The Siege Of Warwan - A Novel

By G. D. Bakshi

An action-packed war novel from a combat veteran  Warwan, a remote, snowbound valley in Kashmir, has become a coveted base area of jihadi militants because of its strategic location. Its inhabitants have been brutalized by years of aggression. Fighting against this wave of terrorist incursions is a lone Indian Army outpost headed by the young, idealistic and gutsy Major Dushyant 'Dusty' Bharadwaj of the Rashtriya Rifles. Struggling to win over the hostile locals, Dusty meets the beautiful Ayesha, a doctor with a troubled past-a woman symbolic of the beautiful but ravaged Kashmir.  While Dusty wages battle against various terrorist cells, Ayesha fights her own demons-the grief of her lover abandoning her to join the jihad and the longing that still haunts her. Their paths cross as Dusty rescues Ayesha from the savage and demonic terrorist Kari Hanzala. But that rescue sparks off a chain of reactions that threatens to devastate the entire valley of Warwan and leads to a spellbinding climax.  Dramatic and intense, this is India's first serious war novel from an ex-Indian Army officer with wide-ranging and first-hand experience of live combat. The Siege of Warwan is both sensitive and action-packed, and shows a deep awareness of the human tragedy behind every war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jul 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9789351360421

G. D. Bakshi

Major General Gagandeep Bakshi (retd) is a combat veteran of many skirmishes on the Line of Control and counter-terrorist operations in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab. He commanded his battalion in active operations in Kargil and was awarded the Vishisht Seva Medal. Later, he commanded a Rashtriya Rifles brigade in counterterrorist operations in Kishtwar and earned the Sena Medal.

Book preview

I

The Sector Commander

1

The New Commander Arrives

The Mi-17 helicopter clattered along the valley of the Chenab, scattering with its rotors the wisps of clouds floating in the sky. The day was foggy and overcast and the pilots were flying below the bank of clouds. Pools of mist had settled in the valley. Through it, the pilots caught glimpses of the mountain tracks snaking up the spurs. The bad weather had now lasted for almost a week.

The rattle of the helicopter’s Kazan engines beat against the flanks of the mountains and reverberated through the valley. The sortie had been launched at special request from the army.The army’s farthest heli-maintained post at Warwan had been without a resupply sortie almost a fortnight and a major encounter had taken place there about two days ago. It had been a hard-fought battle. The only good thing to come of it had been the news that the Rashtriya Rifles had managed to kill five terrorists belonging to the Jaish-e Mohammad in that encounter. Three of them had been foreigners, including ‘Parbat’, the local district commander. The price paid, however, had been steep. Two of the RR soldiers had been killed and three wounded. This included the post commander.

Bad news never comes alone, it comes in battalions. Just the week before, the new sector commander of the Bhadarwah sector had assumed charge. He had been on his first area-familiarization visit when his vehicle was blasted by a powerful IED (improvised explosive device) that had 50 kg of RDX. Brigadier Shergill had been killed on the spot. The event had made headlines internationally. CNN, BBC and Star were flooded with news about the encounter and PTV’s tone had turned triumphant.

Today, the Mi-17 sortie was flying in the new brigade commander. The small AOP (Air Observation Post) helicopters of the Army Aviation had not been able to take off in the dismal weather, so the Corps Headquarters staff had made a bid for the special sortie. The larger Mi-17 had better navigation capability and was expected to be able to fly despite the inclement weather.The helicopter had waited two hours on the ground before the Met gave it clearance. The first sortie carried to Warwan rations, reinforcements and letters from home and returned with the wounded and the dead from the encounter. It landed at Bhadarwah to refuel. Meanwhile, a second sortie was launched—this time with the new brigade commander on board.

