The International Situation – the reckless nature of Chinese nuclear proliferation to the Pakistan army had altered the balance of power in the Indian continent. India used its superior air force to good effect against Pakistan and quickly redeployed on the eastern border to blunt the mobilization of China’s PLA. India also used its long coastline to full advantage by instituting a policy of search-and-seizure of commercial shipping to further pressurize the Chinese economy.

Joint operations by the Indian armed forces in Ormara and Skardu created a strategic encirclement of the Pakistan army—the final blow being the capture of Gilgit airfield. The Chinese were permitted to scale down their involvement in the war by the Indians, who promised to protect Chinese investments in Baluchistan, and by the Americans, who quietly buried the story of Chinese nuclear proliferation.

The capture of three nuclear artillery shells at Pasni, by the Americans and their Pakistani collaborators, marked the beginning of the end of the Pakistani nuclear program. All nuclear material and nuclear facilities, which had escaped destruction under Operation Kartikeya and Operation Janjira, were secured by the Americans with similar collaboration from the Pakistani general staff.

The Chinese remained ignorant of the capture of their nuclear artillery shells on the Baluchistan coast. To tackle India’s revelations on the proliferation of those weapons the Politburo ordered an “internal investigation” into these allegations. As a result of this investigation some low-level scientists and PLA personnel were forced to resign—the politburo revealed to the party that only designs of the said weapons had been stolen by unnamed persons due to negligence. The Americans backed this up by admitting that the Pakistani scientists certainly had the ability to manufacture nuclear artillery warheads with their own nuclear material. The artillery shells recovered at Pasni, which contained Chinese nuclear material, would be used later to pressurize the Chinese on the North Korean question.

India’s skilful conduct of the military operations, the minimal loss of life, and the prevention of a nuclear holocaust, would have ensured it a permanent place in the UN Security Council. However despite US support the idea was postponed until the world could see how the Indians and their allies handled the future status of the Pakistani territories.

Some hawkish proponents of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty used this entire episode to target India! They claimed that the dangerous proliferation of destabilizing weapons had occurred because of the unmonitored cooperation between a member of the NPT and a non-member. Hence nuclear cooperation between India, the US, and other NPT members should cease until India agreed to sign the NPT! Fortunately this suggestion of the cold war dinosaurs was rejected by a low-level functionary of the US State Department.

The Pakistan Territories – the desertions by the divisional commanders in Baluchistan crowned by the dramatic landing of Lt. General Khattak in Indian-liberated Ormara, was imitated initially in other regions of the doomed country. The FCNA commander in the Gilgit-Baltistan region, which had been callously named as the Northern Areas by the occupying Pakistanis, deserted to the Indians with his family. His example was followed by the Punjabi and Pasthun soldiery, which tore of their uniforms and mingled with the civilian population in the main towns until they could find a safe way to escape to their homes. The local Dard, Balti, and Shia populace supported the advance of Indian army.

In the months that followed, the region was declared independent but with close military and economic links with mainland India. The descendant of the former ruler of J&K state, of which this region had been a part, declared that their conquest by his forefathers had been purely a military feat of the Dogra soldiery, meant to secure trade routes. He further stated that a new relationship was required with the region even as the Indian army and air force maintained military bases in Skardu and Gilgit. Preparations for a treaty between the new country and India were made while elections, supervised and assisted by the Indian Election Commission, propelled a new political leadership to power.

This created an opportunity for the re-organization of J&K state with the Mirpur-Muzzafrabad belt joining the new state of Jammu, which had always been the economic engine of J&K. The Hindu population of Jammu occupied a solid block of land and was united by a common language and culture while the Muslims were divided into numerous ethnic and linguistic groups. Moreover the Muslims of the Jammu province had always faced discrimination from the Kashmiri elite and had cultural links with the Hindus of Jammu. With the loss of power the Kashmiri elite reached out to their Hindu brethren, who had been driven out from the valley by the Islamists, and tried to rebuild the tourism and fruit economy.

Control over the Mangla Dam gave the Indians great leverage over the Pakistani province of Punjab. However desertions by Pakistani commanders here were stemmed by the example of the Chief of Army Staff who refused to flee—he had decided to fight for the remainder of the country and thus secure his place in history. Unfortunately the Indians refused to enter the Punjab until they had the political support of its people—there was no chance of fighting a bloody guerrilla war against them. Northern and central Pakistan remained in political suspension for several months until the situation in the neighboring regions was clear.

In the course of the fighting Indian formations had penetrated into lower Sindh but were keeping clear of the main towns and population centers. The chain of command in the Karachi-based 5 Corps was shattered by the desertion of the general commanding the 18th Infantry Division. The 16th Infantry Division, previously stranded along the coastal highway in Baluchistan, had broken up into groups of ragged and starving soldiers that either surrendered to the Ormara Division or died fighting against the ferocious militia fighters. The Corps Commander ordered a hasty withdrawal of the 18 Div formations from the frontlines and into the main cities—here again the Indians did not enter the cities until they could be sure of political support.

The majority inhabitants of these cities were Mohajirs, Pashtuns, and Punjabis—all engaged in business, trade, and transport. These classes did not see any benefit in an independent Sindh and they continued to support the presence of the Pakistan Army. Moreover they provided foot soldiers for the radical Sunni groups in their campaign against the Shias. The political leadership of the Mohajirs and the Sindhis could not muster support to challenge these groupings at least in the cities. The lady opposition leader based in Britain gave up her subtle calls for Sindh’s long life and expressed hopes of becoming the prime minister of a moth-eaten Pakistan defended now by a much weaker army.

Here again, as in Punjab and NWFP, developments in the crucial territory of Baluchistan created the outlines for their political future.

Azad Baluchistan: the militias had seized control over the towns and cities, while the roads and open country were dominated by each Baloch and Pashtun tribe in its respective sphere of influence. The tribesmen were engaged in gathering together all the ordnance, weaponry, and transport of the army and FC—most of the scattered enemy personnel had been taken prisoner while the units that held together were given safe passage to their own homes.

Command and control, intelligence information, and transport facilities were provided to the militia leaders, to the political representatives, and to the tribal chieftains by the Indians and the Americans. The latter, while securing material from nuclear and missile facilities, had also sent air and army units to occupy Dalbandin, Samungli, and Chaman. The Indians, on their part, had landed in Khuzdar and had sent a naval task group to occupy the Sonmiani Bay. Control over Gwadar became a joint enterprise between the Indians and the Americans.

Quetta though was ruined by the unchecked looting and infighting between the Pasthun lashkars, the former army and FC personnel, and the various student bodies representing different ethnic and religious groupings. It was several weeks before peace was established with the militias and student groups marking out their own quarters in the city. The members of the provincial assembly returned to the capital and met the militia leaders in the thoroughly ransacked premises—all were agreed in giving a leadership role to the old Baloch Sardar Nasrullah. The venerable leader sprung a surprise by nominating the Pashtun Malik Ahmed Khan as the provisional President of Baluchistan.

The new president immediately dissolved the assembly and ordered elections on the same electoral seats to the new parliament within six months—by that time it was hoped that assembly building and other government sites would have been repaired. The choice of a Pashtun for president was happy news to the Pashtun militias dominating the city of Quetta—it was also welcome news to the various Baloch Sardars that one of their own was in charge.

In his first radio broadcast Ahmed Khan outlined the program for the political future of the country and appealed to police and administration officials to stay at their posts and cooperate with the militias and tribal chieftains until a central government was in place. He also declared that outsiders who had made a home in Baluchistan were welcome to stay on; since the Baloch and Pashtun fight had been against the Pakistani rulers, not the Pakistani people. Furthermore the Malik declared that people were regarded as assets; and the more diverse those people the better since Baloch tribes and Pashtun families would forget their internal quarrels as long as there were Sindhis, Punjabis, and Mohajirs living in their midst.

This declaration had an impact on the neighboring provinces—it was seen to be a wise and generous stance since there were people of different ethnicities living in all provinces. With the precedent set in Baluchsitan, where outsiders were free to live and prosper, Punjabis trapped in Sindh breathed easier. The Sindhi nationalists and the Mohajirs now became open to the idea of independence with outside support—given the lay of the land Indian military bases were necessary to thwart the Punjabi pressure from the north. Punjab too felt the pressure to tolerate non-Punjabi populations; particularly the Baloch and Seraiki population in southern Punjab, which could always secede to Sindh or Baluchsitan.

The international community welcomed the declaration since it suggested that the rule of law would be enforced—International organizations like the UN, the Red Crescent, and the WHO quickly restarted all their aid programs. Recognition for the new country though was left pending till the elections.

The most pressing need of Baluchistan was money. As a Pakistani province, Baluchistan never had control over its own assets and had been entirely dependent on the federal government even for the salaries of its employees! In the current situation money was abundant among the local people, the Sardars, and the overseas Baloch—all that the Baluchistan provisional government had were assets in the shape of mineral and metal deposits and the oil and gas fields. Each of these assets had been occupied by the tribal armies in whose lands they were situated—the most critical of these was Sui.

The Bugti tribe had brought the gas field under its control and, after the inevitable looting of the buildings and the imprisonment of the DSG personnel, had immediately shut the supply of gas to Punjab and Sindh. After several weeks the situation became so intolerable that the Pakistani President had to appeal to the international community to secure the energy needs of the industry and the households in Punjab and Sindh. India, the US, Oman, Iran and Afghanistan among others had established contacts with Malik Ahmed Khan and Sardar Nasrullah, and had also provided some money to the provisional government. Under their advice and after several discussions it was decided that all national assets should be privatized—this decision of course was left to the discretion of the future elected parliament.

70% of each national asset, a mine or a gas or power company, would be privatized. However to keep such assets in Baloch hands, 10% would be marked for the common Baloch to be purchased as shares, 10% would be sold to the Baloch Sardar in whose territory the assets were located, 20% would be sold to other Sardars and wealthy individuals in Baluchistan, and 30% would be auctioned to international companies. With only the remaining 30% belonging to the government, the lure of independent management control would entice international companies and funds to invest in the asset while keeping its ownership firmly in Baluchistan’s hands.

The Sardars were given the option of exchanging their surplus agricultural and grazing land in lieu of these shares. As a further incentive they were also given the option of nominating their sons or nephews to be members of the board of directors in each privatized company. The government would sell the land surrendered to farmers and shepherds at concession rates. After this arrangement gas from Sui and other fields began to be pumped once again into mainland Pakistan—but that country had to pay valuable foreign exchange to buy this gas since Baluchistan had now refused to accept Pakistani rupees.

The numerous militias were given the choice of becoming part of the new army or to stay at their posts and be commissioned as paramilitary troops. Some of their leaders were given provisional military ranks pending their further training and education—the army chief for the new country was a Baloch Brigadier serving in the Oman army. At this time India requested that the Jinnah Naval Base in Ormara be renamed the Mir Chakar Naval Base—this timely suggestion was happily accepted by the Baluchistan government. Naval and air bases for India were approved at Ormara and Khuzdar but the Americans were given only temporary basing rights for six months—after all it was mostly American weaponry that had been used to suppress the Baloch resistance by the Pakistanis and those memories were still fresh in Baloch minds.

Durrakh Shambani had emerged in all this time as an important and recognized political leader—this was an unexpected benefit of his submission to the tribal jirga for the death of his cousin. At the jirga evidence was presented of the accidental nature of Sachlay’s death and revelations of his underhanded dealings with the Pakistanis shocked the leaders of the Shambani tribe. Durrakh’s leadership qualities blossomed in that gathering—it became known to all that he had contacts with the Indians and would be able to do much for his tribe. And the fact that a middle-class urban man had agreed to submit to the justice of the jirga proved to the warlike tribesmen that the future of their culture and way of life would be safe in Durrakh’s capable hands.

Durrakh offered to wed the widow Meemal, his childhood love, and be a devoted father to Sachlay’s children—after all they were of his blood. The middle-aged militia leader now became a politician and joined the party of his parent Bugti tribe. Due to his popularity he was nominated to be the youthful leader by the Bugti Sardar, who was then negotiating for the future of the Sui gas plant.

After the elections, where Durrakh’s party secured only 20% of the parliamentary seats, an alliance with the Pashtun student party and with the support of several militia leaders who had stood as independents, Durrakh Shambani achieved a political coup by becoming the Prime Minister of Baluchistan.

However the Bugti Sardar was none too happy with the result. Power had slipped out of his family’s hands—sure they still had money and a secure financial future but what would their forefathers say if they gave up power so tamely? With this thought the Sardar nominated his nephew to stand for the post of president of the party—challenging Durrakh’s claim to two separate posts. At the same time the Sardar demanded a greater share in the assets of Sui since his people had shed their blood in protecting this valuable asset for all these years.

Reading of this remarkable news at his home in Pune, Colonel Prahlad Chitnis looked at his guest Hemant Upadhyay and shook his head, “Life is a never ending struggle!”

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Independence

Ormara (Baluchistan) 12th October

The initial artillery barrage had died down and the enemy infantry units were trudging up the hills to hunt out the commandos. As the sun glared down from their left, Major Negi could see them from a distance, crawling along the dry nullahs and scrambling down rocky hills. In his last communication Captain Sharma had warned of the advancing enemy from the north being supported now by armed helicopters—Cobras and Mi-17s. Sharma had led the commando base into the safety of the hills but radio communications between the Pakistanis meant that the troops moving along the dusty northern route would know of the commando presence.

The other squads had not come to Negi—in all probability they had hunkered down on the hilltops or were concealed behind boulders. The intense whine of a helicopter engine erupted behind Negi’s squad.

“Helicopter sir,” Havildar Shambhunath was looking through the binoculars. “Two kilometers.”

“Get the Nag ready,” Major Negi ordered the two naiks.

“Can we use it against the chopper?” asked Lieutenant Tiwari.

“Yes we can,” Negi sat behind the two naiks as they positioned the tripod and loaded the Nag anti-tank missile. “If we don’t try they will find Ahmed’s new base.”

The force of the missile pushed back at the men and a blast of hot air raised dust as the missile shot up into the sky. A few more seconds and it was screaming down towards the target. Negi could now see the helicopter dropping quickly into the valley floor. They cheered at the sound of the impact but just then another sound, louder and coming from the east, made them look back at the highway.

Karan Dev Singh felt his jet accelerate as it dumped one ton of lethal explosives on the long row of targets below. His wingman, Flying Officer Malhotra, had released the unguided bombs from his jet almost simultaneously. Two more Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft followed their lead and tore apart the concentration of the enemy land forces on the coastal highway.

Increasing their speed appreciably the four-ship section increased altitude as it cleared the mass of hills. Squadron Leader Karan switched his radar to scan the air for targets and immediately detected helicopters approaching the coast from the north. Unfortunately they did not have the requisite firepower to take these out—another sortie would be required, Karan realized.

The Mirage 2000s turned towards the sea and flew over the Ras Ormara cliffs surrounded on three sides by sheer blue water. They headed back to Jamnagar—their original base in western Rajasthan, the newly built airstrip code named Red Cactus, having been shut down finally.

Anchored beyond the Ormara headland was the transport ship INS Andaman. Apart from one full battalion and one company of CRPF personnel, the ship carried more supplies and equipment for the Ormara Division. There was also a select group of journalists on board, armed with cameras and mikes, revealing to the Indian public the spirit and heroism of their armed forces.

“I must clarify that army commandos have also been active in Op Janjira,” the Commodore finished speaking to the bespectacled reporter. “However the details of their operations can be obtained from the BGS of the Ormara Division.”

“Off the record…what about the missile strikes into the mainland?” the reporter asked once the camera had been switched off.

“Those are operational details, which cannot be divulged at this point.”

“How about an interview with the marine commandos who interdicted that vessel?”

The Commodore shook his head and began walking away even as the reporter cried out, “At least one photo sir?”

The marine commandos had been engaged in reconnaissance operations along the Makran coast after the capture of Ormara. They had scored two major successes in these operations. The first occasion was the morning of the 10th when the navy commandos, while patrolling the coast, had observed the movement of FC vehicles east of the Basol River. From a distance the enemy had attempted to fire RPGs at the pipes that supplied water to Ormara town. It had been an attempt to disrupt the water supply and draw the Indian army out of Ormara, but the marine commandos fired on the FC vehicles and scared them away.

The second major operation had occurred at dawn this day and was the interdiction of a fishing vessel transporting a consignment of drugs from Pasni. The captured fishermen had been interrogated by naval intelligence and the identity of the owner of that consignment was revealed to Hemant Upadhyay at his headquarters.

“It is a necessary evil,” the voice on the other end of the line was deep. “We are grateful that you took the trouble to inform us.”

“Our armed forces are bound to respect Indian and international law on such issues…however they are not enforcers of these laws,” Hemant was giving the tribal chief’s son a way out. “What I mean to say is that the material is in my possession and I am obliged to destroy it. However to deter future transfers of such material I can authorize a payment to compensate your loss.”

Under-secretary Philip D’souza entered the room and sat down quietly as his boss nodded and smiled—it promised to be another fruitful day. The joint secretary’s staff now comprised ten personnel with Philip and three others forming a separate office. With control over the local telephone exchange they had direct lines of communication to every personality of note in the Baluchistan province.

“This is most generous of you!” the young Sardar admitted to Hemant. “We should arrange a meeting for this purpose…”

“But Sardar sahib the crux of a relationship is trust!” exclaimed Hemant. “How can we come to your location when the enemy forces are in such strength?”

“The days of the enemy are numbered my friend! They unleashed the FC against the people…all the Baloch in this area are united against the enemy. We will soon occupy their check posts and attack their convoys!”

“You must also ensure that the people are not harassed by your men,” cautioned the joint secretary. “There should not be fights over the sharing of captured enemy stores. Your father has a name and a stature in Baluchistan…we trust that with your numerous followers you will conduct yourself in the manner of a true leader.”

Hemant Upadhyay put down the phone and walked over to a board on the wall that displayed a political map of Baluchistan. As he made a circle around the district of Turbat Philip joined him. “Can we really trust him? His father has a cozy relationship with the army establishment and has supported pro-Pakistan provincial governments in the past.”

“Self-preservation is the name of the game!” exclaimed Hemant. “In the past this tribe did not have the numbers or the resources to resist the Pakistan army; hence they followed a policy of cooperation, unlike the more numerous and better-armed Marris and Bugtis. Now the situation has changed completely and the tribe will follow the natural desire of all inhabitants of Baluchistan for independence…denied to them for so long due to the brutal occupation of the Pakistan army and western connivance with the Pakistani state. The real danger is the infighting among the tribes…over sharing of wealth or over control of land and resources.”

“Sir it would be natural for each tribe or armed group to dominate its particular area,” remarked Philip. “Set up their own check posts, charge arbitrary duties on the movement of goods, and control the economy of a particular area…they would consider it justified after all the sacrifices they have made in fighting the occupation forces.”

“It’s exactly what the Sardar referred to…a necessary evil. They didn’t create the drugs trade but they are justified in taking profits from it to pay their own men.”

“But sir if each tribal area or district runs its own administration and economy it could create anarchy!”

“Not necessarily,” Hemant looked again at the map.

“But we know all about the kind of bloody battles that have been fought between the tribes for the last two decades!”

“Agreed. But in the weeks or months that it takes to defeat the numerous units of the Pakistan Army and the Frontier Corps, the tribes and armed groups will cooperate with each other.”

“It will be fatal if they don’t,” nodded the under-secretary.

“And numbers are not important,” Hemant reminded Philip. “Our friend Durrakh does not command more than 500 men, but they are spread in a large geographical area, which gives him greater visibility and resources than any one tribe. His BNA, along with Colonel Prahlad’s men, are concentrating around Khuzdar thus immobilizing the Pakistani brigade at that town.”

“Similarly the Marris have hampered the movement of the Kohlu brigade,” added Philip. “With our presence at Ormara draining away most of the resources of 16 Div the Bugtis too have a free hand around Sui. And now we can be sure of the tribes around Turbat and Panjgur…this leaves only Pasni and Gwadar…”

“Don’t forget Quetta and the Pashtun areas,” Hemant beat his hand against the northeastern corner of the map. “There are three unknowns here…what the Pakistanis are planning for the units of 33 Div, what they are planning for the mujahid units, and how the Pashtuns will react to all this.”

“Durrakh has contacts at Quetta,” suggested D’souza.

“For some reason he doesn’t talk much about his student days,” Hemant sat down at his desk. “In any case his fellow Pashtun students will have moved on to non-political careers…what kind of support he can muster there is another unknown.”

Just then the phone rang. The joint secretary listened to the person at the other end without saying a word—his junior worked out the enormity of the information by watching the changing expression on Hemant’s face.

“Our jets struck the 16 Div units on the coastal highway,” Hemant was trying to stay calm.

“We thought those were enemy jets flying overhead!” exclaimed Philip.

“Yes and there’s more,” nodded Hemant. “The Americans have taken control of Pasni. The Pakistani officers have captured an unspecified of wmds…I suppose they were taken out of the mines before the missile strike. The information on these weapons came from our NSA to his American counterpart…our source appears to be very high up in the Pakistani military.”

Khuzdar (Baluchistan) 13th October

Durrakh Shambani pressed the accelerator of the army jeep as they descended onto a level stretch of road. Colonel Prahlad Chitnis sat on the passenger seat and could just make out the FC check post in the distance—this time manned by his two Para naiks and ten BNA personnel. Captain Usman and Qaisar Rind were at that time already in Khuzdar, studying the situation and making contacts with the various militias that were taking control of that vital town.

Chitnis gazed at the vast plain littered here and there with rocky hills. Things had unraveled rather quickly for the enemy—the Brahmos missile strike had come as massive wake-up call for the indigenous population. Men, women, and even children had gathered together from every village and flocked to the roads. The numerous tribes had joined together to attack the enemy check posts, to block the movement on the roads, and to provide food, water, and munitions to the young fighters of the militias.

Propelled by this movement, the militias had taken the fight straight into the towns where the Pakistan army still held sway. A slew of bomb blasts, sniping attacks on the officers, and the barrage of bad news from Ormara had unnerved the occupation army. All the initiative had passed into the hands of the Baloch fighters.

“Looks like they’ve stopped another Pakistani!” Naurang peeped over Colonel Prahlad;’s shoulder.

The sedan with its tinted windows was surrounded by a mixed group—some of them were men of another militia. Heated words were being exchanged and behind the sedan was another pick-up truck, which the militia members were probably using.

“What happened?” Naurang yelled as Durrakh slammed the brakes and jumped out of the jeep. Without a word he rushed to the sedan, opened the front door and forcibly yanked out the passenger.

“He refuses to let us search the car!” shouted one of his men as Durrakh pulled aside his cousin Sachlay.

“Who is that?” Prahlad asked Naurang as they hurried over to the Sedan.

“That is Sachlay Shambani,” Naurang said under his breath. “Durrakh’s cousin…they have an old family dispute from the days of their respective fathers…Durrankh’s father lived and died an honest and poor farmer. Sachlay’s family is much richer and he is also an MPA with houses in Quetta, Khuzdar, and Kalat. The problem became worse when Sachlay forced the family of Meemal to arrange their marriage…Meemal had earlier been promised to Durrakh.”

A member of the provincial assembly had the gumption and resources to arrange his own security—but Sachlay’s Baloch guards kept their guns lowered as the two cousins faced off. Colonel Chitnis caught a glimpse of innocent faces within the car, surprised by the sudden hush among all those armed men who had been engaged in a shouting match.

“Don’t you dare!” the smaller Sachlay warned his cousin as he backed away. “I too have armed men to protect me!”

“Well let these men know what our quarrel is? Let them know how you have been enjoying the money from the Punjabi rulers while their villages were being attacked?” Durrakh taunted him. “Look at this man! This traitor who claims to work for the people! See how he is running away when our lands are under attack? This was his work even earlier…he only fought with words against the Pakistanis…in reality he was being paid to give them information!”

“Liar!” shouted Sachlay.

He lunged at Durrakh who had just then pulled out a pistol. As they wrestled on the ground the pistol went off—Naurang ran forward and separated the two men. Durrakh stood up and brushed off the dust from his clothes. Sachlay, his clothes drenched with bloodstains, was dead.

“You all are witnesses,” Durrakh said between breaths. “He attacked me first…he attacked me because I exposed his treachery!”

Sachlay’s Baloch guards had raised their weapons but were confronted by Durrakh’s followers. An old man—probably the MPA’s personal servant started crying as he looked at his dead master.

