During
2001–02 India–Pakistan standoff
Did The total Indian casualties were 789–1,874 ? Really
Total 789 kia rest injured.
This also includes Arty duals ,firing at LOC and even cross border raids.
Pakis never publish their dead during this period in shame.
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Indian Arty strike during the same period.
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War and peace on Gurkha Post
By Praveen Swami
An Indian Army Cheetah helicopter takes off from Gurkha Post in the Dras Sector. Helicopters bring in mail and food to the soldiers. — Photo: Praveen Swami
GURKHA POST, MARCH 9. Laxmi Kant Sontake makes sure the cook-house lights its stoves well before breakfast time: up here, boiling a bucket of water takes two and a half hours. Through the day, he shovels snow and does sentry duty. When he finally gets a break, Mr. Sontake plays cards - or watches a movie.
When the soldiers on Gurkha Post tired of the Hindi movies available to them, they gathered around their video compact disc player to watch the only English one
: The Full Monty. The gentle tale of working-class British men surviving the odds, as translated live by Captain Arvind Kondal, has been this year's surprise hit. No one seems to have watched the recent welter of Kargil war films. For the jawans on Gurkha Post, war is bitter reality, not evening entertainment.
A small cement plaque on Gurkha Post reminds the officers and men just why they are there. Put up by the 18 Grenadiers Regiment, the unit that led the final assault on the 5,020-metre-high Tiger Hill during the Kargil war, the plaque commemorates the construction of the first rock Sangar, or bunker, on Gurkha Post. Ever since that bunker was built, just after the Kargil war, both the number of soldiers and the infrastructure to support them have grown substantially.
Today, over-snow vehicles, 200 horse power tracked trucks that were first tested by the Indian Army in the Antarctic, keep a road open all the way from Dras to the Sando Base Camp right through winter. Imported jackets and snow shoes let soldiers stay warm at altitudes where helicopter pilots keep their engines running at full power and never turn off the rotor blades. Perhaps most important of all, there is a ring of electronic motion sensors: no one has forgotten that the Pakistani scouts who led the Kargil war came through in the winter snow.
It might all seem like a terrible waste of men and money, but the forward deployment on the Line of Control (LoC) does serve a military purpose. Consider, for example, the case of Point 5353, named for its height in metres above sea level, from the summit of which the LoC takes a gentle turn in the southeastern direction. In the wake of the Kargil war, a series of local tactical errors on India's part allowed Pakistan to occupy the southern face of Point 5353, thus providing the enemy forces a clear view of Sando Top, an important post.
When Operation Parakram began a little over three years ago, both the Indian Army and the Pakistan Army began trading ferocious artillery fire up and down the LoC. In the high mountains, sudden winds and unpredictable atmospheric conditions ensure that shells rarely land where gunners intend them to. But, with a direct line of observation available to them, the Pakistani forces on Point 5353 should have been able to pass on corrections that would have enabled their artillery to obliterate Sando Top.
If, that is, the Pakistani troops on Point 5353 had been given the chance. Indian soldiers on three posts, namely Point 5165, Point 5240 and Point 5100, guided their superior 155-millimetre Bofors howitzers with devastating accuracy. Pakistani troops on Point 5353 were first hit with smoke-filled mortar shells, to flush them out of their bunkers, and then with air-burst artillery, which showered down shards of metal at great speed. Well over 40 Pakistanis are believed to have died on Point 5353. Pakistan could not reinforce the troops since the Indian soldiers on Point 5165 and Point 5240 were in a position to hit their supply lines.
According to
National Geographic (May 2003), La Rinconada, a village in Peru situated at 5,099 m is the highest permanent human habitation. The magazine records that above that altitude, "there are no permanent settlements" and "civilisation stops." But India has many posts much higher than that in the Siachen glacier, and its troops have fought at upwards of 7,000 m. In Siachen, however, the all-volunteer troops stay for just three months. No one has a choice about serving in Dras. Those who are assigned there will spend two years inhabiting posts higher than La Rinconada — until India and Pakistan learn to live in peace.
