Who won the Kargil firefight? Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif or Pundit Vajpayee?

India to man sixty high altitude posts in Kargil year-round.

IF six Siachin posts cost 10,500 wounded & Rs. 800 crore annually what will sixty Kargil posts cost?



Washington, D.C., Wednesday, July 28, 1999 - Following President Clinton’s July 4th mediation which brought about the stand down in the Kargil sector of Kashmir the vast 200 kilometers long stretch of high mountains comparable in height to the Siachin glacier, and stretching from Gurrez to Tartuk in Ladakh, are going to have regular posts this winter according to Indian press reports which quote senior army officers of the 15 corps headquarters in Kashmir.

According to the Indian Express the officers are reported to have said that, "more than five brigades battling in the Drass-Kargil-Turtuk axis would hold onto positions even after ‘operation flush out’ is completed. Troops deployed in the unheld areas of the line of control will not come down after the Freedom Intruders are evicted. They will hold positions." The general commanding the Leh-based 3 Mountain Division, Major General V.S. Budhwar confirmed to the newspaper that the army is planning to construct bunkers in unheld areas. What is worrying the army planners is the logistic exercise that will dwarf the cost of waging warfare at the Siachin Glacier, which costs Rupees three crores a day.

"Imagine holding on to heights comparable to Siachin, which lies between 15,000 to 18,000 feet with a width of no more than twenty Kilometers. Then look at the Kargil stretch which is a good 200 Kilometers long. The Indian posts perched on such inhospitable terrain and so close to the Pakistan lines will be constantly exposed to the artillery fire and vulnerable to Pakistan assaults, "said a senior officer deployed in Kargil. Another officer deployed in the Mushko valley was quoted as saying that; "most of these bunkers and posts up on the LOC will have to be maintained by Helicopter. Another Siachin seems to be in the making."

Drawing lessons from the Jummu sector where Pakistani firing has made fencing on the international border almost impossible, another Army officer was quoted as saying that, "lugging up construction material and supplies for the new bunkers and posts will be made doubly difficult because of the heavy and accurate Pakistani artillery shelling". Earlier Maj. Gen. V.S. Budhwar, a loquacious soldier, who commands the Indian Army’s Leh-based 3 Mountain Division with responsibility for the Siachin sector, was quoted in May by the Sunday New York times (which carried a front page report by its correspondent Barry Bearak captioned; "India and Pakistan frozen on the roof of the World") as having said about India’s adventure in Siachin that, "Nobody can win, no matter how long we fight."

The New York Times correspondent, Barry Bearak, who visited with the local Indian Field commander, Brig, P.C. Katoch in his carpeted and curtained command post in Siachin who boasted to him that, "We have the heights and the Pakistani soldier sees nothing," Bearak wrote in the New York Times that "Being king of the hill is costly. The Pakistanis can resupply most of their posts by road and pack mule but in the forward positions, some as high as 21,000 feet, the Indians must rely on helicopters. The whirleybirds strain against the altitude like oversized bumblebees. Many an airdrop is swallowed by the snow." The New York Times quotes the Indian Army’s director general of Military Intelligence, Lt. General R.K. Sawhney as saying that maintaining the half dozen Siachin posts costs India half a million US dollars a day (over 180, million US dollars a year or 774 crore rupees annually).

Here is some arithmetic that we Sikhs ought to do! If it has costs 774 crores every year (180 million US dollars annually) to maintain 6 or 7 Siachin posts what will it cost to man sixty posts in the Kargil sector? A whopping 7,740 crore rupees (yes nearly 8,000 crore rupees) or US one billion eight hundred million dollars every year. WHO WON THE KARGIL FIREFIGHT IN DISPUTED KASHMIR, Pundit Vajpayee or Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif? The answer is obvious!

An OPEN LETTER from a North American Kashmiri organization to Pundit Atal Bihari Vajpayee on July 10, 99 says it ALL. A relevant excerpt from it is quoted verbatim below so that sane elements in India (who unlike the morally repugnant Brahmin rulers want good of the Indian people, 650 million of whom are even denied a latrine) will take a second look at the "VICTORY" being trumpeted by the Swastikas worshipping cadres of the fascist BJP. They may want to read a report in yesterday’s (July 27, 99) HINDU newspaper which ran under the caption; "Kargil casualties less than previous wars." The report reveals that since 1984 10,500 Indian soldiers have been wounded in Siachin as compared to 9,856 in the 1971 war and 8,622 in the 1965 war. How many are going to get wounded in Kargil now? The Kashmiri OPEN LETTER to Pundit Vajpayee reads:-

"If anything the superb Kargil operation has proved the following and it is our hope and prayer that you Sir, will relax India’s hold on Pakistan’s juglar in Kashmir and make a peace of the brave so that you can focus on the latrine – less 650 million Indians:-

  1. that Kargil mountains from now on will become an extremely expensive proposition for India to man, an equivalent of the Siachin stupidity multiplied twenty five times;
  2. that India’s 700 generals (as compared to Israel’s 12) lack generalship or brains or both in that they have stuck half a million men in Kashmir dependent on one road, one tunnel, and stand hostage to a transport system dominated by angry Kashmiri Sikhs itching to get even for the 1984 Indian Army attack on the Darbar Sahib, and other holy Sikh Shrines, as was demonstrated on May 9, 99 when the Sikhs blew up the huge Kargil ammunition dump.
  3. That no war, in this missile age, can take place in South Asia without the approval of China, Pakistan's time – tested friend, as most of India’s population centers (Ludhiana, Delhi, Luckhnow, Allahbad, Benares, Patna, Calcutta etc.), major cantonments and airbases (Ambala, Agra, Udhampur, Meerut, Jubbulpur etc.) are less than 300 miles from the Middle Kingdom as the crow (or missile) flies, and stand naked to conventional missile attack.
  4. That Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent is indeed a deterrent, no ifs and buts, and that Pakistan does not fear a nuclear India whereas India fears a nuclear Pakistan.
  5. That Afghanistan, its medieval Taliban regime notwithstanding, does provide great tactical depth and safe silos to nuclear Pakistan.
  6. That in view of the above, it has become quite evident to Pakistani military planners, that a moderate use of force can help secure the headwaters of Pakistan’s main rivers in Kashmir – vital for Pakistan’s future but just barren hills for India.