“Put the body in the car,” Durrakh commanded his dead cousin’s security men. “Take him back to his village…I will soon come there to submit myself to the justice of our tribal jirga.”

In the late afternoon they were in Khuzdar; many other men had joined the seemingly well-armed and well-organized BNA. On the Pakistani side only 1700 men of the 18 Independent Armored Brigade that had come down from Quetta was all that was left of the 41 Division Headquarters in the town. They were holding on to the Khuzdar airport. Khuzdar cantonment was practically lost to the Baloch freedom fighters—they held many non-combatants of the 70 Infantry Brigade as prisoners. The fighting elements of that brigade had been hammered by the Indians and were now trapped along the coastal highway to Ormara.

“We don’t know who to trust?”

“The morale of the men is low! They are saying: let us die fighting the enemy!”

“But if we do that many civilians will die…”

“Our own people in Quetta are at the mercy of the Pashtun rebels! Let us leave this accursed town and protect our families!”

Morale was indeed low. But as captains and majors spoke out of turn and shouted down colonels and brigadiers even basic discipline and the chain of command lay shattered. Sitting in a chair of the airport terminal, holding his head in his hands, Lt. General Khattak had had enough.

“QUIET!” he shouted. “Listen to yourself…a few bomb blasts and some rioting and violent processions and you behave like the town is already lost!”

Khattak got to his feet. The officers surrounding him were still sullen and defiant but at least they were quiet. The general looked around and deliberately stared down each one of them.

“I want one squadron to break through towards the cantonment…even if they start killing the women and children use your superior firepower and wipe out the insurgents. We must regain control of the cantonment! I want to go out on recce and try to find some of our units that have been left along the Bela road…get one cobra ready!”

Taking along one brigadier and two colonels, Khattak took off from the Khuzdar airport and first made a recce of the town. There were mobs on the street—breaking into shops, stoning government buildings, and setting fire to buses. Random shots were also fired at the cobra as it swerved across the Kolachi River and over the town to follow the highway to Bela.

“Do you have enough fuel?” Khattak was sitting next to the pilot.

“Full tanks sir!” replied the young major of the army aviation unit. “We can take two trips to Bela and back.”

“Good,” the major’s cockiness melted into shock as Khattak pointed a pistol at his face. “Take it straight to Ormara.”

Rawalpindi (Punjab) 14 October

He sat alone in his office at the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi. The lights in the office had been dimmed—it had been one of worst days for the Chief of Army Staff. The planned attack on the Indian High Commission had petered out into a mad scramble for loot—the High Commissioner, his family, and other personnel had escaped over the back wall to the Church and were now being sheltered by the Spanish Embassy.

The plan of taking them hostage would have worked if that wretched Qazi, who had suddenly discovered a spine, had agreed to lead the jehadi goons! What had he said?

“Ideally the faithful should be led by their commander. When the commander refuses to leave the shelter of GHQ and continues to secretly negotiate with the enemy, what does he expect from us?”

Had it been any other time the General would have packed him off to Mecca but in this critical period all these mullahs, qazis, and maulanas had become defiant and unreliable. And it was all the fault of that Khattak! That fool of a Pashtun!

“Let us create uncertainty,” he had said. “Let the maulana make a statement…it will keep the enemy guessing and will hamper his military moves.”

But it had an opposite effect. The Indians somehow learnt of all these moves in advance and landed in Ormara—it had been the most shocking episode in Pakistan’s military history. Losing Bangladesh, Siachen, and lately Skardu had been bad enough but this move had shown the Indians to be far superior to the Pakistanis in strategic thinking. What followed then were several irreparable blows to the Pakistan Army’s honor and dignity.

The missile strike on the mines near Bela further unraveled the Baluchistan situation—and while the General was still reeling from the shock the Indians made another move shining with strategic brilliance. The para-dropping of a small battalion-sized force in Gilgit this afternoon! So disheartened were his staff that for a full hour they were unable to advise him on the position of their own forces in Gilgit town. There had been some desperate communications late in the evening describing a revolt within the NLI, where the soldiers turned their guns against the Punjabi and Pashtun officers—a repeat of Skardu!

The phone rang and the COAS leaped forward. This was his last hope—the ever-reliable Chinese!

“Good to hear your voice General Mi!”

He was grateful that the Chinese were not using their usual interpreters for this conversation—but no interpreter was needed for the brief grunt that Mi responded with.

“Sir you must help us in Gilgit,” pleaded the Pakistani general. “The Indians are not in such strength there…even at Skardu they have used soldiers from the plains who are not even acclimatized! So the small force of commandos at Gilgit can be easily…”

“The time for an intervention has passed,” Mi rudely interrupted.

“But?”

“We cannot directly fight the Indians! It would cause an engagement along the entire border where they have placed fighter jets to intimidate us. We had agreed to supply you with weapons and munitions but if your own men cannot be relied upon why should we risk the lives of our men?”

While the disheartened COAS fell once again into the depths of gloom and despair the gruff Chinese voice continued, “Your men have failed to protect even a place like Baluchistan, which is far in the rear. Our personnel at Gwadar were taken prisoner by the local fighters…the Indians have now offered to mediate on their behalf. So should we rely on them or on you?”

The Pakistani was shocked. Why hadn’t those savage Baloch simply killed the Chinese?

“Your silence is very interesting,” continued Mi. “The Indians have even said that our economic investments will be guaranteed by the new government in Baluchistan. So they have even prepared to support the formation of an independent country? Why have your men been unable to challenge the local rebels?”

“The enemy is treacherous,” the Pakistani general managed a weak response.

“And what of the treachery of your own corps commanders?” countered Mi. “Are you aware that the commander of the FCNA has directly contacted the enemy? He has offered to surrender all nuclear material in his territory for a price? Such scenes are being repeated in every region! I am amazed at your ignorance!”

There was a brief pause as Mi expected some response but the Pakistani COAS had lost the will to speak.

“The time for fighting has ended,” concluded General Mi. “There is now a race among the world powers for influence in the new country of Baluchistan. The westerners have said this to our face at the UN. If you have any sense you will try to save the rest of the country before it is too late. On our part we will deal with whatever happens in this region in our own best interests.”

The Pakistani General was perspiring. The Americans had promised him that they would apply economic pressure on the Indians but had not delivered. From what Mi had told him it was clear that they had been cooperating with the Indians from the very start.

He got up and stared outside his window at the green hills. What was he to do next? Where could he go to live a life secure from his enemies? The Chinese were no longer interested in saving Pakistan; his own general staff was treacherous and selfish. That left only two matters of importance—the safety and financial security of his family; and his own place in history.

His friends in the US military could probably push his case for asylum but once there he would always be open to victimization by the media still eager to know about the larger conspiracy behind 9/11. And their democratic process would ensure his vulnerability to any complaints of crimes against humanity by the new country of Baluchistan against officers of the Pakistan Army.

The General made his decision and again reached for the phone.

p>

Breaking point

Khuzdar (Baluchistan) 9^th October

Brigadier Qadir stared down at the containers. The thick gray steel of each enclosed three shells that together weighed over 120 kilos—difficult for even two men to carry safely. Qadir looked at the two men standing beside him. “Open this one.”

“Yes sir,” Asfandyar Khan of the PAEC kneeled down. The light within the mineshaft was weak and his colleague, Abdullah Beg, held a powerful torch over the pressurized container as it was opened.

“Subhanallah!” whispered the Brigadier as all three men stared at the weapons of mass destruction. The lights within the mine came from hastily laid out wires and bulbs and could only give minimal visibility—they did no justice to the dark and beautiful shells now glittering under the torches shone in by the three men.

Nothing further was said until Qadir gently put the lid down and Asfandyar, with equal ceremony, carefully locked the container. This was the first time that Qadir had actually seen the shells—all this while he had been too busy in shifting the 41 Division Headquarters to Khuzdar and in arranging the security at these mines.

“Sir when will we hit back at the enemy?” Abdullah Beg asked him as they stepped out of the mineshaft and into the main entrance. Abdullah’s downcast looks were clearly visible under the more profuse lighting.

“How many of our people will have to die?” demanded Asfandyar. “Our colleagues…the great scientists of this nation have been killed! The people demand action!”

In the aircraft shot down over the Sulaiman Range had been several scientists of the PAEC and of other institutions that dealt with Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Their deaths caused more heartburn to these two than the attacks on their country.

“Soon,” Qadir reassured them. “The enemy’s daring has crossed all bounds…they have taken the war into the Northern Areas and now into Baluchistan! But rest assured we will teach them a lesson. You must keep your composure until then…for the sake of our nation, for Islam.”

“Al-ham-dul-allah sir!” they replied in unison.

As they stepped out the lights were turned off. No one could tell from a distance if this mine was being used. The scientists lived in the wooden rest house while the army unit guarding the site had their camouflage tents and bunkers. No more words were exchanged as Brigadier Qadir drove off—his convoy throwing up clouds of dust on that dirt track.

Five kilometers to the southwest the night’s activities had been observed by watchful eyes—just as they had been all those previous nights and days. And just as the Pakistani army had its tents and bunkers in place to protect the mines, the Baluchistan National Army had its deep bunkers and hideouts among the cluster of hills.

From his position on top of the cliff, Naurang Marri had a bird’s eye-view of the goings on in the valley leading up to the mine. He had a closer vantage point for observing the road leading down from Khuzdar to Bela, which bypassed both the mine and his bunker. Naurang would be replaced by a comrade at dawn—in all these days the BLA had formed a very good idea of the concentration of military forces at Khuzdar and of their movements to and from these mines.

On the road back to Khuzdar there were three FC check posts—at each place Brigadier Qadir’s convoy was stopped and searched. No chances could be taken at such a time. The 41 Division Headquarters had been shifted from Quetta to Khuzdar along with the movement of the special cargo. They had occupied the headquarters of the 70 Infantry Brigade, which in turn had been moved south to Bela, to be within easy reach of Karachi. The Brigadier reached his office at 2 a.m. and was immediately on the phone to his superior.

“Qadir, the Indians have deceived us and the world,” Lt. General Khattak brushed aside formalities. “They are not confining their attacks to the disputed region of Kashmir, but they have occupied parts of Pakistan, and now they have exceeded all bounds by daring to approach our Baluchistan!”

“Sir.”

“The people are angry and restless…the jehadis are recruiting members and giving them weapons…cries of nara-e-takbeer are echoing in the streets!” continued the General. “It was because of the Indian aggression that the jehadis acquired those weapons. We warned the world but no one could restrain the enemy…but now they have bitten off more than they can chew. Our forces must drive out the enemy by any means or the jehadis will accuse us of cowardice!”

“Sir you give the orders and we will throw them out!” Brigadier Qadir was the General’s equal in rhetoric. “Our morale is high and Allah is with us!”

The opening exchanges of the conversation between these two senior officers was part of a rehearsed script. They had always known that all communications were being intercepted and recorded by the Americans and it was for their benefit that the references to jehadis, the Kashmir dispute, and those weapons, had been made. Even earlier during the Kargil conflict of 1999, the enemy armed groups intruding into India, even when manned by regular army personnel and led by army officers, had been collectively referred to as mujahideen. And likewise most of the Taliban mujahideen in Afghanistan had always been regular Pakistan Army personnel. The implication then, as now, had been to treat these armed groups as independent entities and ensure that the rest of the world did the same.

After the intentional rhetoric had been spent the two men got to grips with the situation.

“They only have a toehold on the coast yet…the approach is from the coastal highway,” General Khattak sounded much calmer now. “16 Div is on its way to crush the enemy…leave it for them. If they ask for assistance then send your units.”

“Sir if the Indians have Ormara airport they can fly in many more troops and equipment,” argued Qadir. “We must hit them before they can increase that toehold to a foothold!”

“Instruct the Turbat Brigade to collect the FC units from Pasni and move in from the other side. You will need to hit the local traitors before they establish contact with the enemy,” Khattak was now referring to the Baloch resistance. “The jehadis will also try to strike the enemy…you must stop all such movement and direct them first against the traitors and uproot them from their strongholds.”

“We have to organize them,” Qadir smiled to himself. “Otherwise they will riot on the streets and randomly hit ordinary people. Their fury must be channeled at the enemy.”

All of this was code for the movement of the irregular army units against the indigenous Baloch fighters and their political leaders—a process that had already begun in Quetta when the Indians were nowhere in Baluchistan.

“The Indians know that the structure of our NCA is undamaged,” Khattak chose his words carefully. “If they move any further into our country…if they kill any more of our troops…we will hurl our missiles and aircraft at their cities. Despite their treacherous attack it will not take us long to deliver the desired response.”

“Allah-u-Akbar!”

Despite his instinctive response, Brigadier Qadir was nervous and apprehensive. To him it seemed that the response should have been made when the first Indian fighters were violating Pakistani airspace. Now they were in the Northern Areas and so close here in Baluchistan—what are we waiting for? It appeared that the Indians were doing to Pakistan what had been done to them in the name of jehad all these years. Starting with random attacks and killings in Punjab, J&K, and the North-East, the Pakistani establishment had gradually increased the level of jehad over the years.

The Indians, after each such attack, made threats of a fitting response or hot pursuit but it all ended in talk. The rhetoric was increased by the paper tigers of the BJP, but apart from the nine-month mobilization and more threats of hot pursuit and cold start, it all died down. The Pakistani establishment had thus calculated that terrorist strikes could be increased in intensity at will, and this was the logic behind the acquisition of the nuclear artillery shells, recalled Brigadier Qadir.

In August 2004 he had been a staff officer at GHQ and was an eyewitness at the meetings with the Chinese that culminated in the underhanded nuclear deal. The latter never suspected the intentions of their allies, having put their faith in the modern and progressive Chief. Qadir wondered what the Chinese attitude would be, now that the Pakistani treachery had been publicly revealed? At least they still didn’t know what had happened to the last consignment of shells, he consoled himself.

“Sir we cannot wait for them to keep increasing the stakes bit by bit,” he said now. “They are obviously taking revenge for what the Kashmiri mujahideen have been doing to them. But unlike them we cannot keep waiting while the conflict level is increased by slow degrees? They have the ability to modulate our response…this is unacceptable!”

The Indians had pre-empted the covert use of the nuclear shells on their strategic assets, Qadir almost added. And now all the initiative lay in their hands.

“We will not wait forever Qadir!” Khattak’s response was sharp. “They have committed a great blunder in placing their formations in our midst, both at Skardu and at Ormara. They are trapped!”

“But if they attempt to press forward…”

“I do not believe that the enemy can afford to move out of occupied Ormara,” concluded the General. “You must crush the local traitors before they can join hands with the enemy!”

“Yes sir!”

Ormara (Baluchistan) 10^th October

A division is the highest military formation, which comprises sub-formations and units that move and operate as one. The corps, and above them the commands, that supervise such operations and movements are more administrative headquarters. The 114 Expeditionary Brigade at Ormara had been joined by fresh infantry battalions, artillery regiments, and more of the lethal BMPs, to eventually grow into a division-sized force of 15,770 personnel. In normal circumstances the sub-formations of a division are spread out over a large area—different brigades in separate towns and localities—but here the entire division was concentrated in and around Ormara.

Other changes had taken place on the ground. Brigadier Puri had handed over command of the ground troops to Major-General Rehman Fazli, who had flown in along with the first batch of troops and equipment. Among the first tasks for the divisional commander was to distribute the forces under him in a defensive formation to fight the Pakistanis, who were expected to converge on Ormara from all sides. The orders were issued, ammunition and supplies were distributed, and makeshift bunkers were dug, all within seven or eight hours. But apart from outstanding military capacity, there was a distinct political overtone to the appointment of Rehman Fazli to the command of this important division—the Major-General was an ethnic Kashmiri Muslim.

The 180 men of 10 Para, with their BMP vehicles, had been designated as a mechanized infantry unit along with the 800 men of the 7^th Mechanized Infantry Battalion. Apart from the five casualties, five other para-commandos had embarked on a mission more in tune with their traditional role as Special Forces.

“We should’ve been airborne last night!” Abdul Mirwani shouted into the ear of Colonel Chitnis.

“If the route that you plotted is free of enemy forces we shall have a safe journey,” Prahlad shouted back over the noise. He pointed at the man sitting across them, “Even otherwise they have enough equipment to detect and repel enemy fire!”

The Naval Flight Engineer responded with a thumb up. Sitting beside him was Havildar Shankar, gripping his MP5 and taking deep breaths to calm his nerves. Taking the Sea King helicopter through the rocky valleys and over the empty scrubland of Baluchistan were the pilot and navigator sitting in front.

“Calm down,” Captain Usman patted the knee of the man sitting across him in the second Sea King.

Naik Sujan Singh nodded and looked out at the landscape, marking the shape of the hills and noting the clumps of bushes as they whizzed past in the broad daylight. Even though they had been flying for an hour without incident, Sujan was nervous. This, after all, was their first covert operation deep inside enemy territory.

The two helicopters maintained an even distance of fifty feet as they followed the route marked by the Baloch who had been employed in the electricity department at Ormara—Abdul was also a political member of the Baluchistan National Army. His meeting with the man from R-A-W and “Sikander” the army man had lasted three hours. Subsequently he was left alone, but under guard, for two more hours before someone thought of providing the starving man with some tea and biscuits. Night had fallen by the time he was hustled into a jeep and taken to the port where he boarded a ship and again met the two men.

Abdul also met the Sea King pilots and navigators, and their superiors of the navy, who sat down with him and marked out the route on their maps. After some more questioning he was allowed to sleep in a bunker on the ship. In the morning, after witnessing a large military aircraft landing at the Ormara airport, Abdul met the four other army men. After eating a light breakfast they had taken off from the ship…and here they were.

“Let us down here!” he reached forward and tapped the Sea King pilot on the shoulder.

“No! It’s too rocky,” the Lt. Commander pointed across at a stretch of level ground. “We’ll land there.”

“No!” Abdul nearly yanked off the pilot’s shoulder. “Landmines!”

The Sea Kings hovered several feet over the rocks while the commandos and Abdul rappelled down the ropes. As the helicopters roared up and away Colonel Prahlad ran up a low hillock and took a bird’s eye-view of the surroundings. The fading drone of the helicopters was pierced by a sharp whistle—Abdul Mirwani stood next to Chitnis and waved his hands. From the dark shadows of a rocky valley emerged a string of four camels. Abdul ran down to greet the two men leading them—they handed him a large bundle.

“Camels?” Prahlad laughed as the Baloch men faced the commandos.

“Camels…” nodded Abdul as he threw the bundle at Captain Usman. “…and clothing.”

Direct south of this group of adventurers, and along the coastal highway, marched the Pakistan Army’s 16 Infantry Division, in their determined objective of ejecting the Indians from Ormara. The divisional commander had flown to Bela from his headquarters in Panno Aqil, northern Sindh. The 61 Infantry Brigade at Bela, joined by the 70 Infantry Brigade that had relocated from Khuzdar, formed the bulk of 16 Division that had moved south to the coastal highway and was now driving east to Ormara.

Two battalions of the 34 Infantry Brigade in Sui, eastern Baluchistan, joined by a Frontier Corps battalion were moving south along the Lahore-Karachi highway and would serve as reserves for the two brigades of 16 Div. The fourth infantry brigade of 16 Div, the 48^th, remained untouched at Panno Aqil and faced the Indians across the border in Rajasthan.

“They are moving all military, paramilitary, and police units to secure the highway,” explained Major-General Rehman Fazli. “Our estimate is that these will operate under the orders of the battalion commander at the Ansari Camp, which is at the base of the hills. The battalion is part of the 61 Infantry Brigade at Bela.”

“So they secure the highway until the parent formation arrives,” Major Negi peered down at the map.

“Yes but the other brigades of the 16 Div will not be far behind,” cautioned Brigadier Nautiyal, deputy GOC of the Ormara Division. “The crucial area is this mass of hills…the highest point is 1500 feet…where the coastal highway pierces across the Buzi Pass. Their armor and towed artillery will take hours to snake around the mountain road. That is the place to hit them.”

“Our commando base will be on the Maneji plain,” Negi circled a point on the map. “Even if our squads scale the hills by nightfall, and some of the enemy forces get through, we shall give them a hot reception from our base.”

“We have been assured of air support,” remarked Fazli. “So if you are able to create a major bottleneck in the mountain road, the enemy convoys will be exposed like a row of sitting ducks for our pilots!”

“Yes sir!” Negi smiled along with his superiors.

“Good luck Major Negi!” Fazli and Nautiyal returned the Major’s salute.

The Ormara Division had its headquarters in the Jinnah Naval Base. All the Pakistani prisoners in the base had been shipped to India—to be debriefed and held in custody till the duration of the war. The Naval Task Group under Rear Admiral Isaacs had appropriated all the enemy naval assets and was employing them in the multiple tasks of patrolling the enemy coast, interdicting military and commercial shipping, and escorting the supplies being shipped to Ormara almost every day.

“Good morning sir,” Brigadier Aditya Puri stepped into the office.

“Morning Puri. How is the situation in the town?”

The 114 Expeditionary Brigade had been headquartered at the Ormara airport. They were entrusted with the task of air defense while also watching the road going towards Pasni. The task of administering the town was also theirs—the telephone exchange, the power station and the water supply system were all under their control.

“The town is calm and the local officials are cooperating,” Puri sat down. “We are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the CRPF battalion. It will free up the Sikhs and Garhwalis. We can then place them in defensive positions to face the enemy, should he attempt to approach from Pasni.”

“Oh attempt he surely will!” Brigadier Nautiyal had a grim smile on his face.

“We are expecting the CRPF boys to be shipped by this evening,” Rehman Fazli looked out of the window at the imposing cliffs of the Ormara headland. “On your way did you check in with Mr. Upadhyay?”

“Yes sir,” Puri smiled. “Still insists on staying put at the rest house without security! He’s asked for some more telephone lines for his men…seems like they are making headway with their local agents and contacts.”

The Joint Secretary had been joined by three more personnel and fresh equipment to operate his office. They had found that the easiest means of communications were the local telephone lines, which had not yet been cut by the enemy.

“The cell phone network is disabled?” Nautiyal looked at his colleague.

“Yes, since yesterday afternoon. But the landlines are working fine.”

“Good for the R-A-W!” laughed the major general. “We’ll meet up with Mr. Upadhyay for lunch. I intend to stay in the Maneji Brigade Headquarters for the duration of the night…until we hear from the commandos.”

Thirty-five men from the A Team of 10 Para, under the 2IC Major Negi, rolled across the Maneji Plain through the dirt track north of the coastal highway. They passed two villages along the way and captured fifteen poorly-armed personnel of the Baluchistan Levies. These policemen had their hands bound and were marched back on foot across the dusty twelve kilometers to Ormara by five of the commandos. The rest of the force, mounted on five jeeps, faced no resistance as they reached the base of the hills.

“We’ve made good time but the highway is still seven or eight kilometers due south,” Major Negi addressed his men under the afternoon sun. “We have trained in similar terrain as this. Find the tracks used by local shepherds and farmers and maintain an even distance between our squads. Ahmed will command the base until we return.”

“Yes sir,” Captain Sharma, code name Ahmed, would have fifteen men under his command, all manning the Insas light machine guns and the mortars. The rest of the team had formed into three squads, each comprising five men, and carrying even more lethal firepower.

“Keep communications with the squads and the brigade headquarters,” Negi instructed the captain while checking his equipment. “These hills are bare and rocky while the incline isn’t steep. We shouldn’t take too long to…”

“SIR!”

Negi and Sharma looked up at the three commandos returning from recce—they were bringing in more prisoners. Civilians this time; one man and two boys. Trailing behind them were two mules loaded with firewood.

“We caught them coming down a track along a dry nullah!” Havaldar Shambhunath pushed the old man forward.

“Easy Suleiman!” Sharma caught the old man. “Have no fear; we are your friends.”

Negi pulled out two high-energy sweets from his pocket and knelt down to face the scared young boys. “Here these are for you.”

“Sultan these mules will be useful for us,” Lieutenant Tiwari spoke to Negi in Hindi.

“What’s your name?” Negi smiled at the old Baloch.

“Kaderdad…Kaderdad Ghichki,” the man replied as he looked around at the armed men who all had Muslim names.

“Kaderdad how far in these mountains do you go?” Negi was now on his feet.

“Quite far,” Kaderdad frowned. “We have been here since the morning. Our village is close by but we don’t have good firewood so we have to come here. There is also some good grazing on the mountain slopes.”

“Really? Any shikar?”

