A Recipe For Unbridled Pak-India Competition

Pakistan plans to invade India in April 2000

Pakistan intends to invade India in April 2000, revealed a

source within the Indian army. In fact, their capturing of

Indian positions along the Line of Control in 1998 was only the first step in a

carefully orchestrated campaign to take over Jammu and Kashmir

completely.

They were not expecting India to react so effectively and to recapture the

peaks so soon.

They were still continuing to fortify their positions and move in heavy arms,

supplies and training instructors who have been asked to spread throughout

India to create chaos when the time comes.

An estimated 1,200 such personnel have already infiltrated the country and

are concentrated mainly in the Kashmir valley. Some have been able to

travel to Assam and the northeast, others to Punjab, and a few have even

managed to reach Gujarat and Maharashtra.

India`s unexpected swiftness in taking back its positions was a setback to

these plans. But the invasion is still expected to go ahead in April 2000 as

planned, and Pakistan expects to capture Srinagar by May.

These and several other details of the Pakistan army`s plans were revealed

in a top secret file found in the possession of a Pakistani army officer who

was killed in one of the many battles during the recent Kargil war.

``Like most of the other Pak army regulars, he was not in uniform,`` revealed

an army source who was involved in the assault. ``We identified him by

certain items he was carrying. The file should not have been with him at all.

It shows how over-confident they must have been.``

The officer was probably trying to destroy the vital file when he was killed:

The file was charred on one corner and a box of matches was found nearby.

The file itself is fairly ordinary in appearance. It is the contents that are

explosive. The army source who revealed its existence said he had studied it

thoroughly. ``It contained a number of jottings of the officer himself, and it

was obvious that he was not as confident of success as his superiors. He

seemed to feel that India would offer stiff resistance to the invasion plan.``

Even a couple of letters by the officer to his superiors, his parents and his

brother were in the file.

Other evidence seems to confirm the invasion plan. The peaks occupied by

Mujahideen and Pakistani army regulars in autumn 1998 were found to be

fortified more heavily than is usually required. Instead of a simple dugout,

permanent three-layered bunkers reinforced with concrete were built by the

Pakistanis. ``So well hidden, you couldn`t see them until you tripped over

them.`` Huge caches of arms and supplies were hauled up the steep slopes to

these positions.

At one bunker, an incredible 5,000 kg of atta was found, with an additional

2,000 kg of rice, plenty of pulses and grams, and enough ammunition to

supply an entire company of soldiers for several battles. And yet, only 12

enemy soldiers were in occupation.

In other bunkers, colour television sets with dish antennas and electric

generators were also found in addition to the food and ammunition supplies.

``The bunker in which we found the Pak army officer`s body had a CTV that

was tuned to Zee News at the time!`` said the army source.

``They were preparing not just for the winter of 1998, but for the whole of

1999 as well. And in April, they were going to invade.``

While official army sources have repeatedly denied even the existence of

such fully-equipped bunkers and supplies, several officers and jawans

involved in the actual combat agreed readily with these facts.

Confirmation also came from several local residents of Ladakh villages along

the LoC.

One resident of a village along the LoC in Dras district had this story to tell.

A former porter for the Indian army, this man had suffered two bullet

wounds, one in the leg and one in the back, while carrying supplies to army

base camps along the LoC. So when the Mujahideen came down from the

mountains last August and entered his village, he was instantly suspicious.

To his surprise, they came to his house. ``They had been told by some other

persons in my village that I was with the Indian army,`` he reveals. ``They

knew I was aware of the routes to all the army base camps and positions.``

The Mujahideen asked the porter to guide them to these positions and

camps. When he refused, they offered him Rs 30,000 as a fee and a regular

income thereafter if he joined them. He asked for time to think about it.

Meanwhile, they took up occupancy in the village mosque, where they

penned in some goats and chickens taken from their sympathisers in the

village.

At the first opportunity, the porter rushed to the army unit at Drass and told

his story. He was told to go home. When he persisted and tried to meet the

CO of the unit, he was beaten up badly by some jawans. ``They were not

willing to take my word because they don`t trust us Muslims. They think we

are all militants,`` he said bitterly, recounting the incident.

Later, he tried to send a word to the Brigade HQ at Kargil. The

now-famous Brigadier Surinder Singh was in charge there at the time.

Apparently, the brigadier was just as unsympathetic as the rest.

The porter feared he would be killed by the Mujahideen for not assisting

them. But they had managed to get others to guide them to the places they

wanted -- for a fee, of course -- and had even supplied these spies with

shortwave radio transmitters so they could keep in touch with the Pakistanis

after they returned to the mountains.

The porter`s tale is a common one. Speak to locals along the LoC and you

will hear hundreds of such accounts of actual contact with the Pakistanis as

far back as April 1998. Right until the onset of winter last year, the

Mujahideen, helped by their sympathisers and paid helpers, moved freely

about the region, mapping Indian army positions, strategic and tactical

artillery targets, and transporting arms and ammunition to the Kashmir

valley.

Some of them bought horses or mules to carry these supplies-available for

Rs 3,000 to Rs 5,000 -- and walked alongside them all the way to

Srinagar`s outlying areas. And some even travelled by J&K State Road

Transport Corporation Buses. Post-Kargil, the Indian army intensified

security checks along the Leh-Srinagar route, but tons of lethal arms and

ammunition had already passed through unchallenged. Today, these same

weapons are being used by the militants in the Kashmir valley.

