What the Kargil War teaches India about its national security

Kargil War, 1999. The most important lesson that India learnt from the Kargil imbroglio is that the essential requirements of national security should not be compromised (AFP).

Twenty years ago, on May 3, 1999, local shepherds reported seeing some Pakistani intruders on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC) in the Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). On July 26, 1999, the Pakistan army was pushed back by the Indian Army from the last of the heights it had surreptitiously occupied. With that well-earned victory, Operation Vijay came to an end.

The Pakistan army’s offensive was an ill-conceived military adventure. By infiltrating its regular soldiers in civilian clothes across the LoC and physically occupying ground on the Indian side, the Pakistan army had added a new dimension to its 10-year old proxy war against India. Pakistan’s provocative action compelled India to launch a firm but measured and restrained military operation to clear the intruders.

Operation Vijay was finely calibrated to limit military action to the Indian side of the LoC and included air strikes from fighter-ground attack (FGA) aircraft and attack helicopters of the Indian Air Force. Artillery firepower played a key role in paving the way for India’s brave infantrymen to take back the occupied heights inch-by-bloody inch.

Why did Pakistan undertake a military operation that was foredoomed to failure? Clearly, the Pakistani military establishment had become frustrated with India’s success in containing the militancy in J&K to within manageable limits and could not bear to see its strategy of ‘bleeding India through a thousand cuts’ evaporating into thin air.
Though it was not stated in the Lahore Declaration of February 1999, acceptance of the concept of the LoC as a permanent border between India and Pakistan had begun to gain currency. In an act more out of desperation than strategic planning, the Pakistan army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate decided to launch an organised intrusion into the militarily vacant remote areas of Kargil district to once again ignite the spark of militancy and gain moral ascendancy over the Indian security forces.

The strategic aim of the Pakistan army in engineering these intrusions under the facade of Kashmiri militancy was to provide a fresh impetus to the flagging militancy -- wrongly called jihad -- and again attempt to focus international attention on the Kashmir dispute.

In the Dras, Mushko Valley and Kaksar sectors the military aim was to sever the Srinagar-Leh National Highway 1A to isolate Kargil district and cut India’s lifeline to Leh, with a view to eventually choking supplies and reinforcements to Indian troops holding the Saltoro Ridge west of the Siachen Glacier.