Fighting to the End

by C Christine Fair

  In addition, on February 21, 1999, Vajpayee and Sharif signed the Lahore Declaration, which acknowledged the nuclear dimension of the two states’ security competition and their concomitant responsibility to avoid conflict. The declaration also reaffirmed India and Pakistan’s commitment to peaceful coexistence, to full implementation of the Simla Agreement, and to pursuance of universal nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation. Sharif and Vajpayee recognized the importance of confidence-building measures to improve the security environment and referenced a September 1998 agreement in which both sides had acknowledged peace and security to be in the supreme national interest of both states and thus committed themselves to resolving all outstanding disputes, such as that over Jammu and Kashmir (Lahore Declaration Text 1999).

  The Kargil operation’s origins can be traced back to Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, the commander of 10 Corps, who in November 1998 asked the chief of general staff, Lt. Gen. Muhammed Aziz, to secure him a meeting with Musharraf. Ahmed was accompanied by Maj. Gen. Javed Hassan, the commander of the Frontier Constabulary of the Northern Areas (FCNA). The two men sought Musharraf’s permission to execute a plan to seize and occupy terrain in the Kargil–Dras sectors in Indian-administered Kashmir. Specifically, they proposed seizing several high-altitude Indian outposts, which were normally evacuated during the winter and reoccupied in the spring, with the aim of giving a boost to militant efforts in Kashmir (Lavoy 2009; Qadir 2002). My own interviews with subjects who had insight into Pakistan’s planning for Kargil suggest that the army was seeking to redeem itself (and also to punish India) for the 1971 defeat, India’s occupation of the Siachen glacier, and India’s periodic shelling of the Neelum Valley road and other “provocations” along the LOC. Pakistan also likely sought to exploit its newly confirmed nuclear capabilities to force the lasting political changes in Kashmir that had long eluded Islamabad (Tellis et al. 2001).

  The plan remained a tightly held secret among these four principals. In late November or early December, with preparations ongoing, the operation was informally briefed to Sharif. One of his advisors, however, explained to me (and to others in a Kargil study team conducted under the auspices of the Naval Post Graduate School) that the briefing was in English and that Sharif did not seem to understand the possibilities for escalation of the conflict. In fact, “military leadership had not presented a complete analysis of the scale of the operation or its possible outcome” (Qadir 2002, 26). The rest of the army was not notified of the operation until March 1999, by which point it was already under way. The Military Operations Directorate was tasked with evolving a “strategic operational plan, which would have a military aim to fulfill a political objective. Given the fact that they were developing a plan to justify an operation already underway, the response was no less than brilliant” (ibid.). Pakistan, guided by the calculus of this insulated planning cell, believed that India would not respond with an all-out offensive because doing so would result in a stalemate (Tellis et al. 2001). Brig. (Retd.) Shaukat Qadir offers an important insight on the Pakistan Army’s view of victory when he notes in his own analysis of Kargil that a stalemate “would be viewed as a victory for Pakistan” (ibid.).

  According to Qadir (2002), Pakistan’s military goals were to pose a credible military threat to India by seizing territory, presenting it with a fait accompli, and forcing India to the negotiating table from a position of weakness (see also Tellis et al. 2001). The war plan envisioned amassing Pakistan paramilitary forces from the Northern Light Infantry with support from the regular army and some logistical assistance from locals (razakars). At the same time, Kashmiri militants (e.g., mujahideen) would pursue a newly energized insurgency, further weakening India’s grip on Kashmir. As with Pakistan’s calculations in the 1965 war, things did not go as planned. India swiftly moved to repulse the invaders. In retrospect, Qadir’s claim that the operation was intended to involve mujahideen is suspect given that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief had not been apprised of the mission in advance (Fair 2009b; Lavoy 2009). The involvement of the ISI, the lead agency for dealing with so-called jihadi affairs, was necessary for any successful coordination with the militants.

