Kargil was a part of Gilgit-Baltistan before 1947, but now is a town in the Indian-controlled Kashmir. Kargil lies on the line of control facing Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. Kargil is the only Muslim majority district in the Ladakh subdivision. Kargil is nestled in the Himalaya, giving it a cool, temperate climate. Summers are cool with frigid nights while winters are long and cold with temperatures often dropping to -40°C. A national highway connecting Srinagar to Leh, cuts through Kargil. There is an unpaved road leading from Kargil south to Zanskar, which is only open from June to September each year.
In late May 1999, Islamic guerrillas covertly and overtly backed by Pakistan squatted on vantage heights in the Indian controlled region. This led to mobilisation of Indian troops. The conflict was ultimately resolved as Prime Minister Nawaz Shareef buckled under pressure from the US president Bill Clinton and ordered a retreat of all Pakistani forces from Kargil.
The contemporary district of Kargil (Hindi: कारगिल ; IPA: [kərɡɪl]) was one of the districts of Ladakh Wazarat/Province before the Partition of Ladakh in 1947.
Kargil occurred because of the growing unease among the Pakistani military elite, who believed that the Indianarmy's successful management of insurgency in Kashmir was diluting their Kashmir cause, and also because they felt emboldened by an assumed annulment of Indian conventional superiority through Pakistan's nuclear acquisition.
However, Ganguly conceded that the Kargil conflict showed that, despite the increased lethality of their military arsenals, Indian and Pakistani leaders might feel compelled to confine the theater of operations in a future conflict for fear of an escalatory spiral culminating in the resort to the threat of use, or actual use, of nuclear weapons.
Public sensitivities on a national issue such as Kargil are evident from the record 5,000 million rupees contributed by the public toward the war effort and the rehabilitation of those affected by the Kargil conflict.
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