Quote Originally Posted by omarali50 View Post
Blueblood, I have no direct knowledge of what happened in Kargil, just going by published reports. Most of them played up the "starving soldiers" bit, so that was my impression. After your post, I have adjusted my mental picture to "some posts ran out of food and water and low on ammo, while others had abundant rations".
Does that sound reasonable?
PA brass had to save face. Just as it was in 71, in 99 Pakistani masses were being fooled that they were winning the war and had IA on the run. You being a Pakistani know better about the conspiracy theories and their popularity in Pakistan.

Airstrike on June 17th,1999 on Muntho Dhalo effectively crippled the Pak logistics. But by then major battles were already over and most of the higher peaks were recaptured. So yes, it is very much possible that in the later operations Pak troops could have ran out of ration and ammo.

Btw, on our blog, I just asked the question, why have India-Pakistan wars been generally low in casualties until now (hopefully we wont have another one)?
Just one of those things that happened to be the case until now ("case by case", each war unique and each with specific reasons why slaughter was less intense)? or is there some deeper explanation? (after all, the British Indian army probably lost more men in the battle of Monte Cassino than India and Pakistan did in entire "wars")
http://www.brownpundits.com/2012/10/...#comment-18821
It is a somewhat complex issue in my opinion. So please bear with me. Comparing battles of any war to the battles of WW2 is not a fair comparison. For eg. German casualties in Stalingrad alone was ten times the strength of current German Army or the combined troops of Indo-Pak wars.

1)Strength

We are talking about the times (cold war) when both armies were small if not tiny compared to the rest of the major powers especially in case of India. In 1965, Indian army had 17 armoured regiments i.e. 765 tanks against 15 regiments i.e. 660 tanks of Pakistan. On the other hand, Israel had 800 and Arabs had 2400 tanks in 67 & 1700 and 3400 respectively in 73.
.You do the math.

FYI, current numbers are nearly 4000 for India and 1600 for Pakistan.

2)Geography

Both countries shared a very long border which is 3300 km Indo-Pak + 4100 km Indo-Bangladeshi border. Compare that to 250 km Egypt-Israel border. Where do you recon troop concentration would have been more.

3)Duration

None of the Indo-Pak wars were fought to death so to speak. With the exception of Sino-Vietnamese war, I don’t think short wars can be as bloody as even the larger battles of longer wars like Korean War for example.

In 65, UN intervened and both claimed victory. In 71, East Pakistan was lost in less than a fortnight and West Pakistan didn't challenge the Indian unilateral ceasefire.

Hope this clears some air.