  Sharif was not formally briefed until April, well after the operation had begun. The other services were briefed at the same time. The navy’s representative (the chief of naval staff was abroad) was apprehensive. The chief of the air staff was skeptical of the army’s assessment of the situation and admitted outright that should there be an all-out war, the air force would not be able to provide the kind of assistance the army would likely require. One motivation for this honesty was the simple fact that the conflict would be fought at altitudes in excess of 15,000 feet. Aircraft and ordinance behave very differently at such heights than they do at lower levels, and not all fixed-wing (much less rotary) aircraft can operate effectively (or at all) at high altitudes (Lavoy 2009; Qadir 2002; Tellis et al. 2001).

  In early May, Indian forces began to detect the intrusion when they attempted to reoccupy the posts they had vacated the previous autumn. At first the Indians thought that the intruders were mujahideen. While it is not clear whether Pakistan had devised that cover story in advance, Pakistan did persist with the mujahideen narrative after India made its erroneous assessments public (Fair 2009b). In fact, to this day there is a lingering belief that the majority of fighters on the Pakistani side in the Kargil War were mujahideen. This is simply not the case. The Northern Light Infantry, a paramilitary organization that recruits in Pakistan’s Northern Areas and is officered by Pakistan Army officers, supplied the majority of the fighters. They enjoyed the assistance of the regular Pakistan Army and of locals, who provided minimal logistical and reconnaissance support (Lavoy 2009). Indian official sources assess that between 1,500 and 2,400 intruders occupied roughly a 100-mile segment of the LOC, seizing about 130 outposts to a depth of 5 to 6 miles inside Indian-controlled Kashmir (estimates vary: see Kapur 2003; Lambeth 2012). Indian government officials assess that about 70 percent of these fighters were Pakistan Army forces. Precise troop strength and the ratio of regular army to paramilitary forces remain a subject of debate, but these estimates are commonly accepted (Fair 2009b; Kapur 2003).

  Retaking the posts proved a daunting challenge. The Pakistanis had the advantage of high terrain and could easily shoot down Indian forces as they advanced. India initially considered expanding the conflict across the international border but ultimately did not. By the end of May, however, it began to use air power. This was a significant escalation, as India had not used air assets against Pakistan since the 1971 war; still, the challenging terrain initially foiled even these efforts. Eventually India mastered the terrain and successfully attacked Pakistani positions. India claims that all of its air strikes were on India’s side of the LOC, while Pakistanis claim that India also attacked on Pakistan’s side of the LOC, in so-called Azad Kashmir (Ganguly 2001; Lambeth 2012; Tellis et al. 2001). By early June, India had recaptured some 21 positions.

  As the conflict unfolded, international opinion was unanimously on the side of India. Even the Chinese told the Pakistanis to withdraw their forces and respect the status quo (Tellis et al. 2001). By mid-June India had managed to retake key positions in Dras and Batalik, overlooking the principal supply route for Indian military positions on the Siachen Glacier, where Indian and Pakistani troops have been fighting since India seized territory there in 1984 (Ganguly 2001). India’s slow advance cost the lives of several hundred Indian soldiers as well as at least two of its fixed-wing aircraft (MiGs) and one helicopter (Ganguly 2001; Qadir 2002).

  With the conflict showing no sign of abating, Gen. Anthony Zinni, visiting Pakistan in his capacity as the commander of US Central Command, told Sharif to pull back his troops. The US deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia, Gordon Lanpher, visited India to inform New Delhi of Zinni’s mission and to counsel restraint. But the conflict continued into early July, with the tide increasingly turning in India’s favor. Sharif, fearing w
ider escalation and eventual defeat, sought the assistance of the United States in putting an honorable end to Pakistan’s war. Ostensibly acting on his own initiative, Sharif traveled to Washington over the Fourth of July weekend to meet with President Bill Clinton. Refusing to accept Sharif’s claim that India had started the war, Clinton advised him to withdraw Pakistani troops. In response, on July 12 Sharif announced the withdrawal of the mujahideen. The United States was comfortable allowing Pakistan to maintain this fiction as long as it in fact retreated. But by the end of July 1999, even the Pakistani press began to acknowledge that the mujahideen story was a ruse (Fair 2009b; Lavoy 2009).

