Maverick's World

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

In the last post, I brought up the basic challenge associated with running a logistical line in this context. Needless to say - there are way more issues than I touched upon but those are big ones I see.

I left out the details of the formations and locations and kept to a high level picture. In this post I will talk through how I feel  Pakistanis will think about this conflict. As before I will restrict myself to a high level picture and leave out details of formations and locations.

Again - I do not think this action by India is productive, but the idea of "Taking POK" has become very popular among some people in India and I just want to point out how this may not go as they naively think it will.  

The Pakistani Army is quite used to the threat posed by the Indian Army in Kashmir. They are well aware of their own logistical weaknesses and that is one of the key reasons why they chose to support the Khalistan and Kashmiri insurgencies - to keep the ground wet under India's feet. If India's feet were on dry ground, it's army might break out into a run straight at Pakistani Kashmir!

While much is made of Pakistanis and their kinship with Kashmiris and the shared religion etc..., the reality of Pakistan's interest in Kashmir is quite pragmatic and driven by geography. The Kashmir area affords them a lot of depth for their national capital region and critical national security facilities like the Mangla Dam, the Mashood Test Firing Range, the Kahuta Nuclear Facility and so on. The Pakistan Army would take a very negative view of an Indian intrusion into "Azad Kashmir" and react very strongly to that.

The Pakistani Army most likely thinks that Gilgit Baltistan defends itself due to geography. The Karakoram Highway is a very big expression of the closeness of Pakistan-China ties, but fundamentally moving anything down the KKH is quite costly and it is more cost effective just to provide the Chinese berthing facilities and base in Gwadur. The one part about an Indian move on Gilgit Baltistan that will really upset the Pakistanis is the possibility of India grabbing control over so much hydroelectric potential, but as I said elsewhere this discussion is not as big a part of Pakistani national security discussions as it should IMHO be.

So Yes, Pakistanis will be angry with India's actions and they will feel violated by the Indian Army but they have felt that way forever now and quite frankly they know how to cope with those feelings a lot better than India knows how to cope with whatever it's feelings are on Kashmir. For decades now Pakistan has told the world that India is a belligerent terrorist state that will stop at nothing to destroy Pakistan. Over the last three decades that view has been difficult to sell internationally as India had successfully portrayed Pakistan as the epicenter of global Jihadi terrorism.

So looking at things pragmatically (not to make light of any true concern that Pakistanis may have for their Kashmiri neighbors) - from the Pakistani Army perspective - Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan are merely mountainous sponges where Indian Army resources will be sucked in and bled out. As a result of this, quite literally these places will draw fire away from sensitive national security zones further to the south. This picture (though terrifying in humanitarian terms) is actually quite logical.

When Indian Kashmir ran like a real democracy, it was very difficult for Pakistani strategists to provoke Indians into a self-destructive conflict there. They had to use Jihadis to stir up the pot and in doing so provoke India into stupid and outrageous behavior. The tactic works well when India is feeling particularly foolish. After the missteps in the late 80s, India lost ground to Pakistani provocations but through pain toil and tears, things were returning to normalcy prior to 2014. Now sadly, India is pursuing an aggressive nationalist image, we are wedded to a timeline where the amount of effort Pakistan has to put in to get India to behave stupidly is reducing precipitously. Once the Indian Army crosses the LoC in pursuit of a "Taking POK" mission - the level of Pakistani effort at sustaining their strategic vision of Kashmir will be minimal. The mountains will be doing all the work and the Pakistan Army General Staff will be largely sitting on its rear drinking whiskey.

An effective Pakistani strategy in the context of India "Taking POK" would be to put up a solid effort of resisting the rapid Indian advances in the Muzaffarabad area and Gilgit Baltistan but to really concentrate its reserve formations south of Muzaffarabad closer to its own crucial national security zone. The sacrifice of a few defensive formations (Chakothi, Rawalakot, Bagh, Muzaffarabad, Minimarg to name a few) alone would be sufficient to give the impression that Pakistan did everything possible to stop an Indian advance.

In the highly constrained movement corridors of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan - the most successful approach for mounting a defense would be similar to the Finnish Motti tactic used in the Winter War against the Soviet Union. It is unclear if the Pakistan Army would be able to action on such a tactical approach or it would revert into the Niazi approach of trying to hold major population centers. I feel they could use their considerable local knowledge and supportive population to mount this type of attack against Indian Army columns. If they use this tactic in Gilgit Baltistan,  a relatively small number of Pakistani units should be able to inflict disproportionate damage on India's forces in this way. This is exactly what happened in Kashmir during the 1990s (in case you didn't know that).

As the Indian offensive would naturally create massive refugee crises and staggering collateral damage and the Pakistanis would have to provide relief to them, they would project these efforts on the international stage and successfully be able to push its narrative on India as a bellicose regional power.

This mostly concludes what I have to say on this part of the "Taking POK" story. A few loose ends remain and I will address those in the next post.

posted by maverick @ 4:47 AM