VIBHAYA SINGH TAK
It would not be wrong to say that the War is never good. This causes a major loss on both sides, thousands of soldiers get martyred. India is a peace-loving country that does not believe in war. Indian army always safeguards the nation from alien forces, sacrifice for the Motherland, and make us proud.
Kargil Vijay Diwas is observed on 26 July to commemorate the victory of the Indian soldiers over the infiltrating Pakistani troops. This year is the 23rd anniversary of Kargil Vijay Diwas. Kargil War, also known as the Kargil conflict, was fought between May-July of 1999 in the Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir along the Line of Control (LoC) in which India got the victory. Therefore, the day is dedicated to the martyred soldiers of the Kargil war.
This is the day to pay homage to the Kargil martyrs and to remember the supreme sacrifice made by our brave soldiers, to uphold and safeguard the integrity of the nation.
Kargil war had been the one where a war was fought between two nuclear states Kargil war took place in the Kargil District of Jammu and Kashmir, along the Line of Control (LoC). Pakistan’s army sent its soldiers in the name of intruders in the winters to take over the area. Their main objective was to cut the connections between Ladakh and Kashmir and to create tensions at the Indian border. Let us tell you that the intruders at that time were on the top whereas the Indians were on the downhill and so it was easy for them to attack. Finally, the war broke out between the two sides. Pakistani soldiers crossed the Line of Control and entered the India-controlled area.
Operation Vijay
In 1998-1999 during the winters, the Pakistani Army secretly started training and sending troops near Kargil to dominate the region with the goal of claiming Siachen Glacier. Further, Pakistan Army exclaimed that they were not the Pakistani soldiers but the Mujahideen. Actually, Pakistan wanted international attention on the dispute so that pressure could be generated on the Indian army to withdraw its army from the Siachen Glacier region and force India to negotiate for the Kashmir dispute. Pakistani Armed Forces started sending its soldiers and paramilitary forces across the Line of Control into the territory on the Indian side and the infiltration was code-named ‘Operation Badr’. Its main objective was to break the link between Kashmir and Ladakh and to withdraw the Indian Army from the Siachen Glacier. At the same time, Pakistan believed that creating any kind of tension in this area would help in making the Kashmir issue an international issue, helping it to secure a speedy resolution. Because of the extreme winter weather in Kashmir, it was common practice for the Indian and Pakistan Army to abandon forward posts and reoccupy them in the spring. That particular spring, the Pakistan Army started reoccupying the forward posts well before the scheduled time. In a preliminary step in their bid to capture Kashmir, they reoccupied not only their own posts, but also 132 posts that belonged to India.
On 3rd May 1999 Pakistan started this war when it had infiltrated into the high altitudes in the rocky mountainous region of Kargil with around 5000 soldiers and captured it. When the Indian Government got the information about it ‘Operation Vijay’ was launched by the Indian army to throw back the intruders who had treacherously occupied Indian Territory. However, because of the nature of the terrain, division and corps operations could not be mounted; the scale of most fighting was at the regimental or battalion level. In effect, two divisions of the Indian Army, numbering 20,000, along with several thousand from the Paramilitary forces of India and the air force were deployed in the conflict zone. The Indian Army moved into the region in full force. The intruders were found to be well entrenched and while artillery attacks had produced results in certain areas, more remote ones needed the help of the air force. To avoid the escalation, the Government of India cleared only limited use of Air Power on May 25, more than three weeks after first reports, with the instructions that IAF fighter jets will remain within Indian Territory to launch attack on intruder’s position within Indian territory and IAF was not permitted to cross the Line of Control under any circumstance.
A large number of rockets and bombs were used in this war. About two lakh fifty thousand shells, bombs, and rockets were fired. Approximately 5,000 artillery shells, mortar bombs, and rockets were fired daily from 300 guns, mortars, and MBRLs while 9,000 shells were fired the day Tiger Hill was regained. It is said that this was the only war after World War II in which such a large number of bombardments were carried out on the enemy army. Finally, India won a determined victory.
527 Indian soldiers sacrificed their lives by the end of the Kargil War. They won back each post with blood, grit and raw courage. The peaks, ridges, cliffs and valleys bearing witness to what brave young Indian soldiers accomplished in that summer of 1999.
Operation Safed Sagar
Operation Safed Sagar (Operation White Ocean) was the code name assigned to the Indian Air Force’s role in acting jointly with the Indian Army during the 1999 Kargil war that was aimed at flushing out regular and irregular troops of the Pakistani Army from vacated Indian Positions in the Kargil sector along the Line of Control. It was the first large scale use of Airpower in the Jammu and Kashmir region since the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. The terrain and environment was the biggest challenge for IAF. No aircraft has yet been designed to operate in a Kargil-like environment. Air Force’s operation used air power at the height of 32,000 feet for the first time. The IAF used ground attack aircrafts; MiG-2Is, MiG-23s, MiG-27s, Jaguars, and the Mirage-2000. Mainly, for air interception with a secondary role of ground attack, MiG-21 was built. To attack the targets on the ground, MiG-23s and MiG-27s were optimised. Several targets of Pakistan were attacked. From identifying the Pakistani troops and Mujahideens to interdiction, all the actions were performed well by the pilots and engineers despite just one week of training.
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