Brigadier Sibal Roychoudhry sat near the front door of the chopper, staring moodily out of the window at the terrain that zipped past far below him. Large masses of nimbus clouds had appeared ahead. He was worried that the helicopter would have to turn back and return to the base and wished that he had gone on the first flight of the day. But the corps staff had told him that his force commander, Major General Manjit Singh, AVSM, SM, had come down for a conference and wanted to meet him before he took off. He had to cool his heels for almost an hour while the force commanders’ conference dragged on.

The force commander, a veteran of many counterinsurgency campaigns, emerged at long last. He had served with distinction as a battalion commander in Nagaland and later earned fame while he was commanding the brigade near the Charar-e Gulistan shrine. Foreign terrorists led by the notorious Mastan Gul had burnt it to ash and the Hurriyat people had transferred the blame to the army. This had created quite a furore, but the general was a fighter. He had emerged unscathed from that fracas and was now commanding the elite Delta force of the Rashtriya Rifles (a light-infantry equivalent of a division tailormade for counter-insurgency operations). A lanky Sikh gentleman with a rasping voice, he was a forceful, no-nonsense person with very firm ideas about how counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist operations should be conducted. Sibal saluted when he saw him.

‘Welcome on board, Sibal,’ the general said as they shook hands.

‘Your sector has been going through a rough patch, I’m afraid. We lost Brigadier Shergill the other day and it’s been a major blow. The media really hyped it up. I had told him to be careful, but unfortunately, Shergill got impatient. He went on without getting the Road Opening Drill done.’ The general shook his head. ‘Never violate standard operating procedures in this place.’

Sibal listened without comment.

‘Then there was that major encounter near Warwan,’ the general continued. ‘It always gives me nightmares. I’m not sure if we should keep a heli-maintained post out there at all. We killed five terrorists, but we also lost two boys and three have been wounded. I’m not happy with the exchange rate. This bravado business is not good. The company commander led the entry into the dhok himself and has been wounded. It’s good that our youngsters lead from the front, but tactical drills must not be lost sight of. There is no point in incurring needless casualties. You’ll have to get your sector’s SOPs going again.’

Sibal responded with a non-committal ‘Sir’.

He was not happy about this overzealous casualty-curbing outlook. Too much emphasis on this, he felt, could stymie initiative. The young officer who had led from the front had set an example. If he was berated beyond a point, it would dampen the enthusiasm of others. Standard Operating Procedure Syndromes sometimes degenerated into ‘Zero Error Syndromes’, which was the last thing a combat zone needed. He tried to suppress his annoyance at the general’s words, but wasn’t entirely successful.

The general arched an eyebrow. ‘You don’t seem to agree?’

Here we go again, thought Sibal. He was a bit of a maverick, always at loggerheads with his superiors. He had a reputation for intellectual brilliance, read voraciously and was widely regarded in the infantry as a good tactician with a flair for the unorthodox and a penchant for getting into trouble. He had almost been axed on a number of occasions, but had survived because of his good combat record and the series of decorations he had earned on various battlefields. He wanted to avoid an argument at the very first meeting with his boss, so he tried to restrain his impulse to retort.

‘Sir, I would like to take a look at the ground picture before I offer any comments,’ he managed to say.

‘You do that,’ the general said, his tone stiff. ‘We’ll have a detailed interaction after that.’ He turned on his heels and strode off as Sibal’s hand flew up in an automatic salute.

It had not been an auspicious start. Sibal sighed wearily and shrugged. The helicopter was now swerving to the left between two huge banks of cumulus clouds. How much like the fairy lands of his childhood imagination these cloud battlements looked, he thought.

Soon, the Mi-17 banked steeply and turned into the valley of the Neeru river. Sibal surveyed his co-passengers. The young major who sat opposite had made an impression on him. He was six-foot plus, very fair and had a strong jawline and chin. Broad shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist and he wore the floppy, rifle-green RR beret of the Armoured Corps. Sibal had spoken to him briefly before boarding. The boy had said he was from the ‘Poona Horse’, the Fakhr-e Hind regiment, which Pakistanis called the ‘Pride of India’. While shaking the major’s hand, Sibal had noticed that his hands were huge and his grip was as strong as a wrestler’s. His name was Bharadwaj.

