Part 2: History of Top Leadership Blunders in Pakistan
What are the key sources of the current crises faced by Pakistan? Can any of these be traced to blunders committed years ago by Pakistani leaders? Here's part 2 of the discussion started earlier.
Was it a blunder for General Zia to join the United States and Saudi Arabia in support of the Afghan Jihad against the Soviet Union in 1980s? Did it help achieve Pakistan's objective of weakening the Pashtun Nationalists led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan's son Abdul Wali Khan who opposed the creation of Pakistan? What if Pakistan had not supported the Afghan Resistance in 1980s? Did it promote militarization of religious fanatics in Pakistan? Was it a mistake for Benazir Bhutto to give birth to the Taliban?
Was General Musharraf's seizure of Kargil heights in 1999 in Kashmir a blunder? How was it different from India's seizure of Siachen Glacier from Pakistan in 1984? If these were similar actions, why was India's and the world's reaction so different? Coming soon after Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Lahore visit and the signing of the Lahore Declaration, how did Kargil change the course of India-Pakistan history?
Did Kargil lead to the 1999 Coup against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif? Did Sharif err by firing General Musharraf while he was representing Pakistan overseas and then denying landing permission to the PIA commercial flight brining General Musharraf home? Was the coup staged by General Pervez Musharraf or the Pakistan Army Corps Commanders while he was still in the air? Did Nawaz Sharif's failure to manage civil-military relations contribute to his problems and the coup?
Did Musharraf blunder by siding with the United States after Sept 11, 2001 terror attacks in America? What was the alternative? How would the US react if Musharraf had refused to cooperate? Would the porous Afghan-Pakistan border allow Pakistan to be a silent observer?
Azad Labon Ke Sath host Faraz Darvesh discusses these questions with panelists Misbah Azam and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)
https://youtu.be/grLQJa-QygA
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
South Asia Investor Review
US Aid to Pakistan
1971 Debacle in East Pakistan
Is it 1971 Moment in Pakistan's History?
Mission RAW by RK Yadav: India in East Pakistan
Benazir Bhutto Gave Birth to Taliban
What if Musharraf Had Said No to US After 911?
Riaz Haq Youtube Channel
VPOS Youtube Channel
Was it a blunder for General Zia to join the United States and Saudi Arabia in support of the Afghan Jihad against the Soviet Union in 1980s? Did it help achieve Pakistan's objective of weakening the Pashtun Nationalists led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan's son Abdul Wali Khan who opposed the creation of Pakistan? What if Pakistan had not supported the Afghan Resistance in 1980s? Did it promote militarization of religious fanatics in Pakistan? Was it a mistake for Benazir Bhutto to give birth to the Taliban?
Did Kargil lead to the 1999 Coup against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif? Did Sharif err by firing General Musharraf while he was representing Pakistan overseas and then denying landing permission to the PIA commercial flight brining General Musharraf home? Was the coup staged by General Pervez Musharraf or the Pakistan Army Corps Commanders while he was still in the air? Did Nawaz Sharif's failure to manage civil-military relations contribute to his problems and the coup?
Did Musharraf blunder by siding with the United States after Sept 11, 2001 terror attacks in America? What was the alternative? How would the US react if Musharraf had refused to cooperate? Would the porous Afghan-Pakistan border allow Pakistan to be a silent observer?
Azad Labon Ke Sath host Faraz Darvesh discusses these questions with panelists Misbah Azam and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)
https://youtu.be/grLQJa-QygA
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
South Asia Investor Review
US Aid to Pakistan
1971 Debacle in East Pakistan
Is it 1971 Moment in Pakistan's History?
Mission RAW by RK Yadav: India in East Pakistan
Benazir Bhutto Gave Birth to Taliban
What if Musharraf Had Said No to US After 911?
Riaz Haq Youtube Channel
VPOS Youtube Channel
Comments
In 1983, India began receiving intelligence reports warning of an imminent Pakistani incursion into the region, and a potential assault on the Saltoro Ridge, a strategic location on the southwest side of the Siachen Glacier.
Pakistan was indeed planning to launch a strike, but it made a bizarre error. According to a retired Pakistani army colonel, Pakistan ordered Arctic-weather gear prior to the assault from a London outfitter. But the same outfitter also supplied the Indians. The Indians heard of the Pakistani order and promptly ordered twice as many outfits as the Pakistanis and then rushed their soldiers to Siachen.
