LOC. Until recently, the Indians and Pakistanis lobbed shells across the mountains mainly to remind each other of their presence. But now there's much more at stake. This is no shadow war: soldiers are fighting and dying in one of world's most inhospitable terrains.
As far back as last November, the first batch of Pakistani troops from the Northern Light Infantry Regiment--a unit experienced in mountain warfare--crept over the 3,500-m-high passes along the LOC to occupy the high ridges that the Indian army held in the summer. To avoid raising suspicion, even among local Pakistanis, they went without weapons. Their task was to build new bunkers on the ridges--but as far as possible from the empty Indian positions that would be unsafe because they are marked on Indian army maps. Pakistan was "stretching" the LOC to its advantage, to be able to block at will India's strategic road from the Kashmir Valley to distant Ladakh--the military base for that other source of conflict between India and Pakistan, the 6,600-m-high Siachen Glacier.
Near the town of Kargil in Indian-held Kashmir, Pakistani soldiers have assembled a Chinese-made 57-mm anti-aircraft gun inside a man-made cave protected by steel girders and concrete. It sits on top of a 3,000-m-high ridge that overlooks a 500-m stretch of the Kargil road. When a lookout spots a vehicle, he shouts "Allahu Akbar" (God is great), and the gunner pulls the trigger. The soldiers cheer each hit. The weapon has scattered convoys and made Indian troop deployments hazardous. Bombs and artillery shells fired by the Indians have failed to penetrate the cave.
Islamabad insists that the soldiers on the Indian ridges are Islamic mujahedin, or holy warriors, fighting for the freedom of Kashmir. That was the alibi Pakistan used for its military advance. Men from the Northern Light Infantry Regiment and later the Khyber Rifles were used because of their high-altitude experience and because they are from the region. They were encouraged to look like mujahedin, and they discarded their uniforms for traditional shalwar kameez, or tracksuits, grew beards and wore traditional white religious skullcaps. The soldiers say that when they reached the heights in February, some genuine mujahedin were at the abandoned Indian positions. But these men left after a few days because they could not survive in the high altitudes. They are now used for reconnaissance and as porters.
Morale is high among the gunners. But ask Pakistani soldiers why they are on India's side of the Line of Control ducking shells, bombs and bullets, and you're unlikely to get a clear answer. Some officers talk of the futility and danger of a war that their government denies they are taking part in. There is also the hint of a divide between the men at the front and the government. "None of us wants war with India," says one officer. "It is very damaging for Pakistan's economy, and we feel it will be difficult to sustain." A soldier adds: "The capture of these mountains has given us extra advantage, but I doubt that the Indians will forget this."
Not many of the men expect to come down from the mountains alive. At base camp in Skardu, 150 km from the frontline, phone-booth attendant Yawar Shah says the men weep when they call home to bid good-bye to their families. "You can see them crying in the cubicles," he says. "It is very sad."
www-cgi.cnn.com/ASIANOW/time/asia/magazine/1999/990712/loc1.html
Fighting in the Heavens
Indian soldiers brave fierce fire as they push to reclaim territory seized by Pakistani intruders
By MICHAEL FATHERS Kargil
 |  SEARCH: An Indian soldier, atop a Bofors gun near Drass, prepares to pound militant-held positions high in the hills. Marcus Oleniuk--Sygma for TIME |
The guns fire less frequently than before, now that India's battle-hardened soldiers are slowly and with great difficulty clearing the surrounding heights of Pakistani intruders and denying them forward observation posts, military officials say. Behind the convoy, over a stretch of 150 km from Kargil to the 3,400-m Zoji Pass at the entrance to the Kashmir Valley, the Indian army is settling in, acclimatizing hundreds of frontline soldiers to the high altitude and adding more long-range guns to a bevy of artillery batteries along the river bank or tucked under the shelter of cliffs--all firing from barrels aimed almost vertically.
Away from the range of Pakistan's artillery, newly erected tents dot the upland meadows. Commandos from India's "White Devils" élite mountain and high-altitude warfare group train soldiers in rock climbing. Commandeered civilian trucks and military transporters rumble along the narrow road, spewing clouds of exhaust into the air. The scene is one of unending activity. At last, after weeks of uncertainty, miscalculation and indecision, India's military juggernaut is beginning to roll.
In this conflict, everything is hyperbole. The setting is spectacular; the fighting is difficult and brutal, taking place mainly at night; access and resupply is hazardous, requiring porters to carry heavy loads up near-vertical rock faces 5,000 m high and exposed to deadly crossfire. On the heights where Pakistan has penetrated deepest (about 6 km) into Indian-held territory--where some of the heaviest fighting is now taking place--the locals call it the second-coldest place in the world. No one seems to know where the coldest is.
If you go by climate alone, India has until mid-October to win back its mountain tops before snow blocks the Zoji Pass and cuts off road access to the battle zone. "Well over 70% of the job is done, though I will admit that the last 30% will be the hardest," says Colonel Avatar Singh, a spokesman for the Indian Army in Kargil. At a base camp near Drass, Colonel A.S. Chabbewal, operations chief for the Indian forces at that part of the front, predicts it will take "a few months more" to clear the area. "I'm quite hopeful it will be done by October," he says, adding that the army could, if necessary, fight a winter war.
