Kargil war: 1999 - Revision history

Jyoti: /* A Brigadier and his son were brothers in arms */

2024-07-22T17:41:17Z

‎A Brigadier and his son were brothers in arms

Jyoti at 08:10, 8 August 2023

2023-08-08T08:10:45Z

Pdewan: Pdewan moved page The Kargil war of 1999 to Kargil war: 1999

2023-07-26T19:27:32Z

Pdewan moved page The Kargil war of 1999 to Kargil war: 1999

Jyoti: /* The view from Pakistan: 1 */

2021-08-15T21:15:03Z

‎The view from Pakistan: 1

Jyoti: /* War heroes */

2021-07-30T16:09:10Z

‎War heroes

Pdewan: /* The view from Pakistan: 2 */

2021-07-26T00:45:50Z

‎The view from Pakistan: 2

Jyoti: /* War heroes */

2021-01-21T10:06:14Z

‎War heroes

Jyoti: /* The sequence of the war */

2021-01-21T10:05:42Z

‎The sequence of the war

Jyoti: /* Defeat declared Victory */

2021-01-21T10:05:08Z

‎Defeat declared Victory

Jyoti: /* The sequence of the war */

2021-01-13T15:26:31Z

‎The sequence of the war

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 Edited excerpts from ‘Kargil-Untold Stories from the War’ with permission from Penguin Random House India
-== A Brigadier and his son were brothers in arms==
+==A Brigadier and his son were brothers in arms==
 [https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=TOIDEL%2F2019%2F07%2F26&entity=Ar02003&sk=C8896CD3&mode=text  Ajay Sura, July 26, 2019: ''The Times of India'']
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 When asked about his concerns about his only son, Gen Aul said, “There are no such concerns in the conflict. He was a soldier and was following orders, which a soldier is supposed to do. I am proud that he fought well and was even decorated for his achievement.”
 Gen Aul’s wife Bina Kaul said she had made all her life’s supplications during those two-and-a-half months in 1999.
 =The view of the Indian Army=

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 See [[examples]] and a tutorial.</div>
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 =In brief=
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 “The party firmly believes that judges should be reinstated through an executive order, instead of a constitutional package.”

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 After that Nawaz went to the United States. But an attempt was made to create the impression in the print media that Nawaz Sharif was at fault to surrender there. He said this impression was created by General Pervez Musharraf which was totally wrong.
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 When asked about his concerns about his only son, Gen Aul said, “There are no such concerns in the conflict. He was a soldier and was following orders, which a soldier is supposed to do. I am proud that he fought well and was even decorated for his achievement.”
 Gen Aul’s wife Bina Kaul said she had made all her life’s supplications during those two-and-a-half months in 1999.
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 '''Kargil war'''
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 After that Nawaz went to the United States. But an attempt was made to create the impression in the print media that Nawaz Sharif was at fault to surrender there. He said this impression was created by General Pervez Musharraf which was totally wrong.
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 = Defeat declared Victory =

← Older revision		Revision as of 10:05, 21 January 2021
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	On July 26, the Indian Army announced it had thrown out all Pakistani intruders from the Indian side of LOC.		On July 26, the Indian Army announced it had thrown out all Pakistani intruders from the Indian side of LOC.
		+
		+	=The battles=
		+	==Point-5353: Did the Army try to retake it?==
		+	[https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=TOIDEL%2F2019%2F07%2F26&entity=Ar02008&sk=4998D48C&mode=text Ajay Sura, July 26, 2019: ''The Times of India'']
		+
		+	As the country celebrates two decades of its victory in the Kargil conflict, there is ambiguity about a contentious area known as Point-5353 — one of the highest and strategic peaks near Line of Control in Drass sector of Jammu & Kashmir.
		+
		+	The top Army commanders who led the Indian response 20 years ago have claimed that Point-5353 was occupied by the Pakistan army prior to the Kargil conflict and that the Indian Army never attempted to capture it in 1999. However, the Kargil war despatches, accessed by TOI, have indicated that the Army had made an unsuccessful attempt to capture the important geographical feature.
		+
		+	The despatches, exchanged regarding military operations, have revealed that a team led by Major Navneet Mehta of 16-Granadiers had tried to capture Point-5353. The post was used as an artillery observation post by Pakistan troops.
		+
		+	Col Puspinder Oberoi, the then commanding officer of 16 Granadiers regiment, in a communication to his superiors during the war, said: “Two attacks were made by troops of my battalion on Point-5353. Maj Navneet Mehta and 30 men carried out attack.”
		+
		+	In a handwritten statement, a copy of which is with TOI, Mehta had stated that he was to capture Point-5353 by May 18, 1999/600 hours.
		+
		+	“We reached the base of the cliff and tried to go up... We ended up having 13 casualties … The attacking column developed chest congestion … along with wounds due to continuous attempts. Thus, the attack had to be called off...,” says the communication sent by Mehta to his commanding officer.
		+
		+	When TOI contacted General VP Malik, who led the Kargil war, he claimed: “The LoC in this area was drawn in 1972 by joining several heights (points) with straight lines. The line went over Point-5353. Sometime after 1972 — well before Kargil war — the Pakistan army had occupied it. During the war, 8 Mountain division made no attempt to capture it.”
		+
		+	Lt Gen AN Aul, who was heading 56 Mountain Brigade, said: “No army was occupying these posts before the war. Pakistan had occupied it before the war and it was not in our area…” Aul added that no attempt was made to capture Point-5353.
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	=War heroes=		=War heroes=

