archive: Fighting in the Heavens
Fighting in the Heavens
MICHAEL FATHERS Kargil
Not Known
July 12,1999
Title: Fighting in the Heavens
Author: MICHAEL FATHERS Kargil
Publicaton: TIME Magazine, ASIA Edition
Date: July 12,1999
Indian soldiers brave fierce fire as they push to reclaim territory
seized by Pakistani intruders
They line up by the score-truck after truck, tanker after
tanker--parked in a convoy of more than 100 vehicles, some 20 km from
Kargil on a dusty road beside the Drass River. These brightly
painted vehicles, owned by private hauling companies, display small
paper signs on their windshields: on military business. The civilians
behind the wheel have driven through the night without lights,
ferrying arms, ammunition, fuel and food to India's attacking army
in the forbidding mountains of Kashmir. The trucks have gathered just
after dawn under the protective heights of the steep slopes, waiting
for an all-clear signal before they roar off one by one or in broken
groups across a wider, open section of the river valley targeted by
the heavy guns of Pakistan.
The guns fire less frequently than before, now that India's
battle-hardened soldiers are slowly and with great difficulty
clearing the surrounding heights of Pakistani intruders and denying
them forward observation posts, military officials say. Behind the
convoy, over a stretch of 150 km from Kargil to the 3,400-m Zoji Pass
at the entrance to the Kashmir Valley, the Indian army is settling
in, acclimatizing hundreds of frontline soldiers to the high
altitude and adding more long-range guns to a bevy of artillery
batteries along the river bank or tucked under the shelter of
cliffs--all firing from barrels aimed almost vertically.
Away from the range of Pakistan's artillery, newly erected tents dot
the upland meadows. Commandos from India's "White Devils" ,lite
mountain and high- altitude warfare group train soldiers in rock
climbing. Commandeered civilian trucks and military transporters
rumble along the narrow road, spewing clouds of exhaust into the air.
The scene is one of unending activity. At last, after weeks of
uncertainty, miscalculation and indecision, India's military
juggernaut is beginning to roll.
In this conflict, everything is hyperbole. The setting is
spectacular; the fighting is difficult and brutal, taking place
mainly at night; access and resupply is hazardous, requiring porters
to carry heavy loads up near-vertical rock faces 5,000 m high and
exposed to deadly crossfire. On the heights where Pakistan has
penetrated deepest (about 6 km) into Indian-held territory-where some
of the heaviest fighting is now taking place--the locals call it the
second-coldest place in the world. No one seems to know where the
coldest is.
If you go by climate alone, India has until mid- October to win back
its mountain tops before snow blocks the Zoji Pass and cuts off road
access to the battle zone. "Well over 70% of the job is done, though
I will admit that the last 30% will be the hardest," says Colonel
Avatar Singh, a spokesman for the Indian Army in Kargil. At a base
camp near Drass, Colonel A.S. Chabbewal, operations chief for the
Indian forces at that part of the front, predicts it will take "a few
months more" to clear the area. "I'm quite hopeful it will be done by
October," he says, adding that the army could, if necessary, fight a
winter war.
The sanitized pronouncements of the military command cannot mask the
dirty, vicious reality of the fighting around Kargil. This is war. It
is not a "limited" conflict, as politicians on both sides of the
Line of Control insist. It will go on until one side wins or the
other gives way. Whether by design or miscommunication, both
countries appear to be understating casualties. Numbers issued in New
Delhi and Islamabad do not tally with reports from fighting units in
Kargil and Drass, where soldiers from both sides have told
journalists of bodies lying abandoned in inaccessible ravines and on
rocky outcrops. India's young officer corps, in particular, are being
decimated as they lead their units in World War I- style assaults
straight into enemy guns. In one skirmish last week, three young
officers were killed in an assault on two Pakistani-held peaks, which
left 26 Indians dead. No prisoners are taken. "The Pakistanis prefer
to fight it out rather than surrender," says Colonel Singh. Nor do
the Indians give any quarter, say soldiers and porters who have
returned from the battlefront. Most of the fighting is close-quarter
combat, with bayonets fixed and rifles fired straight from the hip.
The intruders are first softened up with round-the-clock Indian
artillery bombardment and air attacks. The units on the mountainside
inch their way forward at night, often covering as little as 100 m.
In the town of Kargil, once the halfway stop for tourists traveling
to the Buddhist uplands of Ladakh, immigrants from Nepal take a break
between their newly found work as porters for the Indian army. The
money is good, they say--$7 for an 18-kg load. Some days they make as
much as $40. It is they who usually bring back the Indian bodies or
bury the Pakistani dead in a shallow bed of stones. Most of the
30,000 inhabitants of Kargil have fled; houses are shuttered and only
a few shops are still open. Local doctors reported a rise in the
number of miscarriages among Kargil women soon after the town became
a target for Pakistani artillery.
>From the 4,000-m-high Hamboting Pass, northeast of Kargil, one can
see the snow-covered mountain chain that marks the Line of Control,
10 km away. Closer, near the village of Batalik, is a series of
ridges the Indians say Pakistani forces occupy. This was the site of
another round of heavy fighting last week. Above is a dazzling blue
sky; small clouds float by, seemingly an arm's length away. For long
periods, there is no sign of war. The landscape is empty, silent,
sublime. The calm is shattered when an Indian helicopter appears in
the distance, and a volley erupts from guns hidden behind a nearby
ridge. This sums up the war: at times it is almost unreal, then its
horrors are suddenly upon you.
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