DeansMusings

The 1947-48 India-Pak war, or the first Kashmir war, was the longest India-Pakistan war. It is also the least studied. Having read several accounts from both sides, I believe our (India’s) view of the war emphasises some remarkable achievements that prevented the loss of Kashmir and key towns in it. For example the airlift that saved Srinagar (and Kashmir), along with the breaking of the siege of Poonch and Leh. While it is right to celebrate our achievements and the bravery of the soldiers of both the India army and state forces, we also need to understand where things went wrong – I believe they did, at the level of political objectives and planning. Those lessons may be more valuable for us.  As someone with an amateur interest in geopolitics and military history, I believe there were larger lessons of this conflict and the mistakes made – some of which were repeated in India’s later wars.  Before commenting on mistakes and lessons to be learnt, a summary of what went ...

Six weeks after operation Sindhoor, the narrative in India, is still about how many aircraft India lost, ignoring weather or not the primary and secondary objectives of Operation Sindhoor were met, or how many aircraft Pak may have lost. I have covered this in some detail in my earlier post on Operation Sindhoor. https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2025/05/operation-sindhoor-what-we-dont-realise.html Suffice to say that what matters in a battle is weather the objectives were met. A secondary consideration, is the cost – both human and material, in achieving that objective. Our objective was the destruction of 9 terrorist facilities. That was done, with a heavy loss of life among the terrorists and supporters, with no human loss on our side. Pakistan’s objective, which was to either deter us from attacking, or, if India did attack, either clear people from the targets and/or defend against the aircraft and missiles sent against them. That failed.   The secondary objective of India was...

I had earlier written about how `unknown gunmen’ were killing off leading figures among Pakistan’s terrorist groups and speculated that RAW was doing things that hitherto were associated only with agencies like Mossad. My reasons for believing that India had contracted out the killing of these high value targets, rather than them falling out with their handlers in Pakistan’s ISI, or inter-group rivalry were: - Several of those killed were among India’s most wanted, protected by the ISI. The loss in morale to the  group was costlier than any gain to the ISI from dispensing with that person. - People across terrorist groups were killed, so it was not as if the ISI was trying to cut one group down   to size. Nor to the groups have a history of inter group killings. - Some of those were low level operatives, but of particular importance to India. For e.g. the abductor     of Cdr. Kulbhshan Jadhav, the person responsible for beheading an Indian soldier etc (who was a...

  This post has been written because all discussions on terrorism in India – which is Pakistan sponsored, focus on losses on the Indian side. A justification for Pakistan continuing state sponsored terrorism is that for a relatively small cost, India spends a large amount on security and is taking unsustainable losses, and will eventually lose its will to retain Kashmir. As I pointed out in my article on Kashmir – 5 years after article 370 revocation, Kashmir is in fact at its most peaceful in years and it is actually terrorists that are taking unsustainable losses.  https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2024/07/kashmir-5-years-after-article-370.html   What has been ignored is Pakistan’s own terrorism problem, which unlike India, is home grown and less publicised. Terrorism in Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province is worse than Kashmir.    Terrorist Incidents Civilians killed Security forces killed Terrori...