"The Snow Was Turning Red": When War Came to the Himalaya
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| Photo by Chirag Saini on Unsplash |
Tactics
Mountain
warfare, especially in peaks as jagged and harsh as the high Himalaya, requires
highly unconventional tactics carried out by small units trained for both the
terrain and the tactics required. Troops must be acclimated and well-armed,
with supplies staged all up the ridgelines that will be used as assault paths;
detailed and accurate maps of both enemy positions and terrain are vital. In
the early days of the 1999 Kargil War the Indian soldiers sent up the mountains had
none of these things.
In the
narrow valleys and knife-edged ridges of a high-altitude battlefield, modern
mechanized warfare is less than useless—it is impossible. Vehicles of any kind
cannot ascend the steep slopes, and even helicopters have trouble flying in the
thin air.[1]The
large-scale deployments and mechanized attacks that characterize today’s
conventional wars cannot even reach the battlefield. A successful war in this
kind of harsh terrain relies on small, highly mobile units trained to move in
the mountains—to cross glaciers, ascend cliffs and rig their own fixed rope
routes up targeted high points.[2]
Knowledge of the terrain is absolutely key. Though often deployed in smaller
units, the Indian Army battalions who carried out the first attacks of the
Kargil War had neither the equipment nor the information they needed for a
successful offense; and there is perhaps no better example of both their
unpreparedness and its consequences than the assault on Tololing by 1 Naga that
began the night of 17 May, 1999.[3]
The first
battalion of the Naga Regiment was given a series of confusing orders and then
moved into the combat zone within the space of a couple days, shifting from
counter-insurgency operations at 2000 feet above sea level to open warfare at
16,000 feet without a single day of acclimation.[4] Food
supplies in the war zone were scarce when 1 Naga arrived; often soldiers went a
full twenty-four hours without a meal.[5]With
no snow shoes or winter clothing they were supplied with unfamiliar INSAS
rifles and ordered into an assault on Pakistani-occupied Point 5140.[6]The
operational orders given to 1 Naga’s commander estimated only 4 or 5 militants
at Point 5140 and ordered the battalion to “capture the objective by first
light.”[7]With
poorly made photocopies as their only maps they started towards the peaks.[8]
It took
the battalion eight hours to cross the six miles to the base of the mountain,
navigating rough terrain with maps that were hazy at best.[9]The
first part of the attack—carried out in complete darkness—was an ascent of over
2000 meters through sheer cliffs and heavy snow.[10]
The hands of the soldiers soon grew numb from trying to grip the ice and
night-chilled rock, leaving them fumbling at their weapons.[11]As
dawn approached and they neared the summit the Pakistani outpost—the fortified
position they had been told contained only a few militants—opened fire with
machine guns.[12]The
slope above them was snow hardened nearly to ice, impossible to grip without
winter boots and crampons; the ridge behind them was completely exposed to
Pakistani fire.[13]
“Firing uphill was useless. The enemy was dominating the ridge line,” one of
the officers would say later, adding, “all we could do was wait for nightfall.”[14]Such
heavy and accurate enemy fire was far from the lightly-staffed observation post
they had been told to expect.[15]A
second attempt at nightfall, hours later, ended in the same way. When the
soldiers of 1 Naga tried an approach up the sheer cliffside, hoping for a
reprieve from enemy fire, they instead found themselves dangling from a single
rope as the Pakistani soldiers above pushed rocks off the cliff edge and killed
the leading climbers without firing a single bullet.[16]
The men of 1 Naga could not afford to waste ammunition firing at the fortified
ridgeline positions of the Pakistani troops; they had started the assault with
only the supplies they could carry on their backs.[17] By
this time it was clear to the officers and soldiers actually in combat that
they were not facing some small militant incursion, but well-armed and
well-supplied regular army troops in fortified ridgetop bunkers; still the
Indian intelligence agencies and top command continued to insist that only a
few jehadi fighters had crossed the LOC.[18]
As the casualty reports began to trickle
back into the base camp the men left at the foot of the mountains sank to the
cold ground, weeping openly.[19]
The lack of preparation, proper tactics and supplies had taken its toll, and
many of those who had struggled through the snow and ice-hung rock of the
Himalayan battlefield would never return. Even the bodies of the fallen could
not be retrieved; those that were within reach of the soldiers still on the
mountain had been wired with explosives by the Pakistani troops.[20] Their
last letters to their families would be accompanied only by KIA notices, with
no victory to justify their loss.
1 Naga’s May assault on Point 5140
exemplified the consequences of high-altitude combat for unprepared troops.
Without training in mountain warfare, winter supplies or accurate information
on the location or even identity of their enemy, 1 Naga suffered heavy
casualties and still lost the battle. Fighting in harsh weather and harsher
terrain against well-prepared Pakistani soldiers, they had little chance of
success even before they were pinned down by the Pakistani machine guns,
unacclimated and fighting with unfamiliar weapons. Days later, finally off the
mountain and back at the regimental base, an officer of 1 Naga summarized this
attempted offensive best: “pinned down, nowhere to go…trapped, we sat there,
knowing that something was horribly wrong.”[21]
[1] Acosta, “The Kargil Conflict: Waging War in the Himalayas.”
[2] Acosta..
[3]
Baweja, A Soldier’s Diary, 32.
[4] Acosta, “The Kargil Conflict: Waging War in the Himalayas”; Baweja, A Soldier’s Diary, 29.
[5] Acosta.
[6]
Baweja, A Soldier’s Diary, 29.
[7]
Baweja, A Soldier’s Diary, 29.
[8]
Baweja, A Soldier’s Diary, 29.
[9]
Baweja, A Soldier’s Diary, 32.
[10]
Baweja, A Soldier’s Diary, 32.
[11]
Baweja, A Soldier’s Diary, 32.
[12]
Baweja, A Soldier’s Diary, 33.
[13] Baweja,
A Soldier’s Diary, 33.
[14]
Baweja, A Soldier’s Diary, 33.
[15]
Baweja, A Soldier’s Diary, 33.
[16]
Sawant, Dateline Kargil, 11.
[17]
Baweja, A Soldier’s Diary, 33.
[18]
Sawant, Dateline Kargil, 2.
[19]
Sawant, Dateline Kargil, 12.
[20]
Sawant, Dateline Kargil, 13.
[21] Baweja,
A Soldier’s Diary, 33-34.
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