The sanitized pronouncements of the military command cannot mask the dirty, vicious reality of the fighting around Kargil. This is war. It is not a "limited" conflict, as politicians on both sides of the Line of Control insist. It will go on until one side wins or the other gives way. Whether by design or miscommunication, both countries appear to be understating casualties. Numbers issued in New Delhi and Islamabad do not tally with reports from fighting units in Kargil and Drass, where soldiers from both sides have told journalists of bodies lying abandoned in inaccessible ravines and on rocky outcrops. India's young officer corps, in particular, are being decimated as they lead their units in World War I-style assaults straight into enemy guns. In one skirmish last week, three young officers were killed in an assault on two Pakistani-held peaks, which left 26 Indians dead. No prisoners are taken. "The Pakistanis prefer to fight it out rather than surrender," says Colonel Singh. Nor do the Indians give any quarter, say soldiers and porters who have returned from the battlefront. Most of the fighting is close-quarter combat, with bayonets fixed and rifles fired straight from the hip. The intruders are first softened up with round-the-clock Indian artillery bombardment and air attacks. The units on the mountainside inch their way forward at night, often covering as little as 100 m.
In the town of Kargil, once the halfway stop for tourists traveling to the Buddhist uplands of Ladakh, immigrants from Nepal take a break between their newly found work as porters for the Indian army. The money is good, they say--$7 for an 18-kg load. Some days they make as much as $40. It is they who usually bring back the Indian bodies or bury the Pakistani dead in a shallow bed of stones. Most of the 30,000 inhabitants of Kargil have fled; houses are shuttered and only a few shops are still open. Local doctors reported a rise in the number of miscarriages among Kargil women soon after the town became a target for Pakistani artillery.
From the 4,000-m-high Hamboting Pass, northeast of Kargil, one can see the snow-covered mountain chain that marks the Line of Control, 10 km away. Closer, near the village of Batalik, is a series of ridges the Indians say Pakistani forces occupy. This was the site of another round of heavy fighting last week. Above is a dazzling blue sky; small clouds float by, seemingly an arm's length away. For long periods, there is no sign of war. The landscape is empty, silent, sublime. The calm is shattered when an Indian helicopter appears in the distance, and a volley erupts from guns hidden behind a nearby ridge. This sums up the war: at times it is almost unreal, then its horrors are suddenly upon you.
http://www-cgi.cnn.com/ASIANOW/time/asia/magazine/1999/990712/kashmir1.html
Inside Jihad
The militants fighting Pakistan's covert war with India train in spartan camps where they are schooled for battle and prepared for martyrdom
By GHULAM HASNAIN Islamabad and Muzaffarabad
ALSO
In the Line of Fire
After decades of conflict, thousands of sons murdered and a long-standing drought of hope in the disputed region, India and Pakistan are starting a hesitant peace process
Essay: Remembering one of the "disappeared"
Four bearded militants warm themselves at a gas heater in an Islamabad safe house. A wireless set suddenly crackles. "Our boys have entered Srinagar Airport," a grave, distant-sounding voice announces. "Pray for them. It has now been 15 minutes." The voice, speaking in Urdu and broadcasting from deep within India's part of Kashmir, is detailing the progress of a suicide mission by Lashkar-i-Taiba, a ruthless, Pakistan-based militant group waging war to wrest Kashmir from India. The four men in the safe house, also members of Lashkar-i-Taiba, immediately go into fervent prayer. They are not the only ones to receive the radio transmission. Other militant groups in Pakistan can tune into the same frequency. So can the Pakistani military. A phone in the house rings, and one of the militants answers. He is asked what's happening. His reply: "Why don't you find out from your side?" After hanging up, he explains the caller was a Pakistani army colonel.
That scene occurred in early January. Five Lashkar operatives disguised as police officers attempted to attack the Srinagar airport that day. But Indian army guards turned them away, and the operation was aborted. Two weeks ago, however, a second attempt succeeded. Six would-be martyrs, dressed in police uniforms and driving a stolen government jeep, reached the outer defense gate of the airport and indiscriminately tossed grenades and opened fire with rifles. Back in the Islamabad safe house, a coded message came through at 2:15 p.m. saying the men had reached their target. Abu Ammar, a 30-year-old Pakistani veteran of the Afghan war—his face is scarred from shrapnel and his right hand is mangled—knelt and touched his forehead to the floor in prayer. "I have learned that whenever you succeed in your mission, just bow down, thank God and hail his greatness," he said. After a three-hour gun battle at the airport's perimeter, all six of Abu Ammar's men were dead, along with four policemen. (Two civilians were killed and 12 injured.)
Since Kashmir erupted in 1989, India has pointed a blunt and unwavering finger at Pakistan, accusing its neighbor of fomenting the entire problem. It's a large and cynical exaggeration: anti-Indian sentiment runs high within Kashmir, and in the first half of the 1990s, Kashmiris themselves provided the steam in the anti-Indian militant movement. They were disorganized and willing to murder, but passionate and anxious to plead their nationalist cause with the outside world.