← Older revision		Revision as of 10:05, 21 January 2021
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	Each battle and campaign leaves certain lessons for the posterity and perspectives for future. The Kargil war is no exception. China wanted to annex Ladakh through its proxy. This annoyed America. Clinton called Nawaz Sharif to the White House to tell him to pull out of Kargil. But that has not changed Pakistan’s strategy of inflicting thousand cuts every day. In the last decades India has faced a host of military and non military threats from within and outside. Therefore, in future, India will have to be prepared for conventional war, proxy war, terrorism, militancy, chemical & biological and nuclear war. It is too much for a developing nation which has unpredictable neighbours like China & Pakistan. Nepal may be another surprise. It brings out another dilemma, how should India prepare to secure itself for its sustained economic growth; by military or illusory peaceful means.		Each battle and campaign leaves certain lessons for the posterity and perspectives for future. The Kargil war is no exception. China wanted to annex Ladakh through its proxy. This annoyed America. Clinton called Nawaz Sharif to the White House to tell him to pull out of Kargil. But that has not changed Pakistan’s strategy of inflicting thousand cuts every day. In the last decades India has faced a host of military and non military threats from within and outside. Therefore, in future, India will have to be prepared for conventional war, proxy war, terrorism, militancy, chemical & biological and nuclear war. It is too much for a developing nation which has unpredictable neighbours like China & Pakistan. Nepal may be another surprise. It brings out another dilemma, how should India prepare to secure itself for its sustained economic growth; by military or illusory peaceful means.
		+
		+	=PART B=
		+	=The war sites, revisited in 2019=
		+	[https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=TOIDEL%2F2019%2F07%2F26&entity=Ar02013&sk=45976071&mode=text Vikram Jit Singh, July 26, 2019: ''The Times of India'']
		+
		+	[[File: Hooker’s irises growing near an abandoned Pakistani bunker at Point 4355 in Mashkoh LOC sector; A honeybee on a Red poppy at an artillery gun position along the Indus.jpg\|Clockwise from left) Hooker’s irises growing near an abandoned Pakistani bunker at Point 4355 in Mashkoh LOC sector; A honeybee on a Red poppy at an artillery gun position along the Indus. From this location, 130 mm field guns had fired onto the Jubar and Khalubar ridges during the Kargil conflict; Flowers collected from battlefields of 15,000-16,000ft from Bhimbet LoC sector, Drass and Khalubar ridge during the conflict and sent in letters to Chandigarh <br/> From: [https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=TOIDEL%2F2019%2F07%2F26&entity=Ar02013&sk=45976071&mode=text Vikram Jit Singh, July 26, 2019: ''The Times of India'']\|frame\|500px]]
		+
		+	The hill that takes its name after the tiger stands quietly, like a solemn sentinel above Drass. There is no sign on the horizon and beyond that Tiger Hill was the site of a fearsome battle 20 years back and brought dramatically to Indian homes via television. Brown bears have returned to the nullahs at the base of the hill and tiny blooms of prostrate vegetation dot the slopes today. There is no Indian post at Tiger Hill or further westwards to Point 4875 in Mashkoh, the site of another epic battle. Indian Army deployments are now strung forward like a string of pearls on the LoC.
		+
		+	This writer, who as a war correspondent with a national daily in 1999, had climbed the high-altitude battlefields at 16,000 feet in Bhimbet, Drass and Khalubar ridge, Batalik sectors with assault troops then, gathered flowers from there amid shelling and sent them enclosed in letters to his fiancée in Chandigarh.
		+
		+	This July, TOI’s correspondent collected flowers and photographed them during a pilgrimage with infantry expeditions to the same battlefields that tower thousands of feet above the valleys of Drass, Mashkoh and the Indus, where the Army’s various headquarters, administrative bases, mediacorps and thin populations were confined during the conflict.
		+
		+	''' Tololing’s ascent, from the eye of a flower '''
		+
		+	The Tololing ridge towers above the Drass bowl. The ascent to the top at 15,137 feet begins from the fields adorned by lush, big blooms of yellow and pink wild roses growing around streams emptying into the bowl from Tololing, Bhimbet and Sando nullahs. Botanists describe the Drass’s floral biodiversity as an “intermediate” one — a region wedged into the transition between the lushness of Kashmir and the arid vegetation of Leh.
		+
		+	The flowers get sparser and smaller as one moves towards the top. Then, there is no colour to discern on the ground except the Indian Tricolour. Tololing’s fall was a shot in the arm for the Army. As Army COAS Gen V P Malik would recall: “In the space of a few days, after Tololing fell, we were able to conquer Point 5140 (also in Drass sector) and Point 5203 in the Batalik sector. That gave me the confidence that we can do it, ie, the Army can evict the intruders from everywhere.”
		+
		+	''' Stealing into the heart of Khalubar flowers '''
		+
		+	Collections of floral specimens from the inner ridges of the Batalik sector by botanists are mainly from along roads traversing the broad river valleys or the sketchy bags from the era of the British rule. The ridges of Point 5203 — Hansubar, Khalubar, Kukarthang and Jubar running south from the LoC — were occupied by the enemy while the nullahs in between were dominated by fire and shelling.
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	=Dilip Kumar’s intervention=		=Dilip Kumar’s intervention=