  Pakistani forces were forced to withdraw amid fears of a catastrophic defeat. Pakistan was marginally successful in its secondary goal of keeping the Kashmir dispute in the international eye. But this came at a high price as evidenced by Clinton’s March 2000 admonition to the Pakistani people. He acknowledged Pakistan’s purported “convictions that human rights of all [of Kashmir’s] people must be respected,” but he forthrightly told his audience that they had to come to terms with a stark truth. Namely, “There is no military solution to Kashmir. International sympathy, support and intervention cannot be won by provoking a bigger, bloodier conflict. On the contrary; sympathy and support will be lost” (Clinton 2000). Even if Pakistan partially succeeded in keeping the Kashmir dispute alive, it clearly fell short of its stated political aim of forcing some sort of concession from India.

  India: Through the Eyes of the Pakistan Army

  While the previous section sought to provide a brief historical account of the various wars and crises that Pakistan and India have weathered in the years since independence, this section employs some six decades of Pakistani defense publications to explore how the Pakistan Army has viewed India during the same period. A thorough perusal of these writings reveals several prominent and intertwined rubrics or narrative tropes. The first of these is that India aspires to the status of hegemon and that only Pakistan can effectively resist India and thus deny it the power it desires. Second, Pakistani defense analysts more often than not seek to understand India as Hindu and to place it in opposition to Muslim Pakistan. The authors first establish that Hindus are dishonorable, meek, pusillanimous, treacherous, and inequitable and then argue that these traits define the country. This absurd essentialism persists despite the fact that India is in fact a multiethnic, multireligious state and that Hinduism itself is not a singular, coherent faith community. At the same time, these writers establish that Muslims are honorable, brave, dedicated to fighting for the umma, steadfastly committed to justice, and fight only when attacked. With equally absurd essentialism, they then aver that these traits define Pakistan.

  A third narrative that permeates the defense literature is used to diminish the threat India poses to Pakistan. Although many authors seek to inflate the Indian threat, those employing this trope seek to reveal India as a paper tiger that Pakistan can easily dominate. In many cases, India’s Hinduness is used to denigrate its worthiness as an adversary for Pakistan. Finally, India appears in Pakistan’s defense literature not only as a perennial source of external conflict but also as the primary source of Pakistan’s domestic woes. (In some cases, India is pictured as the puppet or tool of another foe—such as the United States, Israel, or the Soviet Union—and acts as their proxy.) This narrative allows the army to continue to argue that it is the only institution that can protect Pakistan from both external and internal threats, which are seen as essentially isomorphous. Each of these narrative tropes is detailed in the following sections.

  INDIA AS A HEGEMON THAT PAKISTAN’S ARMY MUST RESIST

  One of the perennial themes of Pakistani defense writing on India is the contention that India rejects the legitimacy of Partition and the emergence of an independent Pakistan and, moreover, that it seeks to either reabsorb Pakistan or merely dominate it. This line of argument is related to a second view: that India aspires to be a regional, if not global, hegemon. Pakistani defense analysts thus pay a great deal of attention to India’s supposed hegemonic aspirations and attempts to fulfill them. A final, related, rhetorical line is that Pakistan alone can frustrate India’s hegemonic ambitions. Taken together, Pakistan’s defense literature casts itself as the noble underdog that must resist New Delhi’s unprincipled schemes to undo the Pakistani state. This characterization of India as prosecuting a relentless effort to break up Pakistan gives rise to describing India and its alleged designs in the crudest of ways, replete with obloquy if not contempt. These varied, discomfiting contentions are given full play in Ayub’s autobiography Friends not Masters (Khan 2006, first published 1967). In that volume, he argues that behind all of the Indo-Pakistan discord is “India’s ambition to absorb Pakistan or turn her into a satellite. … From the day of Independence, Pakistan was involved in a bitter and prolonged struggle for her very existence and survival. … Indian efforts in the field of foreign policy were all directed towards one aim, the isolation of Pakistan and its disintegration” (135–137).