Sibal’s thoughts were interrupted by the helicopter banking sharply again. The Emergency Ration Packs slid across the floor and one tumbled onto his boots. The soldiers rushed to retrieve it, but he waved them back.

The helicopter was now descending swiftly towards the Advanced Landing Ground at Bhadarwah. The strong downwash of the rotor was raising a whirlwind. The jungle hats of the men waiting at the helipad flapped about their heads. They raised their elbows over their faces and turned their backs to the landing helicopter. The change of pressure because of the sudden descent made Sibal feel like his eardrums were about to burst. He could hardly hear a word of what the JCO at his elbow was saying to him. He pinched his nostrils and blew outwards to straighten his eardrums and release the air pressure.

The commanding officer of the local RR battalion and the DQ, the logistics staff officer from his headquarters, were there to receive him. They stepped forward and saluted the new commander. The CO of the twenty-second Rashtriya Rifles (Rajput), Colonel Kartar Singh, was a tall, thin chap from Haryana. He was a soft-spoken man but a ruthless taskmaster and experienced in counterinsurgency operations. The DQ, Major Sengupta, was from the Armoured Corps. Though this was his first exposure to low-intensity conflict, he had picked up the nuances of the situation very quickly.

Sibal turned towards the coffins draped in the tricolour and the guard lined up for the last post. The three wounded boys were lying on stretchers, their faces ashen with pain. He walked over to them. Major Suhag,the company commander of the Warwan post, had been shot in the abdomen. He was the post commander that General Manjit Singh had spoken of. Obviously, the youngster had not been wearing the mandatory heavy, bulletproof jacket—it was so heavy that the boys preferred to operate without it. However, Sibal could not help but reflect that it was precisely to prevent this kind of a mess that one was supposed to wear it—the general had, quite possibly, been right. The wounded officer saw him and tried to sit up. Sibal pushed him back down.

‘No, no. Don’t get up.You’ll be okay, son,’ he said, patting his arm.

‘What’s your name, son?’ he asked another injured man.

‘Naik Roshan Lal, sir.’

‘And you? What’s your name?’ Sibal turned to the third man.

‘Sepoy Vijay Kumar, sir,’ the man stammered.

‘Don’t worry, boys,’ Sibal said. ‘All of you will be okay. The helicopter will get you to the Command Hospital in less than half an hour, so don’t give up. You all have done a damn good job. Shabash!’

‘Suhag!’ he suddenly heard the young major who had flown with him gasp. Major Bharadwaj was kneeling next to the wounded officer, grasping his hand.

‘So we meet again, Birdie boy,’ the wounded man grimaced. His face was twisted in a sarcastic smile. Sibal watched the curious exchange from the corner of his eye. The tension between the two young men was palpable and Sibal could feel invisible sparks shooting through the air. He wondered what was going on.

‘Would you like to lay a wreath for the martyrs, sir?’ The CO’s voice broke into Sibal’s thoughts and he nodded. It was a grim start to his tenure as sector commander. He walked over to the coffins that lay nearby and read the names on them.

‘Naik Tezbir Singh Tomar and Sepoy Shashidharan.’

The guard presented their arms, then reversed the arms and bowed their heads. Sibal slow-marched to the coffins and reverentially laid the wreaths across them. The bugler sounded the last post. Everyone stood silent, head bowed, as the wind sobbed and hooted mournfully. The dismal weather perfectly suited their bleak mood.

Sibal’s thoughts drifted back to his tenure as commander of his battalion at Kargil. That was almost a decade ago. In those days, the dead had to be cremated there and then. Only the ashes were sent back in a copper urn. Six of his boys had been killed. As CO, he had had to preside over six military funerals. The last one had been conducted even as Pakistani mortar shells were crashing around the hemmed-in spaces of the Drass river valley. The haunting dirge of the last post had sounded as flames engulfed the funeral pyre. Thousands of sparks had risen in the strong breeze that blew as the priest chanted the funeral lament.

