Rudyard Kipling
On a very early spring night in 2021, the specially trained Chinese mountain soldiers, wearing the traditional dress of a not too distant Pakistani Pushtun tribe of the Northwestern Frontier Province, spread out and moved quietly on the outskirts of a small Hindu village at the foot of the Panjal Range. Wherever they found peach, plum or apricot trees, they girdled it with saws so that it would die. While one squad, armed with submachine guns and grenades, formed a perimeter around one side of the village to cover their retreat, another stealthily moved into the village. Underneath their waistcoats, they carried Beretta semi-automatic nine-millimeter handguns with suppressors screwed on to the end of the extended barrels. It was 02:00 local time, and no villagers were awake. A few dogs barked but were quickly silenced by bullets in their heads from suppressor equipped pistols. As they came upon the cattle scattered throughout the village, they shot them in the head as well. One bullet was sufficient. They had practiced shooting cattle at the abattoir and had become thoroughly familiar with the anatomy of the bovine head. There, the heads were sectioned on a band saw after each cow was killed so that they would know the path of the bullet they fired, and how effective was their bullet placement.
Previous visits to this village by Chinese agents identified the most attractive young woman residing there. After they completed their mission of slaughtering cattle, they entered her house. The woman was held down with her mouth taped shut with duct tape and made to watch as her husband was beaten. Keeping their faces covered so that their race could not be determined, and speaking only Pashto, they beat her husband into semi-consciousness. Then his hands were tied behind his back and his feet at the ankles. His wife was then tied spread eagle to the bed. Over the next hour, the dozen men gang raped her and then beat her and left her tied and gagged so that she could not immediately raise an alarm. At dawn, the village discovered over fifty cattle slaughtered and left to rot in their yards, pens and streets. Several hours later, her husband managed to free himself and crawl through the door to seek medical help for his wife and himself. He could only describe the attackers by their waistcoats, turbans and language. Some authorities prefer the spelling and pronunciation of Pakhtun and Pakhtunwali to that of Pushtan or Pushtun.
Three weeks later, an old, heavily laden donkey was led alongside a mosque in Jabori. The mullah was calling to the faithful for evening prayers. The man tending the donkey poured a little grain on the ground along with a few pieces of vegetables, hobbled the donkey, and went around to the front of the mosque to join the others in prayer. Only, he didn’t enter the mosque, but instead blended to the far side of the entering throng, then turned abruptly and walked away. One alley away, a man on horseback with a British Enfield .303 rifle slung over his shoulder held the reins of a second horse. The donkey man mounted it, and together they slowly rode for another three blocks. Reaching down into a saddle bag, the horseman removed a remote-controlled radio device. He flipped a switch, pointed the antenna at the mosque, and pushed a button. Seventy-five pounds of Simtex loaded on the donkey exploded. The wall of the mosque collapsed. The rider replaced the radio back in the saddle bag, and the two riders casually trotted their horses away.
Over forty Muslims were killed in the blast; another hundred were injured to various degrees. Among the dead was the elder, the khan, of the Shinwari clan. The Pushtuns are a very proud people with a rich cultural heritage. Part of that cultural heritage is Pakhtunwali, or Way of the Pakhtuns. It is a code of the most demanding honor, of culture, of their society, of life, that is governed by three primary obligations. The most important of these obligations is revenge, known as badal. The others are melmastia and nanawati. Nanawati requires the Pakhtun to offer shelter and to protect, even at the cost of his own life, anyone in distress, even an enemy, who demands it. Melmastia requires the Pakhtun to feed and shelter anyone who comes to his home. Compared to that of revenge, the other two of hospitality and asylum pale to insignificance. Badal requires revenge for the slightest of insults or even a perceived insult, even if it requires a hundred years. Badal is usually extracted in blood and murder.
The district commissioner initiated an investigation. The provincial governor telephoned Islamabad, requesting more Pakistani soldiers to expand patrolling in the district. Fearing an escalation and more bloodshed, Islamabad promised an investigation team as well as more soldiers. Since there is a modest arms and accessories industry in the district, every civilian man is armed with at least a rifle and a blade of some nature. Provoking the Shinwari clan, a fierce and close-knit clan, vowing badal, guaranteed further violence. The only question for the Shinwalis was in which direction to unleash it.