Pakistan went ahead and launched Operation Ababeel in April 1984, with the intention of taking the Saltoro Ridge. But thanks to the previously obtained intelligence, India launched Operation Meghdoot just 48 hours before the Pakistani assault. When the Pakistan forces arrived, the Indians had already captured the heights of Saltoro.
India took control of around 1,000 square miles of territory during its military operations in Siachen. During the rest of the 1980s and throughout the 1990s, both sides launched various combat operations in an attempt to take strategic positions.
But from the 2003 ceasefire up until the present day, things remained much as they had before, with India in control of the Siachen Glacier and all of its tributary glaciers, as well as all the main passes and ridges of the Saltoro Ridge. Pakistan, meanwhile, holds posts at lower elevations along the spurs of the Saltoro ridgeline.
Despite attempts at finally ending this uneasy status quo, both sides still maintain a presence of about 3,000 troops each. As for fatalities, most have been due to severe conditions on the high-altitude glacier (its highest point sits at about 18,875 feet above sea level). By the 2003 ceasefire, around 2,000 men had died, most of them from frostbite, avalanches, and other effects of the extreme environment, rather than from actual fighting.
Soldiers sent to Siachen know they’ll be serving in a bitter and inhospitable environment. They also know that they’ll be arriving at the highest battlefield on Earth, a fact recognized by Guinness World Records. They might also end up stationed at the world’s highest military base, which sits on a ridge up above the glacier at an altitude of around 19,685 feet. Other records created by this strange conflict include the world’s highest helipad and the world’s highest telephone booth, both installed on the glacier by India.
The glacier itself, meanwhile, continues to suffer from all this human activity. It has retreated significantly in the last 30 years, partly as a result of waste dumping by both sides. The military presence has also put rare species at risk, including snow leopards, brown bears, and ibex, who called the Siachen Glacier home long before the arrival of the two rival nations.
Know Before You Go
The Siachen Glacier is located in Northern Ladakh in the eastern Karakoram Range of the Himalayas. The nearest civilian settlement is Warshi, a small village about 10 miles downstream from the Indian base camp. Due to the ongoing tensions in the Siachen region, civilians rarely travel to the area unless they have some connection with either the Indian or Pakistani forces stationed at the glacier.
The scene I have reported ... where a stretch-bearer showed his bullet-ridden helmet when the bone was sticking out of a soldier, was just outside Holiyal village in Mushkoh Valley at the base of Tiger Hill. The grey-stoned shelter was a desolate primary school tenement. It was chosen as an action station for the main unit that took Tiger Hill because it was not visible to the Pakistani gunners. The Pakistani shells flew over it and bored into a hill behind it.
In July 1999, I could not report to the newspaper I was then working for the names and the places of the incident because the officer who had hosted me was in the thick of battle. He was leading the 18 Grenadiers, I can report today. The ‘action station’ was the school in Holiyal village in Mushkoh Valley, where I had bara-khana – the ‘grand feast’ – the afternoon before the evening the soldiers set off to re-capture Tiger Hill.
Colonel Khushal Thakur, commanding officer of the 18 Grenadiers, later Brigadier, now retired, then told me (my newspaper) over an RT (radio transmitter) “we have reached Tiger Top, we are wrapping it up” the next day (July 4). Tiger Top was at around 15,000 feet. I was at about 13,000 feet. Col Thakur I guess at around 14,000 feet.
I met him quite by chance on one of many forays from Kargil to Drass (about 65 km though hairpin bends within sight of Pakistani gunners) and beyond to Mushkoh, like many reporters, looking for a story to dispatch. Most journalists, certainly the ones loaded with heavy cameras (TV), had made Drass their base. Mushkoh was beyond Drass. I was armed only with pens, notebooks and a satellite phone.
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By this time we were east of Tiger Hill, west of Tololing. The war began turning for India from Tololing. Drass, which was known as the second coldest place on earth (after Verkhoyansk in Siberia) despite being on flat land, was directly below Tololing.
Between Tololing and Tiger Hill is Sando Nullah, through which, unknown to us then, a Gorkha battalion was one of a three-pronged attack, at the centre of which was the 18 Grenadiers.