From his study on the Baluchistan province, Negi knew that the southern hills had plenty of gazelles, mountain goats, leopards, and hyenas. Apart from foreign dignitaries that received hunting permits from the alien rulers in Islamabad, the locals had been hunting game in and around these hills for centuries.

“You are here for shikar?”

“Shikar it certainly is but not of animals!” remarked Negi as the other commandos laughed. “Can you help us find the way? We are your friends…the friends of your people. We’ll make sure the boys get back to the village with the firewood. Guide us through the hills and give those mules to us.”

The old man looked uncertain so Negi pulled out a bundle of Pakistani Rupees from his pocket. “Na janaab! This has no value for us,” Kaderdad brushed away the notes. “Do you have dollars?”

Sharma laughed the loudest as Negi gaped at the Baloch. “No I don’t have dollars,” Negi reached for Sharma’s arm and exposed the Rolex diving watch. “But once we get back safely I’ll give you Ahmed’s special watch, which works even under water!”

Mounting their heavy equipment and ammunition on the mules the commando squads raced up the mountain tracks. Since there were only two mules, Major Negi’s squad carried its own equipment and by evening was within eyesight of the coastal highway. Still a couple of kilometers away though while the other squads had positioned themselves directly above the road. Lower rocky peaks sloped down in front of Negi—if they tried to get closer for the attack they would have no chance of escaping the Pakistani response.

“Ahmed to Sultan! Come in Sultan!” Sharma’s voice crackled on the radio.

“Sultan here!”

“Enemy forces reported ten kilometers north of the village! Over,” Sharma reported. He was referring to the squad that had taken the boys back to their village and had observed heavy movement along the dusty track coming down from the north.

“What is their strength? Over.”

“One battalion…over,” responded Sharma. This probably meant that heavier forces would be coming in the tail and the road back to Ormara would be blocked for the commandos.

“Ahmed come to Sultan…over.”

“Roger…Ahmed out.”

“All squads deliver sweets and come to Sultan. Sultan out.”

The relentless whine of the vehicles crawling up the incline was now overpowered by a deep rumble that echoed around the barren hills. The first vehicle had been hit by an anti-tank Nag missile. With his binoculars Negi saw the other vehicles grind to a halt—the Pakistani soldiers ran out and dove for cover. Another explosion boomed on the road ahead, this time louder. The vehicle’s fuel tank would have taken a direct hit, thought Negi as his men fingered their weapons and looked on. Several explosions followed now punctuated by bursts of LMG fire and the desperate shouts from the Pakistanis on the road.

One hundred and fifty kilometers to their north Naurang Marri gave up his position on the cliff south of the mine to the light-eyed stranger called Sikander. With the night vision telescopic sight of his Insas rifle, Sikander watched the site carefully for some time. After noting down coordinates he handed the rifle to his friend Usman and disappeared.

Two hours later a flurry of activity broke out among the strangers. Usman pulled Naurang down alongside him and put his head down to the rocky floor. An intense whine pierced their ears and a rush of warm air pressed down from the night sky on Naurang Marri. As the Brahmos missile struck the target Usman and Naurang jumped up to see the horizon light up briefly. The sound of the explosion, which followed later, was drowned out by the wild cheering of their comrades below the hill.

New Delhi 11^th October

“It is the fighting spirit of our soldiers and the bravery of the Pakistani quam that is holding the enemy back,” the lady addressed her expatriate brethren in the Bradford locality of London. “The generals who rule our country, who had begged America and China for the latest missiles, planes, and tanks, have failed to protect the nation! I want to ask them, what happened to all these weapons? Why have they failed to deter the enemy aggression?”

The crowd murmured its disapproval. Some fidgeted at the criticism of the army leadership at this crucial time but the lady politician continued with her determined assault.

“We had great scientists and researchers in our country but they were humiliated and sidelined by the generals who were keen to save their own skins! It is again this selfishness that has brought our nation to this calamity…the generals colluded with foreign powers to acquire weapons that could have been built by our own scientists. And now those same weapons have failed to protect us!”

The rumblings of the crowd grew louder as they were reminded of the public humiliation of their nation’s greatest scientist, AQ Khan. The generals had made him a convenient scapegoat for their collective sins. It seemed that the Indian allegation of the nuclear shipment from China was going to be again blamed on some rogue scientists—perhaps the ones who had perished in the crash of the KLM Boeing.

“Now it is reported that the enemy is in Baluchistan…that they have entered Sindh! The generals had every reason to save their illegally acquired properties in Punjab but they have failed even in that task! The Indians are moving in and out of Punjab with impunity! I do not know what to believe…but I know this…the brave people of Sindh are loyal to the cause of Pakistan. But they ARE NOT slaves to the failed generals!”

The crowd cheered and clapped. Most were Punjabis, but when the hated Indians were walking in and out of their home province, in full view of the international media, someone had to be held responsible.

“I want to say to these generals; run away and hide with your friends in other countries, just as your families already do! The Indians know that they cannot conquer Pakistan…it is due to the failure of the generals that they have dared to go this far. We will go back to our country and face the enemy. Long live Sindh! Long live Pakistan!”

The last two slogans had been delivered in English. The live telecast was being viewed all across the world and people watching in Pakistan would have been troubled by the special mention of Sindh. In the office of India’s National Security Advisor the mood was of quiet celebration.

“What time is the press conference at the Home Ministry?” Ramesh Pathak spoke to his secretary over the intercom.

“6 pm sir.”

“And when is the American NSA arriving?”

“At 7 pm sir.”

“Good,” Pathak looked at his watch. It was already 5:30 and the American NSA would have heard the public speech of the Pakistani opposition leader during her flight. But she would miss the Home Ministry statement and press conference—the embassy officials would not be able to prepare her sufficiently for the meeting with Pathak. The Indian NSA leaned back in his chair and switched channels.

Two hours later Pathak was seated next to the Prime Minister on a sofa. Opposite them sat the American NSA and the young American Ambassador to India.

“Mr. Prime Minister on the way here the Ambassador briefed me on the new search-and-seizure policy on commercial shipping announced this evening by the Home Minister. We understand and appreciate the fact that these steps have been taken to ensure India’s security,” the lady crossed her legs and leaned forward. “However we are not clear if this is to be done in tandem with India’s participation in the Proliferation Security Initiative?”

“No madam,” Pathak smiled at her. “This is an initiative of the Home Ministry. We will detain crews and passengers, interrogate them, inspect their vessels, and check all their containers, all at our own ports. Unlike the PSI this will not be done on the high seas.”

“But search-and-seizure measures as extensive and thorough as these would delay the movement of merchant vessels for days or weeks!” exclaimed the US Ambassador. “And, I’d like to point out, this would only harm India’s economic interests.”

“Security interests take precedence over economic interests,” the Indian Prime Minister responded in a firm tone. “This was the reason we established a presence along the Baluchistan coast, as I have made clear in my address to the nation on Monday. The prospect of WMDs being delivered in these ships and then being exploded in urban centers is surely of more concern than delayed shipments of oil or steel.”

The PM had chosen his words with great deliberation—oil and steel were the principal imports of China. With India’s long coastline and many ports of call, the search-and-seizure policy could seriously hamper the economic growth of China.

“We do understand and appreciate your security concerns,” the lady smiled for the first time. “We hope that our two countries will share any intelligence that is derived when these measures are implemented?”

“Of course madam!” her counterpart smiled.

“On the question of the WMDs, the missile strike by your ships in Baluchistan is reported to have destroyed the mine where the weapons were stored,” she continued without a pause.

“We have acknowledged the missile strike and the Prime Minister will speak to the nation about that tonight. However when we spoke this afternoon I had pointed out that some of the WMDs have been delivered by the Pakistani officer commanding the site, Brigadier Qadir, to the jehadis.”

“Yes we have notified our personnel in Pasni about this matter,” the lady clenched her teeth. “We are dispatching additional forces to the region to support the Pakistani officers who have offered to help us in recovering the WMDs. However we request that this activity be kept under wraps. Additionally we cannot at this time acknowledge the legitimacy of the forces engaged against the Pakistan Army in that region.”

“We understand your compulsions,” the PM responded. “However our forces will continue to support and assist the indigenous resistance against those who have occupied their land for the past fifty-seven years. And it is these resistance forces, which have helped us in detecting and destroying the WMDs.”

“Mr. Prime Minister we have in the past discussed this issue closely with the previous government. We do not believe that any other institution or any armed group can keep order in the entire territory of Pakistan, save the Pakistan Army. This is why we have always endeavored to keep up relations with the leaders of that army. It is a reality, but you understand, not of our creation.”

“We share that assessment but with some qualifications,” Ramesh Pathak intervened. “We believe that the country of Pakistan is held together by the Pakistan Army and this feat cannot be matched by any other group in the regions comprising Pakistan. However should any of these regions develop a capacity to govern itself, it is to everyone’s advantage that such a development is encouraged and supported.”

“This is another reason for our presence in Baluchistan,” the Prime Minister remarked. “We believe that the resistance forces in that country are now ready to achieve independence. Like you, we also have contacts within the military of Pakistan…”

He paused to let that sink in. Pathak enjoyed the bemused expression on the lady’s face.

“The information on the nuclear artillery shells…from the day that they were transferred from China…to the transfer of one container now towards Pasni…all this has come from our sources within the military.”

“And the reliability of all this information in turn indicates the reliability of our sources,” remarked Pathak. “It proves their high position in the military.”

“Do your sources give you information on the situation in other parts of Pakistan?” asked the young Ambassador. “Are there any indigenous movements in Sindh, the frontier, Kashmir? Do you have any support for state formation in those regions?”

“What you call Kashmir is really the Gilgit-Baltistan region of the J&K state,” the Prime Minister gently rebuked the Ambassador. “The other areas under Pakistani occupation are either part of Jammu province or Kashmir province. In all three areas our aim is to first attain complete control. After that what we do for the local people is entirely our concern.”

“I must again come back to this point,” the American NSA shook her head. “Can you replace the Pakistan Army with any other force in Sindh or Punjab? And even if that arises by some miracle can that force, or those forces, be sustained by you alone? The fact is that we will have to negotiate with the Pakistani generals at some point.”

“And I may add, the Chinese hold the same view,” the Ambassador intervened. “Even though your armed forces have maneuvered the PLA into a defensive posture, should Pakistan begin to break apart, the Chinese will surely send their Airborne Corps to the aid of their allies. Therefore negotiations should at least be pursued until the military situation has unfolded even more in your favor.”

“Mr. Ambassador we do not share this view of the Chinese leadership,” Pathak smiled. “We know, and we trust you also know, that they are very pragmatic in their foreign policy. In fact we believe that there is a split within the Politburo over the continued support to Pakistan…this split came to the fore after the decision to arm the PA with nuclear artillery backfired. Instead of using these weapons as deterrents the Pakistanis resorted to terrorism, and when things went against them, tried to drag China into the conflict.”

“You believe that the Chinese may only be making a show of support to Pakistan?” asked the American NSA.

“Yes,” the Prime Minister nodded. “When the implications of our search-and-seizure policy are analyzed around the world the Chinese will have a reason to withdraw in their national interests. Additionally we are in the process of making some strategic moves that will certainly give our neighbor justifiable cause to disengage from the conflict.”

p>

FOUR

Khuzdar (Baluchistan) 7^th October

Durrakh Shambani didn’t curse as the television screen went blank—he just lay on his bed and stared. Having spent most of his life in this town Durrakh had become used to the regular power cuts. To add to the people’s misery the municipal authorities had been ordered to enforce a blackout throughout the night—the army feared further air strikes by the Indians.

The day’s news had caused a stir in the town and Durrakh could hear the buzz from the streets below. It was common for the people to gather at street corners, around newspaper stalls, and in teashops to debate and discuss the hourly developments in this furious conflict. Such debates were the right forum for political activity—especially for an office bearer of the Baloch Students Organization—but the BSO members had been arrested, beaten up, and threatened on just the second day of India’s military operation.

But that wasn’t why Durrakh Shambani lay closeted in his tiny one-room apartment. The revving of a motorcycle pierced through the buzz on the street and a voice called out, “Durrakh!”

He jumped out of the bed and looked down through the window. “I’m coming,” Durrakh shouted down at his associate Qaisar. He turned to pick up his jacket and looked at himself in the mirror. The faded gray jacket was a gift from an American reporter four years ago—Durrakh had served as his interpreter in visits to some remote villages.

“Where’s my ID card?” Durrakh looked at the table littered with books. He then shuffled through his jacket pockets and pulled the card out. Any cop or FC man who saw the word student on the card would smirk—Durrakh was almost 44. His cropped beard was graying and the hair on his scalp was getting thinner each passing year. Durrakh didn’t bother to take a closer look—the wrinkles around his eyes and lips had become depressingly profuse.

“We’re getting late,” Qaisar kicked the Chinese motorcycle to a start and the two men raced through the streets and out onto the main road.

Khuzdar was the second major city in Baluchistan and was uniformly Baloch unlike the capital Quetta. It was also more centrally located with roads leading up to Kalat and Quetta in the north, to Turbat far in the east, Jacobabad in the west, and south to Karachi. Such an important town was bound to have a heavy security presence and Qaisar could see the crowd of Frontier Corp men at the checkpoint. He cut the motorcycle’s engine and let it roll to a stop.

“Ey Balosan?” a mustachioed Pashtun stepped toward them. He was dressed in the familiar dark blue shalwar-kameez of the FC and there were a dozen other men with weapons pointed at the road. Behind a bunker of sandbags was the main post where their officer was sitting.

“Going to my village,” Qaisar and Durrakh handed over their ID cards.

“Get off,” the security man was joined by two others. They searched the Baloch men thoroughly and began rustling through the bags on the bike.

“It’s only some rice for my uncle,” protested Qaisar. They ignored him and spilled some of the rice on the road. Most of the FC personnel were recruited from outside Baluchistan and were usually Punjabis and Pashtuns—not surprisingly this force was much despised among the Baloch people.

“Come here!” an imperious voice commanded them over to the post. The officer was sprawled on a cot examining their ID cards. “Who is Durrakh Shambhani?”

“That’s me,” Durrakh said quietly.

“And you are Qaisar Rind,” the young officer sat up and looked closely at the two men. “BSO…you call yourselves students? When I’m your age I’ll be a commanding officer…did you find anything?”

“No sir,” the Pashtun stood alongside the two Baloch. “Only bags of rice.”

“Check inside the bags. They could be carrying bombs or drugs…empty them out,” the officer looked angry. “These BSO-wallahs are traitors to our country. We are under attack and their able-bodied men are going around raising slogans for independence! Why don’t you fight for your land…for your religion?”

The young man was now on his feet and facing them, his thin moustache quivering along with his lip, while the last outburst rang in everyone’s ears. Durrakh and Qaisar only responded with a deafening silence.

“Go and stand outside. We will first check your status with the police in Khuzdar…then we’ll see what is to be done!”

The rice lay in a pile on the road. Qaisar sat down and began gathering it in heaps while Durrakh held the bag open. They spoke in Balochi.

“The Punjabi pup hopes to become a CO,” Qaisar’s gaze was hard with anger.

“Only if he lives that long!” Durrakh slapped his friend on the shoulder and forced him to smile. The Pashtun soldier came up to them and blocked out the mid-morning sun.

“I have made our saab understand,” he assured them. “I said BSO has no guns and no money…they can only shout slogans! But we have a problem. These wretched Indians attacked at such a time that our monthly pay hasn’t been delivered to us yet.”

Qaisar understood what the FC man was fishing for and handed him a hundred-rupee note.

“What will ten men do with this?” the Pashtun shook his head and then smiled as another note was handed to him.

Five minutes later Qaisar and Durrakh were racing away on the road—low hills ran parallel to that road until Qaisar turned right into a dusty track. Khuzdar town and the entire Khuzdar district rest in the lap of the Kirthar and allied hill ranges. These low hills rise up to meet the Brahui Range in Kalat, while from the south, the Suleiman range begins to run parallel to the Kirthar and then goes on to meet the mountains of Afghanistan. These mountain ranges together separate the plateau of Baluchistan from the plains of the Indus.

The two men stopped near a small cluster of houses built in the lap of the low hills. Qaisar Rind was 37 years old and lived with his family in this farm. The Rind tribe dominated all lands further north but in these parts Qaisar’s family occupied the middle strata in the tribal hierarchy.

“How are you uncle?” Qaisar waved to an old man gazing across the date orchard. He cut the engine of the motorcycle and rolled to a stop.

“Salaam Durrakh!” Qaisar’s cousin Shazain walked up to them. “What’s the news from the city brothers?”

Shazain’s little daughter ran to her uncle who took her in his arms, “Alas this time I have bought nothing for you!”

“The city is tense and there’s little electricity,” Durrakh told Shazain as they both picked up the rice bags.

“How are you son?” Shazain’s father had followed them on foot. “And why are these bags open?”

“We were searched on the way by the FC,” explained Qaisar. Both Shazain and his father spat in disgust. “It’s okay…no major loss.”

“All will be okay when these people are thrown out of our land!” exclaimed Shazain. He was shorter and darker than his cousin but both men had the gray eyes of their family.

“Come let’s have lunch,” suggested Qaisar’s uncle.

“No uncle we have to go now.”

“But…”

“Uncle we have important work to do,” insisted Durrakh, the hard look in his eye showing steely determination. He reached across to shake their hands, “Pray that we return successful.”

Durrakh Shambani was the head of the Baluchistan National Army, an organization that he had helped form eight years ago at Kalat. The choice of location was very symbolic—as Durrakh intended it to be. Kalat State had led a confederacy of Baloch tribes that strove for independence after the formation of India and Pakistan in 1947. But they were forcibly incorporated into Islamic Pakistan with the covert support of its western allies. Since then the people of Baluchistan had led several uprisings against their oppressive Punjabi rulers and in the process had formed various parties, groups, and organizations to push their cause.

In 1997 the BNA joined that crowd. Despite the militaristic name Durrakh desired a political role for his organization and an important future for his student followers. He therefore aligned himself with major political parties, collected money for them, and campaigned on their behalf in the towns of Baluchistan. The BNA had barely made its presence felt when in 1998 the Pakistan government decided to test its nuclear weapons in the Chagai district. Durrakh’s fledgling organization went on a protest march to the Ras Koh hills where they were promptly arrested by the army and for two weeks tasted the venom of Punjabi brutality.

The BNA offices were ransacked and Durrakh escaped back to Khuzdar. After lying low for a few months he visited the local BSO office and signed up to become a member—not revealing his political past to his new friends. Durrakh quickly tired of the groupism and infighting within the BSO and found a soul mate in Qaisar Rind. One day Qaisar took Durrakh to a secret location west of Khuzdar where he and a handful of others trained with automatic weapons. They told him that all they needed were new recruits and the means to raise money. Durrakh knew how to arrange both. Thus the BNA was reborn—this time however it became a shadowy and militant organization.

“Dostagein braat Shahdad! Are you there?” Qaisar called out in the darkness.

“Salaam Qaisar! Salamat baate!” friend and brother Shahdad was sitting on top of the grassy hill waiting for them. Durrakh and Qaisar had been trekking through the hills for six hours and their associate ran halfway down the hill to greet them.

“Salaam Durrakh,” Shahdad wished his chief and put his hand on his heart. Qaisar embraced the younger man and the three of them slowly wound their way up the hill and then down into the darkness of a narrow valley. The dark basin was strewn with unimaginably large boulders with smaller rocks dotted around them—there had been little rain in centuries to pare down the rocks or make their edges smooth.

“Ah! Zarkani is awake,” Shahdad flashed the torch twice in response to similar flashes from across the valley. They made their way across the dry river bed and met Shahdad’s cousin Zarkani—both were from the Mengal tribe and were in their twenties. After another ten minutes through bush-covered ridges they reached their secret hideout.

“Baba when did you arrive?” Qaisar looked at the old man sitting in one corner of their cave.

“Baba!” Durrakh cried out and rushed to hug the elderly Baloch. This was the first time that many of them had seen such emotion on Durrakh’s cold and hard face. But then only Qaisar and Fatah Brohi knew that the man who worked as a gardener in Quetta Cantonment had also bought up the young Durrakh.

“He came to the village,” remarked the beardless Fatah Brohi. “After I heard what had been happening in Quetta I brought him here. The old man has a lot of life in his legs!”

Fatah Brohi was 39 years old and belonged to Durrakh’s village. The two youth had left the village to study in Khuzdar but while Durrakh had moved on to Quetta University, Fatah began working in a timber factory at Kalat. Their paths crossed again when Durrakh was reviving the ABA and his old friend showed up to join the BSO in Khuzdar—Fatah had become a carrier for drug traffickers and volunteered to help the BNA raise money.

“The mujahids have become active…they have begun going around the city and the suburbs…only a miracle can prevent an all out attack on our people!”

“Come baba sit down,” Durrakh pulled the hysterical old man down. There were a total of fourteen men in that cave each with a rug to sleep on, and a blanket to keep out the cold. Durrakh reached for one of the battery-powered lamps that lit the cave. “Are you okay? Did anyone grow suspicious of you?”

“No but I left the city without informing anyone…even your associates,” the old man’s tired old face welcomed the warmth of the lamp. “But if you want I can go back!”

“No you have done enough,” smiled Durrakh. “What news of Sachlay?”

“He has gone to Khuzdar,” the old man’s gaze lost its sparkle. “His entire family is there with him.”

“I have to square accounts with him,” Durrakh had winced at the mention of his cousin’s family. “Soon…”

“Dinner is ready brothers!” one of the men called out.

Apart from stores of food grain and vegetables these men had an entire complement of cooking utensils and plates. The food was cooked on gas stoves. Today they had bought a goat from a nearby farmer and the mood was celebratory.

“We hear that the Indians have entered Sindh and there is fighting going on in Punjab?” Zarkani asked Durrakh.

“How many times have I told you not to talk while we are eating?” Durrakh was enjoying the meat. “But yes, this time I won’t scold you…our objective is now within reach!”

“Allah-o-Akbar! I swear I will become a namaazi if he grants us independence!” exclaimed Fatah. The others laughed between mouthfuls.

“It isn’t that simple,” cautioned Qaisar. “The Punjabis are now crowing that the Chinese have brought their forces on the borders and India will soon pull back to defend itself on that side!”

“Remember also that our enemies will use religion to confuse and divide us…our people,” Durrakh’s tone made the others stop eating and look carefully at him. “The mujahids and the talibs in the north, their agents here and the FC will try to turn people against us. We have to be careful on that account.”

“That will be dangerous only if the Indians enter Baluchistan,” suggested Fatah.

“But we don’t need anyone’s help,” Zarkani shook his head. “We can fight on our own…let the Indians take Sindh and Punjab.”

Durrakh and Qaisar exchanged glances but said nothing. After the meal they discussed the strategy to be followed. The BNA had 470 active members scattered across several hideouts in the province and there were thrice that number of freelance fighter who sometimes worked with them. At different times those fighters joined other resistance groups or followed the army of a tribal chief.

The fourteen in this cave were all active members. They would attack FC men on the roads, bomb military installations, and coordinate activities with other factions and tribes. Caches of arms and ammunition were scattered across different locations in the hills while money was raised through contributions, taxes on outsiders, outright robbery and the drugs trade.

Durrakh left his comrades and took a battery-powered laptop outside into the cool night. He checked the encrypted e-mail from his Indian friend and slowly absorbed the shocking news. The Baloch leader then typed out his response, read and re-read each paragraph for mistakes, and then re-wrote it. After pressing the send button he looked up at the starry night sky. The encrypted electronic signal shot through the small satellite dish, up into the darkness, bounced against a satellite overhead, and was reflected back down into the computer of his friend thousands of kilometers away.

Ormara (Baluchistan) 8^th October

Hemant was glad that all his electronic equipment was safely wrapped and placed in the dry cabin on the frigate. He too should have been sleeping in the warmth of the bunk there—with a hot meal in his belly. But he was out here bobbing up and down with the LST as it cut its way through the Arabian Sea.

“You know what I want most Mr. Upadhyay?” the man standing next to him shouted over the roar.

“What Colonel?”

“Coffee! A cup full of boiling-hot-coffee!”

Prahlad Chitnis and Hemant Upadhyay laughed as another gust from the sea nearly drenched them. The intelligence officer and the paratrooper had met first at the joint briefing in Mumbai but there had been no time for a one-on-one interaction. For this reason Hemant had opted to ship with the Colonel and his commandos. He was quite taken in by the soldier—Prahlad Chitnis had the light eyes of a Maharashtrian Brahman, a gray moustache twirled in the fashion of some of his Rajasthani men, and a face barely lined even after years of physical exertion and mental stress.

