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KARGIL Holding the Heights The Indian Army gears up to defend 150 km of the world's most inhospitable battlefield under intensely bitter winter conditions. By Raj Chengappa in Kargil
High up in the Kargil mountains, the Indian troops guarding the peaks call it a "no war, no peace situation". It may be three weeks since Pakistan claimed it had completely withdrawn its troops following the humiliating defeat at the hands of the Indian army, but the big guns are far from silent. Every day, without respite, Pakistani artillery lets loose a fusillade of shells that scream menacingly over Drass and Kargil towns. Almost instantly Indian brigades angle batteries of Bofors guns and hurl back twice as many over the craggy heights, the boom of firing thundering down the slopes and valleys. In Drass, where mountains such as Tololing and Tiger Hill have become part of drawing-room chatter, Colonel S.V.E. David, deputy commander of the 56 Brigade, doesn't bother to dive into his bunker as shells whistle overhead. Like most of the troops which weathered the 74 days of fierce fighting, David has a philosophical approach to such a danger. "The splinter that is going to hit you has your name already engraved on it," he says, acknowledging the big role chance and luck play in such a battle. For him the boom of Pakistani guns have a more ominous and worrying portent. So accurate has been the shelling that Drass continues to remain a ghost town. Most of its residents who fled to safer areas when war broke out in May are yet to return. Last week, life in nearby Kargil town, which was slowly returning to normal, was again disrupted by continuous artillery fire. These are not random attacks by a Pakistani Army frustrated at its master plan -- of internationalising the Kashmir issue -- being thwarted. They are calculated to put as many obstacles in India's path as the army begins the challenging task of defending 150 km of the world's most inhospitable battlefield with winter starting to set in. One direct outcome of such a barrage: local mules and their keepers are in short supply in the valleys. A mule in such a terrain is worth 10 trucks. Given the heights ranging from 12,000 to 20,000 ft where Indian troops have to set up over 200 posts and the fact that there are almost no motorable roads, the sturdy mules are the mainstay for transporting food, clothing, shelter and ammunition up the steep slopes. The 56 Brigade alone needs around 800 mules to carry winter supplies to the ridges. But because people have fled the towns and villages, they have been able to muster only 200. It means that the brigade will have to requisition more helicopters to do the job, jacking up costs considerably. The comparison: A Cheetah helicopter can lift loads of up to 100 kg on each trip, at an expense of Rs 30,000. Two mules can do the same job for Rs 300 -- a fraction of the cost. In Srinagar, the normally composed Lt-General Krishan Pal, commander of the 15 Corps that controls the army divisions guarding the Line of Control (LoC) including the brigade at Siachen, has the words "worry" and "hurry" written all over his actions. For good reason. As Pal says, "The more difficult task is now. Handling Siachen is a lot more easier. Our force in Kargil would have to be twice as much as Siachen. Probably more." In Siachen, there are motorable roads right up to the base camp and the climb from 13,000 ft to 18,000 ft is far more gradual than in the Kargil mountains. Snow mobiles can operate freely even in winter there. In comparison, the peaks of Mashkoh, Drass, Kargil and Batalik are all craggy and razor sharp, with approaches only through deep gorges. In winter, snow accumulates to almost 30 ft and remains soft, rendering movement difficult. The region is also highly avalanche prone making it riskier than Siachen. The peaks don't even have sufficient space on top to build a 5 ft by 8 ft bunker or to house just three soldiers in one of them. With an average of 20 soldiers needed to hold a post and over 200 such positions to be built, it will be an uphill task to get the troops well settled on strategic heights before winter. And full-blast winter is less than two months away. By September-end, snow begins to fall over Zoji La and by mid-October it is usually snowed over completely, cutting off all supplies from Srinagar to Kargil by road. There is another route via Leh but the highway to Manali also shuts down around the same time preventing any major replenishments of supplies by road. It is, as Amar Aul, commander of the 56 Brigade guarding Drass, says, "going to be a rush in winter and a logistical nightmare." Most officers point out that in the past 50 years these heights have never been held by either side and much of it is virgin territory. Which makes the task of wintering all the more difficult. Nor have so many Indian troops been pressed to guard this stretch with such force and for such a prolonged length of time. Before the war broke out there was only one brigade consisting of around 5,000 men and, in terms of artillery, barely 50 guns to guard the area. The army isn't revealing how many additional brigades had been pressed into service, but it is estimated that another three came to the rescue. That makes it close to 20,000 combat troops and 400 artillery guns currently in the region. But this figure does not account for the range of support battalions like supply, ordnance, medical, administration and others. Among the first priorities is to get everyone suitably clothed for winter. The additional brigades had moved in largely from the Kashmir Valley where they were engaged in counter-insurgency operations at an average height of 5,000 ft. Drass town itself is at 11,500 ft and is said to be, along with Vladivostok in Russia, among the coldest inhabited places on the globe. Even during the war there was a huge shortage of what is known as Extreme Cold Clothing (ECC) and glacier gear for the troops battling for the peaks. Pal sheepishly admits that he was forced to put to use as many