Pakistan still occupies four kargil peaks
Pakistan still occupies four kargil peaks
On July 26, the country celebrates Vijay Diwas to commemorate India’s victory in the Kargil war. But five years since the war, four strategic Indian posts in Kargil are still under Pakistani control and the government is not ready to spell out the truth, reports VK Shashikumar
Point 5353, Bunker Ridge, Saddle Ridge, Dalu Nag. These are posts in the Kargil sector that the soldiers of the Indian army knew incontrovertibly to be their own. They form a sort of memory map of disjointed emplacements along the treacherous mountains in the Kargil sector. Features that are joined in various military maps of the area by dotted lines.
Army sources confirmed to Tehelka that at least two of these features are under Pakistani control, thanks to botched up military operations and a government that wanted to hide the truth. The fate of the other two features, Dalu Nag and Bunker Ridge, is still shrouded in mystery.
“Dalu Nag is certainly in the Kargil sector, but it has a history of its own since the 1980s. It has nothing to do with Kargil operations. Some parts of Dalu Nag may have been occupied by them at that time,” former army chief Ved Prakash Malik told Tehelka. “I do not know what exact locations are being referred to by these names,” he added referring to Saddle Ridge and Bunker Ridge.
For the officers and jawans ordered to engage the intruders in a near-impossible battle, this is more humiliating than the government’s negation of the gains made by the army in the 1965 war. But then, Kargil would probably have never happened if the Tashkent Agreement was not signed in 1965. Even in 1999, India gave Pakistan a walkover and enabled it to retain territory that was always under Indian control. And then, the government misled the nation that Kargil had been cleared of all Pakistani intruders.
Former defence minister George Fernandes, argued that the LoC runs over Pt 5353 and, therefore, was unoccupied by either countries till Kargil happened. A point which is not true.
Ironically, though it was the bjp-led government that hid the truth, the Congress-led upa government is also reluctant to clarify. Tehelka sent a questionnaire to Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee asking him to spell out the truth about the four posts. But at the time of going to print, he had not replied.
Meanwhile, within the army at the level of middle and junior level officers and the brave jawans, there is discontent. Any army unit that has done its tour of duty in Kargil after the war in the summer of 1999 has heard about the secrets locked up in the forbidding heights.
Perhaps it is painful for the army top brass to admit that Operation Vijay was not really an unalloyed victory.
Tehelka - The People's Paper
... Even the Pakistani losses in the 1965 war doesn't come close to it and that was an all out war not a limited conflict like Kargil ... Pick your choice ... I expect nothing better from a man who ran to Washington to arrange a unneeded ceasefire and gave all those areas held by our troops unconditionally and when the army removed him for that , he started playing the victim card and has been playing it since then ...
... The hard facts have been presented above ... Check them out instead of posting off topic videos ... Pakistan cant match India conventionally , Yes all of us know that ... But we have developed and successfully used the nuclear deterrent two times ...