Witnesses not attending the mosque described the two horsemen riding away. They were overheard conversing in Hindi. The horse holder looked and dressed like a Hindu. Neither man was recognized as being a local citizen. At the last sighting, they were observed approaching the line of control that separates India from Pakistan in the Kashmir.
Within the week, the track immediately in front of a trainload of Hindu pilgrims who were making their way up the mountain to a shrine was dynamited as the train rounded a curve at forty-five kilometers per hour. The momentum of the train carried each car along. The entire train plunged down the mountainside. Hundreds were killed, with hundreds more injured. Investigation led to the discovery of several pamphlets in Pashto at the site.
An Indian patrol was wiped out by mortar fire coming from the north. An Indian Chetak SA 319B helicopter, bringing supplies to an isolated mountain post on the Pakistani border, was shot down by a shoulder fired surface to air missile.
A mosque in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan was obliterated by fire from a heavy mortar barrage as prayers were attended. Investigation revealed the firing site, along with scraps of pork sandwiches. Identification markings and language painted on the cases which contained the mortar rounds were found to be in Hindi and English.
When a Muslim woman is raped, she is considered defiled. Her life is ruined. No Muslim man will have her for a wife. She is condemned to a life of shame. One of the greatest insults is to impregnate a Muslim woman and force her to carry the baby of the infidel. So shamed, some Muslim women commit suicide. The Indian police and paramilitary police, mostly Hindi, inflicted extremes of rape and torture on Muslim separatists and Sikhs of all ages to repress the Sikh rebellion and to cower Muslim Kashmiri separatists. The Pushtuns and the Sikhs are among the most fierce, aggressive, and violent people in the world. They will remember an insult or a perceived wrong for one hundred years in order to honor badal.
The company-sized group of infiltrators was composed of irregulars but led by a Captain of the Indian Army who had intimate knowledge of the area. Most were members of the Border Security Force, a poorly disciplined but well equipped police force renowned for their barbarous behavior against Muslims. The captain was a devout Hindu, who believed the only answer to peace and Indian possession of Kashmir was total annihilation of the Muslim population. A few kilometers from the outpost where the Captain was assigned, they slipped across the Line of Control. Their objective was a small Muslim village along the Kishaganga River just west of Anzbari Mountain. They crossed at night, using donkeys to carry supplies, in itself quite a dangerous undertaking. Their intent was to kill the males of the village and rape all the females.
They invaded the village shortly after midnight. Initially, the homes were invaded one at a time. Knives were used to silence the men and children of both sexes as they slept. The women were bound and gagged to be left until the small village had been completely captured. Three fourths of the way through the village, a woman screamed which alerted the remainder of the village. Thereafter, automatic weapons came into play. The response of the raiders was immediate. All who stepped outside their homes were shot on sight. Grenades were tossed through doors and windows of the homes not yet violated. All means of electronic communication in the village were actively sought out and destroyed. With no telephones and radios, the village was completely isolated. Only the women survived. Girls as young as twelve were repeatedly raped. An hour before dawn, the raiders retreated along a different route, leaving over sixty dead villagers and a number of impregnated girls and women.
The Indian town of Tangmarg lies almost due west of Srinagar, India. Srinagar has a population of 500,000, almost exclusively Hindus. It is on the banks of a feeder stream to the Jhelum River in the Vale of Kashmir. It is perhaps forty kilometers, or twenty five miles, inside Indian territory from a modest salient in the Line of Control. The battalion of Pakistani Pushtuns took two days, traveling only at night and sleeping under camouflage covers during the day to reach the town. Each man carried nearly seventy pounds of ordnance and food. Each man carried either belts of machine gun ammunition, road mines, fifteen pounds of plastic explosive or two mortar rounds in addition to his basic load of hand grenades, ammunition, personal weapon, rain gear, sleeping bag, cooking gear or camouflage pup tent, and four days supply of food.