Even members of the Task Force in Kashmir Valley confirm the Pakistani

plan to invade in April 2000. An officer in Rashtriya Rifles, one of the three

paramilitary units responsible for maintaining the security in Srinagar,

revealed that in several ``interrogation`` sessions, militants and their civilian

associates had confessed to an elaborate Pakistani plan to capture J&K

within a two-year period and to create havoc in Punjab, Gujarat and Assam

over the next five years.

``Their intention was not just to infiltrate, it was to occupy,`` said this officer.

He denigrated the actions of Indian army units in evacuating and then

recapturing the peaks in Kargil, dismissing them as the ``foolish`` acts of

``negligent`` army higher-ups.

The bitterness that this officer and other Task Force commanders feel

towards the Indian army units stationed in Kargil is understandable: They

feel it is due to the alleged negligence of the Indian army up there that they

are being systematically killed down here in the valley today.

``Who says the Kargil war is over?`` asks a BSF major who lost two men in

a direct assault by militants earlier this year. ``The war is still going on. This is

the real war, not the madness that happened over there. We are paying the

price today. They are enjoying their PVCs and MVCs and getting their

photos in the press.``

Senior army officers discount the Pakistani invasion plan while indirectly

acknowledging that the plan exists. Post-Kargil, they believe, we are well

prepared for such an eventuality and Pakistan`s hostile intentions will not

translate into reality.

``They will never reach Srinagar,`` says a Commanding Officer stationed at

Mushkoh Valley. ``The Pakistani army is good, no doubt. But we are

better.``

Another senior officer close to Major General V S Budhwar points out:

``We don`t have incompetents like Surinder Singh in charge now. We`ve

understood the situation and are equipped to react.``

The lesson of Kargil may have been a bitter one to learn. But it may have

saved a far more bitter possibility from occurring. The prospect of a

full-scale invasion.

Dear Dr. Parvez Hoodbhoy:

A good effort to bring some sense in our consciousness. We need to stop spending on our military defense and divert our resources for the greater defense of Pakistan by providing food, clothing, shelter, education, medical aid, and other useful goods and services.

In a letter to the editor, an eighty-five year old Pakistani (M. Aslam Khan) wrote: ``Pakistanis don`t need slogan-mongering, what we need is health care, education and economic prosperity. Atom bombs and missiles don`t feed the needy and don`t cure the sick. The large army that we maintain as a deterrent against the Indians is nothing but a bottomless pit that eats all the resources the country should be spending on development schemes. Our only issue with Indians is Kashmir which we should settle with the adversary at the earliest`` (Frontier Post, May 13, 1999).

Perhaps both M. Aslam Khan and myself are out of date and we do not appreciate the realities of world. Realistically, Pakistan is a virtual colony of people associated with our armed forces, who are the only patriotic Pakistanis and who have the right to control the destiny of Pakistan. It is our political inaction (lack of resistance in any form) that has made an alliance of uncritical thinkers/nonthinkers consisting of the army, bureaucracy, neem mullahs, and their supporters.

Hoodbhoy`s comment about the Pakistani universities is quite apt. Our universities are basically very large and poorly managed high schools (with some good departments) where the elites of our country do not like to send their children. It costs no less than $100,000 for a young adult to graduate from an average American university. How many Pervez Hoodbhoy`s can we employ with this amount? Now find out, how many young adults come to America annually and what do they do after they finish their degrees (an extremely arduous task indeed)?

Sincerely, Bilal Ahmad

Great articles, but appear to have deliberately left out the ``no first use`` declaration by india. The entire notion of survivabilty and and multi modal deployment proposal is a cosequence of this no first use policy. More importantly, the nuclear arsenal of china, its war with india, its military posturing towards taiwan appear to elude the authors attention, and the indian desire to counter this. It also appear to ignore historic ambition of india as a world power, a significant influence in the asian region, immortalised in the Ankhor wat temples of Cambodia, Barabadore temples of Java and the thriving indian communities in the east coast of africa. By once again restricting to a limited comparison with india, the author has once again followed only a minor detour from the beaten track. The pakistani nuclear policy, for that matter any policy need to be anchored in a version of pak history and guided by a vision of pakistan place under the sun. To give one idea, it should be the vision of an islamic country, may be a moderate islamic country in a technology leadership role in the islamic world, a major economic power, ready to further the cause of islam in any part of the world. This i believe can be achieved in total disregrd to india.

Re: Author

Great Article Sir, makes a lot of sense. We should rectify our folly by accepting CTBT, a mature and responsible ``nuclear state`` should be our image and not the other way around. And if at we need to compete with India, we should do that in other areas, like human resource development, R&D, Economy etc. I wonder what Maulana Jamil, Qadri, Fazul-ur-Rehman, Hussain has to say to that.

Great article Parvez. For the most part it appears that the proponents of Pakistan`s nuclear program live elsewhere or that they are unfortunately (yet not unfortunate in the least) alien to the ``other`` problems that exist in the country. What Pakistan needs at this point is to get rid of the current powers that be in totality and start afresh with new blood (hopefully not having been bitten by the virus of corruption and greed). There is plenty of sincerity, talent and drive in the population. Its the head of the snake that needs to be severed.

The blind manner in which the Indians mimic the West, and the blind manner in which we try to keep up with the Indians, is actually quite funny.

Hollywood -} Bollywood -} Lollywood.

Cold War -} Nuclear ``Strategic Doctrine`` India -} Nuclear ``Mountain Shaking`` Pakistan.

Nuclear India in today`s ``globalizing`` world makes as much sense as the unimaginative movies brought out by Bollywood.