On his part the Colonel was wary of the intelligence officer. He had worked with the R-A-W before; his most vivid memory had been from the operations in Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka. Prahlad Chitnis sized up men on the first meeting and it was either a clear like or dislike relationship after that. With the somewhat reserved Hemant Upadhyay and his mischievous eyes the Colonel wasn’t very sure—he didn’t like that feeling. Especially since the two men had to work closely together in a task of such magnitude.

“You two have been out here for so long!” a voice called out from behind them. Commander Madhavan wedged himself between them and all three men stood on the bow of the LST and stared out at the dark sea.

“The sea is really rough!” exclaimed Hemant as the ship jumped sharply over the waves.

“This is your first time on a ship?” Commander Madhavan patted Hemant’s back. “Well the sea is fine…it’s just that we are following in the wake of all these other vessels.”

Straight ahead were the dark masses of two corvettes, their hulls glistening under the moonlight, now veering to the left. The frigate INS Ganga was also pulling away.

“Well it’s begun,” Madhavan looked at the Colonel. “One hour to landing…we move towards the beach…the ships following us will join in the attack on the port.”

The three men were on the INS Gharial and following close behind were two similar but smaller landing ships, the L36 and the L37. Closing the pack further behind were the big destroyer INS Ranvijay and two large tankers carrying supplies, fuel, water, and troops. The three landing craft were under the command of Commodore Mistry and had begun veering to the right.

“Well gentlemen! I must join my troops now,” Prahlad stuck his hand out.

“Good luck!” Hemant had a grim expression on his face as he watched the Colonel walk away towards the bridge.

“All ready Mustafa?” Prahlad looked across at the men huddled in the boat hanging by the side of the ship.

“All ready sir!” Major Mustafa Pakir’s reply was echoed by the five other commandos with him.

“Sab tayyari hai?” the Colonel shouted and waved across at another boat hanging along the starboard side of the ship. He got a show of hands in acknowledgement from Captain Tomar and his squad. These two boats were motorized landing craft, which would be lowered into the sea as the main ships slowed down near the approach to the coast. The boats would then skim ahead, watch out for anti-ship mines floating inshore, and check the seabed for the approach of the three LSTs.

That then was the main purpose of the Landing Ship Tank—these amphibious vessels would unload troops and vehicles directly on to enemy land unlike other ships or submarines, which had to first secure a functioning port. The smaller L36 and L37 were carrying 200 soldiers each with only their personal equipment and supplies. The INS Gharial, which would lead the landing, carried 800 troops and 10 Armoured Personnel Carriers in its hold—200 of these men were the commandos of the 10 Para. All the other infantrymen belonged to the illustrious 2 Sikh battalion.

“Do you hear that?” Colonel Mohanty, their commanding officer, looked at his junior officers. “They are lowering the landing craft.”

Mohanty’s officers were standing in a huddle around him, the menacing but silent BMPs were parked in a single column through the length of the holding area, while standing shoulder-to-shoulder around them were the infantrymen and the commandos. All of them could hear the creaks and knocks as the boats were lowered along both sides of the ship. And they could feel the INS Gharial slowing down to a crawl.

“Okay boys gather round,” Colonel Chitnis joined them. “The Sikhs will embark first and secure the beach…we have to locate the coastal highway and move towards our objective.”

“My boys will hike it behind you,” said Colonel Mohanty. “Estimated five kilometers to the town where we will set up roadblocks and eliminate resistance. The main town is located on the isthmus while newer settlements have come up along the road to the airport…we will secure the highway as it leaves the town towards Pasni.”

“Major Pakir and Tomar will move along the coast in their boats,” continued Chitnis. “They will approach from the east bay where the port is located. They will then evaluate the situation and secure Pak Navy and Coast Guard assets…by that time we will be racing down the isthmus.”

Dull thuds in the distance made everyone quiet. The large crowd of hot, sweaty, and nervous men knew that these sounds could only mean that the Pakistani port was under attack from the missiles and guns of the Indian Navy. It also meant that they were now approaching the shore.

“Check your weapons and put on your life jackets!” ordered Colonel Mohanty. The Sikhs sprang to attention and quickly donned their orange life jackets—these were necessary considering the strong sea currents and the heavy equipment that each man carried. The commandos in their all-black uniforms scrambled into and on top of the BMPs.

“The enemy is vigilant and prepared to give you a hot reception!” continued Colonel Mohanty—slowly switching to Punjabi with the rising tone of voice. “Show these bastards what you are made of! Take out each one of them and give him such a thrashing that he remembers his grandmother!”

“Oye bolo mere naal!” the stocky Subedar Major standing next to him now roared. “BHARAT MATA KI…!”

“JAI!”

“KI…”

“JAI!”

“KI…”

“JAI!”

The massive gates on the ship’s bow finally creaked open at 1:30 a.m. Indian Standard Time. The sounds of the waves lapping against the shore and the cool air rushed into the LST’s hold. The pumped up Sikhs jumped into the knee-deep water and charged across the beach. Pairs of them took up positions along the shore until more of their comrades had joined them and until it was obvious that the coast was—quite literally—clear!

The BMP rolled down the landing ramp and sank like a stone—the water came up to Colonel Chitnis’ ankles as he surveyed the foreign land. The driver pressed the accelerator and the infantry combat vehicle roared out of the water and crushed the dry brush in its path. Behind them the Sikhs were raising the battle cry of their regiment.

“Bole so nihal! Sat Sri Akal!“

The BMPs tore across the dry bush-covered plain as Prahlad put on his night-vision goggles. “There it is! I can see the highway…slow down!” he shouted down to the driver as they turned.

Even the roar of the ten BMPs could not disturb the picturesque calm of the scenery—the white hills under the moonlight and the vast emptiness that they enclosed. Prahlad could almost visualize the dry plains of the Baluchistan plateau that lay beyond the hills.

“Get down! Get down!” the Colonel ordered the men sitting around him. “Take positions!”

They were now on the outskirts of the town and there was darkness all around.

“Come in! Sultan!” the Colonel was on the radio using the code name of his second-in-command, Major S Negi. “Set up a roadblock on the road to the airport! Locate the FC compound and give them hell!”

One BMP already guarded the approach to the town and besides Negi’s vehicle a third BMP was to capture the Ormara airport. The other six vehicles followed Colonel Prahlad Chitnis as he turned towards the sea. They roared down the narrow isthmus to the town of Ormara—the facilities of the Pakistan Navy were built beyond on land reclaimed from the sea and protected from the sea currents by the rocky headland.

“Sultan to Sikander!” the radio in Prahlad’s BMP crackled. “Hitting the FC post with mortar.”

“Well done Sultan!”

Prahlad now clambered up the turret and used his night-vision goggles to study the horizon—the distant flashes of light over the rocky horizon were disturbing. The navy boys were nowhere near the port.

“Stop!” the Colonel banged the steel turret with his palm. As the convoy stood in the middle of the isthmus Prahlad looked at the town—it seemed much bigger now. Mohanty’s Sikhs would take twenty minutes to drag their supplies and equipment along the highway. Another fifteen minutes would pass as the 600 men positioned themselves around the town. But unless they were supplemented by the men being transported in the large tankers it would be impossible to hold the town against a determined assault by Pakistani troops from the nearby bases.

Distant bursts of gunfire flashed from the port. They were shooting at something in the water—Chitnis thought of his men creeping up in their landing craft and quickly barked an order. The BMPs fired their mortars at the port to silence the resistance while their comrades took positions on the floating docks. After three rounds the armoured personnel carriers drove through the town, two vehicles for the port and the rest following Chitnis towards the main naval compound.

“Sultan to Sikander!” Negi’s voice seemed agitated. “We’re taking positions around the compound…FC retaliating with small arms fire.”

“Sultan hold on to your position…wait for reinforcements.”

Inside the BMP Chitnis put on his night-vision goggles and nodded at Naik Sujan Singh. The two men clambered out and took positions along the ground. In the darkness they could see an iron gate guarding the approach into a large building—Sujan crawled along the ground until he was within fifteen feet of the sentry’s wooden post. The BMP’s engine drowned out any sound that the young commando made as he jumped to his feet and stormed into the post with a loud yell.

“Abey utth!“

Sujan dragged the cowering sentry outside and kicked him to the ground.

“Stay down there! Raise your head off the ground and I’ll blow it off! Got that?”

Two more men joined the Colonel and Sujan as they opened the gates and took positions inside. Within a minute they had kicked the door open and were in the building. A woman’s scream froze Prahlad in his tracks.

“Anyone near a light switch?”

“Yes sir!”

“Keep your finger on it…everyone take off your NVGs,” Prahlad blinked his eyes in the darkness. “Switch on the lights!”

The old woman lay on the floor, clutching prayer beads in her hands, pressed up against an ornate settee. This building was part of the residential complex and from its appearance probably housed a high-ranking officer and his family. They found the rest of the house empty but for one locked room. Prahlad followed his men inside as they forced the door open and switched on the lights. On a sprawling bed sat a woman holding a young girl in a stifling hug while a wild-eyed older boy stood next to them. Without warning he lunged at the commandos.

“Stay calm!” Prahlad shouted as Sujan caught the boy’s arm and threw him on the bed. “Is there anyone else in this house?”

The woman was too scared to reply. The boy had the wind knocked out of him and was lying in a state of dazed confusion.

“We are the Indian army,” remarked Prahlad in English. “Don’t worry. We will not let any harm come to you. Stay inside this house and don’t step out till daybreak.”

At 6:30 a.m. Indian Standard Time the sun peeked over the horizon—it was the 9^th of October. The commandos had secured the entire naval complex with all the civilian and military personnel. The sentries and MPs had been the first to surrender—their rifles would’ve been of no use against the armored BMPs.

The only resistance had come from the Coast Guard personnel at the port. Captain Tomar and two of his men fell to their fire before the BMPs charged in and strafed the port with machine guns and rockets. In all the engagements at the town and the port there had been five casualties and twenty soldiers had been injured. But the naval encounter out at sea had been even more ferocious.

The Jinnah Naval Base had been built to house almost twelve ships and four submarines—however in September, three of these ships and one submarine had been sent for exercises to the Arabian Sea with all ratings and complete equipment. These had been sunk by the Indian ships off the coast of Sri Lanka. Three remaining submarines had been detected escaping to the West Asian ports. So the Indians had taken a calculated risk to target under-staffed and under-equipped Ormara.

The naval task group of one destroyer, one frigate, two submarines, two corvettes, two tankers, and three LSTs had maneuvered their way across the Arabian Sea unchallenged. From the Jinnah Naval Base one frigate and three missile boats came out to challenge the Indians. The engagement lasted twenty minutes and ended in the destruction of the Pakistani ships—but a lone submarine from the nearby port of Pasni torpedoed the frigate INS Ganga twice in succession. One full hour was taken up in the hunt for that submarine and in rescuing the personnel on the frigate. More time was lost in locating and defusing the floating mines that protected the port and in creating a safe path for the Indian vessels. The LSTs were the first Indian Navy ships to enter through the approach channel and dock at the Jinnah Naval Base.

Hemant Upadhyay walked up to the commandos standing around the lone BMP at the port. After the INS Gharial had docked safely, Hemant had slept like a baby through the docking of the other LSTs and the continued sounds of gunfire from the town. When day broke he had stepped on to the port with his laptop.

“Where is your CO?” he asked Captain Usman.

“In the town sir,” remarked Usman from atop the BMP. “You are to take a Coast Guard jeep and meet him at the airfield. Havildar Shankar will escort you there.”

As they drove across the narrow isthmus Hemant felt the cool sea breeze envelop him. For such a bright day and the beautiful location the town was quiet and the roads deserted. The airfield was located on the outskirts of the town—at the briefing Hemant remembered it had been described as a national airport. Twenty men of the Paras and a company of Sikhs were standing guard outside while their officers brainstormed inside the terminal.

“Mr. Upadhyay is here. Welcome sir,” Colonel Chitnis was strangely subdued. The others stood up to greet the Joint Secretary.

“Good morning!” Hemant nodded at them. “I hope all’s well.”

“We’ve had casualties,” Brigadier Aditya Puri’s expression was grim. “Lost some good men…but sir phase one of Operation Janjira has been completed.”

As a Joint Secretary, Hemant was equivalent in rank to Rear Admiral Isaacs, who commanded the naval task group. Brigadier Puri was their junior and he was setting in motion phase two of Operation Janjira. Puri rubbed his hand over his balding head and frowned.

“The 114 Expeditionary Brigade must be in position to thwart enemy aggression on Ormara town, the airfield, or the harbor,” continued the Brigadier after they were all seated. “Now the naval submarines and ships have already begun patrolling along the coast. The enemy submarine that attacked our naval task group came out of Pasni and it is the navy’s estimate that future attacks will come from that side.”

Hemant was lucky to have not been on board the frigate and the others knew it. All of his equipment and baggage was damaged or lost permanently. By the time the INS Ganga was pulled into port fresh replacements for Hemant would be flown in.

“Fortunately the IAF has made it impossible for the enemy’s P3C Orion aircraft to take to the air…making our job easier. However patrols by enemy aircraft have been noted by Negi. We need to have our radars and guns in place.”

“Yes. We’ve already had aircraft flying overhead in the dark,” explained Major Negi. “While we were engaged against the Frontier Corps unit…bastards fought hard. No survivors. I lost two men and the Sikh company sustained injuries.”

Hemant looked around the control tower of the airport. Brigadier Puri, Mohanty, Chitnis, and Hemant were seated in the main circle and around them were Majors Kumar and Negi, the seconds-in-command respectively of the two colonels, and Major Ghose from Puri’s staff. The sun was getting brighter and Hemant could clearly make out the barren hills and plains of this beautiful land.

“We’ve set up an OP…observation post on the hill ranges over there,” Chitnis gestured at Hemant and turned to the Brigadier. “Sir we must also place one of the anti-air units there…it’s a very commanding position.”

Puri nodded and turned towards Hemant, “Mr. Upadhyay have you heard from your contact?”

“Yes. I need some men to go and pick up one Abdul Mirwani from this address,” Hemant handed a note to Chitnis. “He works in the electricity department and will be your guide to Khuzdar.”

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Special Forces

Jaisalmer Sector 4^th October

Naik Sujan Singh lay flat on his stomach and felt the cold permeating up through the sand. He adjusted his night vision goggles and peered to his right. Finding the field clear the Naik signaled with his right hand and heard the dull thuds of two pairs of feet behind him. Captain Usman and Havildar Shankar ran to the incline and then crawled up to Sujan. They positioned the Medium Machine Gun at the spot and took their places as the naik began crawling across the sand.

Sujan’s assault rifle was strapped to his back, the K-bar knife snug by his thigh, and the 9mm in his right hand. He adjusted the silencer on the pistol and made his way towards the fence pausing every few minutes to peer at the enemy guards on patrol and then slithering forward once again. The fence reached a height of six feet but the barbed wire was old, rusty and quite basic—the commando could crawl through the bottom gap with difficulty. Their target loomed large only a few feet away and in the fading moonlight the distinctive outline of a sandbag bunker next to it was clearly visible.

Thirty feet to Sujan’s left Lieutenant Tiwari and Naik Ashok were cutting through the barbed wire. Behind them another two-man team covered their approach with a MMG. While Tiwari and Ashok had the task of rigging the explosives in the open ammunition shed Sujan’s job was to neutralize the bunker. When they had first cased their target the bunker was seen to be a problem—it could only be taken out by a grenade since they had no way of knowing how many men sat inside. The silencer-loaded pistol was meant for the sentries on patrol, if they should care to come too close to the Indian commandos. If the Pakistanis in the bunker got wind of the commandos Sujan was ready to sit up, hurl a grenade into the bunker and then saturate the area by firing his MP 5 assault rifle while the two MMGs provided cover for their quick retreat.

Tiwari and Ashok crept forward; the shadow of the ammunitions shed cloaking their every move. From the corner of his eye the Lieutenant could see rows of tanks and APCs in the compound—some of the other buildings probably held the fuel and spare parts of these vehicles. This night strike on the infantry brigade deep inside the Pakistan was a daring raid; made more effective by the fact that the brigade sat astride the enemy line of communication. Not only would this raid hamper the Pakistani defenses but the Indian formations opposite them would have greater freedom of operations—at this time the Indian artillery had engaged the enemy’s forward positions.

Lieutenant Tiwari climbed up to the open window of the shed wall while Naik Ashok lay motionless on the ground. The lighting of a match and a sudden sharp cry that followed froze everyone—Tiwari softly dropped down inside the shed while Ashok clutched the barrel of his assault rifle. Naik Sujan Singh saw the glow in the bunker and heard a sharp cry from a soldier on patrol who began running towards him—Sujan pulled the pin of the grenade and counted the seconds.

“Abey! What have you seen?” asked a voice from the bunker.

“You bhainchods smoking alone!” the soldier leaned into the bunker.

As the Pakistanis laughed and exchanged cigarettes Sujan pressed the trigger and carefully replaced the pin. Equally calm was Ashok—when the soldier walked away happily blowing clouds of smoke, the Indian commando scampered over the window. Lieutenant Tiwari was busy setting the charges. Ashok pulled off the straps of his explosives pack and got to work.

From the abuse-laced Punjabi conversation Sujan had guessed that there were two men in the bunker and he could see the third man patrolling some sixty feet away—the glow of his cigarette shone bright in Sujan’s night-vision goggles. These NVGs were designed to enhance the faintest source of light and make objects visible in the darkness. But even with these goggles Sujan barely noticed the Indian commandos slithering out of the window and crawling back across the fence.

“Ten minutes,” Sujan said under his breath. He looked at his watch and lay still for two minutes while his buddies crawled back across the bush-covered plain. As he prepared to follow them a sharp rustling sound came from one of the bushes and a head bobbed up from the Pakistani bunker. Singh pulled the pin of his grenade and prepared to spring up.

“Durge Bhawani ki jai!” he shouted and lobbed the grenade right into the bunker. By this time both soldiers in the bunker were standing and staring out into the darkness.

“Oye Girnade!” screamed one as the explosive piece of metal hit his chest, slithered down his legs and fell into the dark pit. The explosion caught them just as they were clambering out of the bunker. It ripped apart the sandbags and the sudden flash of light blinded Sujan Singh.

Undaunted the Indian commando fired a sustained burst from his MP 5 before running back to take cover behind the MMGs. The Pakistani soldier on patrol had dropped down when he heard the screams of his comrade and now he clenched his jaw and began shooting blind from that supine position. Other soldiers were running up to him—these were the first to taste the bursts from the Indian MMGs.

“Time?” shouted Captain Usman as Sujan slid down next to him.

“Seven minutes sir,” shouted Tiwari.

“Let them have it!” Usmann steadied the MP 5 against his shoulder. “Keep them away from the shed!”

The sharp exchange of fire was now punctuated by a louder sound as the Heavy Machine Gun in the Pakistani tower turned to face the intruders in the rear. They followed the flashes of fire and opened up a sustained burst with their HMG. The bullets whizzed over the head of the Indians who lay flat on the incline of the sandy embankment.

“Five minutes!”

“Mortar ready?” Usman kept firing.

“Sir!” two soldiers at the bottom of the incline had left their gunner buddies to prepare the mortar.

“Fire!”

The mortar lobbed shells over the embankment that circled high into the sky and dropped down right into the brigade compound. Two rounds in quick succession did the trick and shut down the firing from the other side.

“Four minutes sir!” shouted Sujan as the explosions echoed in the empty desert.

“Go!”

The seven commandos picked up their equipment and ran down the incline and across the sandy plain. The Pakistani HMG began firing again. A different sound this time silenced the firing—a dull but overpowering sound that increased in pitch to a deafeningly sharp whistle. It lit up the blackness around them and Sujan removed his goggles and looked back. The compound was engulfed in a ball of fire and smoke. As the stocks of ammunition caught fire more flashes and sounds erupted—the commandos raised loud cheers and continued their run.

“Load up quickly,” Sujan called out from inside the BMP armored car. The light inside fell on the other commandos as they pushed in their equipment. “Ashok haat mein kya hai?”

“Yeh?” the young man held up a dead snake.

“It’s the source of all our trouble,” laughed Tiwari as he jumped in. “It was lying perfectly still in the bush when he disturbed it!”

“I snapped it sir,” Ashok got in. “All this while I didn’t realize that it was in my hands.”

As the others laughed the young naik prepared to throw it away.

“Wait!” Captain Usman stepped up and shut the door. “Don’t chuck it just yet. You’ve brought it so far…I think it’s fitting if we take back this Pakistani snake as a trophy!”

The BMP came to life and roared out of the ditch where the commandos had hidden it before jogging the three kilometers to the Pakistani brigade compound. All lights were switched off as they hit the unmetalled road behind the tiny village and drove due south. Leaving Pakistan would not be as easy as entering it had been—for the alarm would’ve spread and the enemy would be on the lookout for any suspicious movement. Fortunately no heavily armed formations were present on this route and the BMP was strong enough to withstand automatic weapons fire and RPG attacks from the mujahid forces.

Just as the first hint of dawn appeared they crossed back into Rajasthan energetically shouting slogans for their unit and their country. All through only the odd automatic bursts had marked their stealthy return and now similar shots were vainly fired from the bunkers of the enemy border units who had recognized the markings on the BMP.

“Sujan apni tang dekh le,” in the faint light Usman was looking down. They were all dressed in black but Sujan’s trousers were glistening at the left ankle.

“Flesh wound,” shrugged the commando as he pulled up the torn cloth and checked his dark and bloodied leg.

Toughness and endurance of pain was a way of life for these men. They belonged to the 10^th Battalion of the Parachute Regiment—known to their military colleagues as the Paras and classified by their government as the Special Forces.

New Delhi 4^th October

Such special operations and other attacks by regular formations were occurring throughout the length of the India-Pakistan border. What was common in these operations was the limited size of the attacking forces; the short duration of each attack; and the quick retreat of those forces. The Pakistan Army had initiated all previous wars between the two countries but despite all these pinpricks originating from one side, this conflict was not the work of the Indian Army.

The Government of India had massed its air power in the region bordering Pakistan over a period of two months. This movement was kept a secret through elaborate ruses and by limiting the circle of knowledge even within the defense establishment. At the opportune moment this power was unleashed on Pakistan’s nuclear assets and delivery systems—this military endeavor became known to the world as Operation Kartikeya. The other objectives of this operation were to destroy the enemy navy while it lay still in docks and to hinder the deployment of the enemy army.

Frontline aircraft of the enemy air force were potential delivery systems for nuclear weapons and these were destroyed in their air bases on the first night of Op Kartikeya. The mass of ageing fighters, bombers, and transport aircraft were left alone since the Indian Air Force did not have the resources to hunt each of them down. The IAF was also keen to conserve its strength for dealing with Pakistan’s ally China and hence the tempo of air strikes was lowered only three days into the conflict. Pakistani pilots utilized this opportunity to hit back at the invaders. They valiantly engaged in area defence and attempted to draw the Indian jets into the firing envelope of their land forces. But they did not have the resources to penetrate into Indian airspace and in the end their efforts ended in failure.

The destruction of the Pakistani Navy was a work-in-progress to which the finishing touches were given, aptly enough, by the Indian Navy. The action had taken place in Sri Lankan waters and had been covered live by the international media. Even now three hours later the live feed from India’s southern neighbor continued.

“You can see in the distance the Pakistani destroyer lying on its side…as it were,” the lady held her hair in place while pointing out at the ocean. “The Colombo police are clearing the harbor and all roads leading to the docks have been cordoned off. We can see several patrol boats of the Sri Lankan Coast Guard…it’s not clear if they will pick up the Pakistani seamen?”

The balding man smiled as he watched the live feed in his office.

“We will also be speaking to the Indian High Commissioner a little later…back to you in the studio.”

The smile on RN Pathak’s face grew broader as he thought of his former boss appearing on screen. The High Commissioner had sent Pathak a congratulatory note when he had taken over as India’s National Security Advisor. His first real crisis had been the transfer of low-yield nuclear artillery shells by China to Pakistan—lack of cooperation between the various agencies had almost allowed the act to go unnoticed. But now they had at last set things straight.

“The Pakistani ships were on their way to the South China Sea for annual exercises with their Chinese counterpart,” the analyst in the studio spoke with the excitement of a teenager. “When war broke out these enemy ships were considered a threat to Indian shipping and India’s civilian ports…”

As he went on breathlessly a map depicting India’s coastline appeared on screen; accompanied by a colorful animation of the ships being chased down to Sri Lanka and then bursting into flames. Someone would have to tell these media dorks to use phrases like ‘military operation’ or ‘Operation Kartikeya’ instead of the loose term ‘war’. War meant destruction and mayhem while an operation at least suggested a disciplined and orderly manner of conducting war.