Today, however, India's charge rings a lot truer. Despite a decade of denials—Islamabad insists it provides only moral and political support, not training or tangible aid—Pakistan is fueling militant activity in Kashmir. Of the five main militant groups operating in Kashmir, four are based in Pakistan, where open recruiting and fundraising are commonplace. Training of militants is also done on Pakistani soil. The Pakistani military is deeply involved, especially in the smuggling of anti-Indian militants across the Line of Control.
Militant groups have roots all over Pakistan, from their well-equipped training centres in Muzaffarabad—the capital of Pakistan's slice of Kashmir—and the country's North-West Frontier province to the nice, middle-class houses in Lahore and Islamabad. Those houses may look no different from their neighbors at first glance, but what about the strange antennas on the roofs, the international phone lines and the transient occupants with unkempt hair, camouflage jackets and hiking boots? And what of those unmarked four-wheel-drive vehicles pulling up at dawn with clockwork precision? Here is an inside look at how Pakistan runs its covert war in Kashmir:
Recruiting and Training
There are thousands of young, motivated Pakistani men anxious to join the militancy in Kashmir, which they consider a holy war. They come from all walks of life: not merely from the religious schools known as madrassahs, or the far-flung, poverty-mired towns and villages, but also from Pakistan's educated and Westernized middle and upper classes. In the jihad they find brotherhood, a sense of mission and purpose. And for these highly religious volunteers, many of whom are still in their teens, there is nothing more sacred in life than achieving the status of a martyr. These are the grunts in the war. The leaders are Pakistani veterans of the Afghan war.
The largest training camp in Pakistan is run by Lashkar-i-Taiba, a wing of an Afghan mujahedin group known as Markaz Al Dawa Wal Irshad. It is set on a vast mountain clearing overlooking Muzaffarabad. (Training grounds for the other three militant groups are located in the North-West Frontier province.) Armed men guard the facility round-the-clock. There are only two structures, one an armory, the other a kitchen. Trainees live and sleep in the open, whether in the sweltering summer or the depth of winter. The field is dotted with installations used to teach the fervent young—some no older than 14—how to cross a river, climb a mountain or ambush a military convoy.
The day of a trainee begins at four in the morning. After offering prayers, the militants go for exercises. A breakfast of tea and bread is at eight, followed by a full day of rigorous drills, which are interrupted only for prayers and a simple lunch, usually rice and lentils. Coursework covers how to use sidearms, sniper rifles, grenades, rocket launchers and wireless radio sets, as well as the art of constructing bombs. The teachers are Lashkar veterans of action in Kashmir and Afghanistan. Sports, music and television are forbidden. Trainees are only allowed to read pre-screened newspaper articles.
Training is divided into two stages. The first three-week session gives religious education and basic knowledge of how to handle firearms. Once a volunteer has passed that course, which costs the organization about $330 per trainee, he is sent to a designated city or town, often near his birthplace, to work at the group's offices and become more involved with the organization.
When a volunteer proves himself capable, motivated and loyal, he is enrolled in a special three-month commando boot camp, which costs the group $1,700 per student. (The money is raised from overseas groups and the Pakistani public, often via open demonstrations in Pakistani cities of militants working out, scaling walls and showing other martial tricks. Generous donors are invited to visit the not-so-secret camps to see how their money is spent.) Phase two is designed to push each volunteer to his physical limit and cull the weak from the strong. In the final weeks, recruits use live ammunition, construct actual explosives and perfect ambush techniques. The final exam lasts three days. A group of trainees, sometimes as large as 100 individuals, hikes and climbs through high-altitude, wooded terrain for three days without food or sleep. They are not allowed to slow their pace except for a few naps. At the end the hungry and thirsty survivors are given a goat, a knife and a matchbox. That's their reward, and they have to cook and eat it in warlike conditions.
Going In
Only the fittest from each graduating group are given a chance at martyrdom across the border in Kashmir. The local commander makes his choice, and the fortunate few are dispatched to safe houses along the Line of Control known as "launching pads." (Parents' permission is technically required for anyone who opts for jihad. Many boys get it easily, but some who don't, fully submerged in the dream of martyrdom, pressure their parents into complying.) At the launching pad, while waiting for their marching orders, the boys write wills and what might be their last words to their families.
At this point, the Pakistani army plays a crucial role helping to arrange the infiltration of the militants across the Line of Control. Militants officially deny Pakistani army involvement, but those who fought in Kashmir tell Time that the wait at the launching pad is dictated by their leaders, who are in touch with the army. "Until an unmarked vehicle turns up at your safe house," says a veteran of Al-Badr, the first Pakistan-based militant organization to get members across the line, "you don't know when your number will come."
When it does, this is what happens: "The vehicle, covered from all sides, will pick up two, three or four militants according to the plan and dump them at one of the forward posts of the Pakistani army," the Al-Badr veteran says. "People in civvies give us arms, ammunition, food and money [Indian currency]. We are asked to check our weapons. After a day or two they give us the signal to go ahead." None of the boys is allowed to carry his own arms to the Line of Control, although sometimes an individual can choose a favorite AK-47 and find it waiting for him at the army camp along the line.
