Line of Control- A Thriller on the Coming War in Asia

by Mainak Dhar

  Pooja was caught off balance by Khosla’s humor and slightly awed by the situation she was in, but quickly reminded herself what her mission was.

  `Sir, I don’t want to say much. All I want you to do is to see a tape.’

  `Okay, come on in. But this better be good, I really have a thousand other things to do.’

  Pooja took out her laptop and played the video of Sethi and his men. Khosla did not utter a single word for the five minutes that the video ran.

  ***

  Khosla still had not fully recovered from the shock of what the young journalist had shown him. He had always suspected that Sethi and his goons were probably involved in the rioting, but to see it with his own eyes left him feeling sick. With great difficulty he had made Pooja promise that she would not go public with the story for one more day, as he was about to announce something which would make her think twice about doing this. She had hesitated, but when the Prime Minister asks for a personal favor, it becomes very difficult to refuse.

  Now, barely twenty-four hours after his meeting with Pooja, Khosla was standing before the UN General Assembly, fulfilling his part of the deal. As he began speaking, a silence fell over the gathering.

  He cut a striking figure, with his trim body, which still stood testimony to a very athletic youth, and his tastefully tailored suit. It was often said that his mere presence had done more for India’s image abroad than hundreds of resolutions and speeches made by politicians of years gone by.

  `Madam Secretary General, ladies and gentlemen, a few days ago, my Pakistani counterpart had come here and waxed eloquent about the genocide my nation was supposedly carrying out against minorities. I stand before you today to expose a heinous plot-one masterminded by none other than Illahi Khan of Pakistan’.

  Murmurs ran thorough the assembly as Khosla continued speaking. The Pakistani envoy at the UN was sitting on the edge of his seat. He was one of Illahi’s hand picked officers, and he knew what was about to come. The Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence network in Calcutta had relayed news of the capture of the SSG man within twelve hours of the incident. What he did not know was the full extent of the information the man had given the Indians.

  `Before you are copies of the transcripts of the interrogation of a Pakistani agent we captured in Calcutta. Please read through it carefully.’

  As he paused, all that could be heard in the packed Assembly was the ruffling of papers as the diplomats and leaders read through the folders before them.

  `Now I will play some select tape recordings of the confession. The full transcript on tape is already on your tables’.

  The Pakistani heaved a small sigh of relief as he grasped all that the Indians had got. He knew it could have been much, much worse.

  `Now, I propose to move a resolution condemning Pakistan for this breach of international law and asking it to cease and desist immediately from the attacks in Kashmir. Otherwise my nation will have no option but to act in self defense’.

  ***

  Several hundred kilometers away in Washington, a middle-aged man sitting at his desk was studying the same documents very carefully.

  `Well, John, what do you make of this?’ Jim Lafferty looked up at his staff.

  `Mr. President, it’s a compelling case-but it’s not conclusive. As Pakistan’s been saying, the Indians could have just fabricated it. There’s just fragmentary evidence at best and certainly not enough to prove that the Pakistani government is directly involved in this.’

  `Come on, John, you know the shit the Saudis have been giving us. Why should I trust the Pakistanis’, the US President turned on his Secretary of State.

  `Mr. President, the Indians may be right-but unless we’re sure, antagonizing the Pakistanis would not be wise. You know they’ve been on the verge of giving nukes to Saudi for years. The only thing holding them back has been fear of international repercussions. Illahi has been giving some very broad hints that they may not be so coy about giving a couple of nukes away now.’

  `So, we just get blackmailed by this tinpot dictator’. The big man had served for over twenty years in the US Marines before entering politics, and was known to be a man of action, often with a volatile temper.

  `No, Mr. President, we be pragmatic. The Indians should be able to handle this if it comes to a war. Our indications are that the more moderate Islamic nations are cooling off a bit, and won’t jump in if there is war. I would worry more about undoing all our peace efforts in the Middle East if that mad Emir gets a nuke. Which scenario are we more comfortable with-Illahi gobbling up a bit of Kashmir or nukes falling on Tel Aviv? Also, while I agree with you that a confrontation with the Emir in some form is probably inevitable, there’s no reason for us to accelerate it. If we side with the Indians now, we just play into the Emir’s hand by vindicating his `Islam versus the West’ perception.’

