Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 11

Indian Politics & Policy
evict the invaders.” 19 IAF ground-attack
aircraft began to pound the intruders’
positions on May 26. In the ensuing few
days, the Indian forces lost two aircraft
and a helicopter. 20 In the longer term,
IAF operations had devastating effects
on the Pakistanis’ morale, as fighter aircraft
pummeled their vulnerable supply
lines. 21 The possibility of military operations
across the LOC was a constant
subject of debate within the CCS, but
Indian forces were ordered to restrict
their operations to the Indian side of
the line. 22
Indian leaders also tasked their
armed forces to prepare for war all along
the Indo-Pakistani border. In late May,
U.S. satellites detected these preparations.
According to one account, “elements
of the Indian army’s main offensive
‘strike force’ were loading tanks,
artillery, and other heavy equipment
onto flatbed rail cars.” In addition, U.S.
officials said later, “armored units intended
for offensive use were leaving
their garrisons in Rajasthan ... and preparing
to move.” 23 As one analyst puts
it: “The key offensive formations intended
for the international border, the
three ‘strike corps,’ were ‘untouched’ by
Kargil deployments and thus available
if the political decision had been made
to deploy them.” 24 A senior US official
recounts that “we could all too easily
imagine ... a deadly descent into full
scale conflict all along the border with a
danger of nuclear cataclysm.” 25
Nuclear-tinged statements by Pakistani
leaders fed into these concerns.
On May 30, four days after the IAF began
attacking Pakistani positions, Foreign
Secretary Shamshad Ahmad said
that Pakistan would “not hesitate to use
any weapon in our arsenal to defend our
territorial integrity.” 26 One source speculates
that this signaling was intended
to caution India “against any further
escalation, vertical or horizontal, in its
conventional military response along
the international border.” 27 Indeed, according
to then-Indian Foreign Minister
Jaswant Singh, New Delhi perceived
at one point that Pakistan was “operationalizing
its nuclear missiles.” 28 India’s
army chief during the conflict, V.P. Malik,
recollects that, in turn, “we considered
it prudent to take some protective
measures ... some of our missile assets
were dispersed and relocated.” 29 Although
media reports suggested “both
sides moved ballistic missiles and possibly
initiated nuclear weapons readiness
measures during the crisis,” the exact
nature of any such activities remains
unclear to this day. 30
As of mid-June, India’s armed
forces continued to have strict orders
not to cross the LOC. 31 The IAF was
carrying out some 40 sorties daily, 32 in
an attempt to rout the Pakistani invaders—or
at least to soften up their positions
so that Indian ground forces could
overwhelm them. In mid-June, the IAF
and the Indian Navy were put on alert,
with the Eastern Fleet reinforcing the
Western Fleet. 33 The navy’s mission in
the Arabian Sea was to contain Pakistan’s
naval assets in the event of conflict
escalation. On June 18, Malik ordered
his forces to be “prepared for
escalation—sudden or gradual—along
the LoC or the international border and
be prepared to go to (declared) war at
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