Dragonfire (19 page)

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.

The terrain in Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir was among the most hostile in the world. The main airbase at Leh was at 3,200 metres. Others in the area were equally treacherous. Chushul was at
4,400 metres and Thoise at 3,000. Arrangements had been made to fly in the AN-32 and IL-76 transport aircraft as the only means of keeping these remote bases resupplied, even at night.

Ladakh itself was snowbound for up to nine months of the year and the AN-32 made routine drops to the men defending the Siachen glacier. Helicopters were the only way to get soldiers in and
out.

India planned to take control of sections of the L-shaped piece of territory, 700 kilometres long, which stretched west and south from the Karakoram and Ladakh ranges close to the border with
China. Dras and Kargil would be reclaimed, and the Indian flag, troops, supply bases and landing strips would be set up at points all the way to the Pakistani town of Muzafarabad, then further
south, passing within eighty kilometres of Islamabad to where the LoC began fifty-five kilometres west of Jammu.

It was one of the most audacious airborne campaigns in military history. The attacking forces divided the LoC into five sectors, each identified by a colour. Red sector covered the area from the
Chinese border near Gapsham in Indian territory taking in a triangle stretching up to Skardu and down to the Marol inside Pakistani territory, the next town north of Kargil along the Suru River.
Yellow sector covered a much smaller, but more heavily fortified area, taking in Kargil and Dras and aiming to capture territory around the villages of Kakshar, Matiyal, Gultari and Karbos. Blue
sector ran along a 160-kilometre stretch from Dras to Tithwal close to Muzafarabad. Orange sector covered the more politically sensitive area from Tithwal to Hajira directly east of Islamabad.
White sector took in the final southerly stretch to the beginning of the LoC near Jammu.

To secure ground beyond the whole of the LoC would be too bold. The initial plan was to cordon off the area behind Kargil and Dras between Minimarg and Suru/Indus. A safe corridor was to be
created in the Neelam Valley and the Haji Pir pass. Once that had been done, the third objective was territory west of Poonch up to Muzafarabad. Once heliborne troops had taken areas, they would be
reinforced with a parachute drop from fixed-wing aircraft.

The first assaults were limited to the Yellow and Blue sectors, where most of the fighting had taken place in the battles over Kashmir and where Indians felt most vulnerable. An assault on the
Red sector around the Siachen Glacier region of Ladakh would be pointless until the summer, and by then the dispute should be over. The southerly assault on the Orange and White sectors would be
limited to artillery barrages. Unni Khrishnan was deterred from striking any harder there for fear that Pakistan would resort to threatening a nuclear strike. He hoped that there would be a
ceasefire within forty-eight hours and that a deal could be reached on India’s terms.

The helicopters flew in formations of fifty, keeping to 135 k.p.h., contour flying along the valleys. With each formation was an Mi-26 workhorse, some carrying seventy combat-equipped troops,
others up to twenty tonnes of ammunition, weapons, supplies and vehicles. Flanked out from the Mi-26s were the smaller Mi-17 medium transport helicopters. For this first sortie they were mainly
carrying troops, with twenty-four in each aircraft. The more versatile assault and anti-armour Mi-25 kept to the outside of the formation, each with an eight-man Special Forces squad, which was to
identify and neutralize those Pakistani positions which had survived the airstrikes and shelling.

Flying at 1,000 feet above the formations were four-man Alouette Cheetahs, two in each sector, used for command and control. They also carried high-ranking officers who would command the sectors
once they were secured. Others flew with medical crew to evacuate the critically wounded.

Three formations flew low and slow towards Yellow sector, with 1,022 men deployed in the first wave. On dropping them the helicopters returned to bring in another thousand within the hour. The
larger helicopters carried platoons of Indian Muslim soldiers, so that there would be one with each landing.

Pakistani resistance was scattered, as if after the overnight battering every man had been left to his own initiative to take out an aircraft. High above, the Indian fighter planes were engaging
the few Pakistani pilots who had managed to scramble their warplanes into the air. The Yellow sector helicopter pilots began calling in hits within seconds of crossing the LoC. They were mainly
from small-arms and machine-gun fire, but it became clear that this would not be a casualty-free operation.

‘Fuel line severed,’ the pilot of a Mi-25 managed to report before power was lost. He skilfully brought it down in one piece, but straight into the fire of a Pakistani bunker. While
the pilot was wrestling with the controls on the way down, the crew fired a Scorpion anti-tank missile blindly, and raked the area with a four-barrel 12.7mm rotary gun, causing mayhem on the
ground. The commandos were out of the helicopter when it was still six feet off the ground, storming the bunker. The corporal in charge just managed to raise the Indian flag before they were pinned
down and killed against overwhelming odds.

‘Pilot killed,’ said another report from a Mi-17.

‘Secure Ground Yellow, you are off course,’ said the second in command to the leader of a formation, which was trying to get attention with a frantic hand signal that the
aircraft’s radio had been knocked out. The Alouette, carrying the sector battalion colonel, took over as command aircraft.

As they got closer to the designated landing zones, the formation bunched up. From the ground, it might have looked like precision flying, but in the air it was like a sudden traffic jam, with
everyone bobbing around at different altitudes and pilots pulling back and going forward to avoid collisions. The pilots had to have nerves of ice to get through the landing. One wrong position,
one touch of the rotor blades and a dozen aircraft could go down. Yet fear of making a mistake affected judgement, with less experienced pilots overcorrecting until their helicopter got out of
control. The orders of the first wave were to avoid population centres, set up secure positions and call in airstrikes and artillery to clear the ground for the next wave. The first landings were
to go no further than Kaksar and the Shingo River.