  `So what do you recommend for the vote?’

  `We abstain and say that this is an internal matter for the two countries to settle. And we watch the situation very carefully.’

  `Bullshit, John-both India and Pakistan have nukes. I don’t want them blasting nukes on each other’s soil. It completely messes up all we’ve been saying about disarmament.’

  `Mr. President, our assessment is that that particular scenario is very unlikely. The Pakistanis, if at all they are involved to the extent that the Indians claim, probably just want to grab a bit of Kashmir. I would guess the Emir’s behind it-though to what extent, I really can’t say. He’s gone public saying that while the Pakistanis have his blessings, he does not wish to interfere. So rather than jump the gun and really draw the battle lines with the Emir and foul up the whole Middle East peace process, we’re probably better off staying in the background. In fact, if the Emir were involved, he would love for us to step in on India’s side-that would just reinforce his whole Armageddon theory. If anything happens to dramatically change our perception of the scenario-we can reconsider.’

  ***

  The hotel room at the Ritz was opulent, but Khosla had neither the time nor the mood to be bothered about it. He had barely slept the previous night, and with the vote in the Security Council on the Indian resolution in the afternoon, he doubted he would get much more rest during the remainder of the day.

  The Indian envoy to the UN, a tall and thin South Indian, Rathindran, walked in with a forlorn look on his face.

  `Sir, there’s good news and there’s bad news.’

  Khosla looked at the bureaucrat entering the room, and realized that with the expression he was wearing, any good news would not be too different from the supposedly bad news.

  `Well, give me the bad news first-I’m kind of getting used to handling it now.’

  `The Americans are going to abstain.’

  `Damn. I knew it from Jim’s tone. He’s just too scared to take any decisions.’

  `Well, the good news is that the British and French are with us. The images of westerners being killed in Jeddah are a bit too fresh in their public memories. I think we’ve done a good job of positioning this by linking it with the Saudi-Mujahideen nexus.’

  `Positioning, for god’s sake, Rathindran, that’s reality. If we go to war, we’ll be fighting a whole lot more than the Pakistani Army. And the British and French can’t do anything about it. Russia’s with us but with their economy just recovering from complete collapse, they can’t do much. It’s good enough if they can keep spares for our weapons coming.’

  `Well, the Chinese are abstaining. The bloody nose they got over Taiwan last year has taken away some of their appetite for fighting. Also, with the chaos the Emir’s men are creating in Sinkiang, they aren’t too keen on openly siding with what they admit in private they believe is a plan hatched by the Emir. They say that they won’t support the Pakistanis in a war. That should hit them, half their fighters and tanks are of Chinese origin.’

  `Yeah well, that doesn’t help us in the UN.’

  `Well, these should cheer you up a bit. These just
came in from the UAE and Iranian ambassadors.’

  Khosla read through the papers with interest. They were clear-the UAE and Iran still expressed concern over the deaths of Muslims in India, but wanted to emphasize that whatever happened was an internal matter, and that they had no interest in interfering, directly or indirectly.

  There was a silver lining to it all, Khosla thought as Rathindran left. Now he knew exactly what to expect in the afternoon. He looked at his watch-there were still six hours to go for the meeting. Enough time to catch up on some sleep.

  Later in the evening, as Khosla packed for the flight back to Delhi, he mused on what had been a mixed day. It had been a partial victory-with the US and China abstaining, the resolution had not gone through.

  However, with the latest news from the UAE and Iran, it did not look like Pakistan could count on much external help if push came to shove. The big uncertainty was however Saudi Arabia, and how far the Emir would go to support Pakistan.

  That, Khosla realized, would depend almost entirely on how much the Emir had to do with this whole mess to begin with.

  ***

  Back in Delhi, one of the first things Khosla did was to call Pooja.

  He had to wait only a few seconds before the now familiar voice appeared at the other end.

