Recalling the Kargil conflict, Pakistan's former military dictator General Pervez Musharraf on Sunday said the Pakistani Army "caught India by throat" and that India will never forget the war. "There was a second line force, too, which caught India by throat and that was later given the status of Army," Musharraf said, addressing a ceremony of his All Pakistan Muslim league (APMl).
Musharraf, who masterminded the 1999 Kargil conflict and ruled over Pakistan for nine years, said India will always "remember the battle of Kargil," the Geo News reported. "We entered Kargil from four points of which India was not aware," Musharraf said. Speaking on the occasion, the former Army chief also announced that his political party will take part in upcoming local bodies election in the country.
In May 1999, India and Pakistan, in their most serious military engagement since 1971, clashed in Kargil area of ladakh in Jammu & Kashmir after terrorists backed by Pakistani troops occupied the mountain peaks of Kargil. In the spring, as snow melted in the Kargil sector to the northeast of Srinagar, some 1,000 or more infiltrators crossed the line of Control from Pakistani-occupied Kashmir into Indian Kashmir.
Equipped for high-altitude warfare, with snowmobiles and mortars, and protected by Pakistani artillery fire from the other side of the border, they established positions at heights above 14,000 feet, overlooking the strategically vital road that connects Srinagar with leh in ladakh. The operation, Pakistan hoped, would give new stimulus to the decade-long insurgency within Indian Kashmir, and, in its direct impact, both raise the military costs for India in Kashmir and cut the strategic highway link between Srinagar and leh. It failed on all counts.