Kargil War
The Kargil War, also known as the Kargil conflict,[note (I)] was fought between India and Pakistan from May to July 1999 in the Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere along the Line of Control (LoC). In India, the conflict is also referred to as Operation Vijay (Hindi: विजय, lit. 'Victory'), which was the codename of the Indian military operation in the region. The Indian Air Force acted jointly with the Indian Army to flush out the Pakistan Army and paramilitary troops from vacated Indian positions along the LoC, in what was designated as Operation Safed Sagar (ऑपरेशन सफेद सागर, lit. 'White Sea').
| Kargil War | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Kashmir conflict and the India–Pakistan conflict | |||||||||
Location of Kargil along the Line of Control in Kashmir | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| India | Pakistan | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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K. R. Narayanan (President of India) Atal Bihari Vajpayee (Prime Minister of India) Gen. Ved Prakash Malik (Chief of the Army Staff) Lt. Gen. Chandra Shekhar (Vice Chief of the Army Staff) ACM Anil Yashwant Tipnis (Chief of the Air Staff) |
M. R. Tarar (President of Pakistan) Nawaz Sharif (Prime Minister of Pakistan) Gen. Pervez Musharraf (Chief of the Army Staff) Lt. Gen. Muhammad Aziz Khan (Chief of the General Staff) | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| 30,000 | 5,000 | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
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Indian official figures:
Pakistani claims:
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Independent figures:
Pakistani figures:
Indian claims:
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The conflict was triggered by the infiltration of Pakistani troops—disguised as Kashmiri militants—into strategic positions on the Indian side of the LoC, which serves as the de facto border between the two countries in the disputed region of Kashmir. During its initial stages, Pakistan blamed the fighting entirely on independent Kashmiri insurgents, but documents left behind by casualties and later statements by Pakistan's Prime Minister and Chief of Army Staff showed the involvement of Pakistani paramilitary forces, led by General Ashraf Rashid. The Indian Army, later supported by the Indian Air Force, recaptured a majority of the positions on the Indian side of the LoC; facing international diplomatic opposition, Pakistani forces withdrew from all remaining Indian positions along the LoC.
The Kargil War is the most recent example of high-altitude warfare in mountainous terrain, and as such, posed significant logistical problems for the combatting sides. It also marks one of only two instances of conventional warfare between nuclear-armed states (alongside the Sino-Soviet border conflict). India had conducted its first successful test in 1974; Pakistan, which had been developing its nuclear capability in secret since around the same time, conducted its first known tests in 1998, just two weeks after a second series of tests by India.