  `I hope you now understand why I asked you to keep the story under wraps. If you had gone public, it would just have helped Illahi’s cause. As is, we had a pretty tough time of it. It would been catastrophic if they had gone to town with footage of Indian leaders involved in the rioting.’

  `I understand that bit, sir. But the fact remains that Sethi and his goons are still roaming the streets with impunity. What about them?’

  `I promise you I’ll put an end to it. Now, tell me, what assignments are you on now?’

  Pooja was puzzled by this sudden change in track.

  `Why do you ask, sir?’

  `Well, if war does break out, I want someone with guts and the willingness to tell the truth to be out there. We’ll be sending out members of the print and electronic press to several of our armed forces units. I want you to be on that team. I’ll speak to your station chief, if that’s okay with you.’

  Pooja did not need to answer. She was thrilled at getting some part of the real action.

  After years of extracting newsworthy stories from the morass that was Indian politics, this was her first chance to report on something that actually could make a difference.

  ***

  `Hold fire…wait till 2000 yards!’

  The nine other tanks heeded Chauhan’s command instantly with him in this exercise. For the last week, they had been training almost incessantly. With the attacks intensifying in Kashmir, and the attack on the PM, the whole army was on edge. War could break out any time now-and the army wanted to be as ready as possible.

  In the latest exercises, they were trying to simulate what would happen when Chauhan’s Arjuns went up against the Pakistani T-80s. Pakistan had acquired almost 300 T-80s from the Ukraine in 1998. A modern Russian tank design, the T-80 was marginally superior to the upgraded T-72, which formed the backbone of India’s armor. Nobody really gave the Arjun much of a chance against the T-80, the assumption being that India’s six T-90 regiments would do the job. The T-90 was the superlative tank in the Indian inventory, and all of India’s 350 T-90s were assigned to the XI Corps based at Bhatinda.

  Chauhan’s regiment was part of the 3rd Armor Division, attached to the XII Corps in Rajasthan. The division was largely equipped with T-72s, and a single regiment of Arjun MK2s, which was led by Chauhan.

  They won’t trust me with a frontline tank, thought Chauhan wryly as his tanks maneuvered in the desert. Well, here was another chance to prove himself. The problem was, he was getting sick and tired of proving himself.

  The result of a long and painful indigenous development effort, the Arjun had several disadvantages versus the T-80, which had a 500-yard main gun range advantage, and the ability to fire anti tank missiles. The Indian army had all but rejected the first version, the Arjun MK1, and had grudgingly inducted a few regiments of the improved MK2. That decision had as much to do with the desire to save face on a prestigious indigenous defense project as about inducting a truly state of the art tank. Many in the Army had rationalized the decision by saying that at worst, the Arjun was equal to a T-72, so strictly speaking it wasn’t really that bad a tank. That was little comfort to the men who would ride the Arjun into battle against the T-80.

  The latest mock battle was trying to simulate the Arjun’s shortcomings v/s the T-80 with Chauhan’s tanks not firing till they got to within 2000 yards, while the opposing Arjuns would fire from 2500 yards. `Hits’ were being recorded using laser designators that recorded when a laser beam `fired’ from a tank to simulate a shot hit home.

  The previous group had learnt the hard way that going against an enemy with a range advantage in an old-fashioned cavalry charge could be disastrous. They had `lost’ eight tanks, claiming only four of the enemy.

  Chauhan had no such intentions. The Indian army’s armor doctrine was based heavily on the principle of concentration of forces. This called for probing attacks across the line till a breach was created in the enemy lines, and then forces would be concentrated at this weak point till a breakthrough was attained. In theory this worked-especially when adopted in the Cold War Soviet model because the Soviets had a five-to-one advantage in tanks over NATO. India’s superiority was less than two to one. Chauhan knew he had to be much more flexible than the rigid doctrine implied if he wanted to win, especially if he was going up against T-80s.

  To be fair, India had also improvised a lot during its wars-it had learnt the hard way what did not work, for example the practice of sending out small armored `penny packets’ in the 1965 war, which were chewed up by superior Pakistani Patton tanks, and also successful innovations like using jeep mounted recoilless guns to hit the bulkier and less maneuverable Pakistani tanks in the same war. Chauhan would have to come up with his own tricks to help the Arjun fight and win.