Three miles from the town, they bivouacked on the third day. A shepherd and his family were killed to ensure all would remain quiet. The battalion commander set his headquarters in the modest stone, mud and stick house of the shepherd family. At 22:00 on the third night, they infiltrated the town in the guise of civilians. Previous intelligence had identified the police stations, the mayor’s home, the Indian army barracks, the telephone exchange and the power station. Posing as Hindu pilgrims, a number of individual Pakistani agents had made a thorough reconnaissance of the town. A platoon was assigned to annihilate each of the police stations, two companies to the army barracks, a squad to the mayor, one to the telephone exchange, and a squad to each Hindu priest and his family. At 01:00, all commenced in a coordinated attack. Civilians were killed on sight, indiscriminately. The signal section of the Indian Army detachment stationed there radioed part of a message that they were under attack before the hand grenades ripped him and the radio apart. By 04:00, several hundred people lay dead and wounded. The mayor, the priests and their families all murdered. The barracks, telephone exchange and power substation were blown to pieces. The battalion commander ordered a withdrawal.
Alerted by the partial message, a relieving battalion-sized force of the Indian Army was immediately ordered into trucks. Helicopter forces were informed at 04:30 of the attack and ordered to stand ready for an attack as soon as light permitted at 07:00. Traveling the road in the dark resulted in the convoy experiencing several accidents along the road. As they approached the town from the east, the second truck in the convoy exploded over a road mine. Fifty meters further, a second truck exploded. As the convoy entered the city and soldiers dismounted, they ran into tripwires connected to explosives. Pushing on through the town in pursuit as dawn emerged, the Indian commander noticed fresh diggings in the road. Ordering a halt in the column, he had mine detectors brought forward. After the first five holes were found to be empty, he started the convoy again. When a truck hit the tenth hole, it exploded in a ball of flame, killing all eighteen men on board. Seething in frustration, the Indian lieutenant colonel ordered each digging to be checked for a mine. As the lead truck rounded a curve on a hillside where the road showed no signs of being disturbed, the front bumper of the truck caught a monofilament tripwire. Five pounds of plastic explosive ignited, blowing the truck and its contents off the road and down into the stream.
At 08:00, the retreating Pushtun column was observed by the scout helicopter of the Indian helicopter force. The retreating Pushtuns were at the base of Mount Abharwat, 4143 meters above sea level. The scout helicopter circled above and a kilometer behind them while excitedly radioing their position. The Pushtuns were waiting for the attacking helicopters. As the attack helicopters swept low, Pushtun soldiers with portable surface to air shoulder fired missiles emerged from previously dug spider holes and from behind rock barricades. They launched a barrage that virtually swept the skies free of Indian attack aircraft. The troop-carrying helicopters of the aviation detachment swept in to rake the positions of the Pushtun archers with their door machine guns. More stinger missile men emerged from other hidden positions to engage the troop-carrying helicopters. At only three hundred feet off the ground, the helicopters could not avoid the missiles. Four more were shot down. The remaining helicopters retreated to a kilometer away to discharge their squads who advanced on foot.
Having expended most of their ordnance, the Pushtuns, now with much less burden, made better time, although fatigue was beginning to set in.
Upon receiving word of the loss of most of his aircraft, the Indian Major General commanding the division at Srinagar notified the Chaklala airbase and requested an aerial strike upon the retreating Pushtuns. Calling the Indian High Command, authorization was granted in fifteen minutes. A flight of four Jaguars, configured for ground attack, took off. Pakistani radar quickly picked up the four aircraft as they rose above two thousand feet. Informed by radio of incoming jet aircraft, the Pakistani lieutenant colonel ordered immediate dispersal of his command, with the remaining shoulder fired missiles to be ready to respond within minutes. In ten minutes, they were over the target. As the lead aircraft passed, a heat seeking shoulder fired missile streaked from the ground and went directly into its engine. The aircraft exploded immediately, sending flying parts over several hundred square meters. The following second and third aircraft delivered Geneva Convention-outlawed 200-kilogram napalm bombs that seared the broad defile. Many of the Pushtuns died a horrific death. Those who made it up more than five hundred meters above the valley floor of the defile survived.