as 3,000 sets of Siachen seconds that were about to be sold off as raddi. He also ordered dipping into the reserves to meet the shortage. The boots proved to be sub-standard and many of them did not have crampons needed to get a grip on rocks making the infantry's life miserable. Now, as Pal says, "We have to start afresh to equip them for winter." It is a mammoth and costly task and ordnance officers are tapping every available source both domestic and foreign to meet the demand. Each jacket made of down feathers costs Rs 16,000. And a set of glacier gear, complete with rucksack, sleeping bag, tent and snow boots, is expected to cost close to Rs 2 lakh. On clothing alone the army is likely to spend an additional Rs 300 crore this season at Kargil. With the overall cost of fighting in Siachen estimated at Rs 4 crore a day, conservative estimates put it at Rs 12 crore a day in Kargil. Before the snow melts next May the army would have spent Rs 2,400 crore just on maintaining the troops at Kargil. That figure does not include the Rs 1,000 crore for the massive upgrade in technology that is required urgently to give India the decisive edge in the battle to dominate the heights. Major-General Mohinder Puri, general officer commanding of the 8 Division, which successfully turned the war by engineering Pakistan's first major defeat at Tololing, says, "Some of the equipment we were using were vintage stuff. There is an urgent need to get state-of-the-art equipment, especially for surveillance." Among the major chinks in the Indian armour that the Kargil war showed up -- apart from the total intelligence failure that led to the intrusions remaining undetected till the Pakistanis were deeply entrenched -- was the lack of proper battlefield surveillance equipment. The Indians were equipped with heavy second-generation night-vision devices that used image intensifier tubes which could just about discern enemy movement up to half a kilometre or so. And for longer range they used the cumbersome night-vision equipment of the Milan anti-tank missiles. Nor could the army use the Searcher Mark 1, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or UAVs purchased from Israel to hover over the battlefield and send back images in real time. That's because these were designed to operate at heights of just 10,000 ft. India's indigenously-built Nishant, which is still undergoing user trials, has the same capability but its development has been delayed by a couple of years. As a makeshift arrangement the Nishant's sophisticated all-weather cameras were latched on to Cheetah helicopters during the war for sending back real-time information and images. Much of the equipment was already slated for import by the Indian Army but this purchase has now acquired a new sense of urgency. So medium-range battlefield surveillance radars and high altitude UAVs are likely to be purchased from abroad. Besides, sophisticated night-vision devices that use the more advanced thermal imaging are being rushed to Kargil. These devices are highly sensitive and are able to discern the different temperature gradients caused by, say, a human body or vehicle and accurately reconfigure them in the viewfinder even in pitch darkness. Since much of the terrain is so daunting and difficult to patrol, the army is planning to buy unattended ground sensors that act like an electronic fence at critical intrusion points. If a Pakistani soldier steps across a sensor buried deep in the ground it sends a series of beeps to the control room several kilometres away, warning also about the extent of the intrusion. Says Lt-General Shamsher Mehta, deputy chief of army staff: "We are making sure our winter posture is a reasonably superior one." But he cautions, "Technology is not foolproof and cannot replace the foot soldier." Another major failure had been India's inability to silence Pakistan's artillery guns. That's because the army lacked a weapon-locating radar called the Firefinder that accurately tracks an enemy shell's trajectory and works out where the gun position is. After delaying its purchase for many years, India is now frantically searching for a seller. The Indian Army's inability to listen in on Pakistani Army communications especially those that used digitised encryption was also a big goof-up. Most of the conversation they picked up were on the lower frequency sets being used by the so-called Mujahideen which was of very little consequence. Besides, since much of the intercepts were in Pushto the army remained foxed since there were few competent translators available. Moreover, Indian communication equipment is mostly of World War II vintage and risk of interception is high. Before winter sets in, the army plans to buy a range of sophisticated communication systems including radios that employ frequency hopping techniques, switching rapidly from band to band and making it difficult for the enemy to pick it up. Says Lt-General R.K. Sawhney, director general of military intelligence, "Our techint (technical intelligence) capabilities must be upgraded on an urgent basis." But it is in the area of satellite surveillance that no immediate upgrades are possible. India's latest series of remote-sensing satellites has a resolution of 5.6 m while the army requires 1-m resolution. Even if the army contracts it from the Indian Space Research Organisation it would take a couple of years to develop. With cold winds already beginning to sweep the valleys of the Kargil range, the Indian Army is making frantic efforts to ensure that it has reasonable firepower and well-acclimatised manpower to thwart any mischief Pakistan may try to cook up. Meanwhile, Kargil has already seen a major rethink towards modernising the Indian Army. As Brigadier Ashok Duggal, deputy GOC-in-C of 3 Division which guards the Kaksar and Batalik sectors, says, "It would be a long, long time before the army forgets Kargil." This winter it will remember the lessons even more acutely. THE KARGIL SHOPPING LIST MOUNTAINOUS BURDEN FOOD |
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