Kargil @ 25: It Was a Total failure of Strategic, Operational and Tactical Intelligence

As India observes the 25th anniversary of the Kargil conflict between India and Pakistan, the question to ask is, did India’s military leadership learn the correct lessons? A good way to approach this subject is to go back to the primary source: the then Indian chief of army staff, General V.P. Malik’s book titled Kargil: From Surprise to Victory. 

According to Gen. Malik, “Kargil was a limited conventional war under the nuclear shadow where space below the threshold was available, but it had to be exploited carefully.” The general raises three doctrinal issues.

One, Kargil was a limited conventional war,

Two, space for conventional war was available below the threshold nuclear war, and 

Three, since the available space was not defined by either side (it would vary from sector to sector on the 776 kms Line of Control and the international border), both sides would need to be careful to not cross the other’s red line for use of nuclear weapons.

Interestingly, these assumptions were accepted as doctrinal truism against both adversaries (Pakistan and China) and were not war-gamed by subsequent military leaders. Therefore, the present concept of building ‘integrated theatre commands’ under the chief of defence staff aims to integrate the army, air force and the navy for joint operations under a limited war.

War doctrines are dynamic; they should evolve with the science (infusion of technologies) and art (concepts to optimise infused technologies) of war. This is what generalship is about. Ironically, Gen. Malik’s doctrinal thinking should have been rejected right when it was articulated since it was fundamentally flawed.

Let’s start with his first assumption on Kargil being a limited war. Now, there is a big difference between war, conflict and grey zone operations. War is when both or all sides bring their full military might to the battlespace to accomplish what was not possible by negotiations. On the other hand, a conflict is when full military might not be brought on the battlespace, and grey zone operations refers to all activities and violence below the threshold of the use of firearms. It becomes clear that conflict is a gamble with firearms, where one or both sides believe, for reasons, that an escalation to war will not happen. All conflicts are aberrations, and hence doctrines for war cannot be built on them.

Thus, Kargil was a conflict since Pakistan brought minimal regular military in the battlespace that gave India the option to use its military assets unconventionally. Pakistan, under General Pervez Musharraf injected five battalions of its then paramilitary, the Northern Light Infantry (NLI), a brigade worth of regular troops to provide covering fire, and Mujahids in the conflict. The Pakistan Air Force, the Pakistan Navy and most of the Pakistan Army were not even in the information loop of the General headquarters (GHQ) to maintain secrecy. Only four headquarters, namely, GHQ, Rawalpindi corps headquarters, Force Command Northern Area (responsible for Siachen), and ISI headquarters were to execute the operation. 

Also read: Kargil: The People Who Didn’t Do Their Job – and Those Who Did

On the Indian side, all three services were involved in the operation. The Indian Army operation was called Operation Vijay, the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) was named Operation Safed Sagar, while the Indian Navy, which was on war alert, called its activities Operation Talwar. Under Operation Vijay, five infantry divisions and 100 artillery guns (many used in a direct firing role as enemy air defence and air force was not active) were inducted in the battlespace, while the holding or pivot corps were ordered to be on high alert. Gen. Malik gambled in assembling 100 artillery guns since they were pulled out from strike corps denuding them of firepower. This showed poor level of war preparedness and nervousness of the army leadership to reclaim territory occupied by Mujahids at the earliest.

The panic at Army Headquarters in Delhi was understandable since there was total failure of strategic, operational and even tactical intelligence on what Pakistan’s GHQ was up to. Two instances make this point: in the absence of the army chief, Gen Malik who was in Poland, his vice-chief, Lt Gen S. Chandrashekar reached out to his counterpart at the Air Headquarters (account of this in Air Chief Marshal Tipnis’s article on operation Safed Sagar exclusive for FORCE) to provide gunships without government’s knowledge to destroy what he thought were some dug in terrorists; he had no idea of Pakistan army’s preparation done over one year. 

And two, without tactical intelligence on the enemy, the army top brass, in panic displaying poor leadership ordered units to climb heights to clear Mujahids occupying them. Of the 574 soldiers’ lives lost during the conflict, maximum casualties were in this phase. Furthermore, desertions happened and scapegoats for putting blame were found. Ideally, a national commission should have been set up after the conflict to ascertain the truth. This did not happen as the Vajpayee government based on Kargil victory sought advantage in the impending general elections. 

 Moreover, there was acute shortage of war withal (ammunitions, spares and so on) at the height of the conflict in June 1999 with Gen. Malik publicly telling the media that “we will fight with whatever we have.” There were umpteen media reports of bureaucrats from ministry of defence flying across the globe with huge suitcases brimming with US dollars for expeditious purchase of ammunition and spares. Since Musharraf was found to be in Beijing getting war withal from China, Indian worry was that the conflict should not become a war. On the part of Army Headquarters in Delhi, poor leadership was apparent as it was well known that given General headquarters Rawalpindi’s major advantage of it alone deciding on when and where to start the war with India, the Indian military should be always prepared for war at short notice. 