‘Who is it that is going with the flames? Who is it that is rising with those sparks? O Jatveda, O Agni, the knower of men, burn all that is dross in his being. Take away the element of light.’

Sibal’s eyes had felt heavy. His hair had greyed in just six months. He had been only a lieutenant-colonel then, but he had felt crushed beneath an invisible weight.

‘Glory-hunting bastard,’ an officer had hissed under his breath.

That officer had been a problem since the day he had arrived from a comfortable peace station. Newly married, he had not adjusted well to the rigours of the combat environment. A pessimist, he had been unnerved by the escalation in fighting and was trying to while away his tenure and just survive. He had been sacked subsequently, but his barb had bitten deep into Sibal’s soul. Had he perhaps been too task-oriented? Had he not shown adequate concern for the safety of his men? But he had never taken cover during all the shelling and firing—not once. He had tried to set an example. He had not asked his men to take any risk that he had not taken. If he could do it, could he not demand the same from his men? For the larger cause, for the good of the country?

‘Salami shastra!’

Sibal was jolted to the present by the words of the commander of the funeral guard. He saluted and turned back. The coffins were rushed to the helicopter and it took off with a resounding roar.

The staff officer had lined up the vehicle fleet—the leading Jeep fitted with a machine gun and a siren, a second Jeep with electronic jammers to jam remotely actuated explosive devices, a signals Rover, a spare Jeep and then the last escort Jeep with another machine gun mounted on it.

‘Why haven’t they put on the star plates and my flag?’ Sibal asked the staff officer.

The young DQ blanched. ‘Sir, here star plates and flags are generally not put on due to the threat of mines and IEDs,’ he explained.

‘I took thirty-two years to earn that damned flag and the star plate. I’m not taking them off for any bloody terrorist,’ Sibal barked. ‘Put them right back on.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And make sure that the lead vehicle keeps blowing the siren. I’m not sneaking into my command. Let them know I’m here.’

‘Yes, sir!’

Sibal thwacked his cane on his calf and climbed into the Jeep. The engines of the vehicles growled into life and the cavalcade took off in a swirl of dust. The strange, quavering cadence of the siren’s wail echoed all around.

The new sector commander had arrived. And the imperious thwack of his cane had proclaimed to all that things would have to change.

2

Boy Soldiers and Child Warriors

The convoy wound its way up the steep slopes, snaking around the flanks of the mountains in lazy loop after loop. When the cavalcade of Jeeps entered a village, Sibal noticed a sight very familiar in Kashmir—that of little boys walking along the road. They waved lustily to the soldiers and mimicked their war cries with childish ‘jai-zindabads’. They contorted their faces, imitating the salutes of the soldiers.

Little boys! How excitedly they waved at the soldiers, how they clapped their little hands in glee, how grim and solemn their little faces became as they mimicked the salutes—fierce expressions that would do the most diehard Nazi proud. Sibal sighed. Only little boys could be so earnest, so delighted at the thought of war.Would they cheer as hard once they had seen shot-up corpses and women wailing—once they had felt the pain—he wondered. Real wars were brutal affairs. The stench of the corpses, the sight of raw and gaping wounds made grown men throw up in horror. But no one got hurt in a child’s imagination.

The Jeeps rumbled over the rutted road. Sibal drifted back many decades, to his own childhood. He remembered the tin pistol and the improvised cardboard holster that his father bought for him. It had sent him into transports of rapture. Now, every time he saw young boys in war zones, Sibal’s heart felt strangled within him and he experienced a strange mixture of sorrow and joy. Joy at their excitement, their childish enthusiasm and exuberance; sorrow because they were the ones who stood to lose most in a war, their homes, families, their childhood. Once, Sibal had been like those boys. Today, he felt terribly old. How many corpses had he seen in his life? That sickly sweet smell that came from a fresh corpse… the frozen expressions on the dead faces… the wide, vacant eyes of those who got hit on the backs of their head, staring at infinity… the flies buzzing on gaping wounds and open mouths… the congealed blood and shattered bones…

The little boys were the worst victims of war. They lost not only their lives but also their illusions.