The next step is the most hazardous: from the Pakistani army post, the group embarks on a three-to-seven night journey into Indian-controlled Kashmir, traveling by night, hiding during the day. The group leader wears night-vision goggles. The rest follow blindly across the mountains. There are numerous obstacles: Indian mines, tracer flares, Indian border patrols anxious to shoot at them. "But whenever such a situation arises," says a Lashkar militant, "the Pakistani guns come to our rescue to provide cover."
Militants making the return trip go through a reverse route, ending up at a Pakistani army base—sometimes with souvenirs. Abu Haibatullah, 32, was sent across the Line of Control in the mid '90s with a particular mission: to bring back an Indian soldier for interrogation. He managed to ambush and disarm a soldier, but when the Indian tried to snatch Haibatullah's gun, he killed him. He then decided to return home with the soldier's head. "Lots of people came to see the head," he recalls proudly. "Some were from the Pakistani army and they praised me for my gallantry."
In the 1990s, the Pakistani militants hired local guides—ethnic Kashmiris—to help them get across the mountains and into India. "On a number of occasions," says Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, 42, the supreme commander of the Lashkar-i-Taiba militants, "they took the money and tipped off the Indians. So we trained our own manpower." In other words, the Pakistani militants don't always trust the Kashmiris on whose behalf they are waging this war. The Pakistani militancy, which had its roots in the Afghan war, is now an institution unto itself.
War at the Top of the World
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,501050711-1079528,00.html
Up at 5,653 m, Pakistani army Captain Ali Nazir watches the crows as they soar down from the spires of rock, gliding over the blue glacier. "I like the crows," Nazir says. He points to his soldiers clustered around a fiberglass igloo. "Aside from us, they are the only living creatures we ever see." And when the crows leave during the fierce, three-week-long winter blizzards? Then, says Nazir, "I cannot describe the absolute desolation I feel." He gestures grandly, like an orchestra conductor, at the view: snow clouds roiling down from the crags, avalanche tracks, man-eating crevasses ribbing the glacier. Soldiers see strange things at such altitudes�genies flitting across the glacier, phantom troops along a ridge. Men go mad and wander off to die in blizzards. "This is a terrible place. It is a battle just to survive," says Nazir, 27, his face darkened by high-altitude exposure.
Across a rampart of rock and ice stretching the length of the 75-km Siachen Glacier, an Indian soldier, Amarjeet Singh, is preparing to take up his battle position against the Pakistanis. Singh had served on the glacier before, in 1989, at the height of the fighting with Pakistan, but he thinks his second tour of duty will go easier. Indian and Pakistani troops are no longer shooting at one another. They are mainly worried about avalanches and deadly high-altitude sickness instead. "It was much worse before," recalls Singh, who says he now has warmer boots to protect him against frostbite, and better ice axes. Once he gets to his mountaintop bunker, entombed under layers of snow, Singh, like the other soldiers there, can call home by satellite phone from their soot-blackened igloo, while waiting out the hour that it takes to boil rice at these altitudes.
Even with improvements in military equipment, Siachen is still an awful place to wage a war. Both countries refuse to disclose their casualties in the 21 years that they have been fighting up here, but some military analysts put the combined death toll at anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 lives. Temperatures can fall below -55�C; and more soldiers are killed in avalanches than by gunfire. To mount an assault on an enemy-held mountaintop is often suicidal. Because of the lack of oxygen, attacking soldiers can climb only about five meters before they have to stop to catch their breath. If you let bare skin touch steel for more than 15 seconds�a finger on a trigger, for example�you risk severe frostbite. Says Rifaat Hussain, who teaches political science at Islamabad's National Defence College: "It's totally insane to be fighting a war at these altitudes."
Recently, TIME was able to visit both sides on the glacier and talk to soldiers involved in something that, if not the world's most insane war, is surely the war fought in the most insanely impractical place. But the Siachen Glacier is worth visiting for more than the spectacular scenery. It is both a potential flash point between two nuclear powers�and potentially evidence of a new spirit of cooperation between them. The two neighbors nearly waged a full-scale war in 1999 when 800 Pakistani soldiers disguised as militants scaled a 5,100-m-high ridge near Kargil in Indian-held Kashmir and began shelling a major road used by the Indians to supply their Siachen outposts. India recaptured Kargil after suffering many casualties, but the Indians remain wary of the peace-making vows of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who, as army chief, had planned the Kargil offensive. Today, Siachen is more important as a test of diplomacy than of high-altitude battle skills. If India and Pakistan cannot solve a dispute over a chunk of ice that is of little strategic value, asks Jalil Abbas Jilani, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman and one of the key diplomats in talks with India, "then how can we fix more complex issues like Kashmir?"
