What Kargil '99 Can Teach About Jammu Today

On the 25th Kargil Victory Day, it's worth taking a wider view of the 1999 war. Pakistan's terror strategies in Jammu today are similar to what we saw then

- LT GEN SYED ATA HASNAIN (RETD)

THE saga of the Indian Army's response to Pakistani intrusions in the Kargil sector in 1999 has now reached the status of folklore. The heroes of the battles of Tololing, Khalubar, Tiger Hill and many more deserve their place under the sun and so do their families. The 25th anniversary of the Kargil Vijay Diwas observed on July 26 is an occasion on which more can be told. There was so much happening at that time in so many other sectors some of these relatively unknown facts deserve airing, too.

Besides Kargil, the Pakistani deep state had launched active operations of an intense kind employing terrorists and even regular forces in the adjoining Valley and Jammu regions. On Kargil's flank, in the Turtuk area near Siachen glacier was Point 5770, more foreboding than any. Today, it stands renamed Navdeep Top after a relatively unsung hero who had scaled the peak with a handful of Rajputs to kill and evict a Pakistani section.

It should be recalled that while carrying out operations in Kargil, General Parvez Musharraf's strategy was twofold. First was the intent of cutting off the Srinagar-Leh highway to starve Ladakh, and in consequence, force the vacation of Siachen glacier by the Indian Army a pipe dream. The secondary or alternative aim was to disturb the counter-terror grid in Kashmir from where India would need to find troops to respond to Kargil intrusions. In addition, it was to motivate the J&K people to rise against the Indian government and thus weaken India's hold over the region. A potential public revolt was always a Pakistani obsession. It has been abortively tried several times with Operation Gulmarg in 1947-48 and Operation Gibraltar in 1965.