Suddenly, breaking over the mountain ridge, a flight of four F-16A3 Fighting Falcons of the Pakistani Air Force appeared. In a no-contest aerial battle, the remaining three Jaguars went down in flames in seconds. Waving their wings to the few survivors below, the Falcons streaked back to their air base. Artillery fires from just inside the Line of Control covered the remainder of the retreat of the Pushtun battalion. When the Pushtuns crested the mountain ridge, the Indian soldiers broke off the pursuit.
Word of the raid, its aftermath and the loss of so many aircraft infuriated the Indian Prime Minister and his cabinet. Previous battles in the last several decades had occasionally escalated to division-sized engagements, but now India was much stronger in all respects than Pakistan. The Indian Ministry of Defense wanted to immediately retaliate. The Prime Minister refused, with the concept he would take the problem, once again, to the United Nations. Details were sent to the Indian delegation to the UN. Two days later, India called for condemnation of Pakistan for the repeated raids, and especially the fiasco of Tangmarg. As usual, the United Nations General Assembly listened politely to both sides and did nothing.
The Indian Ministry of Defense, seething at this last military insult, quietly discussed a general onslaught of Muslims in Kashmir. The concept of pushing several hundred thousand Muslims out of Kashmir and into Pakistan had considerable merit. The refugees would create a calamity for Pakistan. The sixteen-hundred-kilometer border between the two countries, running from Kashmir to the Arabian Sea, cannot be defended by Pakistan.
The Indian Prime Minister, bitterly disappointed in the United Nation’s lack of response, called a meeting of the Union Executive, which consists of the President, the Vice President, and the Council of Ministers, which is chaired by the Prime Minister. The Council of Ministers is composed of the Prime Minister, Cabinet Ministers, the Ministers of the various states and deputy ministers. On this particular occasion, the Service Chiefs of Staff and the political affairs committee of the cabinet attended.
“In view of the debacle we have recently suffered regarding Tanmarg, and the failure of the United Nations to take no action whatsoever, I wish to discuss our options to see that such a raid does not occur again. With the audacity to attack a town so close to one of Kashmir’s major cities, having over 500,000 population, Brahma only knows what the Pakistanis will next attempt. So, gentlemen, let me hear your opinions, starting with you, Minister of Defense Sivaji.”
“We have a number of options, Prime Minister. For one, we can exchange them tit for tat in conventional raids. I cannot predict where such an exchange of blows will end. Second, we can declare all-out conventional war. Pakistan’s response will quite likely be a nuclear attack on our forces, government, and cities. Third, we can initiate nuclear war by striking first with small nuclear bombs that will take out their nuclear capabilities with a reasonable chance of success. Fourth, we can initiate a major attack limited to Kashmir with the objective of terrorizing the Muslims and forcing them out. In past episodes, Pakistan activated their nuclear forces under such circumstances, but of course, things were always calmed down by outside pressures before any nuclear exchange occurred. Naturally, we would have to have a full alert all along our mutual border. Pakistan is so weak in all areas relative to us that they have little option to being defeated under conventional means. That means they will have to go nuclear to have a creditable response to any significant attack we mount. Fifth, we can go to general quarters all round, that is, full alert and deployment along our border to see what their response is; a bluff, as they would say in American western movies. Pakistan would probably view this as the intent to launch an all-out attack on them. This would give them the excuse for a pre-emptive attack on us. Sixth, we can do nothing. Pakistan is very, very shaky indeed.”
“What other options are available? Does anyone else have any other thoughts they would care to express? Certainly, everything should be considered and nothing dismissed outright.”
No one said a word. The enmity between Pakistan and India, Muslim and Hindu, Sikh and Pushtun, had grown too strong.