  Another article detailing India’s ostensible hegemonic designs is Maj. M. A. Zuberi’s June 1971 piece titled “The Challenge of a Nuclear India.” Zuberi likely wrote the article amid the developing crisis in East Pakistan but before full-scale war with India broke out. He opines that “extremists [in India] still harbor a dream of Akhund Bharat [an undivided India which includes Burma]. Even moderates would like to see Pakistan in a position of India’s satellite” after which “Pakistan would be reduced to a status of an innocuous spectator” (22). Zuberi feared that “a nuclear India would automatically claim the right for leadership of areas in her immediate vicinity if not the entire non-communist Asia and Africa” (23). (While India had not yet tested a nuclear device, its nuclear program was already an open secret.) Zuberi defines Pakistani and Indian security in zero-sum terms when he notes, “It would not be wrong to say that Pakistan’s defence is inversely proportional to India’s strength” (ibid.).

  In Maj. Khalid Mehmud’s 1985 essay “India’s Posture as a Regional Power,” the author describes India’s hegemonic aspirations and its desire to dominate not just Pakistan but all of South Asia. As Mehmud explains, “India has its peculiar perception of security for South Asia and wants to impose its security and economic system upon the entire region. … It also wants to restrict the foreign policy choices and options of its neighbours and wants them to make their policies compatible with the Indian foreign policy objectives” (4). In a different piece published later that same year, Mehmud (1985a) notes that, despite these aspirations, “Presently, India does not possess the power and the means to overthrow the structure of power in the international system. However, its aspirations and ambitions for a subject role in the international system are an indication to bring major changes in the existing global power pattern, at an appropriate time” (16). Farhat Khalid, writing in this vein for the Pakistan Army Journal in 1988, suggests that “India has ambitions to play a much wider role than just being confined to South Asia. Many in India believe that it is destined to have a global role, and some even visualise it as ranking immediately behind the superpowers and alongside powers like China” (5).

  The implications of Indian aspirations (as they appear in Pakistani defense publications) are ominous for Pakistan. Writing in March 1990, as the Cold War was concluding, a few years after the 1986–1987 Brasstacks Crisis, and while the Compound Crisis of 1990 was developing, Lt. Col. Israr Ghumman summarized Pakistan’s predicament as a small state confronting “multidirectional threats to her security due to her geostrategic importance, national policies and ideological stance. Pakistan remains sandwiched between an expanding ideology [the Soviet Union] and a hegemonic neighbour [India] forcing it to live in a perpetual state of external conflict” (26). Ghumman believes that India will inevitably become the “dominant regional power,” but “she finds Pakistan a much smaller country, as the sole embarrassing stumbling block” (ibid.; see also Bakhtawar 1990; Durrani 1989). While t
his is of some comfort, he notes that “India is in the process of modernization of her armed forces. Once the Indian military might is developed, it is likely to be unleashed [upon] Pakistan at a time of her choosing” (ibid.). For Ghumman, this conflict is inevitable because India cannot ascend unless she subdues Pakistan. He explains that the “immediate threat to Pakistan emanates from hegemonic designs of hostile India, which considers Pakistan as a stumbling block in her way to achieving a regional power status” (27). Ghumman, like Zuberi before him, believes that the best way for Pakistan to manage the Indian threat is a nuclear deterrent, which would also enable Pakistan to avoid needless investments in conventional forces.

  After 1990, when the United States disengaged from South Asia and invoked the sanctions on Pakistan demanded by the Pressler Amendment, Pakistan began to see India not only as a threat on its own terms but also as a proxy for the United States. (This view was also expressed after the 1962 war between China and India, during which the United States provided military assistance to India.) Col. G. Sarwar describes this proxy relationship in a 1995 article titled “Pakistan’s Strategic and Security Perspectives.” According to Sarwar, Pakistan’s insecurity has always stemmed from “the inherent animosity of India against Pakistan” (64). While this alone would be problematic for Pakistan, “America is deliberately conniving at India’s belligerent posture … [and] is exerting undue pressure on Pakistan thus endangering its security interests” (ibid.). Sarwar argues presciently that “America is determined to assign an important role to India, ostensibly with the aim of neutralising the strength of [the] Chinese and also decimating all the power potential of Pakistan” (ibid.). He also describes India’s 1974 nuclear test as “a part of [India’s] design of achieving regional hegemony and the status of a global power” (ibid.). India’s test, and its hegemonic aspirations, deeply disquieted Pakistan and prompted it “to acquire nuclear technology for preserving its national integrity” (ibid.).