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Kargil War

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The Kargil War was an armed conflict between India and Pakistan in late 1999 in Indian-controlled Kashmir. While Pakistan attempted to blame the fighting on independent Kashmiri insurgents, it was not believed and was forced to withdraw. It led to heightened tensions between the two nations and increased defense spending on the part of India.

Location

Before 1947, Kargil was a part of Gilgit-Baltistan. Now it is a town in Indian controlled Kashmir. The town lies on the line of control facing the Northern Areas of Pakistan, and is the only district in the Ladakh subdivision that has a Muslim majority. Kargil is nestled in the Himalayas, giving it a cool, temperate climate. Summers are cool with frigid nights while winters are long and cold with temperatures often dropping to -40°C. A national highway connecting Srinagar to Leh cuts through Kargil.

Militant incursions

In late May 1999, Muslim guerrillas covertly and overtly backed by Pakistan and regular Pakistani troops from the elite Special Services Group as well as the mountain warfare specialists the Northern Light Infantry set up base on the vantage heights of the Indian controlled region. This led to the mobilisation of Indian troops in Operation Vijay to forcibly evict them. The Indian Air Force used laser-guided bombs to destroy the well entrenched positions of the militants. The Indian army fought and won victories against considerable odds and retook most of the heights.

Pakistan received widespread world condemnation for its failure to patrol its borders and prevent insurgents from crossing over onto its soil . Few nations believed the Pakistani attempt at plausible deniability by linking the incursion to insurgents. As veteran analysts noted, the battle was being fought at heights where only seasoned troops could survive, poorly equipped, rag tag terrorists would neither have the ability nor the wherewithal to seize land and defend it. As the Indian attack picked up momentum and the Indian Air Force expanded its air strikes, the Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif flew to meet US president Bill Clinton on July 4, to earn support from one of its oldest allies. However Clinton rebuked Shariff, asking him to use his contacts to rein in the militants and withdraw Pakistani soldiers from Indian territory. Faced with growing international pressure, Shariff managed to pull back the remaining soldiers and insurgents from Indian territory. 527 Indian army soldiers were killed. Nawaz Sharif later noted that 2500 Pakistani soldiers had been killed in the conflict, more than in any of the prior Indo-Pakistani Wars.

Fallout

India

The aftermath of the war saw the rise of the Indian stock market by over 1500 points. The next Indian national budget included massive increases in military spending. Indians united nationwide and army enlistment swelled. Celebrities pitched in by visiting injured service personnel. From the end of the war until February 2000, the Indian economy was bullish. After the war, the Indian military severed all ties with Pakistan, and increased it defence preparedness. Since the Kargil conflict, Indian defence preparedness has increased manifold as the government began spending more on state of the art equipment.

Pakistan

Faced with the possibility of international isolation, the Pakistani economy tumbled and Pakistan was shunned as a global hotbed for terrorism. In October 1999, General Pervez Musharraf staged a bloodless coup d'etat ousting PM Nawaz Shariff. According to Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister of Pakistan, Kargil war was Pakistan's greatest blunder. For nearly three months, the Kargil conflict threatened Southern Asia with the prospect of the first nuclear deployment against humans since Hiroshima in World War II, and the first mutual nuclear exchange in history. More than 3000 Pakistani soldiers, belonging to the Northern Light Infantry or NLI, were killed and more than 300 bodies were buried on the terrains of Kargil, when the Pakistani Army refused to accept them.

See Also

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