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:26, 13 January 2021
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	On July 26, the Indian Army announced it had thrown out all Pakistani intruders from the Indian side of LOC.		On July 26, the Indian Army announced it had thrown out all Pakistani intruders from the Indian side of LOC.
		+
		+	=War heroes=
		+	==3 India, 1 Pakistani heroes==
		+	[https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=TOIDEL%2F2019%2F07%2F21&entity=Ar01901&sk=0842FEC7&mode=text July 21, 2019: ''The Times of India'']
		+
		+	CAPT SAURABH KALIA
		+
		+	Along with five other soldiers of his patrolling team, Saurabh was captured alive, brutally tortured, and killed by the Pakistan Army
		+	In the small hill town of Palampur, you don’t need addresses to reach the houses of martyrs. All I do is put my head out of the window and ask, ‘Kya aapko Capt. Saurabh Kalia ka ghar maloom hai?’ [Do you know Capt. Saurabh Kalia’s house?]’ People smile and guide me with gestures of the hand and tilts of the head, leading us in no time to a house with a sign at the gate that tells us we have reached a family that has borne personal loss. It is the internationally recognized icon of an upside-down rifle with a war helmet placed on top — a tribute to fallen soldiers. The dates 29 June 1976 to 9 June 1999, inscribed on black marble beneath Capt. Saurabh Kalia’s name, are a reminder that he died before the best years of his life.
		+
		+	The Kalias tell me how Naughty, as his parents called him, was as a boy — quiet and reticent, fond of cooking for his family and friends. They joke about how difficult it was to wake him up in the mornings and how when Mrs Kalia was told that in the IMA early risers were ordered to wear boots and run on top of late risers, she quickly got Saurabh an alarm clock, telling him worriedly, ‘Tu toh subah uthta hi nahi hai beta; tere upar toh woh roz boot waale ladke daudayenge. [You can never wake up early, son; they will make boys with boots run on top of you every day.]’ He had called home on 30 April 1999 to wish Vaibhav (his younger brother) on his twentieth birthday. He had said he was going ahead to the forward posts and might not be able to stay in touch for a while. ‘Don’t worry about me if I don’t call or write. I shall be home for my birthday (29 June),’ he had said. And then there had been silence. Saurabh Kalia was never to call the family he loved so much again.
		+	Mrs Vijaya Kalia, who suffered a heart attack the day she heard Saurabh had gone missing, gave up her government job soon after his death but says she did not shed a single tear for him. ‘It would have diluted the magnitude of his sacrifice. I am very proud of my son. He gave his life for his country.’ A shattered Dr Kalia vowed that he would fight for the human rights of his son and five comrades who were subjected to torture for more than three weeks and make sure that the guilty were punished. Dr Kalia’s journey has been long and painful with roadblocks at every stage. ‘It doesn’t matter whether I get any success or not. I shall continue to fight for these soldiers till I die.’
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		+	A brave mother who didn’t want another soldier to risk his life for her son’s body
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		+	CAPT. HANEEF-UD-DIN
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		+	Awarded Vir Chakra posthumously; Subsector West was renamed Subsector Haneef in his honour
		+
		+	The Shyok, river of death in Yarkandi Uyghur, meanders through these vast forgotten lands before slipping into Pakistan and merging with the Indus at Skardu. Adjacent to Subsector Haneef, named after the young officer who died on this craggy mountainside exactly two years after he had passed out of the IMA. It is poignant that this young boy with a Hindu mother and a Muslim father, who grew up celebrating both Eid and Diwali, died in a war between two countries that had been split on the basis of communal ideologies. He had gone to fight for 11 Rajasthan Rifles whose war cry is ‘Raja Ram Chandra ki Jai’.
		+