  The eight enemy tanks came over the sand dunes, looking like some primeval monsters in the afternoon sun. They were coming in a horizontal formation, all tanks abreast, so that all could fire at the same time, thus maximizing the impact of the first salvo. As they closed to 2600 yards, Chauhan bellowed out his command.

  `Break formation’

  The ten tanks wheeled around, four of them breaking right, four left, and two including Chauhan’s tank backing up slowly.

  As the enemy tanks closed to 2500 yards, Chauhan’s tanks discharged their smoke canisters. Almost instantly, the area around them was obscured in smoke. The enemy Arjuns had thermal imaging systems, and could still `see’ Chauhan’s tanks, though this did make the task tougher.

  The enemy tanks had now been forced to break ranks, and thus had already lost the advantage of a massed first salvo. Their tanks were now seeking out individual targets and they began `firing’. The first salvo hit just two of Chauhan’s tanks that were now almost in firing range. Before the enemy could `reload’ and `fire’, Chauhan’s tanks had entered firing range. Now the playing field had been leveled.

  By the time it was called off, the overall scorecard read five losses for Chauhan’s tanks versus seven kills. It was an outstanding performance. Will this be enough?

  ***

  Khosla turned to his service chiefs, `You guys have been itching to get at the terrorist camps in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir for years. Now’s your chance. Give it a day. We’ll make a last ditch effort to talk to Illahi, If things don’t work out-we take out the bases in PoK. I don’t want to wait around for them to attack us. Also, let’s put our forces on war alert-let’s not be caught by surprise now. We’ve been lucky to get the kind of advance warning we’ve got. This is bad-but its probably a bad plan on his part-he can’t use nukes against our cities either now that he’s internationalized it all, and you guys have been telling me that in a conventional war, we won’t
have to sweat much, right? ‘

  It was the Army Chief, Baldev Randhawa, who spoke. A known hawk, he had played a key role in the recent modernization efforts of the Indian forces, in his capacity as Chief of Defense Staff. This was something pioneered in 2002 to bring all services under one command, to better facilitate joint operations and resource allocation. `It’s not that simple. First, a lot of our reserves are getting tied up in controlling the riots-our police forces just aren’t trained or equipped to handle this kind of mess. So on the ground, our sheer edge in numbers will not be as big as it may look on paper. Also the whole equation could be upset if the Saudis come in, as our intelligence reports have been suggesting. A couple of squadrons of F-15s, a couple of AWACS and a few regiments of M1s and we’re not looking at anything like a decisive qualitative edge either.’

  `We’ll also need to be very careful about which camps we hit. A lot of these are being used as fucking `refugee camps’. One dead civilian and Ilahi will be shitting all over us again’.

  Once again, Khosla was glad he had chosen the straight talking Punjabi to this top post.

  `Joshi, what’s the analysis of the Saudi involvement?’

  `Sir, it’s a bit hazy. We know PAF pilots have been flying with the Saudis for years. But there’s no evidence of any direct involvement. Of course, that could change with a war. The good news is that the Saudis don’t have the airlift capability to get much material into Pakistan-so they’ll probably have to come by sea. And we’ve got the Vikramaditya waiting off Karachi.’

  `The Pakis have been training a lot on Saudi F-15s. Our Israeli friends tell us they’ve eyeballed several F-15s with Pakistani pilots running interference over Gaza. The M1s and anything else would have to come by sea, but the F-15s could just fly over’ The Air Chief surmised.

  While the emergence of the Emir meant the immediate removal of US bases and a stoppage of Western arms supplies, the Saudis retained an impressive arsenal, F-15s, Tornadoes and E-3 AWACS, largely maintained and often flown by PAF personnel. The new regime had taken a hard line on Israel and its fighters had flown several missions in support of the Hamas and Hizbollah militants against Israeli targets. The Israeli Air Force had quickly asserted itself, and the Israeli threat of nuclear retaliation had restored an uneasy peace. But the West Bank remained a powder keg, waiting to explode.