Delhi's Kargil Debacle

From the BOARD of EDITORIAL ADVISORS, Ms NASIM ZEHRA makes a fascinating analysis of the KARGIL SITUATION

Whatever were Delhi's calculations when they launched the Kargil counter-insurgency operation, eight days into the operation Delhi's tanks and fighter-planes backed operation against the mujahideen has been reduced to a mere band-aid operation; a band-aid to stop India's bleeding wound Kashmir. This round, which would go down in history as Delhi's

Kargil-Drass phase of defending Delhi's untenable position on Kashmir, has ended up showing India's weaknesses on many fronts. A panicked Prime Minister has offered 'safe passage' into Pakistan to the Kashmiri mujahideen, who he claims have come from across the LoC. The Indian Minister Pramod Mahajan has announced banning of PTV in India. Claiming 'Pakistani propaganda' on the Kargil military operation, as the justification for banning PTV, he demanded that PTV be removed from all dish antennas. Violation of this he said will be severely punished by state and the centre governments. A frustrated Indian government is trying to win through information blackout what it is losing on the ground in Kargil and Drass.

Although the complete picture of Delhi's Kargil-Drass debacle has yet to emerge, considerable military, diplomatic, political and psychological damage has already been inflicted on Delhi. An ill-planned move combined with Pakistan's competent military and political response has forced India to backtrack on its own earlier positions. The world's largest democracy and the world's third largest army has been reduced to fighting its hard

battle by banning the enemy's TV channel. A better compliment the PTV could not have earned ! Obviously the propaganda dished out by India's own various television networks is cutting no ice with the Indians who sense the adverse situation their army has been caught in.

Diplomatically too the Indians have had to retract from many of their earlier positions. For example they backed off from the claim that their jets did not stray into Pakistani territory. They conceded that only one did. Similarly the Indian press reports quoting Indian officials regarding Washington's pro-Indian interpretation of the May 27 event have also been refuted by Washington. On May 29 a senior US State Department official rejected claims in the May 28 Indian press reports that the US had rejected Pakistani position on Kargil or blamed it for any infiltration. 'We also never did state that according to our knowledge India has not struck over the LoC, deliberately or accidentally.'

On the diplomatic front the Indians are playing on the back-foot. Having been put into a difficult position by Prime Minister's May 28 invitation that he was willing to send the Pakistan Foreign Minister, Delhi is neither agreeing to the Sartaj visit nor saying no. The international community is calling for a Pak-India dialogue.

Politically too Delhi's Kargil engagement has back-fired. Delhi authored military escalation along the LoC has again brought the issue of Kashmir to the centre-stage at the regional and international level. The press and officials from Washington to Moscow and from London to Tehran are conceding the importance of settling the Kashmir dispute. From the back burner of the collective memory of international players it has been brought to the fore. May be not for long. Yet ironically the Kargil operation, aimed at 'killing' the Kashmir issue, will have helped to chisel away at the paralyzed and hardened Kashmir position of the international players. And the Kashmiris living under Indian occupation know that. Much like the Palestinian 'Intifada' which proved to be a potent stimulus for the Palestinians under Israeli occupation, India's Kargil fiasco will renew the Kashmiri resolve to fight on. Psychologically the fact that a mere 400-600 Kashmiri mujahideen have bogged down the world's third largest army for a few months, irrespective of the final outcome , will be a major morale booster for the Kashmiris of Occupied Kashmir.

The political fall-out of Delhi's Kargil operation has extended beyond the Kashmir issue. On home ground, politically India is divided over who to blame. While the Vajpayee government is blaming Pakistan for heightened military activity, its opponents are blaming the government for 'an intelligence failure'. The Congress party demanding the resignation of the Defence Minister said that the President and the Defence Minister 'should hang their heads in shame.'

On the military front the Indian army has found itself bogged down in a long drawn out, guerilla war in an extremely inhospitable and treacherous terrain. The Indian commander in Kargil-Drass sector has conceded that in any military combat the mujahideen have advantage of height and cover. Contrary to earlier claims that it would be a quick 'flushing out' job, the Indian military spokesmen believe that 'it can take the Indian army upto a few months and also cause heavy Indian casualties'.

It is war for the Indians. 'It is more or less war ...I am treating it as near war...' Lt General Hari Mohan Khanna, commander-in-chief of the Northern command. India has opened a new front along the LoC at Bhimber.

Their intimidation tactics would centre around inflicting heavy civilian losses across the LoC. Meanwhile Islamabad's contrasting position has flowed both from a blundering Indian establishment and from its own above-board and principled Kashmir policy. On Kashmir Islamabad has played with a 'straight bat.' It openly supports , at the diplomatic, political and humanitarian level the struggle underwritten by the UN Security Council resolutions 91 and 122. Nawaz Sharif meanwhile ably supported on foreign policy issues by his Information Minister and the Foreign Office has pursued a near faultless India policy. He has mixed peace offers with commitment to his country's defence and projected nuclear strength with gentleness. He is indeed South Asia's strong man of peace. No Arafat or Anwar Sadaat, Nawaz Sharif leads a nation which has correctly sized up the aggressor on its eastern front. Islamabad has moved on the Kashmir issue, playing by the rules of diplomacy. It has invoked the UN resolutions, it has sought bilateral dialogue and has asked for third party intervention. Since the beginning of Delhi's Kargil-Drass misadventure, the Prime Minister has requested the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to play an active role in de-escalating the tension between the two nuclear-armed states. Specifically he has requested the Secretary General to increase the number of UNGOMIP monitors along the LOC and to send a UN envoy to the region.

Delhi's losses in Kargil-Drass will obviously not force Delhi to concede the Kashmiris, living under Indian occupation, their right of self-determination. They will however have escalated the military and political costs of retaining a defiant and insurgent Kashmiri population. Kargil will also have vindicated Pakistan's longstanding position that peace and stability in South Asia is impossible without the settlement of the Kashmir issue.

On a broader note however , in dealing with its neighbours Delhi's double-speak and of self-serving contradictory posturing continues. Even now as Delhi attempts to invoke moral underpinnings to its misplaced outrage against Pakistan for allegedly supporting 'infiltrators' it must remind itself of the role it played in the 1971 tragedy. Not only did India march into Pakistan as 'sympathizers' of the East Pakistanis , the Indian army also politically and militarily propped up the budding freedom movement in East Pakistan. A fact that the former Indian Chief of Staff Eastern Army General J.F. Jacob documents in his book Surrender At Dacca.

Also as Delhi engages in a moral outcry against the NATO air attacks on Belgrade it overlooks the fact that the NATO forces see their role in Kosovo no different from how Dehli's aggressor army justified its role in East Pakistan in 1971.