Pathak reached for the remote and switched off the set. Twenty minutes later he was driving into the porch of the Prime Minister’s residence. Sunlight was streaming through the thick cover of trees and the air was free of smoke and dust—the few perks of this job. The Prime Minister rose early and did yogic exercises in the garden before meeting with his top political and bureaucratic advisors.

“Good morning sir!”

“Come Ramesh,” the old gentleman sat on the sofa in his dhoti. “Join us.”

The first visitor to the Prime Minister’s residence was the head of India’s premier intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing. Misinformed civilians and foreigners wrongly called the agency RAW whereas in government circles the complete acronym R-A-W was used. Ashok Desai stood up and shook hands with Pathak.

“Has your counterpart been in touch?” the PM asked him as he sat down.

“You mean our mutual friend?” Pathak laid stress on that word to indicate the American NSA. “We spoke last night…said she was planning to visit the other side soon. I told her that traveling to a war zone was not in her best interests!”

Desai started laughing and the PM smiled, “They and the others have been persistent in calling up every member of the cabinet…think they can pressurize us to lay off at this stage!”

He looked on as Pathak sipped some tea. The small room was comfortably cool without an air conditioner and Desai as usual was dressed in his favorite brown suit. “Ashok that video we watched last night?”

“The one from the Mirage 2000?” Ashok Desai frowned as the PM nodded.

He thought that had all been cleared; the pilot had taken all the right steps before shooting the civilian aircraft down. The situation had also been explained directly to the Netherlands and the story had died out in the media—there was so much more news to cover.

“You see,” Ramesh Pathak uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “After the Boeing crashed there was a firefight on the ground. Armed groups attempted to seize something from the debris but were prevented by units of the Pakistan Army. A firefight continued for hours…there was a well-publicized report of the martyrdom of one Major-General Nusrat in the Pakistani media.”

The color drained from Desai’s face, “We were watching over the Sri Lanka situation…”

“The material has been recovered and taken south towards Khuzdar.”

“Is your source reliable?” Desai looked properly stunned.

“The event is proved by the concentration of forces at that town. They must have sensed some sort of threat from the indigenous fighters,” remarked Pathak. “The police have been raiding the offices of the student bodies and political parties at Quetta, Khuzdar, Panjgur…the Frontier Corps units have increased their patrols and search operations in the lesser towns.”

“What is even more interesting is the source’s estimate of the cargo that they were all fighting for,” the PM had a grim expression.

“Nuclear material?” said Desai slowly, the frown on his face indicating mild disbelief. “Flown in a civilian jet in the hope that it would not be chased or shot down by us…destination Quetta or Dalbandin? But don’t they already store material at Chagai?”

“Not any material,” explained the white-haired Pathak. “The low-yield weapons…that we knocked out at the outset. The information with the DSHQ on the air strike at the Mangla formation is under question now…”

“Making such a statement now is premature,” cautioned the PM. “They had only estimated the cargo carried by the trucks…it is possible that the Pakistanis kept some of these shells in reserve at Rawalpindi?”

The two bureaucrats nodded in silent agreement. The Prime Minister seemed offended by the mere suggestion that the armed forces alone were responsible for this ill-timed development. After all Desai’s agency had a hand in tracing the transfer of the shells from Tibet across Gilgit and into Pakistan. Why hadn’t they known all about where these shells were stored?

“Maybe you should talk to your opposite number in Washington,” the PM looked at Pathak. “Make this very clear…if they know something then they must share it with us; otherwise if either our troops or civilians are threatened then we will unleash all our strength on those evildoers.”

Jodhpur 5^th October

Captain Usman stepped forward, stomped his foot on the tiled floor and snapped his right hand to his forehead.

“Well done!” Lt. General Andrew Camphose returned the salute and the two men shook hands.

Another loud stomp echoed in the hallway as Lieutenant Tiwari stepped forward and energetically went through the motions; proudly shaking hands with the GOC-in-C of the Indian Army’s Southern Command. Camphose was congratulating the entire squad for their successful raid deep inside Pakistan and right astride the enemy’s line of communication.

“Shabash!” Lt. General Rohit Ranawat also shook hands with the men.

Ranawat was commanding the Indian Army’s 12 Corps and the ceremony was taking place in his headquarters at Jodhpur. His immediate superior, Lt. General Camphose, had especially flown up from his own Headquarters at Pune to congratulate the commandos.

“You boys don’t look tired at all!” laughed the white-haired Camphose as he stepped back and looked at the entire squad.

“Sir you give an order and they’ll have another go at the enemy,” remarked Colonel Prahlad Chitnis the Commanding Officer of the 10^th Battalion. “Kyon?”

“Yes sir!” the seven men shouted in unison.

“That’s the spirit!” the Southern Army Commander roared back at them. “Keep it up…you’ll be seeing action again pretty soon.”

The commandos marched out and the three officers turned back to Ranawat’s office. The commandos’ footsteps still echoed in the hallway as first the lean Camphose, then the stocky Ranawat, and finally the very tall Chitnis walked past the guards and the flags planted outside the office door.

“Meet Colonel Chitnis, commanding 10 Para,” Camphose said to the man who had stood up as they entered. “Prahlad this is our BGS ops…Brigadier Aulakh.”

“Sir we’ve worked together before,” Prahlad saluted and then stuck his hand out at the handsome Sikh. “Op Vijay.”

“We’re from the same background sir,” smiled Aulakh. “Special Forces.”

“Puraney Paapi!” quipped Ranawat.

The two old rogues laughed along with their seniors.

“Gentlemen! You recall the briefing on the enemy’s possession of sub-kiloton munitions and the danger they posed to our formations,” began Lt. General Camphose after they were all seated. “It appears that a consignment of these nuclear artillery shells was transported to Quetta in the last few days. Army Headquarters has received a directive from the GOI to carry out operations and cooperate with friendly forces in Baluchistan…much in the same way as we are doing in POK. The objectives are; recovering or destroying these munitions, getting justice and freedom to the people living in these regions, securing our nation’s interests, and obtaining international recognition for these aims.”

“Following these directives,” continued Ranawat. “12 Corps has received intelligence from the DIA and their civilian counterparts on the current situation in Baluchistan. Our own formation commanders have submitted details on the movement of the enemy formations into Sindh…especially the Mehran Force and the Frontier Corps units.”

In peacetime, while the armed forces train and prepare for war, paramilitary forces protect the border. On the Indian side the Border Security Force performed that role while their counterparts on the Pakistani side in Sindh were the men of the Rangers—the Mehran Force operated in the interiors of the province while the Frontier Corps units monitored internal security in NWFP and Baluchistan. The latter had also been used in counter-insurgency operations in Sindh.

“It is our estimate that we need to position a division-size force to achieve our objectives in Baluchistan,” remarked Camphose. “This will affect the offensive capabilities of the 12 Corps since only your units are fully acclimatized to operate in Baluchistan…and more importantly Prahlad’s boys are the only SF units in the Southern Command. Now with this proposed reduction in strength we need to review the internal situation in Sindh.”

“The primary concern for people living in border districts is the lack of water and healthcare,” remarked Ranawat. “Which is the same as on this side. To tackle unrest and disaffection the Pakistan Army engages in development activities…but on its own terms. Thus the people of Sindh whose main demand is a just share of water from the Indus River System are dependent on the demands and needs of upstream Punjab. Control over water distribution is maintained through a series of barrages…for Sindh the damage to the barrage at Sukkur has complicated the situation.”

The Sukkur Barrage was located near the Punjab-Sindh border and was an important communication link between Pakistan’s armed formations near the border and those in the interior. Quite naturally it had been targeted by a flight of MiG-27s on the very first morning of Operation Kartikeya. Canals from this barrage irrigated vast areas of lower Punjab and Sindh and any fall in water levels would seriously hamper supply to those regions.

“The damage is not that extensive,” frowned Camphose.

“Besides this is the harvesting season,” Aulakh piped in. “The winter crop will not be planted for a few months.”

“It’s more than that,” Camphose shook his head. “The release of a large volume of water has restored the dried up riverbed to its ancient condition. This will have a huge impact on the psyche of the people…for them the Indus is much more than a mere river. Besides the flooding along the coast will rejuvenate the mangrove forests and give heart to the fishing communities living there.”

Ranawat looked at his watch—two o’ clock. In half an hour Camphose and he would break for lunch and in the evening the Southern Army Commander would meet the staff at 12 Corps HQ. They would finalize and iron out the rough draft of operations in Baluchistan prepared that morning at Pune. This meeting had been held to sound out Chitnis and his Special Forces unit on their prospective role in those operations.

“Even though each village would have elements from the Mujahid Force and the paramilitaries we must treat civilians with compassion,” continued Camphose. “It would have to be a daily battle for winning their confidence. Now on the enemy assets…Aulakh?”

“Sir,” the Brigadier leaned forward and opened a file. “Bombings and strikes by the IAF have not affected the formations under 5 Corps…the entire Karachi-Hyderabad-Mirpur Khas axis is secure. There is a high possibility of offensive operations by the enemy in the Barmer sector. This is further confirmed by what we know of the movement by 31 Corps.”

“Yes,” remarked Ranawat. “The Corps HQ moved south from Bahawalpur to Pannu Aquil three years ago. Their role was to guard the Rahimyar Khan-Sukkur road.”

“And sir their deployment is defensive,” nodded Aulakh. “One division under 5 Corps, which was earlier guarding Sukkur, was thus freed up to take offensive action. On the positive side the damage to the Sukkur Barrage has hampered the movement of the 2 Corps and the formations that came down from Quetta.”

“They play the role of strategic reserves,” Ranawat looked at Chitnis. “If they try to bridge over the damaged portion of the barrage then they become targets of our aircraft. On the other hand if they cross further upstream then 31 Corps formations will take the offensive because their positions will have been taken over by these new arrivals.”

“Sir only 5 Corps has the muscle and strategic space to go offensive,” insisted Aulakh. “But an enemy division in Baluchistan will be in their rear and they will have to divert some units to guard the Karachi-Lahore highway.”

“This is where your boys come in,” Camphose looked at Chitnis. “We need to hit the storage facility with local guidance while the rest of the division secures assets along the coast. Now…”

In the next twenty minutes the Army Commander briefed the Colonel on the target for his unit; the equipment they would carry; the time of the attack; and the mode of transport.

“Why not by air sir?” Chitnis rubbed his hands over his face.

“Too risky,” Camphose leaned back in his chair. “Besides most of the IAF hepters are engaged in HBOs over in J&K.”

Hepter was army-speak for helicopter and HBOs were heli-borne operations, which at that time were being used to fly soldiers, supplies, and arms to forward locations in the mountainous terrain of J&K.

“There has been a general reduction in the tempo of air sorties overall,” remarked the 12 Corps Commander. “After the first few days, which took us all by surprise, the IAF appears to be holding back…”

“Which is a good thing,” said Camphose. “You will have air power at your disposal when your formations move into Baluchistan.”

“Yes sir,” smiled Ranawat. “The enemy pilots made some error in judgment. They assumed that after the intense first few days our boys were exhausted and they could now hit back and take them on!”

“Sir for us the China factor is also beginning to loom large,” cautioned Brigadier Aulakh. “That is why our focus is so much on J&K.”

“Prahlad you brief your men this evening,” Camphose abruptly got to his feet. “We’ll meet again tomorrow night. Good luck!”

Colonel Chitnis left the 12 Corps HQ in the afternoon heat and drove to the location of the 10 Para Battalion—his unit. Every soldier and officer of the Indian Army is identified by his unit, which may be an infantry battalion, a regiment of tanks or guns, and a supplies or engineering unit. Thus Lt. General Camphose joined the Indian Army as a fresh-faced 2^nd Lieutenant in the 21^st Battalion of the Mahar Regiment; Lt. General Ranawat belonged to the Poona Horse tank regiment; and Brigadier Aulakh was from the 9^th Battalion of the Parachute Regiment.

The unit initiates and trains the recruits and for the rest of their service soldiers go wherever their unit is sent. Officers go on to command larger formations but the identification with their unit remains even after retirement. A collection of these different infantry, artillery, tank, engineering, and supplies units is called a formation. These formations have the resources to defend the country against enemy attack, launch their own attack against enemy formations, and occupy enemy land. In peacetime they assist civilian authorities by providing relief and rescue efforts in natural calamities, controlling and pacifying riot-affected areas, and quelling internal revolts.

Chitnis drove into the compound and saw his boys engaged in a game. Lieutenant Tiwari held a volleyball in his hand but there was no net—he was preparing to throw it at someone. The medium-built man ran backwards a few steps, took aim and threw the ball with his sinewy arm.

“Abey Sujan! Tu to gaya!” laughed Usman as he ran to pick up the ball.

“Nahin lagi sir!” Sujan brushed off the dust from his vest. The ball had hit him in the chest and as per the rules he was out of the game.

“Kya ho raha hai?” the Colonel took off his shirt and languidly strode up to them. “Playing dodgeball with a volleyball?”

“Yes sir!” Sujan grunted as he targeted Ashok in the back.

“I’m in!” Chitnis sprinted in and picked up the ball, shoving aside Tiwari. Under the desert sun the Colonel’s vest was already damp with sweat but he was used to such exertions and he ran about without losing his breath. There was a desperate scramble as the others pushed, pulled, and punched to escape their Commanding Officer’s aim.

“Missed!” the ball whizzed past Sujan’s head.

While the others ran after the ball Chitnis jogged up to Sujan and quickly grabbed him from behind. He slipped his arms around the naik’s waist and picked him up.

“Arrey kya kar rahe ho!” screamed Sujan.

“Laga dey Shankar!” Chitnis grunted as he kept the Jat lad in the air. Havildar Shankar fired the ball smack into Sujan’s chest.

The game ended after another thirty minutes of rough masti and the hot, sweaty, and dusty men began trooping back to their quarters. They had been dead tired after last night’s mission but that had been a mentally draining and physically on-the-edge exercise. These tension-free games were important for restoring their minds and bodies to peak condition.

“Tiwari tell me what type those fighters are?” Chitnis slapped the Lieutenant on the back.

A deep but low rumble made the commandos look up. Two Indian Air Force jets were snaking across the clear blue sky; the distinctive blue-gray airframes visible even at that height. The paratroopers train and work closely with the air force and identifying the various types of jets is a lesson learnt through experience.

“Mirage 2000 sir!”

“And going east,” Captain Usman sighed. “Lucky guys!”

A Special Forces unit stands apart from all other units in a formation—usually they are not even part of any formation. With their advanced weaponry and specialized training these para-commandos have abilities far surpassing conventional army units. They can operate deep behind enemy lines and with their language skills are trained to work with disaffected populations within enemy country—these operations require military and political clearance at the highest levels and thus SF units take their orders from the Corps or Army Commanders and sometimes even directly from the Army Chief!

The Special Forces battalions have fewer personnel than regular infantry units, which are further organized into teams that operate in different areas. The 200 men in the A Team of 10 Para at Jodhpur, had been operating under orders of the 12 Corps Commander but their missions so far had been conventional. Attacks on the enemy’s communication lines and supply depots were important by themselves but a valuable asset like a Special Forces unit needed to be used in a more imaginative manner—fortunately for the 10 Para such operations were already on the drawing board at the 12 Corps Headquarters.

Mumbai 6^th October

An asset is a piece of property, something advantageous and well worth having—so says the Chambers Dictionary. Businessmen understand this term to mean capital, land, and machinery, assets that are useful for running a business and making profits. The use of this term has very quickly spread to the military where ships, aircraft, tanks, and guns are regarded as assets, which enable the military to train for and execute a war.

But Additional Secretary Mohit Prabhu of the Cabinet Secretariat was not concerned with those sorts of inanimate assets—Cabinet Secretariat was a euphemism for the R-A-W. Mohit had been called to Ashok Desai’s residence where his boss had briefed him on the developments at the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security. The two men had then sat down to prepare a plan for an important branch of their agency in light of the momentous decision taken by the CCS.

For intelligence agencies the best assets are human beings. And for an agency that specializes in external intelligence such an asset was usually from a foreign country. Joint Secretary Cabinet Secretariat Hemant Upadhyay was the deputy head of the Baluchistan desk in the R&AW—he was quite adept at recruiting such assets.

“Any trouble finding this place?” Hemant asked his boss.

“None at all,” confessed Mohit as his taxi drove off. “But consider the irony; the North Indian taxi driver knew the roads better than one who has been born in this city!”

The two men got into Hemant’s Ambassador car. For a city famous for its nightlife the Mumbai streets were deserted and strangely quiet but the glittering lights still created a reassuring glow in the darkness of the night. Hemant pulled up beside the pavement along the Marine Drive Road—neither man stepped out to enjoy the cool sea breeze.

“A decision has been taken,” Mohit wiped his glasses clean and began tapping his fingers on the briefcase.

“Baluchistan,” said Hemant quietly.

“They want to see the site destroyed,” began the Additional Secretary. “But as you had said in your report the network of tunnels is so large that on-the-ground verification will be needed.”

“The NSA’s source must be highly connected…”

“Yes,” Mohit nodded. “The army’s assessment is that units will concentrate at Khuzdar and form an axis with the Quetta-Jacobabad line.”

“Just this morning I got e-mail from our asset there…the Brigade has cordoned off all roads and their air defense units have taken up positions around the hills. But no feverish activity within.”

Hemant’s assets in that province had confirmed the news of the sensitive cargo and he had been feverishly tracking the case without any sleep. The IAF strikes were an even bigger surprise to India’s own intelligence community than to the rest of the world.

“The main theme at that meeting of course was China’s forward deployment and mobilization,” Mohit snapped his head left as a car whizzed past them. “The other was America’s role…their leaders have neither confirmed nor denied our claims on the activity around Khuzdar.”

“Even at this stage!” Hemant was surprised. “What’re they waiting for?”

“Hard to say… boss was asked about it but he rightly pointed out that this was a matter for the DIA.”

India’s Defence Intelligence Agency obtained information on the militaries of other countries, particularly in the neighborhood, and they were best placed to know what the US forces based in Pakistan had advised their superiors.

“We have to put pressure on them and on the Chinese,” continued Mohit. “That is why the government has sanctioned a military presence in Baluchistan. This presence will be explained as a response to the reported loss of the nuclear artillery shells at the encounter in the Zhob area.”

“Where the Major-General was killed?”

“Yes,” smiled Mohit. “They tried to use it to their advantage…asking other nations to stop the fighting or else the terrorists may get their hands on these weapons! With that encounter they created enough doubt in everyone’s mind and portrayed themselves as the last thing standing between stability and worldwide wmd strikes. Well now it’s our turn…we will state officially that the threat to international shipping from such terrorist groups, who apparently operate freely against the Pakistani state, requires us to establish a presence along the Baluchistan coast.”

“But our objective is the destruction of the arsenal at Khuzdar?”

“That is only a small part of our objective,” Mohit turned to stare at Hemant. “A decision has been taken. We have to activate our assets and motivate them to fight for independence. These are your written orders.”

Mohit pulled out a bunch of files out of his briefcase and began handing them across to Hemant. “This is the profile of the Special Forces CO…these fellows will make contact with our asset and move towards the site. You’ll meet him tomorrow at Western Naval Command Headquarters. These are the profiles of the commanding officers of the army and navy whom you will be shipped with and…this is the list of items that you will be provided for your stay in Baluchistan.”

“Any word of advice sir?” Hemant’s throat was very dry.

“Remember what was done in Bangladesh,” Mohit reminded him. “Open your office and start the paperwork…get our friends active…and cooperate with our military personnel. I may be sent to take over from you once things get off the ground.”

“Right sir,” Hemant started the car.

“Now let’s get out of here before some cops come snooping around!”

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]]> http://ayravat.wordpress.com/2006/12/03/chapter-iii/feed/ 4 ayravat shooting simulator http://ayravat.wordpress.com/2006/12/01/chapter-ii/ http://ayravat.wordpress.com/2006/12/01/chapter-ii/#comments Fri, 01 Dec 2006 20:41:53 +0000 ayravat http://ayravat.wordpress.com/2006/12/01/chapter-ii/ ]]>

Rumblings of jehad

Dalbandin (Baluchistan) 2^nd October

The Cobras finally returned. Too low and too fast, thought Air Commodore Sajjad as he watched the swirls of dust rising up from the ground—there were still ugly holes in the runway. Visibility had been further reduced by the fast setting sun and Sajjad began jogging over to the three choppers. The army men already gathered there—officers and soldiers—were busy removing the bodies. The dying whines of the Cobras marked the stony silence and barely suppressed rage of the men as they completed the grisly task. The Air Commodore looked at the dead soldiers—piled one on top of the other in a pool of their own blood—and he grit his teeth, “Bastards!”

The army had taken charge of the Samungli air base since the time Lt. General Khattak had stormed into his office after the initial attacks. Sajjad had only been told that they were expecting a special civilian flight from Islamabad carrying important personnel and materials. For that reason a battalion of heavily armed soldiers had taken up positions in and around the large base—not that Sajjad had a problem with the army. And he had always enjoyed working with the army aviators, but the manner in which he was cast aside was not good for inter-service relations.

The army aviators and their Cobra gunships had come into action almost immediately. A team of between thirty or fifty soldiers led by high-ranking officers had taken off that afternoon in response to an emergency—the civilian airliner while on its way to Samungli had crashed into the mountains of the Suleiman Range. Army units from Zhob and Quetta had been rushed there to secure the crash site but the 41 Div GOC, Major-General Nusrat, was flown there to take charge of the operations. At that time Sajjad had not known how serious the matter and it was only later when the return of the Cobras was reported that he learnt of the firefight with the jehadis.

The brass were waiting beneath the terminal of the airfield. Lt. General Khattak peered down at one of the stretchers and saw the very calm—and very dead—face of Major-General Nusrat.

“They’ve been shot at close range,” Sajjad stared grimly at Khattak.

“It was an ambush,” Brigadier Qadir said stoically. Nusrat’s deputy had an arrogant look on his unshaven face as he shifted uncomfortably behind Khattak.

“They caught us unawares,” Khattak turned Sajjad into the terminal building. “When the airliner went down the enemy were the first on the scene. They were familiar with the area…numerous tunnels and caves have been built in that range by the local tribes, which these people used effectively…if only we had come to know earlier we could’ve pre-empted this firefight.”

The Corps Commander had been speaking in a whispered tone, out of respect for the dead, or so Sajjad imagined. The Air Commodore was not high enough in the chain of command, and not in the right service, to know more about General Khattak’s background. If he had known, and if the light had been better, Sajjad would have understood that the expression on Khattak’s face indicated anything but a state of mourning. The Corps Commander was relieved that his hastily drawn up plan had produced good results.

“Sir?” Qadir stepped closer to his boss. “Should we wait a few hours before sending the convoy through the city?”

“No. Such a big secret cannot be kept…in fact Islamabad will allow the media to cover the funerals tomorrow…after the foreign office has issued a statement. But before that let me be clear,” Khattak was now looking at the airman. “There are to be no off-the-record leaks to the media. There are only so many of your men and mine who know about this, so let no one think he can get away with making leaks. I will not tolerate it!”

“Yes sir!” Sajjad stiffened in salute and quietly walked away.

As the two army men watched the portly Sajjad walk up to the control tower, Brigadier Qadir stifled a laugh. “He got the message!”

“Now only Kamran has to act out his part with finesse,” remarked Khattak looking up at the darkening sky. “The evening prayer would have begun at Dalbandin.”

Situated less than three hundred kilometers west of Quetta, and on the highway to Iran, Dalbandin was originally a village with an airstrip that served as a satellite to the main base at Samungli. That was before the Arabs discovered the place. Baluchistan is home to the Houbara Bustard—considered a delicacy and also an aphrodisiac—among Arab dignitaries. Since the early eighties sundry Sheikhs, Ambassadors, and Ministers started coming over in droves to hunt this poor bird with their falcons.

These dignitaries transformed the face of Dalbandin—now a small town of five thousand souls—helping in building a civilian airport and a totally out-of-place marble mosque with towering minarets. This evening it seemed as if a great portion of those five thousand souls had gathered in the cool interiors of the mosque—listening attentively as the muezzin lectured them on being loyal to their country and religion in these trying times.

