Maverick's World

"Taking POK" - a discussion of some technical aspects - I

An old friend asked me to comment on some of the technical issues involved in "Taking POK" and I agreed to do it.

I want to be clear about this from the outset. I am merely analyzing the technical aspects as best known to me. I am not in any way/shape/form advocating that "taking POK" is a good thing, only recognizing that it has become a popular discussion and it is time to highlight the technical aspects.

Let us begin by briefly reviewing key facts about the region.

Pakistani Kashmir consists of two parts - "Azad Kashmir" and "Gilgit-Baltistan". Both areas are very mountainous and many parts are covered with snow during the bulk of the year. As the snow melts, water from the melting snow causes unpredictable shifts in the patterns of the flow in rivers and streams. As the entire area is at a high altitude, there is little vegetation and soil erosion from mountains results in unpredictable silt dams being formed. The same kind of thing also happens in winter where snow collects in unexpected ways along rivers and streams creating snow dams. All this complicates the picture of flooding and communication in the region.

There are very few roads between key population centers in "Azad Kashmir" or "Gilgit Baltistan" and for the most part these communication links are easily snapped by bad weather or avalanches or landslides. It is common to experience "heave" in many of these roads - the routine seasonal temperature changes (winter to summer and back) produce shifts in the soil and which in turn weaken or break the tarmac above it.

Most of the roads here are one lane only - it is difficult for two vehicles to pass each other. In many places along these roads, there are bridges that cross various rivers and streams. A number of these bridges can only support small loads and thus are likely to break if one drives a lot of vehicles over them in a short amount of time.

If you start driving on one of these roads, you find yourself stuck for hours behind traffic. A single motor vehicle accident or landslide or bridge collapse can shut down the road for hours or even days. It is a very shaky picture as road transportation goes. The Pakistani Army relies on air mobility to supplement critical road transport but it still has to transport the bulk of its supply by truck and that is quite expensive. A liter of petrol costs way more in Pakistani Kashmir than it does in Karachi!

Neither "Azad Kashmir" nor "Gilgit Baltistan" are really known for possessing great mineral wealth. There is a small robust tourism industry in these parts and small amounts of mining. There are too few people there to really exploit this economic potential and a large fraction of the population is made up of expats from Pakistani Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunwa.

The economy of Pakistani Kashmir is largely held in place by shipments of oil to Pakistani military installations which create the necessary infrastructural pull to make it economically feasible to supply local populations. There is a great ongoing discussion in Pakistan that this region can be used to create massive hydroelectric power resources for the rest of Pakistan* but that has yet to make the huge impact it should (sadly).

Normally invading a mountainous region like this is senseless (Look at Europe - no one ever invades Switzerland for the same reason!) but over the last thirty years, there has been a slow and steady improvement in the regional infrastructure (in part because of the Saltoro War and the Kargil War) and this has enhanced the ability to do certain things. So is an Indian invasion of POK possible? Yes, but... there is more to think about... lots more.

It is reasonable to ask why would India attack POK?  I can see only two likely reasons for India doing this.

1) To punish the people of "Azad Kashmir": Most of the people in Pakistani Kashmir live in the southern part (from Muzaffarabad down). A number of these people are refugees from the Indian side. Having been most affected by the ongoing tragedy of Kashmir, these populations have a deep hostility towards India and form a perennial source of manpower of groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. Those groups have killed a lot of Indians. Any move to punish the people of "Azad Kashmir", to impose 10,000 KIA/hr death rates on them and end their will to fight India - is likely to be extremely popular among Modi worshipers.

2) To snap the Karakorum Highway:  If there is anything Modi haters and Modi worshipers both dislike - it is the manner in which China exploits Pakistan's fight with India. The Karakorum Highway (KKH) links Pakistan to China and is a vital part of the China reach for the Arabian sea. Most senior members of the Indian national security establishment openly take a negative view of the KKH and the debt obligations imposed on Pakistan by the China Pakistan Economic Cooperation agreement (CPEC). They seem to think that Pakistan will never repay this debt and India will have to indirectly pay it - so they would much prefer it if this KKH and CPEC were brought to an abrupt end.

In the next blog post - I will discuss the technical challenges associated with proceeding towards the aforementioned objectives with military options.

* No surprise that I am a huge supporter of that idea. I have always supported the idea of a prosperous and confident Pakistan and this is a much better use of Pakistani Kashmir than the previous use popular in the last thirty years - i.e. a laboratory for crazy Jihadi ideas!

posted by maverick @ 5:07 AM