But on the ground, resistance was building, and it would be impossible to reach some of the landing zones (LZ) without inflicting an enormous number of civilian casualties. The orders, though,
were clear. If civilians stayed around, they should be treated as sympathizers and participants in the conflict.

For many of the pilots, their assailants from the ground were invisible. Ten aircraft came in at only twenty knots under concentrated fire on the northern side of the Shingo and Dras rivers
where the Pakistanis had an artillery command and control centre. All that the Indian troops could see were villagers looking up, shielding their eyes from the sun, with the enemy among them firing
up with heavy-calibre machine guns. The crews called in hits every other second. The ships were too high for the soldiers to jump and if they did they would be cut down in a withering field of
fire. Then a gunner from a Mi-25 opened up on the villagers with the 12.7mm. Other soldiers from the same craft fired into the crowd and lobbed down grenades, killing women, children, animals and
the enemy – any living thing which moved against them. Ten aircraft landed. Ten took off again. The men on the ground secured one of the most strategic areas in Yellow Sector.

Further along, directly north of Dras, the pilots had to deal with LZs of up to 4,500 metres. Buildings seemed to grip hold of mountainsides of icy wastelands. It was one of the cruellest places
to fight a war, but also one of the most strategic. In the second formation of fifty aircraft, fifteen were damaged and ten were shot down while they foundered around the mountains, dropping off
troops. Most of the pilots had to carry out pinnacle landings, which they described as like approaching a raft at sea in a storm. Some of the hilltops soared straight up 300 metres above the
valleys and the pilots had to keep the landing spot below the horizon. If they climbed above, they were too low and became buffeted by winds.

The pilot of a Mi-26, loaded with five tonnes of equipment and twenty men, made that mistake. His aircraft became impossible to control and it smashed into the mountain, mushing up like a
squashed paper cup. It rolled down the slope, spewing out men and equipment all the way down until it exploded into a ball of fire. Some of the areas were so unstable that the skids would slip on
the ice and get caught somewhere, so the pilots couldn’t take off. They had to get lift by bringing the nose up first, making sure both skids were free. If one got stuck the aircraft would
flip over and crash.

On Pakistan territory across the LoC from the town of Minimarg, eight helicopters came into land amid extraordinary scenes of welcome, as if they were a liberating force. Four Mi-25s landed
first and the assault squads set up positions around the rest of the LZ, with the villagers backing away from them, but staying. Then the Mi-26 came down and, as soon as the wheels touched the
ground, the men on board four Mi-17s jumped out from a hover, secured the area and began unloading equipment. That was when the Pakistanis opened up. A handheld anti-tank missile exploded against
the cockpit of the Mi-26. Machine-gun fire, criss-crossing the LZ, cut down a swathe of men, scrambling to get weapons to defend themselves. Rocket-propelled grenades destroyed two helicopters
before the assault units were able to lay down fire.

The battle around Minimarg lasted for hours with the bodies of children lying wounded and dying in between the two sides. Every helicopter was wrecked and it wasn’t until the third wave of
the Yellow sector assault arrived that India could lay claim to the area.

Prime Minister’s Office, South Block, New Delhi

Local time: 0930 Saturday 5 May 2007
GMT: 0400 Saturday 5 May 2007

‘Tell General Hamid
Khan and President Tao that I want to speak to them personally and set a time. Chandraji, see the Americans informally and tell them
what’s going on. We will handle this bilaterally and regionally. We will not internationalize it. If they want to send special envoys, we will accept them with courtesy, but not as
negotiators. If the democratic world wants its values to survive in Asia, they will have to help us anyway.’

Joint Staff Headquarters, Pakistan

Local time: 0915 Saturday 5 May 2007
GMT: 0415 Saturday 5 May 2007

‘Prime Minister Dixit
is on the hotline, sir,’ said Masood as Hamid Khan, alone in his office, was reading the latest military reports from Kashmir.

‘Have all our aircraft left Kashmir?’ asked Khan, reaching for the telephone.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘How many have we lost?’

‘Eighteen on the ground. Ten F-16s and eight F-7s, all from the attack on Skardu. We lost two F-16s in dogfights. The enemy lost one aircraft, a Mirage 2000.’

‘Cold comfort, Captain. It is my fault for not anticipating their swift response.’

Khan picked up the phone. ‘Prime Minister, General Hamid Khan here.’

‘General, I will not speak unclearly, nor will I be diplomatic,’ said Hari Dixit as soon as Khan came on the line. ‘India holds you responsible for aiding and abetting the
Chinese attack on Dharamsala, for murdering the former Indian Chief of Army Staff and the Home Minister, and for planning a terrorist campaign throughout India in which many lives were
lost.’

‘Prime Minister, you are talking rubbish,’ interrupted Khan.

‘Shut up, General,’ snapped Dixit. ‘India will continue to form a fifteen-kilometre buffer zone across the LoC. We will attack any military installation, anywhere in Pakistan
in order to achieve our objectives. Your attempts to draw Europe, the United States and China into this dispute will fail. You are an unelected military leader with a history of aiding
insurgencies. You are not a man of the modern world.’

‘You have twenty-four hours to withdraw your forces from Pakistani territory, Prime Minister,’ said Khan. ‘And twelve to stop all hostilities.’