		+	Haneef ’s body lay under the open sky and falling snow for 43 days, his handsome face frozen into a cold mask. When then Army Chief Gen. Ved Prakash Malik visited Mrs Hema Aziz, Haneef’s mother, in her small Mayur Vihar apartment in Delhi and told her the body could not be retrieved because the enemy was firing constantly, she met his eyes bravely and said she did not want another soldier to risk his life to get her son’s body back. ‘After the war is over I would like to go and see where he died,’ she said.
		+	Haneef ’s body was eventually retrieved. He was buried with full military honours in Delhi. Hema Aziz made the pilgrimage with her other two sons to Turtuk, to see where her son, who used to laughingly complain that she never had time for him, had given up his life for his country. This time, he was not around to see her.
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		+	A soldier’s last letter
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		+	LIEUTENANT VIJYANT THAPAR
		+
		+	Posthumously awarded a Vir Chakra
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		+	‘Dearest Papa, Mama, Birdie and Granny,’ begins the last letter that Vijyant (Robin) wrote to his family from Kargil in June 1999. ‘By the time you get this letter I’ll be observing you from the sky, enjoying the hospitality of apsaras. I have no regrets. In fact, if I am reborn as a human I will join the army again and fight for my nation,’ he writes on the purple Forces Inland letter, his neat handwriting filling up the page. ‘If you can, please come and see where the Indian Army fought for your tomorrow.’ He adds that whatever organ can, should be taken; he asks his parents to donate money to an orphanage and asks them to give Rs 50 every month to Ruksana, a three-year-old Kashmiri girl he had befriended in Kashmir during his short stint there. He signs off with a brave, ‘OK, then it’s time for me to join my clan of the Dirty Dozen. My assault party has twelve chaps. Live life kingsize. Your, Robin.’ Vijyant had written this letter to his family just a few days before he went to battle. It’s the reason Col. Thapar comes to Knoll each year to commemorate the death anniversary of his son. And though it is becoming more and more difficult for Col. Thapar to make the treacherous climb to Knoll every passing year, he plans to honour that commitment for as long as he can.
		+
		+	Bravery goes beyond borders
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		+	LATE CAPT. KARNAL SHER KHAN OF THE PAKISTAN ARMY
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		+	Martyred at Tiger Hill
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		+	Soldiers recognize and respect bravery, even if it is the enemy. A perfect example of this is the case of the late Capt. Karnal Sher Khan of the Pakistan Army. Very few people know that the Indian Army was instrumental in the officer being awarded the Nishan-e-Haider, Pakistan’s highest gallantry award, which is equivalent to India’s Param Vir Chakra.
		+
		+	In July 1999, Capt. Sher Khan was holding five strategically located posts in the Tiger Hill area, touching a height of 16,700 feet. It was so well-defended that General V P Malik stated in his book, Kargil — From Surprise to Victory, that it appeared almost impossible to capture. According to an officer of 8 Sikh, ‘After a fierce battle, we recovered Tiger Hill on 4 July. For the next four days we were gradually advancing to recover other features — the Helmet, India Gate and Rhino Horn. Soon after the soldiers of 8 Sikh recovered the feature on 7 July around 8 am, Capt. Karnal Sher launched a swift counterattack with just a handful of Pakistani soldiers. It was suicidal for him to do so in broad daylight because we could see his movements. Yet in the highest of military traditions, he launched an attack.’ Such was the ferocity of his attack that 8 Sikh had to be reinforced by a platoon of 18 Grenadiers. Karnal Sher Khan fought till the end and finally fell when a hail of bullets hit him. Even in his last moments his hands were holding his rifle. The Indian Army wrote to the Pakistani government citing the bravery of the young officer. On the basis of this recommendation, Capt. Karnal Sher Khan was posthumously awarded the Nishan-e-Haider.
		+
		+	Edited excerpts from ‘Kargil-Untold Stories from the War’ with permission from Penguin Random House India
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	=The view from Pakistan: 1=		=The view from Pakistan: 1=