It's a good question. In November 2003, India and Pakistan declared a cease-fire along their disputed border from the Siachen Glacier through Kashmir. The truce, which has held, is part of a thaw in the hostility between the two countries. Nowadays, Kashmiris can travel by bus across the hilly, barbed-wire front line to visit relatives�the first time they have been able to do so for 50 years. Businessmen are hatching plans to pump oil from Iran through Pakistan to India's factories, and Pakistani musicians and actors are heading for Bollywood spotlights. In June, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during a visit to Siachen, said he wanted to turn the battlefield into a "peace mountain." A few days later, India's army chief General Joginder Jaswant Singh said the Indian army had drafted a road map that would convert the glacier and its surrounding peaks into a demilitarized zone. However, years of mistrust bedevil the peace process. Neither nation wants to be the first to pull its troops off the ice for fear that the other would rush in. Vijay Oberoi, a former Indian army vice chief of staff and an influential military analyst in New Delhi, has doubts about Pakistan's true intentions. "We have suffered when we trusted them," he says. The Indians see their own position on the Siachen Glacier in grand terms. "The fact that India is on Siachen, and in control of it," says Lieut. Colonel J.S. Pundir, "is a sign that we can be a superpower." The Pakistanis are equally suspicious of the Indians. "We don't want to be here," says Captain Nazir, "but the Indians moved in first, and we've sacrificed a lot of blood to keep them from advancing farther into Pakistan."
The origins of the ice war date back to 1949, after India and Pakistan came to blows over possession of Kashmir, a former kingdom coveted by both countries. Negotiators agreed on a cease-fire line that stopped at a map coordinate known as NJ9842, a mountaintop northeast of the Kashmiri city of Srinagar. In vague wording, which would come back to plague both nations, the agreement stated that the cease-fire line would extend from NJ9842 "thence north to the glaciers." This, according to the Pakistanis, put Siachen firmly inside their territory. The Indians think otherwise. New Delhi insists that because Siachen is the source for the Nubra River, which flows eastward into India, the glacier should belong to them. In the mid-1970s, Pakistan began to issue climbing permits to foreign mountaineers who wanted to explore the Karakoram Range, which has some of the world's highest peaks. Then, in 1977, an Indian colonel named Narinder (Bull) Kumar was leafing through a mountaineering magazine when he spotted an article on international expeditions venturing onto the glacier from the Pakistani side. Kumar persuaded his superiors to allow him to lead a 70-man team of climbers and porters to the glacier. They returned in 1981, climbed several peaks and walked the length of Siachen. In an interview with Outside magazine in 2003, Kumar described the glacier as "like a great white snake ... going, going, going. I have never seen anything so white and so wide."
Bull's secret trek was spotted by Pakistan. On patrol, some Pakistani soldiers found a crumpled packet of "Gold Flake" cigarettes�an Indian brand�and their suspicions were raised, according to a senior Pakistani government official. Soon, the Indian expedition on Siachen was shadowed by the Pakistanis. At army headquarters in Rawalpindi, Pakistani generals decided they had better stake a claim to Siachen before India did. Islamabad then committed an intelligence blunder, according to a now retired Pakistani army colonel. "They ordered Arctic-weather gear from a London outfitters who also supplied the Indians," says the colonel. "Once the Indians got wind of it, they ordered 300 outfits�twice as many as we had�and rushed their men up to Siachen." When the Pakistanis hiked up to the glacier in 1984, they found that a 300-man Indian battalion was already there, dug into the highest mountaintops. The Indians control two of Siachen's three passes, and two-thirds of the glacier. Says Lieut. Colonel Abid Nadeem, Pakistani commander at Gyong, which at 4,266 m is the highest battalion headquarters in the world: "The Indians were climbing heights. And we were climbing heights. Then the shooting started. And so the war began."
Battles for these nameless peaks often involved surreal acts of heroism and self-sacrifice. In April 1989, for example, the Pakistanis decided to try to dislodge an Indian squad from a saddle between two peaks known as the Chumik Pass before reinforcements arrived. First, a platoon of Pakistanis, roped together, tried scaling a 600-m cliff to reach the Indian post, but they were wiped out by an avalanche. Time was running out; Indian reinforcements were approaching. So a Pakistani lieutenant, Naveed Khan Qureshi, 27, with no mountain-warfare training, volunteered for a crazy mission. The plan was for Qureshi to be dangled from a tiny helicopter by a rope and then dropped on top of the peak, above the Indians. Slapped by high winds, the helicopter stalled and went into a dive. Qureshi was still underneath it, swinging to and fro. "I was sure that he was going to get caught in the tail rotor blades," says the pilot, Raheel Hafeez Sehgal, now a colonel. Sehgal pulled the chopper out of its stall and headed for a lower ridge. Qureshi was cut loose�and fell straight into a crevasse. Miraculously, he survived, but was trapped there until a second soldier was airlifted in. The two men were stranded in a blizzard for two days until the weather cleared long enough for Sehgal to land four more troops and supplies. Trouble was, their position was 150 m below the Indian outpost instead of above it. Lashed together by ropes, the six men advanced up the mountain, and eventually overran the Indians' bunker. From that vantage point, the Pakistanis began to pound a lower Indian base on the glacier with mortars and rockets. A month later, the two countries realized the madness of trying to slug it out, and agreed to demilitarize the sector. The pact has held firm�proof, says Pakistani military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan, that Siachen can be a place of peace.
