India Buries Soldiers That Pakistan Won't Claim
If you are caught or killed, the secretary will disavow you.
Sounds like mission impossible..... my note
By BARRY BEARAK
GUN HILL (POINT 4875), Kashmir -- Up and down some of the steepest peaks in the Himalayas are dozens of freshly dug graves
for unknown soldiers, men who India insists are Pakistanis and whose
nation dares not claim them.
The Indian army buried five more bodies here Friday near the crown of a
mountaintop 16,500 feet high, a spot recently renamed Gun Hill on
military maps because of the intense mortar fire that has been lobbed
from its rocky summit.
Just as they have with the bodies
of others, the Indians offered
them to Pakistan, but Pakistan,
caught in what much of the world
believes is an elaborate fiction,
cannot accept the dead from an
invasion force it has disavowed.
For two months, Pakistan has
insisted that the hundreds of
invaders who had dug into
mountaintop positions just inside
Indian-controlled Kashmir were
mujahedeen, Muslim holy
warriors, though on Friday its
army chief, Gen. Pervez
Musharraf, told BBC that
Pakistani troops occasionally
engaged in "aggressive patrolling"
on the Indian side. The Indians
have from the beginning
maintained that the infiltrators
were largely Pakistani army
regulars, a view increasingly
accepted by outsiders.
"Isn't this terrible?" asked Maj.
Deepak Rampal, one of the Indian officers who led the charge up Gun
Hill. "No government or army ought to disown their people. Think of the
humiliation for the families at home -- the religious sentiments that will
never be fulfilled, the sons who will never know how and why their
fathers laid down their lives."
Two months of intense fighting in these barren heights have wound down
to occasional fire. Whoever the invaders actually are, Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan asked them to withdraw, and for nearly a
week they have been doing so.
Originally the Indians said all the interlopers had to be gone by Friday,
but they have since agreed to allow another 24 hours or so.
Now for India, with its war won, winning the news media seems
important. Hence, Friday's trip for reporters. "Most of the bodies we
bury where we find them, but these we brought back up to the top of
Gun Hill to show the media," said Maj. J.A. Arif.
The Indians, glorying in victory, ferried a flock of reporters up to the
funeral atop the narrow peak, no easy expedition. Only the smallest of
helicopters could land on the one tiny wedge of flat terrain. Eighteen
visitors had to be flown in one at a time.
A Muslim cleric from the army presided over a respectful if abbreviated
minute-long service. When he chanted "Allah akbar," "God is great," six
Hindu soldiers dutifully answered, "Allah akbar."
My note: Here is the proof that India is truely secular. India sent Indian muslim soldiers up in the mountains. The Indian muslims served their country very well and went up the mountains chanting Allah Akbar. The pakis mistook them for reinforcements and guided them up the hill and it was too late before the pakis realized their mistake.
The bodies, covered with Pakistani flags, were then lowered into a grave
barely 2 feet deep. My note: That is military tradition. How come that the pakis mutilated living and dead Indian soldiers. It is hard to gouge out a resting place here. Up this
high, the Himalayas are like a moonscape of outcroppings and craters,
their colors changing from brown to black to purple. The surface is
covered with sharp chips of slate. Not far below is solid rock.
The five men had been dead for at least 10 days. As they were placed
into the hole, the flags were removed. One man's leg fluttered about as if
no solid bone was left to hold its shape. Another had but the smallest
remnant of a right foot.
The dead, by India's account, were among 53 of the enemy who had
been killed during a two-day battle for the peak that ended on July 6.
The invaders had used what was then known as Point 4875 as a perch
for shelling a key Indian highway.
"We advanced on them inch by inch under the cover of artillery fire and
flame throwers and rocket launchers," said Maj. Vikas Vohra. "When we
finally came upon them, some were taking meals. Their tea was piping
hot. They were caught completely unawares."
None of those buried Friday were identified by name, but the officers
atop Gun Hill showed off several items that they presented as proof of a
Pakistani military presence. There were identification cards from
Pakistan's 12th Northern Light Infantry and army pay books. There was
a letter from a soldier to his family.
Such evidence is easy to falsify, as the Pakistanis have charged. And
indeed nothing that was presented by the Indians was conclusive.
Still, the Indians worked hard at making their case. Not far from Gun
Hill, at the Indian military base at Dras, a display had been laid out of
ammunition, weapons and gas masks -- all supposedly standard issue of
the Pakistani army.
Maj. Gen. Mohinder Puri made brief remarks. He was eager to speak of
the confiscated items, and eager to set the record straight on something
else: "We have observation-post logs which give us the details of when
the Pakistanis arrived, which was some time in the first week of April," he
told reporters.
That is important because some reports put the invaders in the mountains
as early as February. Indian intelligence agencies have been heavily
criticized for not discovering the intrusion until May. If the invaders had
been there for but a month, then India had only been caught with its pants
down around its knees, not its ankles.
To be sure, better surveillance is required, and perhaps a permanent
presence in these peaks, Puri said, adding, "We will analyze a lot of
things before deciding what type of deployment we will have."
Despite the hale talk of victory, there was something melancholy in the
air. An air force commander confided that there had been great glory in
sending his men off on so many sorties, and he was sorry to see the
excitement end.
Col. S.V.E. David, the army's deputy commander at Dras, said in a
conversation about the invaders, "If you come eight, nine kilometers
inside your enemy's territory, why do you bloody run away like a dog
with its tail down?" He seemed to feel his opponent had quit the game at
halftime.
"They should have fought it out for longer," David said. "They had the
supply lines. They had the men. They could have lasted 10, 15 more
days. What they lacked, I think, was leadership. Whoever was running
things just couldn't keep the act together."
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