Re: Pakistan lost 357 soldiers in Kargil: Musharraf Says
Good arguments saleem
I agree with the casuality count of Gen Musharraf, it was a discreete operation involving no more than 2000 soldiers. How can we have thousands of casualities out of 2000 people. Sharif is simply lying.
I have read the book and got the reason why Gen Musharraf was at the airport as i assumed that as he came to the tarmac to see him off, he must have been the one who sent Sharif to USA.
Also the Indians i met have said that most of the time at the completion of attack, the posts had already been vacated by Pakistani Troops. so it is clear that there was some withdrawal and definitely some posts were captured by Indians with physical attack as well.
Pakistani's who participated in the operation also mention the severe difficulties in shortage of rations and ammunitions in the later part of the battle. Many had withdrawn as they had simply finished with every thing and in few cases went on to fight for days consecutively without food.
According to Indians, initially the army went on back foot as it was their fault that they did not conduct patrolling in winters and on faulty intelligence they hurriedly sent brigades to dislodge the guerillas. Sever casualities happened in the start e.g. in one night Indian 17 Punjab suffered 246 casualities. There was severe backlash in Army officers on this needless butchery. one man on the top of mountain can literally stop a full battalion with one machine gun. It is simple knowledge, so no question about bravery or cowardice.
Lately after having severe casualities, Indian Army learned quickly and than used massive artillery and sair bombardment. Here was the first tactical mistake commited by Pakistanis. As we did not give any fire cover to our troops, Indians lined up their Bofors FH-77B guns and pounded the posts with impunity. Indian Army itself admits that had their been retalitaory fire from Pakista, they could never had done so and could never have got the posts back. This severe artillery punsihment cut all the supply routes and fighting on the tops got very tough.
How and when withdrawal happened, was it due to compulsion on ground or compulsion by government, is something debatable. so far i assumed that it was due to compulsion on ground. however from the excerpts you have quoted above it seems that it was both ways. Army also readily agreed to withdraw as it was having problems. One Pakistani officer told me that there was severe verbal clashes between the post commanders and their battalion commanders as our commanders refused to call the troops back, last man last bullet type of mentality and also refused to provide fire cover as demanded by them saying that operation needs to be kept low profile.
It is true that enroute to withdraw, there must have been severe casualities as the withdraw was not with India and they never gave any safe passage to returning troops. Probably this is the reason Indians did not find much bodies. A Pakistani officer told me that in front of tiger hills, Indians had lined up their bofors FH-77B guns in open, practically tyre with tyre, one salvo of counterbombardment from Pakistan would have destroyed or put out of action, at least half of them. As Indians knew that Pakistan is disowning its soldiers and cannot reply they did the deployment like this.
So though Nawaz Sharif could not hold on, Gen Musharraf is also repsonsible for this illmanaged operation. He should have gone alongwith Nawaz Sharif. However by claiming thousands dead, Nawaz is trying to score ploitical mileage on shoulders of pakistan Army.