Kargil By Gen. V P Malik

I have lately been reading a interesting book "Kargil" written by Gen V. P Malik. This book primarily focuses on the series of events that lead to the Kargil War between India and Pakistan and beyond.

The book is a well written piece of litterature, which for the first time provides a insiders view to the Indian side of the war. It also allows us a small peak view to the Military Doctrian with in Indian Armed forces.

Two very significant things that emerge from the book are the complete isolation of the military from the process of formulation and execution of the Strategic Foreign Policy and the difference of opinion amongts the military leadership on the purpose and nature of deployment/use of each of the armed forces.

To elaborate the points meentioned above:

  1. One of the sour points that Gen Malik keeps mentioning is the lack of information on the "Track 2" diplomacy gathering pace between India and Pakistan in the buildup to the "Kargil War". The point clearly beings out the extent to which, the Indian Defense Forces are kept out of the Strategic Policy making processes.
  2. It also brought out the aparent inability on part of India to leaverage a combination of Economic, Political, and Defense posturing to attain its Foreign Policy objectives.
    In the years to come if India was to become a regional power then the capablity to leaverage its Economic, Political and Military capablities will become paramount. Only a coordinated and combine use of these three tools will allow us to achieve successfully the objecitves of our foreign poilcy.
  3. The second point that emerges from the book is the difference in opinion between Army and the Air Force on the use of the Indian Air Force during the course of the "Kargil War". This again brings us back to the different views that are held by the Doctrine commands of the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force. While the Indian Air Force (IAF) views its futuristic role as a means of strategic force projection by India. The Army Doctrine however continues to view the IAF as a tactical force subservient to the Army and essentially playing the role of Air Based Artillery. This difference in the doctrine becomes clearly evident when the original request for Air Support forwarded by the VCoAS was turned down by the Air Chief ACM Tipnis. The final and formal request for the same had to be finally personally conveyed by the CoAS and ratified by the NSC before the AirForce deployed it Combat Elements.
I guess the rest of the book is more about the cronology of events as they occured and allows for rapid reading.

The book is otherwise good for a single read. I think it would have been interesting if Gen Malik would have also used the book to share his thoughts on the use of Defense Forces as a means of Foreign Policy. But I guess that would and may be the topic of another book authored by him.
Author : Pushkar Bhat
Date : 20th May 2006

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