Today, an icy stalemate prevails. At Gyong, the Pakistani battalion headquarters, the military has made a large-scale model of its sector of Siachen. Using a swagger stick, an officer points out the positions of the Indian outposts, which dominate many of the highest peaks and ridges. Analysts reckon that India and Pakistan have 150 manned outposts along the Siachen Glacier, with some 3,000 troops each. At the Indian Forward Logistics Base, a 4,927-m-high post that is a key coordinating point for Indian troops manning the northern part of Siachen, Lieut. Colonel Pundir claims that the Pakistanis still don't control any part of the glacier. "Not even an inch," says Pundir. With an air of contempt, he adds: "They can't even show their faces near it." Pakistani Lieut. Colonel Saeed Iqbal concedes that the Indians control the heights. But he insists that the Indian success comes at a price. "It's costing them far more than us," says Iqbal. "We can deliver our men and supplies to the front line using roads, while the Indians have to bring in everything using helicopters and snowmobiles." Islamabad political analyst Hussain calculates that it costs the Indians $438 million a year to fight for Siachen (Indian officials claim it is less than $300 million), while Pakistan's bill is estimated at $182 million.
Since 1989, India and Pakistan have held nine meetings to hammer out a peace deal for Siachen. So far, they have got nowhere. At the last meeting, in May, India insisted that Pakistan accept the current 110-km front line along the glacier and the surrounding peaks�known as the Actual Ground Position Line�as the de facto international border. That way, say the Indians, if Pakistan does try to seize the Indian positions after a withdrawal, it would attract international condemnation. "The ball is in the Pakistani court; they must accept the ground reality," says Oberoi, the former Indian army vice chief of staff.
Pakistan, for its part, says it will never accept India's alleged claim jumping. Says Foreign Ministry spokesman Jilani: "Siachen is perceived as a major act of Indian aggression." You hear that viewpoint often on the Pakistani side of the glacier. After a game on the highest cricket pitch in the world, in Gyari, Lieut. Colonel Iqbal sits down in a deck chair. "This war was forced on us," he says. "I have to stop the enemy from sitting on our land, and it might as well be here." Iqbal glances up sharply at a booming noise, which sounds like distant artillery fire. He grins; it's just another avalanche.
Despite what analyst Hussain calls a "trust deficit" between the two sides, fresh peace proposals are making the rounds in New Delhi and Islamabad. The Pakistanis want to separate troop withdrawals from the glacier from the knottier issue of who owns Kashmir and, with it, Siachen. For its part, India wants hard evidence�such as a map or a photograph in which the Pakistanis agree to the current front line as the border�before it will agree to demilitarize. One proposal, made by international environmentalists, is that the Siachen Glacier be declared a troop-free zone, with access permitted to mountaineering and scientific expeditions. The Indian army says that thanks to global warming, Siachen is receding at a rate of 10.5 m annually. International pressure is also being applied to solve the conflict, according to analysts in India. "The U.S. would like India to withdraw; they see it as a symbolically important step," says Brahma Chellaney, a defense analyst at New Delhi's Centre for Policy Research. Outsiders know that reaching a final settlement on Kashmir will be hard, but hope that the two sides can at last negotiate on what might be solvable. "Siachen looms high in what can be achieved," says Chellaney.
But honor is at stake. India and Pakistan each believe fervently in their own claim to Siachen. Both have spent blood and treasure to prove it, although the glacier's strategic value is minimal. From his camp on the ice, Pakistani Captain Nazir watches an Indian party through binoculars. Despite the cease-fire, Nazir can't relax. He is worried that an avalanche will sweep down on his encampment. "One came down on our toilet," he says. "Thank God nobody was inside." That would indeed be an awful way to go. But until India and Pakistan can find a way to trust each other, such a white death threatens the lives of young Indians and Pakistanis locked in a pointless war on the roof of the world.Diplomatic Fiasco: Pakistan's Failure on the Diplomatic Front Nullifies its Gains on the Battlefield
Op-Ed, Newsline, volume 11, issue 1, pages 37-38
Author: Samina Ahmed, Fellow
Belfer Center Programs or Projects: Science, Technology, and Public Policy; Managing the Atom
On July 12, just days after Prime Minister Sharif's unannounced visit to Washington DC, the withdrawal of forces began in Indian-held Kashmir. Pakistan's sudden capitulation to US demands to withdraw "armed intruders" occupying mountain heights in the Kargil-Drass area across the LoC brings to an end an ill-conceived adventure which brought the two nuclear-capable states to the brink of all-out war. Diplomatically isolated and dependent on international goodwill to prop up its ailing economy --still reeling from the impact of sanctions imposed after its May nuclear tests- Pakistan could ill— afford to take on a militarily superior foe. That Sharif threw in the towel in a dramatic and public admission of culpability comes as no surprise. The military battle was in any case lost once Pakistani decision-makers failed to convince the international community of the righteousness of their cause. Diplomatic isolation and disapproval plagued Pakistan from the onset of the current crisis in Kashmir in May 1999, just a year after the nuclear tests. It will be an uphill task to restore the country's international credibility and image, particularly if the lessons of the Kargil escapade are swept under the rug by a policy establishment that has obviously failed to come to terms with the complexities of the post-cold war international environment.