“Death to the kafirs!” screamed a young man standing just below the muezzin’s pulpit.

“Death! Death!” the cries of other youngsters echoed around him.

“Send those infidels to the fire of hell!” the young man got louder and looked wild-eyed at the crowd.

“To hell! To hell!” his cohorts echoed the shrill call.

Now the bearded old muezzin stepped forward to calm them down. Raising his hands skywards he called out, “Brothers this crisis is a test of our faith in the one true God! Hold true to your faith and be prepared to make any sacrifice for the glory of Islam!”

As the crowd roared its approval another bearded figure could be seen near the muezzin. “Maulana Shamas, a proven leader of the mujahideen should address the awaam and tell us what steps we can take in fighting the vile kafirs!”

The hush that fell over the crowd indicated the awe surrounding the Maulana’s name. Shamas was the Punjabi pronunciation of the Farsi name Shams—the Maualana was born in a family of farmers at Faisalabad, the heart of Pakistani Punjab, but had been indoctrinated into the faith at an early age.

“I begin by saluting Allah the merciful…”

The prematurely retired Major Kamran ran his fingers through his thick mane. One hour on his knees had proven to be a tiring experience. Kamran was however heartened by the trust being now placed in him—a true namaazi he may not have been but ambitious he certainly was.

“O you Gazis of Islam,” Shamas had raised the tone of his voice. “The Kafirs are destroying your land…bombing cities and slaughtering the women and children of Muslims! Your brothers in the army will resist the enemy if he dares to enter into our land! Insh’allah! “

“Insh’allah!” the crowd roared back approvingly. Unlike other Maulanas, Shamas had been active in the Afghan jihad as a young mujahid, fighting the Russian tanks and helicopters with his AK-47. As he grew older the Pakistanis used his early education of the Holy Quran and his powerful oratory to recruit young Punjabis and Pathans for the jihad in J&K. The Punjabi Maulana had a large base among the Afghan refugee population in Baluchistan—especially in Dalbandin.

Dalbandin’s existence as a pleasure resort for the Arab elite ended in 2001. That same year, following an American ultimatum, Pakistan became the base for operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Dalbandin’s airport now stopped accepting civilian flights and was converted into a purely military facility. Situated less than fifty kilometers south of the Afghan border it was the ideal base for launching air strikes and Special Forces operations into Taliban country.

These operations however only became effective when the Americans stopped listening to the Pakistanis and opened contacts with the Northern Alliance, Afghanistan’s only national fighting force. Northern Alliance operations swept the Taliban out of the Afghan cities and towns and this fast receding flood left behind the stranded wrecks of Pakistani imperialism—officers and men of the Pakistan Army trapped in the stronghold of Kunduz. After much begging and pleading the Pakistanis were allowed to airlift these men to safety—among the more valued passengers had been Major Kamran and the then Colonel Qadir.

“It is not enough to defend our own homes!” shouted the Maulana. “We must strike the enemy in his own land. As our people are getting killed so must his people be killed. As our cities our bombed, well then, so must his cities be bombed!”

“Allah-u-Akbar!” Kamran stood up and shouted.

“Allah-u-Akbar!” roared the crowd.

Kamran had retired prematurely from the army publicly citing disillusionment with the Army Chief’s Afghan policy. But privately the Major was assigned to revive the Taliban and coordinate their operations in Afghanistan. In that capacity he had been living in Dalbandin—a town where Afghan refugees living in camps outnumbered the five thousand local Baloch inhabitants.

“Brothers! Now we have the weapon…the ultimate weapon to strike fear in the hearts of the infidels!” Maulana Shamas raised his fist in the air. “We will strike their cities and engulf them with flames…the flames of hell. The infidels will die and will again burn in the fires of hell! Allah-u-Akbar!”

“Allah-u-Akbar!” the crowd was on its feet.

Chengdu (Western China) 3^rd October

“All our scientists and officials perished in the crash,” Vice-Admiral Bhatti put the phone down. “The shells were undamaged in the pressurized containers…now they have been secured.”

“Why did they take this civilian flight?” asked General Mi.

“We assumed that the Indians wouldn’t shoot it down,” KK Bhatti stood up. “Besides all the military airfields around the capital had been attacked and damaged by then.”

“And why did it take so long to organize a rescue mission?”

“The brigade at Zhob took time to send a respectable force along the mountain roads. And it took time to fly in reinforcements with Major-General Nusrat from Samungli.”

The Vice-Admiral had been in much better spirits this morning. Firstly his ADC and his luggage had been flown in to allow him a refreshing bath and a change of clothing. Next he had treated himself to a short but welcome nap before being woken for a rich breakfast—nothing Chinese. But the news from his homeland was changing all that.

“How did the lightly armed tribesmen get there in their pick-up trucks?” Lt. General Wu looked at him. “Were they aware of the cargo? Is that why they prepared an ambush for the Pakistani forces?”

Bhatti had no answer for that. But knowing his brother-in-law and the 12 Corps Commander it was quite obvious that they had planned this together. That explained why it had taken so long for the rescue operation to be launched.

“The Quetta Corps Commander is your old friend from Gilgit,” General Mi spoke in Mandarin. “He was commanding a brigade there in 1997…”

“While I was in the Xinjiang Military District,” remembered Lt. General Wu. “He is a capable officer. But the risk of the Uighur rebels getting possession of the shells is too great! Our sources know that they had taken shelter with the same tribe, which was involved in the fight.”

“That is a disturbing thought,” General Mi frowned as he lit a cigar. “We cannot trust these darkies. They have a knack of taking unconventional actions and of going back on their word. For the moment we must not alarm them with this question of our rebels…there is too much at stake for us in Pakistan.”

“What does the Army Chief say with regard to the communication silo?” the stocky General switched back to English. “How was it hit?”

“Sir the Indians hit the Pindi silo with earth-penetrating munitions,” explained Bhatti.

“The silos we built were immune to such strikes!” General Mi exhaled a cloud of cigar smoke.

“Sir they tried the concept of making sequential attacks on the same spot,” the Vice-Admiral leaned forward. “The first bomb penetrates say ten meters into the earth and explodes; the next bomb is aimed at the same spot and it penetrates further into the earth; the third bomb goes deeper and so on until the silo walls are breached.”

“With conventional bombs?” scoffed Wu. “Such hardened walls would never fracture!”

“Well sir I can’t explain that,” confessed the Vice-Admiral.

“I see the sinister hand of America in all this,” nodded Mi as he turned to look at the other two gentlemen. “Satellite information on the silos and even the logistics support for carrying out the pre-emptive strike has been provided by them.”

The truth was that India never had any intention of launching a pre-emptive nuclear attack—and both the Chinese and the Pakistanis knew that. The only way the Indians would have gone nuclear was if their cities or their forces were first attacked with such weapons—and this had become impossible with the American grip on Pakistan. They had added to the failsafe triggers and elaborate launch codes with the separate storage of the nuclear core from the trigger; the separate storage of delivery systems; and even the separate storage of those missiles and their unstable fuels.

These precautions were totally absent in the nuclear artillery shells that China had supplied to its ally. Under the watchful eye of the 2 Corps Commander in Multan, these were ready-to-use and fire-at-will weapons. These had provoked the Indians into launching pre-emptive attacks.

“What about the radiation at Multan?” asked the CMAC Commander. “Were the devices there kept in the same containers? Or had they been distributed among different units?”

“Two containers were assigned to the 2 Strike Corps at Multan,” explained Bhatti. “These were hit on the first night of the strikes. Direct hits on the storage area has destroyed them…”

“What has been done for the area?”

“I’m afraid that we could not go into those details at once,” said KK. “But you know what the possibilities are. Radiation over a vast area or even radiation clouds floating across the plains! Evacuating the population of that region is not possible at this time.”

“They must be told not to use this for propaganda purposes,” General Mi switched back to Mandarin.

“Sir.”

“Otherwise the Indian claims will be shown to be correct. This incident should be kept quiet…we must assist them in treating people in that area. If of course their claims are correct!”

“It is true sir,” sighed Wu. “They are very capable of lying. I must confess that after the incident with the LNG tanker I feared that the devices had been distributed to their religious-military units.”

The other possibility was that the Pakistan Army Chief was keeping his cards close to his chest. Not revealing information until the overall picture was clear made sense—after all he would need all the bargaining tools he could get once the fighting died down. But die down it would—that much was clear even to the gentlemen in faraway Chengdu.

“Let us take a break while the material pertaining to the Indian Army’s movements is prepared,” Lt. General Wu smiled at KK Bhatti.

His senior was already shuffling towards the terrace. While the Vice-Admiral made his way outside, the General lit his second cigar and sat down slowly on the chair. Very slowly—after all he was 72 years old. Bhatti’s equal in rank, Lt. General Wu, was almost 65.

“Have you spoken with your family?” the old man asked Bhatti.

“My brother-in-law assured me that they are safe.”

“Children?”

“A son and a daughter,” said Bhatti quietly as they gazed out at the mid-morning haze. “Both studying in the UK.”

“Ah! I have grandchildren studying in Beijing,” Mi smiled briefly. “Their father lives there…owns a private company.”

The senior most Generals of the PLA were all grandfathers in their seventies. Most of them had also served in a political and administrative position at some point in their careers. The Chinese loved to claim that their armed forces were under the firm control of the communist party—in fact the military and political arms of Chinese society were completely enmeshed together.

While Pakistani brass didn’t have such long careers—life didn’t exactly slow down for them. They were simply re-employed to head public corporations, run ministries and departments, and administer provinces. The lower ranks and officers didn’t fade away into retirement either—they were used to provide leadership and instill discipline into the mujahideen units. In Pakistan all the elements of power and influence were enmeshed within the stifling embrace of the omnipotent military.

General Mi Liang kept Vice-Admiral Bhatti company for an hour while Lt. General Wu Jiangao prepared a presentation for those two men. The head of the Chengdu Military Area Command was with his subordinates and staff officers, watching a slide in the projection room.

“How did these Indians concentrate their forces without anyone finding out?” asked Wu. The previous slide had depicted the peacetime location of military forces in the Indian continent—the current slide was a satellite image depicting unusually high activity emanating from bases concentrated in northwestern India.

“We must keep a watch on the western media,” suggested his deputy, Major-General Hang Dazhou. “If they are in league with India then our response must be made with great deliberation and caution.”

“From what I’ve seen that is unlikely,” scoffed Wu. “At any rate the pullout of their forces has brought our goal closer to realization. Next slide!”

“Sir this depicts the positioning of naval forces at Mumbai,” the young Major said from the shadows as he traced the said coastline with his pointer. “As in the case of the land forces in the disputed eastern frontier there are no movements more than a day after their air force opened the conflict.”

“General Wu, if their land forces are mobilizing fast in Kaasmeer, and their navy is staying put then the Americans are definitely in the game,” Dazhou whispered to his superior. “But as you suggested this does not make sense.”

“Why would they encourage instability in the region? And why put their own forces at such risk?” the head of the CMAC stood up. “No this is India’s own game and they hope that the west will soon join in on their side.

“Sir we must propose that our forces initiate a conventional mobilization until Beijing decides on the policy to take,” Major-General Hong Feizi said for the first time. He was the head of the Tibet Military District, a sub-command of Chengdu, and had flown in a day earlier. “We should not deviate from the understanding we developed with our allies…even though they acted prematurely and showed their hand with inadequate preparation.”

“A conventional response is what the Indians expect,” Dazhou shook his head. “We must assume that they have planned to tackle a conventional mobilization by us. They may even have alerted their nuclear weapons posture!” He and Feizi had stood up along with their superior officer. “When the enemy expects a conventional response we must hit him by covert methods…if Major-General Nanqi were here he would suggest the same.”

The head of the Yunnan Military District, another sub-command of Chengdu, was away at Shanghai. While his command did not border India, contacts with elements in neighboring Myanmar’s unstable northern regions, gave him the potential for interfering in India’s northeast.

“During his tenure with the RRF Nanqi had written a paper on unconventional warfare,” Wu Jiangao looked at Feizi. “I trust you have read it?”

“Yes sir,” replied Feizi, slightly disappointed that his superior seemed to be veering towards the other view. He didn’t want his colleague in Yunnan to walk away with all the glory. “Sir with respect; if we initiate covert operations deep within Indian Territory it will further destabilize the situation. It is true that the Indians would be prepared to counter our mobilization but there is no risk to our forces; while at the same time we would be able to pressurize the world and exhibit our support to the Pakistan Army.”

“By the same token an overt posture would drive India into the arms of other powers,” countered Dazhou. “And it will be difficult to disengage from a mobilization…especially if the Indians do not back down. With covert operations, which are possible with minimal investment of money and manpower, we have plausible deniability.”

“But these operations will involve a third country,” Feizi was now getting irritated. “Whether Myanmar or Bangladesh; the threat of destabilization is thus even greater with these methods!”

“But…”

“Feizi is correct,” Lt. General Wu held up his hand. “Besides Beijing will never sanction such a posture at this stage…a conventional response is more to their line of thinking. But an all-out mobilization must only be carried out after the situation is clear.”

“Continuing with what we have seen here,” added Feizi. “If the Indians are only interested in seizing Kaasmeer then we must join the world in restricting their seizure of land. The Karakorum highway has to be preserved at all costs!”

“Yes,” nodded Wu. “A combination of a people’s war in that region, the world’s economic pressure, and our military posture will serve to contain the Indians. The Indian people are already exulting over the achievements of their air force…very immature!”

“So this is what we recommend to the General and the Pakistani?” asked a frowning and obviously disappointed Major-General Dazhou.

“We shall describe both options with all the points that have been discussed,” Wu nodded to the Major at the door. “But neither man will accept the uncertainties of unconventional warfare. The Pakistani in particular will press for help in Kaasmeer only!”

All three men started laughing.

Quetta (Baluchistan) 3^rd October

Ayesha watched the young couple with an indulgent smile. She just loved the way they looked at each other, the way they talked, and their emotion-soaked exchanges with the elders in that household—it was all so heart-warming! Such times had always been rare in her marriage with Najaf, sighed Ayesha as she glanced at the other women. All were staring wonder-eyed at the large-screen television in the ground floor living room—the afternoon reruns of the ever-popular Indian soaps were on.

The spell was broken when the forced emotions onscreen quickly morphed into the glowing, happy faces of slick advertising. The ladies sighed and leaned back, smiling at their imperious hostess.

“Please take some food all of you!” Mrs. Khattak reached forward for a leg of chicken. “Ayesha you too…you’re so thin that no one takes you for a mother!”

Four other healthy ladies followed her example and began gorging on sundry legs and loins. “But Ma’am mash’allah you’re in very good shape,” cooed Mrs. Irani from the far end of the sofa. The two other ladies beside her and the three on the sofa opposite beamed and nodded approvingly.

“Well all it takes is regular walking,” Begum Khattak, appropriately enough, sat alone at their head. “None of that fancy Yoga that Malini does to look young!”

The others tittered at that remark—Malini was one of the characters in the Indian soap. “But you even look younger than the rest of us,” insisted Mrs. Irani after stripping the chicken leg to the bone. Her husband was a heart surgeon and they were one of the few Parsi families in Quetta.

A collective hush escaped their lips as the antics of the Indian business family beamed once again into the plush living room. “Just look at Aarti’s necklace!” Saira whispered to Ayesha. “I’ll get one made exactly like this in Karachi.” Her husband was at that time in faraway Khuzdar, busy guarding the all-important cargo taken from the crash site.

The two other ladies that made up the group were Mrs. Jaffri and Mrs. Maqdoomi—the latter’s husband was at home waiting to see what gains he could make in this new situation. With so much movement of men and materials taking place Maqdoomi’s fleet of trucks would always be employed; especially when his close friend was the Corps Commander.

“That’s a lovely color!” the rotund and red-cheeked Mrs. Jaffri said out loud. It was a blue chiffon sari worn by the young daughter-in-law who was scheming to gain control of the family business—but only to teach a lesson to her wayward husband. The ladies held their breath as the husband stared angrily at his clever wife. The soap ended there and the credits began rolling over the frozen frame.

“They look so slim and trim!” continued Mrs. Jaffri. “My husband refused to let me go out wearing a sari but you people in the cantt are so lucky!”

The three civilians had dressed in the more comfortable shalwar-kameez, which unfortunately made them look drab and unkempt. The army wives looked elegant in their saris. “IG saab is right,” Mrs. Khattak looked at her. “You don’t know what these people are capable of! They will roam through the streets like mad dogs looking for any hint of Indian influence…their first target will be the cable TV offices. Thank God they shut these Indian channels on their own!”

The cable operators in Quetta had seen the storm of fanatics gathering in the mosques and had pre-empted them by closing access to all but the staid and stiff Pakistani channels. That was the reason these ladies had been invited to watch their daily staple of Indian TV at the Corps Commander’s residence. They hadn’t missed seeing these particular episodes, which had run on Thursday night, but they would be back tomorrow for Monday night’s fare. A meeting like this was more necessary for building morale among these women and their families.

As Mrs. Khattak switched to the news Ayesha looked out at the garden and noticed someone hunching near the window. A few minutes passed and the figure straightened and quickly moved away. It was the Baloch gardener from her area…what was he doing? Ayesha kept her eyes on him as he moved through the shadows of the apple grove. Must have been called to work here, she thought and turned her attention to the manly-looking woman reading the official news.

“Indian jets continued their indiscriminate bombing campaign, killing innocent men, women, and children across Pakistan. Their attacks on military positions were however beaten back and the brave pilots of the Fiza’ya took to the air to turn the intruders out of Pakistani airspace. In deep frustration the Indian pilots dropped their bombs on undefended cities and towns and ran away,” the lady paused to shuffle some papers and then looked up again. There was a grim expression on her face and a death-like coldness in those eyes—made more ominous by the black dupatta covering her head and shoulders.

“The Indian Army made numerous attempts to enter Pakistani territory but were defeated and driven back with loss each time. The brave Pakistani forces have been mobilized and deployed to defend the border and the mujahideen are ready to make attacks into enemy territory,” she paused again—this time looking smug and self-assured. “The President has assured the people that the musalla afwaaj will soon give a befitting reply to the Indian attack. Pakistan paindabad!”

A video showing the military parade on the annual Pakistan Day began playing to the tune of the National Anthem. Mrs. Khattak pressed the mute button.

“They’re hiding all the bad news,” remarked Saira. “Sukkur barrage is gone along with the bridges. Traffic is stranded all along the highway.”

“Sargodha is totally destroyed ma’am,” Mrs. Maqdoomi leaned forward and whispered. “We got to know from our family friends in Lahore…their son’s friend was serving in the air base.”

The bonhomie and good mood had been destroyed by all this bad news and there was a gloomy, downcast look on all faces. Ayesha thought of telling them about Multan—Najaf’s father had called them yesterday afternoon. He had talked for an hour on the terror the people felt when large number of jets roared over the city in the dead of night. Of how the people ran out on rooftops and into the street but saw nothing in the darkness except occasional flashes in the distance. Or how they drove out towards the cantonment area that morning to check the immense damage and ended up blocking the roads for the military convoys.

The room fell silent as the Corps Commander’s wife stood up and went towards the corner shelf behind her. She picked up a silver bell and jingled it—the sound made the ladies jump. An old servant answered the call and Mrs. Khattak waved out at the numerous plates littered with bones, “Pick up all this! And bring the tea at five o’clock.”

Ayesha was dying to tell them about Multan and make her presence felt in the conversation but Mrs. Khattak’s tone of voice blew away her eagerness. “You people have made it clear that shutting out the satellite channels was the best thing for us. I mean if we are so scared and disheartened can you imagine what would’ve happened to the commoners?” she demanded to know. “These Indian and western channels are full of bad news and we have to protect our people from the truth! We have to show them that not only are our forces undamaged from these attacks but that they are fighting back and are ready to make counter-attacks!”

The muted official channel showed clips of sullen and suspicious soldiers, some of them with beards, crowded into freshly dug bunkers as the visiting generals shook hands with the local commanders. Ayesha remembered the clip from three years back during the India-Pakistan military standoff at the borders—she had been in college then. Back then the build-up had come at a steady pace. She didn’t know much about military matters but the sort of readiness being portrayed in these clips was simply not possible; and if the government felt compelled to recycle old clips to hearten the people then how bad was the real situation?

“The major problem has been our police and the civil administration,” Mrs. Khattak remarked scornfully. “So incompetent!”

“Yes ma’am,” Ayesha took a deep breath and quickly chipped in. “My father-in-law told us that in Multan there was no sign of the police and no action was taken by the electricity department. The people on their own switched off all lights! The local officials only came out in the morning when it was all over.”

“Is Najaf’s family all right?”

“Yes ma’am,” smiled Ayesha. “The Indian jets flew over the city but didn’t drop any bombs there.”

Her smile vanished when she saw the frosty look on Begum Khattak’s face. Ayesha had inadvertently praised the enemy—watching their entertaining films and serials was all right but describing them as noble or humane, even in private conversations, was out of the question. Fortunately the Begum let that pass with a toss of her head and remarked, “Well let me tell you that we may not have much to worry about. Masood was telling me this morning that GHQ has let everyone know that our quick response has stunned the Indians. They are not moving their forces to the border…instead they seem to be focusing on Azad Kashmir.”

“He keeps telling me that they don’t have the stomach to occupy Pakistani lands,” chimed in Mrs. Maqdoomi. “And they’re extremely clever, like Chankia, and want to avert international hostility. Hence the focus on Kashmir, where they have legal claims.”

Chanakya, or Chankia as the Pakistanis pronounced the name, was an ancient Indian philosopher-cum-administrator who helped create a massive empire spanning the length and breadth of the sub-continent. He also wrote a lengthy treatise on war and administration, and for Pakistanis, epitomizes Indian cunning. The fact, that most of Chanakya’s education and political experience was gained in areas now in modern Pakistan, is conveniently brushed off.

“Still we can’t afford to do nothing,” Mrs. Khattak reminded them. “The situation here is bad enough. You know these Sardars and their supporters haven’t turned up for the special session?”

“You mean the assembly?” asked Saira.

“Yes. He and the Governor had decided that the assembly should convene and condemn the Indian aggression. Then the members were to renew their belief in and commitment to the ideology of Pakistan.”

“They can still do that!”

“Not when a large number of members are absent from the house,” the Begum shook her head. “That would send exactly the opposite message…that these Sardars are preparing to revolt. So now they are bent on getting those people to Quetta…by force if necessary.”

“Break it down!” at that command shalwar-clad legs kicked open the wooden door, splitting it in two and shattering the profuse carvings to pieces. Three men stormed inside and fired AK-47 bursts into the ceiling while shouting praise to their God.

“Allah-u-Akbar!”

“Seize these dogs,” the same voice commanded them. Retired Subedar Sher Mohammed glowered at the two men and one woman cowering down behind the sofa. Pieces of plaster dropped down like rain from the shot up ceiling as the three were pulled to their feet. “Where’s your master?” Sher Mohammed stroked his beard.

“He’s gone!” the older man folded his hands. “They’ve all gone.”

A rough hand whipped out in a blur and flew across the old man’s face. He fell to the floor in a heap whimpering piteously from the shock. And on cue the others caught hold of the younger man, threw him against the wall, and began kicking and punching him as he lay dazed on the carpet. The woman recoiled in horror, covering her mouth with her dupatta and folding her arms across her chest—she was old—but not old enough.

Sher Mohammed sized her up in one quick glance and stepped forward. She cried incoherently as he grabbed her shoulder and pulled her to his chest. “Aaagh!” the woman raked her fingernails across his cheek and plucked out puffs of hennaed hair. The old soldier angrily pushed her through to the bedroom and threw her on the bed.

“Where is he?” the others continued beating the two men.

“Khuda Kasam the Nawab saab is not here!” wailed the older man. “They all left a week ago.”

“Lying bastard!”

Feet and fists rained down once again, their moans drowned out by a high-pitched scream from the woman inside. Suddenly another group of shalwar-clad men stormed inside.

“I told you to bring these dogs outside!” shouted Major Najaf Khan as he pulled the first three men away from their victims. “Who else is here?”

“Saab ji!” a clean-shaven young man named Ali nodded at the half-open door.

Najaf and Ali pushed through the door and caught Sher Mohammed on top of the old maid. “She was trying to escape,” the Subedar pulled her up with one hand. “Through the window…I caught her just in time!”

He used his other hand to hold his shalwar in place. Najaf could see a damp spot on the brown cloth. “Bring them down,” he said quietly, feeling his cheeks burn with shame. “Are you hurt?”

