Kings College War Studies Prof Walter Ladwig on the impact of terrain in India-Pakistan conflict:
http://www.walterladwig.com/Articles/Conventional Deterrence in South Asia.pdf
The 2,900km long Indo-Pak border is characterized by diverse and
varied terrain that has differential impacts on military operations. To
the north in Kashmir –—which has seen fighting in four wars –the
landscape is mountainous and heavily forested. When combined with a
lack of wide roads, the movement of vehicles and large military
formations is significantly hindered. Moreover, much of the highaltitude
territory suffers from significant snowfall in winter, high levels
of rain, and overall low visibility, the combination of which limit the
operability and payload of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, as well
as disrupting surveillance and surface communications.47 Depending on
the time of year, it is possible to conduct large-scale military operations
across the Line of Control (LoC) separating Indian and Pakistani
controlled Kashmir in the areas of Jammu south of the Pir Panjal
mountain range and the Kashmir valley.48 However, difficult terrain
and under-developed transport infrastructure in these areas hinders the
ability to concentrate forces, control dispersed units, and marshal
reinforcements and supplies.49 Consequently, as Jack Gill notes a
‘verity’ of combat in Kashmir is that ‘a combination of weather, terrain,
and logistical hindrances … makes swift, deep penetrations unlikely, if
not impossible, in the face of even minor resistance.’
50 This is hardly
ideal for a limited aims offensive that seeks to succeed by quickly
overwhelming or bypassing defending forces.
A second section of the border running from Southern Jammu and
Kashmir through the Punjab down to northern Rajasthan is marked by
a near continuous line of concrete irrigation canals that stretch for
2,000km. Not only does this network of canals and their tributaries –
which have a horizontal depth of up to several kilometers in some
places –form an obstacle in its own right, they have been turned into
defensive fortifications with the addition of large pilings of soil, concrete
bunkers, minefields, and fortified gun emplacements.51 This barrier
system –which runs as close as several kilometers to the international
border –significantly hinders the offensive operations of armored
vehicles while providing concealed fighting positions for defensive
troops who are protected from direct fire and artillery weapons.
Securing a bridgehead and mounting a cross-canal assault against a
dug-in opponent can be expected to be a time consuming and bloody
affair. Beyond the canals, many areas of Pakistani Punjab are densely
populated with several sprawling urban centers, which would also limit
the pace of military operations and the potential for battlefield
awareness.
This section of the border poses several problems for a limited aims
offensive. Regardless of whether the attacker achieves strategic surprise,
as Mearsheimer notes, the kind of forward defenses found here pose
problems for limited incursions on the ground because they allow even
thinly populated defenders to offer stiff resistance.52 Moreover, the
limited aims strategy is based on the belief that in the face of a
successful offensive a defender will either acquiesce or attempt a
counterattack against the aggressor turned defender that results in an
attritional stalemate so costly they eventually abandon it.53 In this
respect, it should be noted that both Kashmir and the Punjab hold great
political significance for both the Indian and Pakistani governments.
Loss of territory in these areas would be unacceptable to the defender,
who would be pressured to escalate the conflict either horizontally or
vertically instead of abandoning further military action.
The third section of the international border, where the Sindh and
Punjab meet, is often described as Pakistan’s major point of strategic
vulnerability. It is in this region, between Sukkur and Rahim Yar Khan,
where the country’s primary north–south transportation artery runs
extremely close to the international border. Consequently, some
analysts have suggested that this leaves Pakistan extremely vulnerable
to a central assault that would spilt the country in two.54 It would be a
significant reversal for the Pakistani government were Karachi and
Hyderabad in the south cut off from Lahore and Islamabad in the north
by a limited incursion. However, that historical risk has been signifi-
cantly alleviated by the construction of a largely parallel highway on the
western side of the Indus River that can facilitate the movement of
goods and military traffic while remaining screened from the international
border by a major river. Although this region lacks the extensive
fortifications described in the northern Punjab, the presence of irrigation
canals and the Indus River will constrain the available axes of
advance for a military force moving from the border towards the
Sukkur–Rahim Yar Khan region. This in turn will allow Pakistani
forces to fight from prepared positions, albeit not as hardened as those
found further north.
The southern-most sections of the international border, consisting
of the flat, barren deserts of Rajasthan and Gujarat are extremely
suitable for mechanized military operations. Indeed, during the
2001–2002 Operation ‘Parakram’ the Indian Army reportedly concentrated
all of its offensive forces in Rajasthan, suggesting that the
Thar Desert and the Rann of Kutch is a likely location for either side
to undertake a large-scale armored offensive.55 Although the open
expanse of the Thar Desert lacks the kind of obstacles to a rapid
advance found further north, it also lacks the strategic value attached
to those regions. Irrigated and developed on the Indian side of the
border, on the Pakistani side areas of the harsh desert have been left
empty to provide a natural buffer-zone.
The story is similar in the Rann of Kutch, which depending on the
monsoons, is alternately a windswept desert or a salt marsh. In either
instance, the region has been described by one observer as ‘one of the
world’s least valuable pieces of real estate.’
56 Although relatively easy to capture in a limited aims offensive, neither of these two areas
would offer particularly useful leverage in post-conflict negotiations.
Loss of territory in this region would not impose a major cost on
Pakistan and if anything would allow it to trade space for time as it
readied a counterattack against Indian forces in significantly exposed
terrain.
The particular geography of the Indo-Pak border would inhibit an
RMA-enabled Indian limited aims offensive in two major ways. First,
the difficult terrain in the region north of the Thar Desert would prevent
modern sensor and weapons systems from operating at proving ground
effectiveness, while the presence of natural and man-made obstacles
would hinder a rapid advance. Second, the open spaces further south
that would allow an RMA-enabled force to shine lack the kind of
strategic objectives that would be worthwhile to target with a limited
offensive. Moreover, the vast, open expanse of the desert does not
provide significant advantages to an aggressor who subsequently has to
defend the territory they seized against a counterattack.