Ironically, believing that people have short memory, on the eve of the present anniversary celebrations, Gen. Malik told the media that ‘if we (Indian military) had escalated, which we were prepared for, we would have had more casualties.’ Truth was three-fold: critical shortage of war withal; hence, the Vajpayee government’s brief to simply evict Mujahids from Indian soil; and therefore, the meeting of Indian and the US’ National Security Advisors in Europe to end the conflict. Besides, Gen. Malik should know that conflicts/wars are conducted to accomplish political objectives and military aims and are never ended for fear of casualties. 

To dwell further on Malik’s limited war concept, it cannot become a doctrine since all wars are different. On the one hand, a war between peer military competitors (India and Pakistan), and between unequal military powers (India and China) will not be the same. Even between India and Pakistan, a war depends on each sides’ war aims, preparedness for war, comparative advantages at strategic and operational levels of war and generalship. For this reason, professional militaries test doctrines and war concepts by a mix of simulations, war games and realistic exercises with troops. While this has never been done to put Malik’s assumption to real test, the present military leadership is building integrated theatre commands on another wrong assumption that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Pakistan military war concepts being similar will allow switching of Indian formations from one theatre to another with a different adversary. 

Worse, after the Kargil conflict, the most important lesson should have been to build credible conventional war deterrence (capabilities and capacities) to prevent another misadventure by Pakistan. According to the Kargil Review Committee Report of year 2000: ‘Successive Indian chiefs of army staff and director generals of military operations told the committee that bringing to bear India’s assumed conventional superiority (against Pakistan) was not serious option.’ The Indian army did not do this. It, instead, convinced the political leadership to do the contrary: raise a new 14 corps headquarters for war, and an additional 37 battalions (some 50,000 troops including various headquarters) of Rashtriya Rifle units to pursue counter terror operations more vigorously. This way, the army created more posts for senior officers, while doing more of the same on the ground. The recent series of terrorist attacks in Jammu region are evidence of Indian army’s reluctance to focus on building credible deterrence. Indian will continue to lose more young and brave soldiers in this war that cannot be won since the initiative of time, place and quantum of attacks is with the faceless and nameless terrorists. 

Also read: The Truth About the Kargil War Is Bitter But it Must Be Told

Let’s now discuss Malik’s second doctrinal assumption on linkage between conventional and nuclear wars. Sadly, both Pakistan and China understood the lessons of the Cold War on this subject, which Malik and the present Indian military leadership still do not know it. In the Fifties during the Cold War, the United States realised that, though technologically inferior, the Soviet Union had more conventional weapons (more tanks, more guns, more aircraft and so on) than Nato forces. To offset the advantage of the Soviet Union, the Pentagon initiated its “first offset strategy”, which introduced tactical nukes in battlespace.

The thinking was that tactical nukes would halt the Soviet’s conventional blitzkrieg, and as the US had far more strategic nukes, the Soviets were unlikely to escalate. Then by the Seventies, the Pentagon assessed that the Soviets had comparable capabilities in both strategic and tactical nukes, which made first use of tactical nukes by Nato risky. Hence the need for Pentagon’s “second offset strategy”, which was based on long range precision fires to stop the Soviet advance well before the tactical war was joined. The lesson which came out of the two offset strategies was this: nuclear and conventional deterrence are not linked. They must be built separately.

For this reason, after India’s nuclear tests in May 1998, the Pakistan Army chief, General Jehangir Karamat, ignoring US pressure and allurements to not follow India’s example, did nuclear tests of its own. Karamat said that these were necessary to maintain strategic balance with India. In other words, strategic and conventional war deterrence are separate. Moreover, when the Indian Army announced its Cold Start doctrine, supposed capability to cross over into Pakistan territory at zero notice, Pakistan, within months, said it had full spectrum nuclear deterrence, which included tactical nukes. The latter are not for use, but, given the short time needed to cross into Pakistan territory, tactical nukes are meant to deter India from exercising the zero-notice option. Another example of this truism is in the West Pacific where the PLA and the US military are locked in a security competition. Here, given its small numbers compared with the US military, the PLA is furtively building its nuclear arsenal, knowing well the need for separate nuclear and conventional war deterrence.

Thus, Malik’s assumption of linkage between nuclear and conventional wars is wrong. The way to deter conventional war is by building deterrence for it. Moreover, when the deterrence gap is hugely disproportionate, as in the case of the PLA and the Indian military, the PLA, should it decide, will not hesitate to wage an occupational war like reclaiming Arunachal Pradesh which it calls South Tibet. The PLA has enormous capabilities to neutralise India’s meagre nuclear capability for its conventional, non-strategic (tactical) and strategic means.

Coming to Malik’s third assumption, between peer competitors like India and Pakistan, Rawalpindi is unlikely to gain much by a conventional war with India. This explains why it has been waging a proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir since 1991. By doing this, the Pakistan Army has made a major gain by the slow bleeding of the Indian Army, where India is losing its trained young soldiers to terrorists with no loss to the Pakistan Army which continues with its war preparedness. 

Moreover, the fact that not a single military officer has questioned Malik’s doctrinal wisdom is evidence that senior military leaders read very little and think even less. No wonder they are not confident about speaking their minds to the political leadership. Perhaps, today is the time for introspection and resolve to build credible deterrence to safeguard national sovereignty. 

Pravin Sawhney’s latest book is titled The Last War: How AI Will Shape India’s Final Showdown with China.