The older man noted the Major’s sarcasm and leered back at him, “These scratches? I’ve faced much worse in the Kashmir jihad.”

Najaf turned away in contempt and picked up the phone by the bed. “Sir we’ve searched the place…some automatic weapons and ammunition were found. Three servants on the first floor and two in the quarters behind the house.”

“Good,” said the rough voice on the other end. “Bring them in…let’s see what happens. We can always make a police case against them on account of the weapons. Any papers or documents?”

“No sir.”

“All right Najaf you bring them in,” said Major-General Illyasi. “General Khattak is with the CM and the Governor…I’ll let him know right away.”

It was five in the evening and the shadows were lengthening out in the street as the five prisoners were thrown into the pickup truck. The others piled in behind them while a few minutes later Najaf led a second group of men out of the house. From a distance the old Baloch gardener watched the two vehicles drive past him—he had cycled down from the cantonment area to the city. It was sheer chance that the assault on the Sardar’s house took place while he had stopped to buy some fruit from a roadside hawker.

First the pickups had blocked the main entrance while the men jumped out and covered the perimeter of the house. Then they had stormed inside with their guns. Random shots and screams were heard and people gathered outside to watch the show. The gardener had been more shocked by seeing Major Najaf than by the event itself—that was something they had always expected. But a Shia officer heading a mujahid force and that too in a sensitive place like Quetta?

Maybe there was nothing to it; he shrugged while mounting his bicycle. After all he hadn’t known the Major to be very religious—he had never once visited any of the Shia mosques in Quetta or mingled with the local civilians. That was why they hadn’t approached him all this while. Besides he was new to the posting.

But this assault had a much deeper meaning. It wasn’t meant to arrest or threaten the particular Sardar but was a warning to all the Baloch. Not touching any relatives of the Sardar and refraining from trashing his property was meant to be a signal that things hadn’t reached that stage—but if they did then the mujahids would not hold back. And seeing their example the common people would have a free hand to burn and loot the property of any Baloch.

The gardener turned into the main road and stopped at the red light. A truck full of bearded men stopped beside him and waited for the signal to change. He looked across at the men—they all had automatic guns and belts of ammo around their shoulders. One of them looked down at the old man in his distinctive Baloch turban and made a menacing gesture—sliding a finger across his throat.

They needed to hold a meeting soon, realized the old man as the truck pulled away, blowing acrid smoke in his face.

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]]> http://ayravat.wordpress.com/2006/12/01/chapter-ii/feed/ 1 ayravat Tactical Body Armor http://ayravat.wordpress.com/2006/11/30/chapter-i/ http://ayravat.wordpress.com/2006/11/30/chapter-i/#comments Thu, 30 Nov 2006 21:41:42 +0000 ayravat http://ayravat.wordpress.com/2006/11/30/chapter-i/ ]]>

The PLA-PA alliance

Quetta (Baluchistan) 2^nd October

The birds came in low and fast, a cacophony of sounds as they honked and flapped furiously to slow down and land in the still waters of the marsh. The fluttering of their wings ceased but the stillness of the night did not return as the waterfowl sated their thirst and hunger. Now the honks and quacks mingled with splashing as they eagerly dove in and out of the water in search of fish.

In a nearby clump of reeds two hunters watched them with quiet fascination. They call it by different names: the hunter’s instinct coming to life, the thrill of viewing one’s quarry, or simply…bloodlust. The twin barrels belched fire and the hail of pellets found their mark. The rest of the flock took to the air. This time the sounds of nature were muted by the random shots that boomed around the shallow waters and echoed in the barren emptiness.

“Go!” shouted the marksman’s companion. As a shadowy figure scrambled past him and into the water, Major Najaf Khan got to his feet and called out, “A little to your left!”

Through his night vision goggles he could see the barefooted soldier, trousers rolled up into his crotch, struggle through the mud and into the knee-deep water. He poked around the dark waters with a cane branch and bent down to retrieve the kills.

“How many?”

“Sir one in the first shot and two in the second,” Najaf removed his night vision goggles and took the kills from the soldier. “Geese and a mallard.”

“It’s too early in the season for mallard,” remarked Lt. General Masood Khattak as he reached out for the birds. “Pintail…even in the darkness I can tell the difference.”

The night vision goggles dangled around his neck as the two men struggled back through the mud. Behind them the mud-caked Pakistani soldier began the ritual cleaning of the birds. The scent of gunpowder lingered in the air.

“Good shooting sir!” Brigadier Qadir and Colonel Maqdoomi trudged up to the Land Cruiser. General Khattak had planted himself on the fender, the powerful headlights creating an eerie glow around his person.

“Empty handed?” laughed Khattak as he lit a cigar. “Well I gave you all a chance…it was a good flight, slow and level, and you got off several fires.”

“No one can shoot like you sir,” remarked Najaf as he cleaned the General’s gun. It wasn’t the usual sycophantic fawning of an ADC—the Corps Commander was indeed a good shot. He had brought down six birds in flight that evening.

“And what about the ADC saab?” queried Maqdoomi as he unlocked his Land Cruiser. “Your barrel needs to be warmed up young man!”

“Wait till dawn…you’ll get your chance then,” remarked General Khattak as he exhaled a dense cloud of smoke and stared into the distance. “Any luck Mike?”

“No sir!” the sharp response from a distance revealed a new clipped accent. Two more joined the hunting party with similar guns and goggles. Colonel Michael Sims and Captain Edwards from the USAF base at Dalbandin began flicking off the thick mud from their boots.

“Colonel Saab we’ll only leave in the morning,” Khattak turned back to look at Maqdoomi. “We’ll wait the night out here and bag some more kills at dawn.”

Retired Colonel Maqdoomi was the oldest in that group. He had been a senior colleague to the then Lt. Colonel Khattak when both had worked in the National Logistics Cell during the Afghan war of the eighties. What he lacked in military capacity was made up by his sharp, calculating brain and easy morals. Twelve years after taking premature retirement he possessed extensive properties and fine vehicles—and had the resources to arrange hunting excursions for important friends.

“Mornin’ shoot’s fine with me…damn night vision’s no good! It’s designed to detect moving objects on the ground, not flying objects in the air,” laughed Colonel Sims. “I don’t know how you do it General?”

“Practice,” Khattak blew out another cloud. “I’ve been trying this since last year…not just with ducks and geese but also partridges and pheasants.”

“Sir we must take the Colonel on a chikor shoot,” chimed in Brigadier Qadir, deputy GOC of the 41 Division. The chikor was a mountain partridge common in those parts.

“Hmm,” the Corps Commander stood up. “You know Mike; new technologies in war have always been tried and tested first in hunting. That was also a good way for men to become trained in using that equipment. Centuries ago the Mughal princes took their first lessons of the battlefield by going on long and bloody hunting excursions.”

Mike couldn’t see the General’s face but he could imagine what was going on in his mind. The very mention of the word ‘Mughal’ made Pakistanis misty-eyed—this was the Colonel’s personal experience. Two years in this country and every man or woman he met never failed to highlight his or her link with those medieval monarchs or expound on their numerous virtues or some other facet of their history.

“Plenty of game here,” the American Colonel quickly changed the subject. “You mentioned that this really isn’t the season?”

“Yes. We’re lucky that the rains were surprisingly plentiful…and surprisingly late this year. Otherwise the waterfowl only appear by November.”

Lt. General Khattak was Commander of the Pakistan Army’s 12 Corps headquartered at Quetta in Baluchistan. Pakistan’s largest but least populated province, a province littered with vast mineral wealth but peopled by a depressingly poor and illiterate populace. Located in the extreme west of the Indian Continent this land missed the life-giving monsoon showers and only received some rain and snow in the winters. But the monsoons of 2005 had sent a swirl of clouds to the unlucky province, which lingered for several days before scattering away under the strong tropical sun. The rain had swollen the dry rivers and streams and had recharged other water bodies briefly—but enough for the winged visitors from North Asia.

(image source:http://www.bdd.sdnpk.org/)

“What’s going on?” Brigadier Qadir was staring in the distance. “Sir three, no four vehicles are coming towards your car.”

Everyone walked away from the glare of the headlights and looked out towards the road. Four sets of headlights were bobbing and weaving their way down to the General’s staff car. They stopped there for a few seconds and then a lone vehicle took of—the roar was audible all the way to the hunting party—and shot like an arrow towards them. The open jeep squelched to a halt in the mud—its lights blazing and the rear-mounted machine gun pointing at the hunting party. A bearded officer jumped out.

“Sir!” the Major saluted. “Sirens are blaring in Samungli…headquarters is on red alert…we have been trying to locate you for the past half hour. Messages and calls are coming in…sir, we are under attack!”

They all stared in dumbfounded silence. The Major with his now incoherent stuttering, the jeep and the steady rattle of its engine, Maqdoomi dropping the barrel of his gun on the cruiser, the sounds of a returning flight of waterfowl. None of this could hide the deep rumble in the distance and they all turned in open-mouthed fascination and stared at the eastern horizon.

They came in low and fast, the sounds increasing in pitch and the darkness now pierced by two bright lights. Time seemed to freeze as the lights got brighter and the sounds louder and a strong force pushed the hunting party down on the ground. A towering wave of sound washed over them and a blast of hot air forced their eyes shut, but Khattak twisted around and looked at the intruders rising into the sky, the waterfowl scattering away in their wake. They faded away as quickly as they had come and in the deadening silence Captain Edwards whispered to Colonel Sims, “Mirage 2000?”

The staff car raced through the chaos of Quetta. People were out in the streets, standing on rooftops and staring wild-eyed at all passing traffic. Already slogans were being raised and mobs were forming as panic and shock slowly gave way to anger. There wasn’t much peace and quiet inside the car either.

“Major you’ve got to let us go to the base,” insisted Colonel Sims for the third time.

“Sorry Colonel,” Najaf turned around. “General’s orders.”

“Well the General doesn’t know that my men and our ride were at the base. It’s my duty to be there!”

“Look the General has his reasons,” Najaf directed the driver to turn right at a crossing. “Just see the people out in the streets. If they find two foreigners by themselves…just imagine what they’ll do to you?”

“So where’re we going now?” Captain Edwards leaned forward, his dark face glistening with sweat.

“The Corps Commander’s residence,” said the much calmer Najaf now.

In this calamitous situation his nerves seemed to settle down when he focused his mind on the set of duties he had to perform. He went over them mentally while the car was stopped by bayonet wielding guards at the entrance to General Khattak’s sprawling residence. They recognized the ADC and quickly waved the car through—at least these honest souls were doing their job. Whatever happened to their counterparts in the air force, Najaf asked himself?

“Where is the Begum Sahiba?” he asked the crowd of servants in the well-lit porch.

“Begum Saab is asleep,” replied one of them in Urdu. Considering that all of them had a wild, uncertain look in their eyes and that the entire city was buzzing with the clamor of its citizens, it was indeed surprising that Khattak’s wife had slept through all that.

A full twenty minutes after he had pulled into the porch, and one hour after the jets had shot over his head, the servants told Najaf that Begum Masood Khattak would see him in the living room. He paused before a full-length mirror in the hallway—clumps of mud and reed reached to his waist, and his hair was stiff and flattened by sweat.

“What’s happening in the city?” she asked Najaf imperiously before he could step inside.

“Ma’am it’s nothing…there have been explosions…people just came out in the streets,” he said vaguely, not daring to step inside. He looked bad enough but smelled even worse.

“No need to waffle Najaf, I heard the air-raid sirens before the explosions!” the Begum hugged her blue nightgown before switching to Urdu, “Is the General Saab safe?”

“Yes Ma’am,” Najaf drew strength from her calm, self-assured tone. “He is taking control of the situation. I was sent to get his uniform and…”

“I have everything ready,” her dark, lined face was grim. She turned to look at a large portrait of Lt. General Khattak in full military regalia. “Young man my husband has been a prisoner of war at a young age. We have lived through worse crises than this. You had better get a hold of yourself…and don’t worry about your family. I will call Ayesha and make sure they’re all right.”

“Thank you ma’am,” he swallowed the lump in his throat and ran to the car.

It took them twenty minutes to wind their way through the chaotic city streets and onto the road to Samungli Air Base in the north. The cool, bracing air of the mountains gave way to a smoky haze hanging low over the base as they drove past a crowd of Military Police in Khakhi and their civil counterparts in blue.

One minute after being thrown down by the enemy jets, Lt. General Khattak had taken control of the situation. One minute of stunned silence, fear, anger, and desperation had given way to cool, methodical thinking. Mounting the open jeep, the Corps Commander had barked his orders to everyone and had raced away with the convoy to Quetta. The first reports of where the jets had struck came from stray policemen and civilians on the streets whereupon, avoiding the cantonment area and his headquarters, Khattak had taken the road to Samungli. His entry into the air base had been a remarkable sight—the 56 years old Corps Commander standing next to the rear-mounted machine gun, his hollow-eyed gaze taking in the destruction and mayhem around the base. His unkempt civilian attire however prevented the Pakistan Air Force personnel from giving him due importance and he had to barge his way through to face Air Commodore Sajjad.

And now he was sitting in the Base Commander’s office surrounded by numerous army, air force, and police personnel. They had been awakened by the sirens and thus had the time to appear in uniforms but there was no doubt that the man in civilian clothing was in charge.

“Come in,” Khattak looked at Najaf. The major stiffened in salute at the assembled brass and then took his place behind the General. The servant with the uniforms and shoes followed him.

“Sir they came over the Brahui range,” continued the white-haired Sajjad. “Shielding themselves from our radar.”

“And sir even our low-level radar failed to detect them in time,” the deep voice of Maj. General Ilyasi contrasted sharply with the roaring flames and shrieks outside. He was Chief of Staff to the Corps Commander.

“That’s because they avoided the natural approach along the highway,” Sajjad drew an imaginary line in the air. “These two jets swerved towards the Khuzdar road and sailed over the mountains while we were busy getting a fix on the main flight.”

“How many in total?” Khattak leaned forward on the desk.

“Seven jets sir.”

“Type?”

“Mirage 2000,” Sajjad shook his head.

There was an uncomfortable silence in that room as the Corps Commander leaned back in his chair, forehead in furrows and mouth curled down in scorn. Masood’s deep-set eyes sat well in his narrow face and without his trim moustache he would have passed off as boyish looking. The fluorescent lights in the Air Commodore’s spacious office highlighted the dark circles under most sets of eyes as Khattak turned towards the Inspector General of Police Baluchistan.

“Mr. Choudhary the city is in chaos and you are in charge,” he switched to Urdu. “Your men must take charge, patrol the streets, reassure the citizens…I mean I don’t want to tell you your job!”

“Of course not General Khattak,” the IG took his cue and stood up. “In the light of the situation we may need assistance in patrolling from the army. We are also required to increase security at VIP residences, banks, industries, and infrastructure nodes.”

“My BGS will be at the headquarters when you go back to the city. Contact him for any assistance your police needs; I’ll be arriving there to review the situation some time later.”

IG Choudhary shook hands with Lt. General Khattak, being of equal rank by protocol, while the others saluted and followed their boss out. An air force Squadron Leader shut the door and the halting stiffness of the defenders of Pakistan in civilian presence was now replaced by candor and bravado.

“Were your pilots sleeping when the intruders were first detected?” Khattak stared at Air Commodore Sajjad.

In any other country it would be unimaginable for an army man to patronize his comrade of the air force, sit in his office, and grill him in front of his junior officers. But this was Pakistan. And there was more to come.

“I am not doubting your personal bravery Sajjad,” Khattak could see the Air Commodore sweating. “But relying only on your missiles and radar proved to be a costly mistake.”

“God is witness sir!” cried out the pot-bellied Sajjad. “We sent up two of our pilots to circle around the base; two more waited on the runway but the accursed Indians surprised us! We cannot blame the men; our jets had to stay away from the firing envelope of their own air defense units.”

Samungli Air Base had refitted jets of the Chinese MiG-21 variety, the bulk of them ground attack fighters. Considering that Samungli was a major air base, and a sector command headquarters for Pakistan’s air defence network, the deficiency in aircraft was compounded by the existence of only a single runway, now rendered inoperable for some time.

“So where are they?”

“Sir?”

“Where-are-the-pilots-who-engaged-the-enemy?” Masood Khattak shouted.

“They flew to Dalbandin,” croaked the Air Commodore. He wilted under the general’s scornful gaze before adding, “They could not engage the enemy, hence they attempted to draw them away from the base by posing as bait.”

A laughable explanation, the Air Commodore knew, but suitable for these goons in khakhi who knew little of the tactics and principles of air power. He couldn’t stand the Corps Commander’s rough tone any longer and silently prayed for deliverance while his tormentor picked up the phone. “Yes this is General Masood Khattak speaking…adab-arz…get me Major-General Rana,” Khattak visibly brightened when the Commander, Frontier Corps (Baluchistan) came on line. “Javed…any word from GHQ?”

As his colleague responded the General waved the others out of the office. “You two stay here,” he whispered to his servant and ADC in Urdu.

“Did your people suffer any damage?” Masood turned in the chair and stretched out his legs. His servant quickly got down to work. “Then hold on for half-an-hour; I’m putting Illyasi in charge here before we get clearance. After I get there you move out to the city.”

Ten minutes later Khattak stepped outside. He had chosen to wear fatigues instead of his regular uniform, since there was still a combat-like atmosphere at the base. Towards the south end of the runway lay the wrecks of two F-7P fighters. The flames had been doused but the acrid smell of burnt fuel and metal hung in the air. Towards the north end the whines and whirring of a helicopter taking off muffled the sounds from the roaring flames around the fuel storage bins.

“Apache sir,” Najaf whispered in the General’s ear.

“Looks like they all survived,” nodded the General. As they watched the Americans fly away to Dalbandin Khattak bit his lower lip and switched to Urdu, “If two or three had died it would’ve been a free public relations exercise for us.”

Nothing in the General’s tone of voice or in his facial expression suggested that he was joking. American deaths meant American media descending on Quetta; it meant American networks dedicating stirring airtime to the good, honest lives of the dead patriots; and it meant lead editorials in American newspapers and caustic headlines on the “unprovoked attack that lead to the loss of American and other lives”. The General didn’t mind his countrymen being reduced to the category of “others” as long as he got biased coverage. No American deaths meant balanced reporting.

He could see the jet towering over him, its exhaust nozzles belching fire. Slowly and painfully it crept over him, the heat of the flame scorching his face, the roar turning him deaf. Over and over it came; the heat entering his ears, nostrils, and eyes…Najaf pushed through the water and sat up in the tub, his loud gasp echoing in the small bathroom.

He had left the hot water tap on, realized Najaf just as the door opened. “It’s all right,” he told his concerned servant. “Nothing happened. Get my uniform ready.”

With his rank and salary Najaf could neither afford the expensive tiling and fittings in the bathroom nor the numerous accessories and fine furniture cluttered in his allotted flat. Those were the benefits of his two-year marriage with Ayesha, the daughter of Ghulam Hassan Chaudhary, an influential Punjab politician. And it was with Ayesha that a personal servant, a cook, and a maid had also become part of Najaf’s household.

The maid at that time was taking care of Noor, the young couple’s first-born child. Husband and wife sat at the table talking in low whispers. It was five in the morning.

“Have some more,” the pretty Ayesha served him some more of the scrambled eggs.

“Hmpf,” Najaf shook his head, swallowed hard and washed down the remains with a glass of milk. While he moved about collecting his papers and searching for his phone Ayesha stayed at the table, frowns of worry creasing her pale forehead.

“What will happen to us?” she was on the verge of tears.

“Nothing happens without Allah’s will,” Najaf assured his wife. He stood behind Ayesha and gently rubbed her shoulders, “Take strength from the other ladies…Mrs. Khattak will be contacting all of you soon. For our sake…for the nation’s sake you all must keep up your spirits!”

For the first time since their marriage Najaf rued the fact that his wife was so young. Barely twenty-one, Ayesha had been studying Law at the University of Lahore when her parents sent a marriage proposal to Najaf’s parents in Multan. The only son of lower middle-class parents, then Captain Najaf had been as taken aback by the proposal as his parents.

“Saab?” Najaf quickly pulled his hands back as the servant peeked in through the door. “There’s a car outside.”

The Major waved his wife goodbye and skipped down the stairs. He remembered the first time he had seen her standing outside the university gates shielding her face from the harsh sun. On a week’s leave, the young Najaf had ridden a bike all the way from Multan to Lahore just to get a look at his future wife. Ayesha had looked stunning in an all-white Shalwar-Kameez, her pretty face enclosed by a black dupatta.

“Saab ji,” the local gardener accosted him at the bottom of the stairs. “Can you lend me some money?”

“I gave you 200 Rupees last month,” the mildly irritated Najaf brushed past him towards the waiting car. It was still dark and he was surprised that the gardener had come in so early.

“Sir what can I do?” the wrinkled and graying old Baloch pleaded. “I have to treat that clerk at the office, otherwise he doesn’t release my pay. And after these attacks I must send what money I can to my family.”

“Go up and ask the Begum Saab,” Najaf patted down each of his pockets and didn’t find his wallet. “And remember to come back to Quetta! We must not dishearten the civilians by running and hiding with our families.”

As he got in the car Najaf did not see the hard expression in the Baloch’s eyes or the cold smile on his face. The smile remained as he watched the car drive out into the main road.

“Thank you sir for picking me up,” Najaf looked across at Brigadier Qadir.

“What did that fool want?” the graying and clean-shaven Brigadier snapped.

“Same old story,” Najaf opened his attaché case and filed through some papers. “Can’t get his monthly pay…needs to make the clerk happy.”

“Do you realize that today is a Sunday?” Qadir smirked at the Major’s bewildered expression. “Better make sure that joker doesn’t run away. Bloody treacherous bastard!”

Some moments of awkward silence followed. The staff car raced through the empty main road towards the headquarters. Najaf peered outside, noting that the lights had been killed in almost every apartment block along the way, before slowly closing his attaché case.

“No point looking at these,” Qadir smiled as the radio receiver came to life. “We start on a clean slate now. Write a new chapter in our nation’s history!”

“Sir,” Najaf was surprised by the Brigadier’s euphoric tone.

“Did you get a chance to watch some TV?”

“No sir.”

“The story is that the Indians have hit us everywhere…bloody all-out attack!” Qadir bared his yellowing teeth in a lingering grimace.

“Sir!” the armed guard turned back to look at Qadir. “Message received…we have to move to Samungli immediately. The Corps Commander’s convoy just pulled out of the headquarters.”

As they passed through Quetta city, Najaf was again struck by the total absence of any human activity. Where in hell are the cops, he asked himself? The answer came when they left the city outskirts and took the road west to Samungli.

“Now what is this tamasha?” Qadir banged his fist against the car window. “Najaf find out what’s happening?”

The high road to Samungli, and presumably beyond to the Afghan border, was littered with vehicles—all going in one direction. Both lanes were blocked and the drivers and passengers were roaming about without any sense of urgency. Major Najaf Khan was however apprehensive about the fact that all of these civilians were armed. He silently hoped that Qadir would send his guard along soon.

Najaf continued walking through such hostile looking groups before seeing a police pick-up. He peered through the window and stiffened briefly. The Superintendent of Police acknowledged the half salute, “Looking for a way out major?”

“Yes sir,” Najaf noticed that the police officer’s pistol rested on the dashboard. “Sir I’m the Corps Commander’s ADC…we need to join up with him.”

“Don’t worry most of our army is also stuck on the road…all the way to Samungli.”

“All the way?”

The SP got down and pulled up his trousers over a protruding belly. Najaf noted the name S H Jaffri on the cop’s chest even as the latter reached for his weapon, “We’ll have a better view from up here.”

Najaf followed him to the back of the pick-up. The policeman huffed and puffed as the sprightly young major pulled him up, “Ahh! Now you get up there.”

Both of them were soon standing on top of the vehicle’s hardtop and staring out at the road ahead. “Ya Khudaya! What are these idiots doing out here?”

“What do you think?” retorted the cop. “All through the night these people have been driving out here to see the damage for themselves…some of them to get in the action!”

The two men exchanged wry smiles. The proliferation of light arms among civilians had seen a massive upsurge since the Afghan war of the 80s. Now many of these armed morons thought they could change the world with these weapons.

“From Chaman we had trucks and buses driving down to the city,” continued Jaffri. “They stopped, or were stopped by the army, near the air base. The end result has been chaos all through the morning…my men have been kept busy for the past hour.”