Although many factors contributed to Pakistan's diplomatic debacle in its latest war of words and deeds with India, ranging from incompetent diplomacy to its failure to successfully woo the world's media, Prime Minister Sharif s apparent about-turn in his policy towards India played a particularly prominent role. The May 1998 nuclear tests had focused international attention on the potential for conflict between two rival states with a history of war. Sharif's peace overtures, culminating in the February 1999 Lahore Declaration were therefore hailed by the international community as harbingers of peace. Events along the LoC this May, therefore, came as a shock for the more ardent supporters of the Lahore process, particularly the Clinton administration.
Even as the US administration suspended some and the Congress debated suspending all economic and military sanctions, promising a return to a South Asian policy of engagement extending beyond a one-point non-proliferation agenda, sporadic fighting broke out along the LoC in Kashmir. By May 1999, the conflict threatened to spread as India accused Pakistan of sending hundreds of regular forces and insurgents in a bid to forcibly alter the LoC. Pakistani denials and claims that indigenous Kashmir freedom-fighters were occupying the heights on the mountain ridges in the Kargil-Drass area across the Line of Control failed to gain credence in international circles. This failure could be partly attributed to the contradictions in Pakistani policy since expectation did bear fruit but with Pakistani respect for the sanctity of the official propaganda for internal consumption focused on the setbacks suffered by the Indian forces, raising public expectations of an Indian military debacle to new heights.
It is improbable that there were any real hopes of a sustained successful campaign in a remote and desolate area where the inclement weather in the fall would would have forced all combatants to withdraw. A more likely Pakistani goal was for a renewed international focus on a long-standing conflict over a disputed territory between two nuclear states. This expectation did bear fruit but with disastrous diplomatic consequences. Fearing the outbreak of all-out war between the two nuclear capable foes, the Clinton administration at first quietly and then openly accused Pakistan of intervening across the LoC, demanding an immediate withdrawal of the Pakistani-backed "armed intruders." However, the Sharif administration seemed oblivious to the growing international consensus about Pakistan's culpability. While military and foreign office spokesman extolled the military advances of the mujahideen in Kargil, the diplomatic war was already lost.
Pakistani policymakers clearly failed to understand the perils of the post-cold war environment. During the cold war years, as an ally to the US, Pakistan could reasonably expect a sympathetic American response to tensions with pro-Soviet India. Pakistan was also the beneficiary of Chinese support against their mutual foe, India. The end of the cold has changed regional and international equations. Strengthened non-proliferation norms and concerns about the state-sponsored terrorism have replaced the cold war ideological agenda and traditional allies have become neutral in a world that is dominated by the one super power.
Pakistan was to learn this lesson the hard way when the Kargil conflict escalated. In its annual meeting in Cologne, the world's advanced industrial nations, Pakistan's main source of economic assistance, and India's ally, Russia joined hands with the US in calling for a withdrawal of Pakistani-backed forces an Pakistan respect for the sanctity of the LoC. Deprived of US military hardware as the result of non-proliferation legislation, the Pakistani military also faced the prospect of the French reneging on their deal to supply Mirage 3 aircraft and submarines in a bid to pressure the Pakistanis to respect the LoC.
As the Vajpayee administration threatened to extend the local war beyond the Line of Control, Sharif dashed to China, only to be rebuffed by a Chinese leadership more interested in regional peace than in sustaining cold war alliances. In its first open rift with Pakistan, China not only called for a peaceful and negotiated settlement of Kashmir dispute but also for respect for the LoC. Collaborating closely with the US throughout the crisis, China was clearly in no mood to come to Pakistan Pakistan's rescue within or outside the Security Council. By the time the US Commander-in-Chief of the Central Command, General Anthony Zinni was dispatched to Islamabad to pointblank demand a withdrawal of Pakistan- backed forces from Indian-held Kashmir, the Sharif administration was ready to capitulate, realising that the only alternative would be a disastrous war that Pakistan could ill-afford in its current state of economic disarray, military vulnerability and international isolation.
In the July 4 Washington declaration on Kargil, Pakistan's dramatic and public departure from its previous stand of disclaiming other than political support for the Kashmir mujahideen has greatly harmed its own moral standing on the Kashmir dispute. Pakistan was to learn Pakistan has also been forced, albeit unofficially, to swallow the bitter pill of acknowledging the sanctity of the Line of Control in Kashmir. Above all, the Kargil episode demonstrates that the international community, led by the US, concerned about the potential for a nuclear exchange will no longer ignore any real threat to peace between Pakistan and India. Ironically, the nuclear tests of May 1998 have frozen the territorial status quo in Kashmir, for at least the foreseeable future.
Victory in reverse: the great climbdown
THAT the Kargil adventure was ill-conceived, if not downright foolish, was becoming clear, albeit slowly, even to the congenitally blind and benighted.
That consequently Pakistan, swallowing its pride and not a few of its brave and gallant words, would sooner or later have to mount a retreat was also becoming clear, especially after Niaz Naik's secret visit to New Delhi which was a desperate bid to get India to agree to some kind of a deal which would provide a face-saving way out for us.
But that the climbdown when it came would be so headlong and ill-judged, and that in the process it would leave in tatters the last shreds of national pride, should take even prophets of doom by surprise. A script written by a college of cynics could not have equalled, let alone excelled, the singular performance of the Heavy Mandate in Washington.