The second-in-command of the 18 Grenadiers, Lt Colonel Viswanathan – a friend Colonel Khushal Thakur’s ‘2-IC’ – had fallen in Tololing on June 23. When I met them in Holiyal, his place was taken by Lt Col Paugham (I don’t know his current whereabouts) with Major Rajeev Kumar holding the base and the radio in the “action station”, the school in Holiyal over which Pakistani shells whistled.
Paugham had drawn a sketch in my notebook at the bara-khana to explain how the plan included an excursion through the exotically named “Pariyon ki Jheel (Lake of Fairies)” to the North West of Tiger Hill.
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That was also part of a plan to recapture a strategic height – Point 5353 – that India was unable to regain and even today continues to be in Pakistani possession. It probably has the best view of National Highway 1A that the Kargil incursion of 1999 by the “intruders” was aiming to interdict.
Let alone wars, even battles and skirmishes often are not conclusive. Kargil is one of a series. It has a history and a future.
The Kargil-Drass-Leh sector was targeted by Pakistan and Pakistan-backed forces in 1947-48 when India could not retain Skardu, then again in in 1965 and in 1971 when India captured and till today holds on to Turtuk near the Siachen south glacier.
With such histories that portend grim and bloody futures, the value of celebrating futile heroism – when bullets through helmets define luck – is questionable.
On Sunday, social media activists supposedly based in Pakistan, repeatedly targeted Gen. Ved Prakash Malik (retd) for the Army’s inability to recapture at least three heights near the Line of Control that continue to be in Pakistani possession.
Gen. Malik was the Army chief during the war.
The discourse was particularly centred on a strategically significant feature, Point 5353, which has a domineering view of the national highway between Srinagar and Leh. It has never been occupied by Indian forces since the war.
ThePrint pieces together the events that prevented the Army from regaining Point 5353 (the numbers denote the height of the peak in metres), including a directive from the Vajpayee government and failed attempts to broker a settlement with the Pakistani army.
The intruders had illegally occupied peaks named Tololing, Tiger Hill and unnamed features like Point 4170 and Point 5353 that belonged to India on a 100-km long front.
They were also functioning as ‘observers’ for the Pakistani artillery to direct fire on Indian military traffic.
The heights are vital to the Indian Army as in the summer months they are used to stock up on winter rations before the national highway is covered in snow. This is also the route for supplies to be ferried to soldiers on the Siachen Glacier.
When the Indian Army set out to free the territory of intrusions, with aid from the Air Force, recapturing Point 5353 was one of its objectives. The Army launched “Operation Vijay” and the air force “Operation Safed Sagar”.
Unfinished business
When the operations began, the Vajpayee government made it clear that men and aircraft had to go about their task without crossing the Line of Control, increasing the complexity of mountain warfare.
This severe limitation was probably responsible for Indian forces not being able to clear all the heights used by the Pakistanis to impede Indian traffic.
This reporter, who was with the 18 Grenadiers battalion led by Colonel Kushal Thakur when the Kargil War was reaching its climax — it was never formally declared a ‘war’ — was given a view and a sense of the strategic importance of capturing Point 5353.
From the village of Holiyal in the Mushkoh, where a dilapidated primary school was used as a forward operating base for the battalion, Point 5353 was just east of and behind Tiger Hill through a tract called Sando Gully.
The officer had then pointed out that if the Pakistanis are to be denied a strategic view of National Highway 1A, then Point 5353 would have to be cleared.
The fact that it continues to remain in Pakistani hands shows that it is clearly an unfinished agenda of the war.
But accounts on why this happened and why India decided to drop the capture of Point 5353 have emerged now, the latest being Gen. Malik’s tweets this Sunday.
Without going into the specifics, the General tweeted that the Army had completed its missions by 26 July, 1999.
by
Ravi Rikhye
In the Chapter 4- How India Lost All Its Wars of the book, the author gives analysis of the proposition that war of 1947-48 and 1965 were a favorable stalemate and that of 1971 was an outright victory has been carried out in this chapter. Here the author comments that in all security crises, there have been very serious misperceptions of adversary behavior and that India repeatedly commits same mistake.
https://booksynopsis16.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-war-that-never-was-ravi-rikhye.html
India also officially gave a lower number for some time: 530 war dead. But
@Mukherjee_Anit
noticed in 2014 that the Indian Army's website section "Pay Homage to Your Martyrs" led to a much larger number: 970.
https://twitter.com/clary_co/status/1345088352408784896?s=20
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A Name Upon A Grave
India needs a proper account of the army’s war dead
ANIT MUKHERJEE
https://caravanmagazine.in/perspectives/name-upon-grave
ON THE NIGHT OF 4 FEBRUARY 2000, an army post I was commanding in Kashmir was fired upon. The incident was unremarkable at the time—just a few months after the Kargil war—and no one was hurt. The next morning, a patrol went to investigate the site from where the shots were fired. (I was away from my post on another operation.) One of the members of the patrol was Manokaran, a barber by trade, who was in many ways the live wire of the company. He should have been on leave but, a week before, faced with a shortage of personnel, I had ordered him to postpone his departure by two weeks. Manokaran accepted this cheerfully.
