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Oscar : Mate, I was listening to Musharaf's latest interview (the one he gave to that Indian Anchor & was about the alleged beheadings & the sort !); listening to that I got the impression that the Kargil Conflict was a purely Mujahideen endeavor independent of the Army that escalated into the NLI being brought in when the Indians crossed over into Pakistani Territory & two of their jets were shot down !
Is that true that the Mujahideen sort of sucked us into a conflict that the Army wasn't planning on fighting ?
Ill be accused of being an Indian again.. by certain racist circles.
But here goes..
I was 15 then..so all I remember is of what other people said and conclusions to that I drew later, living in a posh hotel since my father worked there. In a hotel you meet everybody, and in that hotel you met everybody...and I mean everybody(including the current chief who was GoC Murree at the time and as I heard he was not too happy with it having his misgivings with the details of the operation).
I remember vividly the buildup MUCH before Kargil.. AAA and guns moving along the crossings... (there is a certain bridge at a spot called Kohala that joins into Azad Kashmir).. I remember all the army officer friends we knew talking bits and pieces about it.. about having India by the Jugular(and we did.. all propaganda to the contrary is just BS).
Initially, the PA had captured and held peaks that literally made Indian supply lines a duckshoot..
The LeT were just the initial cannon fodder, since they needed our more professional troops to back them up. So I believe the deeper hits were left to Let and "embedded" troops while the key positions were held by the more able ones.
but when the attacks began.. and the AF officers looked grimmer.. PN even more.. Musharraf plan fell upon itself.
It was brilliant short term tactics.. just really really short sighted. ..and could have been better used in an actual war scenario.. but our leaders have a tendency to not hold on to their aces in the deck because they get over-confident and cocky.
When the retreat happened.. I remember seeing the gardens of the MH and CMH in Murree with constant choppers flying in and out... Chopper pilots who bore testament to countless bloodied bodies.. of men being forced to run.
Kargil was nothing less than a crime against Pakistan, just as Operation Gibraltar was.. and the only people who paid for it were our troops who only said "Labbaik!" and jumped in.. and were abandoned.
Musharraf did not just butter up the NLI later on for no reason.. he knew he had sacrificed troops for no gain and only loss.
and he needed to compensate those troops by some hot airy words.
Kargil, like Op Gibraltar.. was a Pakistani attack on India.. and that I will stand by for all the accusations in the world.
Criminal not just that it brought Pakistan to the brink and pushed its progress back by years, and sacrificed our lions for the ego's of lambs who used it for their contrived gain.
But that these were in essence good ideas and tactical plans that could have stayed better off(or at least elements of them) under the carpet until needed for use.
Until Gibraltar and Kargil.. India was asleep.. it would not even have cared or acted..
Why then would you try to aim for its heart when its not attacked you and by doing so you could save yourself in that dire time.
You forced an oblivious dum-dum into arming itself to the teeth so that when it did exact its revenge you could do nothing(71,Kargil withdrawal).
You forced yourself back two steps so that when the enemy did build itself up you had so destroyed your reputation that no oe would sell you weapons to try and match them... (although the civilian governments that followed these dictators did the most damage in terms of economy.. that is the result of a feudal democracy and a democratic system that was not allowed to develop).
So in conclusion, Kargil was the most brilliant folly ever.. and goes everything against what is called the art of war.
It was a hurried move to try and kill the enemy's bishop without realizing that the move left your king exposed.