WAS IT WAR OR CONFLICT?

Kargil war 1999

A Battle of semantics
Were we in a war with pakistan? Depends on who you ask.

The government's preferred term for the military exchanges with neighbor Pakistan that started May 7th is "Limited conflict"

This choice of semantics has its advantages. Academician and editor, INDIA'S WORLD, a foreign affairs magazine, Hapymon Jacob points out that when you call a conflict a war it becomes a legal phraseology.International bodies get involved which has all kinds of bilateral and legal implications.

Neither the army, nor the navy, nor the indian air force, crossed the international border or The Line of Control. The modern weaponry used meant that India hit targets deep inside pakistan, such as bhawalpur in pakistan's punjab province, without ships pr planes crossing over or using troops on the ground.

Second, unlike a traditional war, there isn't any territory at stake. India's clear objective was to disable terror infrastructure that enables attacks like Pahalgam. There wasn't a defend area conflict unlike in the 1999 Kargil war which India had to recapture or dismantle. Operational manoeuvres were characterised as proportional responses to previous attacks. During the Kargil war, the Pervez Musharraf-led pakistan army sent in troops across the Line of Control to take over strategic high-altitude positions in Kashmir. This led to a conflict that lasted two months and ended only on July 26 of that yaarvwhen the army regained control of key positions such as Tiger Hill.

If we go through the news reports at the time, the terms used to describe Kargil in May 1999 were "conflict" or "crisis". As the details emerged, India also referred to it as Operation Vijay. But as the conflict extended, as the troops moved in and the casualties started climbing, the term "War" became avoidable.

"No two wars are the same so comparisons are unfair,every war has its own intensity and Dynamic," says retired Lt General Syed Ata Hasnain. The 2025 exchanges between India and Pakistan were indeed a "Limited conflict", he says, since the definition of war and conflict is on a spectrum.This time, given the advanced munitions deployed and extended range of their deployment,there were greater chance of more civilians being caught in the line if Fire.

    Thankfully,the debate now will be on the semantics of ceasefire.