One query — Whose fault was Kargil?

November 19: ``Could we not have kept the Kargil casualties down ?'' The question came from a school teacher who was debating sending her...

int(2)

November 19: “Could we not have kept the Kargil casualties down ?” The question came from a school teacher who was debating sending her son to the army. The photographs of Lieutenant Haneefuddin’s mother weeping, Lieutenant Amit Varma’s mother saluting the coffin and a tractor at the Delhi airport pulling eight trollies carrying coffins, shook her.

“Whose fault was it that Pakistanis came in eight to 10 kilometers with these weapons and we lost so many soldiers recapturing the peaks to reach the line of control ?” The question followed two photographs showing Pakistani weapons recovered by the army from the captured peaks extending almost 150 kilometers from Kaobal Gali to Turtuk.

It seemed strange hearing the questions in Mumbai. Questions that soldiers had asked over and over again in the conflict zone, during the course of the battle. Seeing pictures of soldiers living in underground bunkers using empty rum bottles filled with kerosene and a shoe lace for a wick to light their lives, people weretouched. And seeing a photograph of an army officer displaying anti personnel mines with clear markings of Pakistan ordnance factory, they were angry.

Story continues below this ad

“Kargil has come alive through these pictures. But what is the solution to the problem ? Do our soldiers have to stay there on 16,000 feet high peaks in sub zero degrees temperatures, several feet deep snow throughout winters ?” asked a St Xavier’s college student. “You were there for over two months. Tell us what do the soldiers need most now. What can we do here for them ?” The warmth the people had for the soldiers is indeed touching. Perhaps something that keeps the army going. That is what a young army officer who visited the Kargil Express Photo journey this afternoon felt.

The people felt as bad for the people of Kargil, Drass and Mushkoh valley whose pictures they saw – uncertainty writ large on their faces. If these people lost their crop and sheep in shelling on what are they surviving now? Are they still living like refugees ? A young schoolgirl who visited the photo journey asked if the school-going children in Kargil had a school to go anymore ?

“In Mumbai we feel so far removed from the problems of both the army and the people of Kargil, Drass and other parts of Jammu and Kashmir. But we want to help in our own little way,” the school girl said. Help that the local population of Mushkoh village, Drass, Kaksar, Kargil and Batalik could well do with.