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Using a sledgehammer to swat a fly

Four sharp pinpricks across the Line of Control in Kargil by the Pakistan Army have put the country in a spin. The army is geared for war and the government calls it a warlike situation. It has to be admitted that this coup de main operation has completely flabbergasted the army. Never before has it been surprised so much by so little.

Equally, it is now being forced to use the sledgehammer to swat a fly -- a fly which will flit from pinnacle to pinnacle on the Kargil range.

Pakistan's general staff has to be congratulated on this crafty and calibrated intrusion that must have taken many months to plan and execute. To start with, a less active, relatively dormant sector was selected. Then, the gaps between Indian defences on the LoC identified.

This was followed by selecting vacant mountain heights in these gaps and linking them with Pakistani posts on the LoC. New bases were established close to the LoC to support the posts in the intrusion zone.

The posts were prepared, stocked and equipped with the full range of hand-held weapons and Stinger missiles. Guns were moved forward to support them registering each post as an SOS target. The ground was properly assimilated finding out directions of attacks, ambush sites, forward posts and so on.

As there is no local population in these areas except Batalik, the intruders were accompanied by porters and guides. It is not surprising that it was a villager from Batalik who reported to the nearest army post, the presence of these intruders.

By choosing an area that is considered inaccessible in winter, Pakistan bowled a googly unbalancing the Kargil brigade. Soldiers who have served in Siachen are aware of the extreme difficulty in dislodging the defenders from a post in the mountains especially when these are in close proximity to their other posts. Therefore, an attempt to capture such posts can be suicidal.

So around May 15, an outwitted Indian army discovered the presence of an unknown quantity of intrusion of unknown strength spread over a 100-kilometre bandwidth of territory. The immediate reaction was to contain and seal the four pockets of intrusion from Mashkoh to Batalik and take other defensive measures. The intelligence and operational assessments indicate Pakistan's strategic goals as internationalising J&K by challenging the sanctity of the LoC and rekindling the dying insurgency.

This left India the following options. From doing nothing to doing a tit-for-tat to attacking the intrusions and infiltration bases across the LoC to simply evicting the intruders. Since the second and third options are foreclosed for fear of escalating the conflict and the first wouldn't do, India settled for the last. It is the least risky but high-cost option. It is also the most obvious, predictable, difficult, time and life-consuming operation.

Is it possible that the Indian army is falling into a trap set by the intruders drawing Indian soldiers into the Kargil killing ground? Pakistani's elite mountain fighters backed by the Taliban are manning this trap holding the high ground and covering with every type of weapon, the approaches to the posts they are holding. The attackers are on lower ground and out in the open, virtually sitting ducks. This slight exaggeration of the threat is necessary to avoid falling in the trap.

There is no need for the Indian army to be bullish about removing the intrusions. The aggression committed by Pakistan should be vacated through diplomatic means even while the intrusions are pulverised by air strikes, artillery and ground fire. Maximum pressure should be applied on the intruders by isolating as many of these as possible.

Kargil requires the Kosovo treatment for the very reason -- fear of causalities -- that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is not pushing in its troops to evict the Serbs. The strategic threat to the Leh highway has been removed. Need we expend precious lives to redeem an intelligence failure?

Pakistan's short and sharp campaign deserves closer scrutiny. There are two views on Pakistan's strategy in Kargil. One, that it is a master stroke, the other a misadventure.

First the master stroke. A brilliantly conceived infiltration operation enabled the Pakistan army to deploy several hundred regular soldiers across the LoC completely surprising the Indian army and forcing it to mobilise for a warlike situation.

Through this low-cost low-risk intrusion, Pakistan would bring Jammu and Kashmir on the front-burner, and at the same time, testing India's resolve in defending Jammu and Kashmir. By subsequently raising doubts over the demarcation of the LoC, it would hope to defreeze the status quo.

The intrusion force was given a politico-military task: threaten the Srinagar-Leh highway by interdicting the road, revive the insurgency and hold on to the intrusions to the last man forcing the Indian army to evict them. This is the trap. Politically, these actions would reopen the full range of issues about Jammu and Kashmir.

The other view says the Pakistan army has failed in its military objective in Kargil to create an upheaval in Jammu and Kashmir. Instead the operation has shown Pakistan as the aggressor which has violated the LoC, international law and Simla agreement.

It has shown Pakistan in poor light internationally, something the new nuclear weapons state can ill-afford. It is already under the threat of being defined as a failed state and is now gearing towards being labelled a rogue state.

General Ashok K Mehta