The Kargil War (new title, all aspects)

[Madhu]

From an Indian POV:

By all accounts, Wangchuk is an extraordinary soldier, a contradiction even. "We could never imagine he could even hurt a fly," recalls Pintoo Norbu, hotel owner in Leh who knows him. The son of a paramilitary soldier, Wangchuk is a deeply religious Buddhist -- before going to battle he and some of his men went to the Dalai Lama, who was visiting Leh, to seek his blessings -- soft spoken and scrupulously polite. But that gentleman's exterior hides the tough interior of an officer the army is proud to showcase.

http://ikashmir.net/kargilheroes/wangchuk.html

Lots of links come up if you search "Ladakh Scouts" and "Kargil" but I don't have enough knowledge of the subject to help me sort out the various links....

[Madhu]

Omar,

As someone interested in the military history of the region, have you read any of Rakesh Ankit's work (Indian Rhodes scholar)?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/45084187/1948-Jammu-Kashmir

Just curious if anyone knows more about the subject?

PS: On your earlier question on the low casualities, I think it's interesting the "limitedness" of the various Indian/Pakistan conflicts. What I mean is that even before the conflict going "nuclear", so to speak, there were various reasons that conflicts were limited and some due to the larger context - two poorer countries within the larger context of the Cold War and the late stages of the British withdrawal from the subcontinent.

I dunno what I'm trying to say, I mean, I think I'm intuiting something but I can't articulate it exactly.

PPS: I think what I am intuiting--if that is even a word--is that the Western presence, like a particle/wave duality, is both stabilizing and destabilizing at the same time. So, the presence is essentially destabilizing because "rock-paper-scissors-like", destabilizing wins out. Yeah, once again, I don't know what I am trying to say. So, maybe the limitedness is something else yet again that I can't put my finger on....