It was now 7:30 and the sun was already glaring down on their backs. There appeared to be a strange stillness in the air, a sudden sense of calm that was percolating down to the crowds and shutting them up. A low rumble reached them and Najaf looked up at the sky. Nothing…yet. Moments later deep thuds began echoing in the distance; the Major instantly recognized anti-aircraft fire and pulled out his pistol.

“What’s happening?” Jaffri whispered even as he gripped his own weapon tightly.

The low rumble increased in intensity as the enemy aircraft came closer. Firing broke out way ahead on the road and Najaf extended his shooting arm towards the horizon. The jet tore past them in seconds, its blue-gray metal glittering in the sun, the loud exhaust drowning out the futile whup-whup of Najaf’s pistol and the static AK bursts from the civilians. SP Jaffri kept his weapon pointed but chose not to fire.

Chengdu (Western China) 2^nd October

He was the only one dressed in white. And the only one with a dark complexion, although back home he came under the tall and fair category and took great pride in making that claim. Had it not been for his career in the Pakistan Navy, with its postings in boiling Sindh and torrid Baluchistan, he would have been as pretty as his other Punjabi brethren.

Not that Vice-Admiral Khawas Khan Bhatti was tall—at 5 feet 11 inches he was just above average—but at least he towered over these soldiers. Bhatti returned the salute of two more PLA personnel as he passed into another hallway. These Chinese were really making him sweat! First the way he was hustled into a military aircraft at Shanghai, then the non-stop flight to Chengdu, and lastly the helicopter ride to the military station. And to top it all—this, thought the Vice-Admiral as he began climbing the carpeted stairs. Better known to his military colleagues as KK, the seaman was slim and sported straight dark hair even in his middle-age. But he still had to pause midway to catch his breath. He cursed whatever inscrutable facet of the Chinese military character was at work here.

“Follow me sir!” a PLA Colonel saluted him at the top of the stairs and smartly marched off.

“Right,” the fast tiring Vice-Admiral shifted his briefcase to his left hand. Damn Chinese didn’t even let him bring his ADC along! No, he corrected himself; if anyone was to be damned it was those wretched Indians! Attacking without warning, bombing Pakistani cities, killing hundreds of people—if only he hadn’t been away on a trip to China, swore KK, he would’ve shown those dogs how to fight—yes, once business was over here he would…

“Sir please take a seat,” the Colonel was waiting patiently inside a room. Standing before another door, which presumably led to a bigger office, the diminutive PLA man stared unblinkingly at the Vice-Admiral. KK sank gratefully into the plush comfort of the leather sofa while the Colonel went into the office.

“He is here?” Major-General Hang Dazhou nodded at the Colonel. “Good…let him wait.”

Beside Dazhou there were four other men in that cool well-lit office, the Political Commissar Qiao Nanqi, Major-General Hong Feizi, Lieutenant-General Wu Jiangao, and General Mi Liang. The last named was the most important in the group, being the head of the General Staff Department and in that capacity a member of the Central Military Commission, the decision-making body that reported directly to the Party Central Committee. General Mi Liang was a distinguished career officer with an artillery background; he had been on a tour of the Chengdu Military District when the Indians started turning the Pakistani landscape into Swiss cheese. Tall for a Chinese, Mi was also stocky and used his bearing to overpower lesser mortals.

“We must not reveal our intentions at this point,” Lt. Gen. Wu Jiangao was the head of the Chengdu Military Area Command. “Let him come forward with all the facts…he is after all the Chief’s brother-in-law.” The suggestion to bring the visiting Pakistani Naval Vice-Chief to Chengdu had been Wu’s. The former was believed to have the ear of the Pakistan Army Chief because of his close relation with him.

“Commissar Nanqi will begin the conversation,” Gen Mi responded. “When he is done we shall engage with the Vice-Admiral.”

With that they each took their places behind the curved table and Wu waved at the Colonel, “Show him in.”

The office was peculiarly low-roofed and warm; KK felt the warmth and appreciated the change from the temperate climate outside. He returned the salutes of the two Major-Generals and shook hands with the other three men, all of whom had stood up to greet him.

“Welcome to Chengdu. I trust you had a comfortable journey?” Commissar Nanqi removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “We are very shocked and outraged at the unprovoked attack on your country, which has been a close ally of the Chinese people for several decades. The political leadership in the CCP has instructed us to render all possible assistance to our ally in these trying times. We stand with you in your struggle.”

“I am very heartened by these words!” the Vice-Admiral indeed looked very grateful. “And my countrymen will take solace and encouragement from the statement by the Chairman. As true friends of Pakistan the Chinese people have been the first to condemn outright the Indian aggression!”

That was one unusual fact. Usually the communists waited for the Americans and Europeans to state their positions before conducting their own diplomatic dance. But on the 2^nd of October, when the first reports of IAF jets tearing into Pakistani airspace came in the dragon came to life and began breathing fire. They had thus made their position pretty clear early on and had virtually committed themselves to the cause of the Pakistan army.

“We will render all possible assistance,” the Commissar ran his fingers through his thin white hair. “If I may ask Vice-Admiral, what is the status of Chinese personnel working in Pakistan at this time? I understand if you have difficulty answering that question…”

“No, no!” KK put his hand up. “Sir we will do our utmost to ensure the safety of your countrymen, who are also our friends and colleagues. There were less than two hundred personnel from different branches of the Chinese government departments working on our ports and other nearby bases. As soon as I am in touch with my office I shall ensure that these personnel are taken care of.”

The other unusual fact was the lack of an interpreter in this meeting. During the rest of his trip Vice-Admiral Bhatti had been provided a female interpreter and all conversations with Chinese officials were translated from Mandarin to English. Not that the Chinese were weak in English; they just insisted on using their own language with foreigners. As was evident here, these officials were very proficient in expressing their feelings in that foreign tongue.

“Your ambassador has been asked to deliver a joint press conference with our foreign minister,” Nanqi continued. “That has been timed to coincide with an early morning at New York…we can introduce our resolution in the UNSC at that time. We are still working on other countries that can co-sponsor this resolution.”

“Your promptness and unconditional support has put our other friends in the UN to shame,” there was a bitter tone in KK Bhatti’s voice. “All their opening remarks are about concern and regret…no condemnation! At times I wonder if they truly consider us allies?”

There was a twinkle in every Chinese eye as the Pakistani said that. The stifled air of hypocrisy and double-speak was almost too much to bear and the military men began shifting impatiently in their chairs. As if on cue Qiao Nanqi got to his feet, “Well Vice-Admiral we have had a satisfactory conversation but now you must excuse me. I have to attend to some urgent work. My colleagues however have many things to discuss with you.”

As the old man left the room, General Mi nodded at the Colonel. “Come Vice-Admiral Butti, we shall continue our talk in more pleasant air,” he smiled at KK.

The blinds were drawn apart and the sliding glass doors were opened. Out on the patio three chairs had been placed for the brass—apparently the two Major-Generals would not be joining them here. They were looking out west, with the sun now overhead, and KK knew that far in the distance lay the Qionglai Mountain Range. That range formed a wall to protect the Sichuan basin where Chengdu was settled thousands of years ago. Farther west of the Qionglai lay taller mountains that gave way to the plateau of Tibet, beyond which towered the mighty Himalayas. South of Sichuan lay the provinces of Guizhou and Yunnan—the latter bordering Myanmar.

(image source:http://www.confluence.org/cn/)

As capital of Sichuan province Chengdu was ideally located to serve as the headquarters of a Military Area Command—less than 200,000 soldiers in the CMAC were distributed across four provinces and served in numerous group armies, military garrisons, and other land and air units. For this strategically situated command the primary concern was India; followed closely by law and order in Tibet. Units in the CMAC had been trained to operate deep within enemy territory and had close links to insurgents, and to the drugs and arms trade that supported them, in bordering countries.

“Why did you deliver the shells to the religious groups when we had specifically warned you against doing so?” General Mi demanded.

His bleak expression caught the Pakistani off-guard, “Sir we…we did no such thing!”

“Do you think we are fools!” shouted Mi.

A soldier bringing three steaming hot cups of tea froze at that verbal explosion. It became very quiet—even the birds stopped their chirping in the trees lining the avenue below. Chengdu has a temperate climate at the best of times and this was autumn. Vice-Admiral Bhatti eyed the cup of tea longingly—it wasn’t just the cold in the air. It was the expression on the stocky Chinese General’s face as he nodded at the soldier to place the cups of tea on the table. Bhatti could feel the blood draining away from his hands and feet.

“The strike on the LNG tanker,” continued Mi as Lt. General Wu sat down quietly on the other side of the Vice-Admiral. “Our sources revealed to us the true nature of the operation…even though your brother-in-law tried to lie to the Chairman about it!”

“Sir we never denied…”

“Did you not give them the nuclear artillery shell?” the stocky Mi sat up in his chair and glared at KK Bhatti.

On the 1^st of July a jehadi group in a motorized fishing vessel had attempted to hijack an LNG tanker named the Milano in the Arabian Sea. Their objective, as Khawas Khan remembered all too well, had been the naval dockyards in India’s commercial capital Mumbai. It would’ve been a double blow to the enemy’s economic security and defence preparedness, had the operation not been thwarted by the Indian Navy and Coast Guard. He was quite certain that the Indians didn’t know about the micro-nuke with the jehadis…

“It was due to that failed attempt that the Indians increased their guard and finally took the decision to strike you,” Lt. Gen Wu Jiangao said for the first time.

I must speak to the Chief before I reveal anything here, brooded Khawas Khan silently, as he watched the glowering Chinese. Or maybe I should just come clean and gain their confidence, he told himself, I know all there is to know about that incident. And if these Chinese have such a good source it would be futile to hide anything from them.

“Sir let me explain,” the Vice-Admiral reached for his cup of tea. “That operation was planned in my presence and only a few people knew about it. We used some expendable religious students from a local seminary in Karachi and put them under the charge of two naval personnel…one of them an officer.” He paused to sip the tea and immediately grimaced—not hot enough and too lemony. “The device was in a pressurized, water-tight container with the officer…Lt. Commander Ashfaq. None of the others knew about this device; they assumed it to be a regular explosive.”

“But these details are unnecessary,” scoffed Wu. “The Indians found out about your plan and in response they decided to strike you at a time of their choosing.”

“No Lt. General Wu,” smiled KK as he leaned back in his chair. “My men brought the device back with them…the others were blown up by standard explosives on the boat. That blast also brought down the Indian helicopter and allowed our men a safe escape. The Indians never learned about our real intentions.”

“They may not have known about the device but they knew your intentions,” remarked a much calmer General Mi. “Which is why their training intensity increased sharply in that period. Did you not take that factor into account? As a pointer to their future intentions?”

“They had also increased their activity in June,” the Pakistani reminded them smugly.

On the 21^st of June four PLA trucks, carrying nuclear artillery shells, had crawled across the Karakoram mountains down into Pakistan. The Chinese had delivered these micro-nukes on the premise that the Pakistan Army would provoke a war with India through a major terror strike and then use these shells with plausible deniability to defeat the enemy’s armed formations that would cut deep into Pakistani territory. The intention, apart from forcing India to concede defeat and negotiate a surrender of land in J&K, was also to pressurize the Americans into withdrawing their forces from Pakistani bases and deputing the Pakistan Army to rework its influence in Afghanistan—as in the good old days of the nineties.

“But you alarmed them further with that bungled operation,” Mi signaled for some more tea. “At any rate that is now in the past and we must see if we can still achieve our objectives in this situation. We must not lose hope for by investing so much in this military action the Indians may well have played into our hands.”

Some more tea was served and the shivering Khawas Khan gratefully reached for a boiling hot cup—he didn’t care for the taste but the warmth that laced his throat was heavenly!

“Sir?” Major-General Dazhou appeared.

“Are we connected?” Mi looked up at him. “Right Vice-Admiral, we have with great difficulty managed to get a line to Islamabad. We want you to talk with him, get a grip of the military situation, and then put some of our questions to him.”

“And sir?” Dazhou came closer to his superior and spoke in his native tongue. “The Indians have held their press conference…we have made a recording. Also western media is reporting that a commercial airliner may have crashed in Baluchistan this morning.”

General Mi’s eyes lit up and he looked at Bhatti, “This is no time to think…he is waiting to discuss important issues with you!”

When the dazed KK didn’t move Wu leaned forward and explained, “Your brother-in-law…we want you to talk with your brother-in-law.”

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The conclusion to Op Kartikeya

Acknowledgement

 A note of thanks to Colonel Ranbir Singh Bhadauria…

for all his advice and encouragement.

A reference map of Baluchistan

next: Chapter I

As India and Pakistan dabble with the latest set of peace initiatives, we have a novel that reminds us that if things go wrong now—as they did when Pakistani militants attacked Indian Parliament in 2001 and India mobilised its troops—New Delhi might be tempted to go for air strikes.

Airavat Singh’s Op-Kartikeya: Round Five in South Asia is based on a scenario in which, this time, New Delhi might just order a series of surgical air strikes by the Indian Air Force (IAF) simultaneously across Pakistan, by Mirage 2000 fighters from air bases in Gwalior and elsewhere.

As intelligence intercepts reveal that a new set of missiles and weapon systems that Pakistan has received from China, via the Karakoram highway that runs from north of Kashmir, could strengthen the resolve amongst the hardliners in Islamabad to step up their campaign of terror across India, the government in Delhi sanctions “Operation Kartikeya” — named after the god of war — and orders the men and machines of the IAF to gear up and meet the challenge.

Set in 2005 — two decades after Ravi Rikhiye’s controversial The Fourth Round — this facto-fiction account is different from other such works about India-Pakistan wars. Mr Singh’s book is more about air battles than land battles, because in today’s electronic era, conventional wars are of limited value, whereas, as the author states, “In the air force, time is measured in hours and minutes. The tactical movements that two opposing armies or navies engage in usually extend into days if not weeks. But when the opposing birds are set in motion the conflict is decisively altered in favour of one or the other.” The ‘birds’ are India’s nuclear capable Mirage 2000 fighters.

Written with the expertise of an insider, but by one who has interestingly never flown a fighter, the book is surprisingly accurate about the details that so many want to know, but never quite get to know. And about how the services methodically deliberate over the consequences of a conflict at the bomb-proof integrated service head quarters in Delhi; or for that matter the ‘G’ forces that a pilot faces as he pulls the joystick of the Mirage 2000 and becomes air-borne in no time.

Here is a sample: “Squadron Leader Karan Dev Singh eased back the throttle of this Mirage 2000 fighter jet and rolled the joystick to the left and pulled. When the jet turned, he instinctively tensed the muscled of his lower body, even as the G-suit inflated to help him fight the gravitational force of the landmass 10 kilometres below. The Mirage 2000 could handle up to 9Gs of that force, but at that level the pilot would experience ‘tunnel vision’ as the blood rushed away from his head causing him to eventually black out … but just then Karan decided it was time for some fun, he told himself and rolled the jet right and on to it back, allowing it to drop like a dead weight even as he gripped the stick and held that position. This manoeuvre was meant to avoid negative G-forces … then blood rushes to the pilot’s head and induces a feeling of weightlessness.”

OP-KARTIKEYA: Round Five in South Asia

Airavat Singh; iUniverse (USA); $14.95 (paperback)

This is a book that will thrill military buffs and arm-chair strategists alike. A facto-fiction, that is thoroughly researched but still a most readable account of how the next military confrontation between India and Pakistan could shape up. But for the hypothetical outcome, get a hold of a copy and read it for yourself.

Maroof Raza is a series editor of the Military Affairs series of Har Anand Publications

While Op Kartikeya dealt mostly with the air campaign I wrote part-II of the book and titled it “Knockout”, describing the on ground situation and the reaction from the Sino-Pak alliance.

That story I shall post next chapter-by-chapter.

At At the human level Op Kartikeya is the story of an IAF squadron leader. Karan Dev Singh is a fighter pilot at the Maharajpur Air Base in Gwalior, which is home to two squadrons of the Mirage 2000 multi-role aircraft. All the action in the book is seen through his eyes. Be it the relentless and tough air maneuvers in preparation for war, midnight strikes on Pakistani air bases, or going head-to-head against Chinese fighters. As an independent air wing commander in the latter half of the book, Karan’s skills at man-management and leadership are put to the test. Without getting over-technical, an attempt is made to portray the inner dynamics of a military unit and the technological details of the machines of war.

At the macro or strategic level Operation Kartikeya is the unleashing of Indian air power on an unreasonable (but unsuspecting) enemy. The planning and execution is done by the newly-created Defence Staff Headquarters (DSHQ) with an air chief marshall as the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). This book was conceived several years before the Kargil conflict but was only written in 2001-02. The original story had to be severely altered following America’s Op Enduring Freedom against Afghanistan and India’s Op Parakram against Pakistan. The book is set in the year 2005 when a new government has been sworn into office after making fresh political alliances in key states (it has no bearing on either the current UPA government or the previous NDA government). In Op Kartikeya the elections were held on schedule.

Contrary to convention, ministerial designations and military ranks have been capitalized throughout the book. And the ministers are known only through their designations…no attempt is made to explore their personal lives or characters. The focus stays on the military men.

With regard to the title, Kartikeya is the name of a Hindu deity, a warlike youth. How this name is adopted to designate a military operation is described at length in the book. In the book he is not regarded in religious terms but as a mythological figure. For those who argue that he (and other Indian deities) are still worshipped today…well frankly we Indians can’t help it if our civilization has survived 50-odd centuries of worldwide turmoil. Some of the military men depicted in this book may worship Kartikeya in their homes, but at work they will regard the name of their operation in purely the mythological qualities it portrays.

Op Kartikeya is fiction and should not be judged like a research paper or scholarly dissertation. In my writing I have followed the rule that good fiction should entertain while pushing the boundaries of conventional thinking. The other elements of the book are examined in detail separately in the following order:

Low-yield nukes

Also called “baby nukes” and “battlefield nukes” these weapons are miniaturized versions of the standard fission-based nuclear weapon. For comparison while the bomb that destroyed the city of Hiroshima in WWII had a yield of 15 Kilotons (kt), a low-yield nuke would have a yield of 0.02kt…equal to 20 tons of TNT. Such nukes would be used in artillery shells and rockets and during the Cold War they were actually deployed in Europe with ground-based units.

China’s 2nd Artillery Corps (2AC) is believed to possess such nuclear artillery. India has tested nuclear weapons with a yield of as low as 0.2kt and sustained efforts would enable it to obtain further miniaturized nukes. However Indian defence analysts have been outspoken in their disavowal of testing and deploying such mini-nukes. Pakistani commentators, on the other hand, have steered clear of discussing such issues and at any rate it appears to be a grey area in the India-Pakistan conflict.

The inherent difficulty with deploying low-yield nukes is that the threshold for a nuclear conflict is drastically lowered. Given their size and limited impact, the decision to use such weapons will rest with the commander on the ground, and not with any higher authority. What clouds the issue further is that if only one side possesses and uses such weapons what will the other side respond with?

For an example of a nuclear artillery shell see: http://www.brook.edu/FP/projects/nucwcost/155mm.htm

DSHQ

At the time Op Kartikeya was being written the Government of India (GOI) was carrying out a comprehensive review of India’s security environment. Ever since the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) came to hold office, they had promised to accord high priority to the country’s defence needs. Part of the promise was fulfilled by the nuclear explosions at Pokharan. Kargil prompted a further push in this line of thinking. The creation of a National Security Advisor, the integration of intelligence services under the National Security Advisory Board, and the publication of India’s nuclear doctrine were all steps in the right direction. There was also a crying need for a similar integration for the Indian Armed Forces.

Following the recommendations of the Kargil Review Committee (and a report by the group of ministers) the NDA government proposed to create a Defence Staff Headquarters (DSHQ) with numerous joint commands and a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) at its head. The CDS would serve as a single-point military adviser to the GOI, whether in a crisis or for peacetime planning. Due to inter-service rivalry and political fears, what we got eventually was a watered down integrated Defence Staff Headquarters and a Chief of Integrated Defence Staff (CIDS). The appointment of a CDS has been postponed indefinitely.

The DSHQ as portrayed in Op Kartikeya has no similarity to the above. For one all commands, save one, are located at a single underground structure in the outskirts of Delhi. Secondly the DSHQ has operational control over the lone AWACS aircraft, since it straddles all three environments (air, land, water) and is useful to all three services. This is unlikely to happen in reality. Thirdly personnel from the three service headquarters (and from their regional commands) can be attached with the DSHQ to help plan and execute operations for their relevant service. In this manner the service chiefs have a sense of active participation in the joint operations. This too is a stretch but fits in nicely with the flow of the story.

The fears of the CDS becoming a defence supremo, of the DSHQ having rifts with the three service headquarters, and of inter-service rivalry have been shown to occur but in the interests of the story such temporary ripples are quickly smoothed over. The reader is free to decide the merits of each argument.

Air power mobilization

The Indian Air Force pilot on the cover of Op Kartikeya, helmet held by his side, conveys the importance given to that service in the book. The CDS is an air chief marshal who was picked from a pool of three-star officers of all three services to head the DSHQ. He thus becomes a four-star officer parallel to the three service chiefs and in league with the air chief proceeds to formulate an air force-led war against Pakistan. In addition the IAF holds the Strategic Forces Command and the Doctrine & Training Command within the DSHQ.

The use of air power to first cripple nuclear and ballistic missile assets and then fight a strategic war against the enemy army, is based partly on the IAF’s doctrine published in 1995 and partly on numerous policy papers written by defence analysts. The fictional part is the elaborate and secretive measures used, first to carry out training for this war, and second to deploy air assets in the western and southwestern air commands. Can such a massive secret be kept? What with all the high tech listening devices, eyes-in-the-sky, and cash-rich spying agencies…compounded by the fact that most government departments are leaking sieves?

Well neither the eyes-in-the-sky nor any spy agencies discovered the sequence of events leading to India’s nuclear tests at Pokharan in 1998. The circle of knowledge for that feat included politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, and the army…and yet there were no leaks. The circle of knowledge for Operation Wild Dog is more limited and only at the closing stages are the cabinet, the army, and the navy informed.

Those who have read Op Kartikeya may notice a low 2% loss suffered by the IAF in three days of conflict. They should note that only the squadrons with a high servicing rate and the most efficient aircraft are used in the war. Moreover stocks of spares, munitions, and lubricants are built up prior to the conflict. And the overwhelming attacks take the enemy air defences by surprise.

The Indian Navy’s role and the Indian Army’s strategy

Op Kartikeya is an IAF story with a fighter pilot as the lead character. Extensive research was done for this service, its aircraft, and its doctrine. In the DSHQ, not only is the CDS an Air Chief Marshall, but the IAF also controls two commands. The Indian Navy heads two commands; the Operations Command and the Andaman & Nicobar Command (ANC), which is the only command not headquartered within the DSHQ premises.

In keeping with the Indian Navy’s doctrine and aspirations a variety of engagements are portrayed across the vast swathe of India’s oceanic territories. From the interdiction of missile-proliferating vessels to the anti-terrorist operations in league with the Coast Guard; defensive maneuvers against an intruding foreign task group and offensive engagement with rogue Pakistani vessels; and ending of course with the events at Ormara. In all cases the reader only a gets distant overview of these operations. Moreover no detailed description of the Indian Navy vessels or the impressive array of their weaponry is provided. Doing so would have distracted the reader’s attention from the main storyline.

For the reasons cited above the role of the Indian Army, and its operations at the ground level, are given a cursory treatment. In the DSHQ the army on paper heads three commands but since two are non-functioning only the Defence Intelligence Agency is headed by a Lt. General. This deficiency is made up by the fact that the Vice-Chief of Defence Staff (VCDS) is also an army Lt. General. As recommended by the group of ministers, should the CDS be either an air force or navy man, the VCDS must belong to the army.

Since the army has the least to fear from the creation of the CDS post and is the most enthusiastic proponent of joint commands on the ground, giving it a reduced presence in the DSHQ was a deliberate decision. It was also interesting for the DSHQ to accord priority to the air force plans and see what shape inter-service rivalry would take in that situation.

With regard to doctrine the mobilization of the army’s three strike corps (1, 2, and 21) is avoided while elements of the various holding corps make pin-prick attacks on the enemy forces. This has nothing to do with the newly-espoused doctrine of “cold start”, which came about when the book was already in publishing. However elements of the strike corps are used to launch operations in unexpected areas, like Skardu and the Baluchistan coast. Since only an overview is given of these ops, the reader should forgive some optimistic exaggerations like the landing of a division-size force through an air bridge in POK.