It is not a question of interpreting the hidden meaning of the Washington statement. This statement is a model of clarity which nails Pakistan's humiliation to the mast and leaves nothing to the imagination. If it is still being proclaimed as a great step forward to resolve the Kashmir dispute, it only confirms the view that in Pakistan brazenness is always the last resource of a floundering government.
To repeat the first point, at issue is not Pakistan's retreat. Given the nature of the Kargil adventure, the fact that in planning it the army high command substituted fantasy for a sense of reality, Pakistan had no option but to effect a roll-back eventually, whatever armchair Rommels might say to the contrary. As a feint aimed at embarrassing the Indian army, the Kargil operation could have made some sense. As an attempt at permanently occupying the Kargil heights it was madness if only because no country, whether India or Pakistan, would tolerate such a naked trespass into territory under its control. At issue is the manner of our retreat as agreed to by our great helmsman.
Even when it finally dawned upon Pakistan's Bismarcks and Napoleons that the Kargil intrusion was a blunder, there was no reason to panic. Pakistan still had options before it which, if sensibly exercised, could have brought about a withdrawal with a minimum loss of national dignity. We could have settled matters with India and told it that a mistake had been made which we were willing to undo provided (1) there was a scaling down of hostilities along the Line of Control and (2) that India did not make it a point to crow about our discomfiture. This would have been far preferable to the course actually adopted.
But this would have required a measure of statesmanship, a quality of which there has been not the slightest evidence in Islamabad since this crisis erupted. So Pakistan's war leadership did what flowed naturally from its basic instincts: go cap-in-hand to Washington and agree to an extraordinary statement which commits us to undo our Kargil folly.
A pathetic sop sweetens this mini-Munich: a pledge from the American president that once concrete steps have been taken to restore the Line of Control - that is, once we have undone our folly - he will take "a personal interest" in encouraging India and Pakistan to resume bilateral discussions. Only a leadership with no idea of national pride and dignity can suppose that an empty pledge such as this is sufficient recompense for the blood of our martyrs.
A more complete negation of Pakistan's stand, and a more complete vindication of India's position, is hard to envisage. Yet official drum-beaters and Pakistan Television, that weary performer forced to dance to every government's tune, are trying to sell the agreement sealed at Blair House, Washington, as the greatest diplomatic triumph since the Congress of Vienna.
The people of Pakistan are not surprised. They are stunned because this is not what they had been led to expect. The two surprised parties must be Clinton and Vajpayee. When Nawaz Sharif telephoned Clinton and requested an urgent meeting, the American president, who is no one's fool, must have realized in a flash that it was all up for the Pakistanis. But is it far-fetched to suppose that even he must have been taken aback by the eager enthusiasm of the Pakistani leadership to cave in and put its signature to a one-sided document.
By the same token, Vajpayee too must have been taken by surprise. The Indian army, despite the successes it has scored, was not having an easy time of it in Kargil and Drass. Dangerous terrain, an elusive enemy and heavy casualties are not things an army likes. Imagine then the sense of relief in New Delhi when Clinton called to say that the Pakistani leadership was about to execute a volte face and all it demanded in return was that he (Clinton) should give this turnaround his blessing. A bang turning to a whimper: to this time-worn phrase a fresh meaning has been given.
The Tashkent and Simla accords look like victory parchments by comparison. Ayub Khan did not suffer humiliation at Tashkent. Even if the Tashkent agreement went down badly in Pakistan because official propaganda, always a curse in this country, had raised popular expectations to fever pitch, it was a fair agreement between two countries which had fought each other to a standstill. At Simla on the other hand, Pakistan was at a grave disadvantage because it had suffered a humiliating defeat at India's hands. Yet even in the shadow of that disaster Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to his enduring credit, managed to preserve what remained of Pakistan's honour. The Washington statement defies understanding. For such submission wherein lay the compelling necessity?
Why has this happened? The answer is simple. Pakistan has suffered a failure of leadership, a failure of vision and, most important of all, a failure of nerve. When the crunch came the politico-military leadership could not take the heat.
Will explanations be demanded for this shambles? It is safe to say no because post-mortems of this kind are not in the Pakistani tradition. The government's spin machine will go into over-drive, as it has already, in a bid to paint the Washington capitulation as a Roman triumph. The Bismarcks will cover for the Napoleons and the Napoleons for the Bismarcks.
To be sure, Pakistan's fighting men will feel betrayed. The Kashmir cause itself has received a mortal blow. But then who cares. Greater disasters in our history have gone unsung. The humiliation of Kargil too (or is it the humiliation of Washington?) will soon be forgotten.
Even so, is there nothing to be done? To begin with, all the models of the Shaheen and Ghauri missiles, and all the replicas of the Chaghi hills, which adorn our various cities, should be put on board the best of our naval cruisers and, in a solemn midnight ceremony, dumped far out into the waters of the Arabian Sea. If this crisis has proved anything, it is that the possession of nuclear weapons does not confer immunity from the taking of stupid decisions.
Furthermore, the prime minister and the army chief, if they can help themselves, should not say anything for a while: no explanations, no brave statements. The people of Pakistan can do without salt being poured over their wounds.
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/990709.htm
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