At the site, the patrol discovered a backpack containing some clothes and a steel tiffin box. The patrol commander, an experienced Gurkha, ordered that the box not be disturbed, but Manokaran, with characteristic daredevilry, exclaimed, “Maut se kyun dartey ho?” (Why are you afraid of death?) and opened it. This triggered an improvised explosive device that blew out his eyes. Within an hour, I was at the scene shouting into a radio to call for casualty evacuation, and ordering a medic to do more to save Manokaran’s life. I could not get myself to do what I should have done: hold his hand to comfort him. Just before he was put on a helicopter, I finally took his hand, and lied to him that he was going to be OK. He was crying for his mother. Manokaran died before the helicopter landed at Badamibagh cantonment in Srinagar.
Many years later, I gave up my uniform and started a new career as an academic. One afternoon I came upon a section of the Indian Army’s official website titled “Pay Homage to Your Martyrs”. It includes a database listing the name, rank, service number, home state, unit, and regiment of apparently every soldier who has died in all of India’s post-independence wars, as well as the name of the operations in which they died and their dates of death. In a way that other soldiers would
https://thewire.in/video/watch-vajpayees-biographer-on-former-pms-adulterous-relationship-lovechild-views-on-gandhi
The book is called Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right 1924-1977 and confirms that Vajpayee and Kaul had a child out of wedlock in August 1960 called Namita nicknamed Gunnu. As the book says: “As she grew older, Gunnu’s facial features began to resemble her father’s (but) on paper, she was to be the warden’s daughter … Vajpayee may have felt the void of not being able to officially call himself a father, though Gunnu began calling him ‘Baap ji’.”
Writing about Rajkumari Kaul and Vajpayee’s relationship, Abhishek Choudhary says: “Rajkumari’s embarrassed family tried convincing her to save her marriage by letting go of the new man in her life. She refused (yet) there are no clear answers as to why she did not divorce her husband and formally marry Vajpayee.” As a result, he says, Rajkumari Kaul, Vajpayee and Birjan Kaul lived for many many years as a threesome. “With time the trio arrived at an equilibrium of sorts. Rajkumari made genuine efforts to balance her care between the husband and the lover.”
There’s a discussion at the very start of the interview about why Choudhary thought it was important and necessary to openly and honestly discuss and analyse Vajpayee’s private life i.e. his decades-long affair with Rajkumari Kaul and their love child Namita. I will leave you to see Choudhary’s explanation and why he thought this must be discussed. All I will add is it’s very convincing and very truthful.
This subject is the first of many revelations about Vajpayee that are discussed when, the author of the new biography, Abhishek Choudhary, spoke with Karan Thapar in a 53-minute interview for The Wire. In fact, there are many important revelations in the book which are picked up and discussed in the interview. There are also several myths about Vajpayee, that have been accepted as gospel truth, which the book punctures. They too are discussed in the interview.
Let me mention one other important subject, amongst the many discussed in this interview, which arises out of the biography. This is Vajpayee’s surprising (to many) and disturbing (for some) response to Gandhi’s assassination. The book says: “Atal most certainly did not consider Gandhi’s death a serious loss to mankind. The dozens of articles he had written and edited holding the Mahatma responsible for India’s partition and condemning him for pandering to Muslims had most certainly contributed to poisoning the air that ultimately led to his assassination”. In the interview, Choudhary readily accepts that there is an element of blame that falls on Vajpayee.
Because most, if not all, of the issues covered in the interview are sensitive – sometimes potentially controversial – and because paraphrasing can lead to misunderstanding but also because selectively choosing aspects of the interview to highlight conveys a sense of subjective priority, I will leave you to see this interview for yourself.
All I will do is identify the key issues discussed and then, second, give you a list of the questions so you know the order in which things will come up.