‘And let international sanctions do the rest of our fighting for us,’ said Dixit. ‘Is that what you’re saying? Khrishnanji, what do you think?’
‘I am not as convinced as the Foreign Minister, Prime Minister,’ said Unni Khrishnan. ‘If China launches a cross-border attack, we will have to respond. Already they have reinforced the border along the Thag La Ridge just west of Bhutan, which is where they made their first advances in the 1962 war. We now know they have sent Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines to the Andaman Sea. Two surfaced as they went through the shallow waters of the Malacca Straits and made themselves known to the satellite cameras.’
Dixit put his head in his hands. ‘What in Heaven’s name are they trying to achieve?’ he said.
‘They think they can threaten us and win, sir,’ said Khrishnan.
Mumbai/Bombay, Maharastra, southern India
Within an hour of the Kargil/Dras sector falling, explosions tore through cities all over India. The first was in Mumbai, the capital of Maharastra, where the state government was fervently Hindu nationalist. A massive car bomb went off on Madame Cama Road, outside the state government offices, near Horniman Circle on the edge of the main modern downtown business district. A security guard on duty was killed.
A second car bomb exploded in Delhi’s Connaught Place and over the next two hours there were bomb attacks in thirteen Indian states. The only significant city to escape was Calcutta, the capital of West Bengal, for reasons which only became apparent much later.
The most concentrated violence was in the north-east. Two car bombs exploded in the capital of Arunachal Pradesh, Itanagar; one outside the town hall and the other close to the police station. Bomdi La, the southern town in the Kameng Division near Bhutan, was attacked by three timer bombs and grenades were thrown in the western town of Tawang, the closest major centre to the Bhutanese border.
In neighbouring Assam, guerrillas claiming to be from the once-defunct United Liberation Front of Assam fought running gun battles with police and troops in Dispur, the state capital, and in the second city, Narogong. When the fighting was finished, twenty-nine Indian security personnel were dead, together with more than fifty guerrillas.
Strategically, the most important target was the main trunk road heading north towards Sikkim from West Bengal, cutting across the smallest corridor of Indian territory. It was less than thirty kilometres across at its narrowest. Wedged between Nepal to the west and Bangladesh to the east, this was where the geographical cohesion of India was at its most vulnerable. It was known as the Siliguri corridor or Chicken’s Neck. The road, which linked Siliguri and Guwahati, was blown in three places and blocked with booby-trapped empty fuel trucks. Two hundred mujahedin fighters held the position, while Indian infantry and fighter planes tried to dislodge them. It was later discovered that the guerrillas had come over the border from Bangladesh, where they had been trained for the operation by Pakistani and Chinese specialists. Every man would die, but for a short time, Pakistan’s dream and India’s nightmare had come true. The seven states of the north-east were cut off from the rest of India.
Prime Minister’s Office, South Block, New Delhi, India
‘Let me get this clear, Prime Minister,’ said Unni Khrishnan, the Chief of Army Staff. ‘You believe that China and Pakistan have an agreement to sever the north-east militarily, and at the same time move in on Kashmir. But I am convinced China does not want war.’
‘No, perhaps it doesn’t. But it will go as far as it can by pushing it to the edge.’ Dixit put on his spectacles and looked down. ‘I think the answer might lie in this memo I have in front of me. It was written to Pakistani Field Marshal Ayub Khan in 1966 by Zulfi Bhutto, who was then Foreign Minister. We should note the circumstances. Pakistan had just been defeated by us in the 1965 war. Bhutto considered the terms of the truce unacceptable and was quoted as saying that Pakistan needed complete victory over India. The only alternative would be Pakistan’s destruction as a self-respecting nation. He described the Tashkent Agreement which ended the hostilities as a national humiliation and diplomatic betrayal. Then he outlined his plan, and I am convinced that Hamid Khan has borrowed Bhutto’s strategy to use for his own foreign policy. Remember, of course, that Bangladesh was still East Pakistan.
‘“The defence of East Pakistan would need to be closely coordinated with Chinese actions both in the north-east of India and also possibly in the regions of Sikkim and Nepal. It would be necessary to provide the Chinese with a link-up with our forces in that sector. I envisage a lightning thrust across the narrow Indian territory that separates Pakistan” — or Bangladesh as it is now — “from Nepal.”’
Dixit looked up. ‘Bhutto was referring to the Chicken’s Neck, exactly the same area which the terrorists held this morning. “From our point of view, this would be highly desirable,” he wrote. “It would be to the advantage of Nepal to secure its freedom from isolation by India. It would solve the problem of Sikkim and Tibet.” ’
‘It would also deal with China’s claim to Arunachal Pradesh,’ said Prabhu Purie, ‘and bring Bhutan and Nepal into the Chinese sphere of influence.’
‘In short, gentlemen,’ Dixit went on, ‘that is the price the Chinese dictatorship is asking us to pay for peace. We give Kashmir to Pakistan. Expel the Dalai Lama and much of the Tibetan community from India. Abandon our security obligations to Bhutan and Nepal and renegotiate our borders with a view to handing over Arunachal Pradesh and giving independence back to Sikkim. And it will go like that, chiselling away at us to make us the weaker power in Asia.’ He paused, lost in his own thoughts for a moment, then summed up: ‘It is not the road democratic India would seek to go down.’
Line of Control, Kashmir
Unni Khrishnan, Chief of Army Staff, and Ranjit Mansingh, Chief of Air Staff, monitored the operation from the underground command and control centre at the Ambala airbase just south of Chandigarh. Four hundred aircraft were used, including the ageing fighter and ground-attack MiG-21, the MiG-27 tactical strike fighter, the Mirage 2000–5 air-defence and multi-role fighter and the formidable SU-30. They flew from Ambala, from Srinagar in Kashmir itself, Jodhpur in Rajasthan, Hindon near Delhi and Agra, more famous for the Taj Mahal than for waging war.
The first strikes hit Pakistan’s Divisional Headquarters in Skardu, taking out air defences, radar and aircraft. The next waves concentrated on the artillery positions sixteen kilometres beyond the LoC, destroying the big guns which had laid siege to towns like Kargil and Dras over the years. Then the Indians laid down a withering array of firepower on Pakistani army bunkers, transport and fuel depots. When the airstrikes ended, India’s Bofors 155mm guns opened up to continue the pounding.
As the weather cleared at mid-morning under a bright blue Himalayan sky, the helicopters took off, in one of the most impressive sights of modern military warfare: the sky filled with rotary aircraft, in places blackening the sky like flocks of migrating birds. The plan for such an assault had been drawn up and reworked dozens of times since the first war with Pakistan in 1947. But never before had it been taken off the shelves, dusted down and implemented. At the centre of Operation Secure Ground were the Himalayan Eagles, the expert mountain squadron which had pioneered techniques in fixed- and rotary-wing high-altitude mountain flying. The squadron’s emblem depicted the snowcapped Himalayas over which its pilots flew every day of the year.