ABSTRACT
The India-Pakistan war in the Kargil sector on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir lasted from 6 May to roughly the end of July 1999. It was the fifth large-scale conflict between the two countries. There seems to have been a subconscious reluctance on the part of both India and Pakistan to acknowledge the extensive nature of these conflicts, their territorial motivations and the violence inherent in them. Euphemisms are used. The military confrontations are described as “skirmishes”, “intrusions”, “warlike situations”, or “limited military operations”, whereas in fact, Indian and Pakistani armed forces were engaged in full-scale military operations against each other in 1947-48, twice in 1965 in Kutch and in Jammu and Kashmir (a war that expanded across the international frontiers between India and Pakistan), in 1971 during the East Pakistan crisis, and most recently in Kargil.