‘Gentlemen, the commander.’

The bell in the operations room of the sector headquarters rang shrilly as the new commander strode in.

All the staff officers in the operations room sprang up and stood at attention.

‘Please be seated,’ Sibal waved as he settled into the sofa facing the operations map.

‘Sir, if you permit, the GSO-2 will brief you on the Warwan operation as you had desired,’ said Colonel Dhillon, the white-bearded deputy sector commander.

‘Proceed,’ Sibal said.

The GSO-2, a young, wiry major of the infantry, picked up his laser pointer and flashed it at the location of the post on the map. ‘The encounter began here at 0630 hours. A source had tipped off the company commander about the presence of a group of six foreign terrorists in a dhok—a log hut built by shepherds—outside Matehund village.’ He indicated the place with his pointer.

‘The outer cordon was laid by 0400 hours and the inner cordon was in place by 0430 hours. At first light, when we attempted to close in on the dhok, we drew heavy fire from a UMG. They also fired UBGLs and, subsequently, two RPGs. One of our boys was killed by the RPG as he was attempting to close in and one was badly wounded.’ The GSO-2 paused in his briefing to clear his throat. UMG stood for Universal Machine Gun, UBGLs were Underbarrel Grenade Launchers, RPGs were Rocket-propelled Grenades.

‘Ten rounds of Carl Gustav rockets were fired into the dhok. The terrorists stopped firing. Then the company commander himself closed in with the entry team. As he entered through the door, he drew heavy AK fire from inside. His friend Sepoy Sashidharan was killed on the spot. The company commander was hit in the abdomen. Despite his wounds, he threw in two grenades and killed one terrorist with a burst from his AK. He was dragged out by Naik Tezbir Singh Tomar at great personal risk. Tomar went back and shot the two terrorists who were still alive. Two had been killed by our rocket fire earlier and one had managed to escape. Tomar was shot in the head and died.’ The GSO-2 cleared his throat again. ‘The others took photographs of the terrorists with a digital camera. These are being projected before you on the screen, sir.’

Five mangled corpses. The two that had been hit by the rockets had half their faces blown off. Fragments of flesh and blood were spattered across their bodies. The others, shot by rifles, had neat entry and exit wounds on their chest and abdomen. Sibal’s eyes were riveted to the corpse of a small boy at the side. He looked hardly thirteen, yet those young hands were clutching an AK-56. The empty magazine had been placed over his chest for the photograph. The UMG, the RPG launcher and the UBGL were arranged near the feet of the corpses.

‘That kid couldn’t have been a terrorist,’ Sibal snapped.

‘I’m afraid he was, sir. He had an AK-56 in his hands and kept firing almost till the end. They are recruiting young boys now, between eleven and fifteen. Apparently, they are easy to motivate and are usually quite excited about being given an AK. They are used initially as porters. Many of them are also sexually abused. Some try to escape, others are enamoured by the power the gun gives them. In fact, a terrorist slogan here states: Gun hai to paisa hai! Gun hai to izzat hai! Gun hai to ladki hai!’

The deputy commander, a greying colonel, cleared his throat.

‘The AK has become a kind of a status symbol in these parts. Teenage boys would give their left arm to get a gun. They see it as a means of empowerment. Our analysis indicates that most of the local terrorists are from the lower Muslim castes, hazzams—barbers, lohars—blacksmiths, cobblers, etc. Terrorists entice them with the promise of power. And then the nightmare begins. The foreign terrorists mostly use the new recruits as porters to carry their packs. Many of them, as the GSO-2 said, are sexually abused. Only