“Very well, then. Of the options Defense Minister Sivaji outlined, the last is too bitter to contemplate. This was a raid of sufficient magnitude that it cannot be ignored. The public is clamoring for retaliation as I have never heard before. The Bharatiya Janata Party is demanding the resignation of myself and this Cabinet. The people seem to be in favor of it if we do not respond. Of the other options, I question how much outside help can Pakistan receive, and from whom. Will other Muslim nations come to their aid? Will the United States assist them in any way? The United States has armed them to a considerable degree in the past. After supporting Pakistan for several years, only to find that Osama bin Laden and the Taliban core cadre were being protected in a mountain redoubt, the United States most likely feels duped and humiliated. Certainly, Russia will not provide aid to Pakistan. Given the difficulties they have had over Chechnya, and the cross-border raids from the Islamic Central Asian states, I am confident they would like to see Islam crushed. That only leaves China, in my opinion, which might provide some assistance to Pakistan. If so, how much and in what form will China provide aid? How concerned is China right now with the situation in Korea? The North Koreans have been severely bloodied and are retreating. Pyongyang is now in the hands of the South, and it appears that in spite of the nuclear exchanges, a united Korea ruled from Seoul seems to be the ultimate outcome.
“What are your opinions, gentlemen? Minister of State, what say you?”
“Mr. Prime Minister, Pakistan is acting in a most arrogant way. Is it a bluff, an attempt to provoke us into war? Are they acting according to Sun Tzu, ‘When you are weak, appear strong’? I do not know for certain. They can be attempting to hide insecurity, but I doubt it. As serious as this raid was, I don’t believe they would undertake anything that would lead to war unless they were assured of considerable outside support. As you suggest, I see that only China could or would provide such support, but I very seriously doubt that the Chinese are that stupid. The Chinese, I am sure, understand just how fragile and weak Pakistan is. Our agents continue to report on the large number of Chinese businessmen and advisors there. They should know Pakistan. I don’t think they would want to back a loser. Why should they pour resources down a black hole? How will they provide massive support? Whose territory would they cross? Tajikistan? I don’t think so. No, I think Pakistan will have to go it alone if war breaks out. My conclusion, therefore, is that this was a massive raid to tweak our nose, demonstrate their capabilities, and show the world that they are something of a regional power. Perceptions are sometimes more important than reality. In the final analysis, however, I believe they will back down rather than commit to a war they cannot win.”
“Minister of Justice, what are legalities here?”
“Constitutionally, we should have a Declaration of War from both Houses of Parliament, of the House of the People and the Council of States. Certainly, even calling a closed meeting of Parliament under the circumstance would destroy any chance of surprise.”
“Chiefs of Staff, what do you feel is militarily possible? Let me establish a parameter. We will not be the instigators of nuclear war. While we might suffer the first atomic blast in anger since World War II, we will not initiate it. If Pakistan unleashes a nuclear device, we will launch a complete and catastrophic attack upon Pakistan, with both conventional and nuclear forces. In that circumstance, our objectives are to first destroy all their nuclear capabilities, followed by destruction of all their armed forces, and third, annihilation of their political leadership.”
The Service Chiefs looked at each other and nodded, already having reached mutual agreement. The Chairman spoke. “Mr. Prime Minister, we can, and will, do whatever you and the Executive Union decide. We can militarily defeat anything the Pakistanis can mount. It is only the political fallout that is a concern, and that is something with which you must deal.”
“Given the optimism of our military establishment then, our option will be the conventional invasion of Kashmir. We will drive the Muslims out and seize control of the headwaters of the major river systems originating there. Jammu and Kashmir belong to India. We will settle this question once and for all. Minister Sivaji, put all our defense forces on maximum alert, but did not move them to the border below Kashmir. We will not give them the impression that an all-out invasion is under way. If you wish to move them to martialling areas from which you can launch an all-out attack according to previous planning, all well and good, but hold them in those areas. Pakistan will be hard pressed to defend a 1600-kilometer border with us. Have our nuclear forces prepared, however, to launch immediate retaliatory strikes at the first indication of a nuclear assault upon any of our forces or territory. Your targets, of course, are their major force deployments, their command and control nodes, their governmental leadership, their weapons depots and their industrial centers. While we will not be concerned with Islamic civilian casualties, all of our weapons will be of small yield for the sake of precision. Who knows, if nuclear war develops, perhaps what is left of Pakistan will once again be united with India.”
Chapter 24
