Reclaiming PoK & Gilgit-Baltistan: A look at India's military options (Part 1)

India has strongly demanded that Pakistan vacate its illegal occupation of PoK and Gilgit-Baltistan and has vowed to reclaim its long-lost territories, but will the region's harsh terrain support a military invasion in the future? (Image: Photo by Rubaitul Azad, Pexels)

India's lost opportunity to claim the entirety of Jammu and Kashmir during the war of 1948, thanks to a hurried call for ceasefire that India's military watchers have long since rued, turned the mountainous region into a hot flashpoint that simmered for the next 78 years with significant military and financial implications.

Prologue

India's assertion of Jammu and Kashmir being an integral part of its territory has remained steadfast, and it has invested enormous military and political capital over the decades to put pressure on Pakistan to vacate the region, but with little success.

While some pressure groups in India, including political parties, sought to mend ties with Pakistan and flirted with the idea of turning the Line of Control, a heavily militarized chain of posts that divides the province into two, into a permanent border, the nationalists stress on the fallacy of such an approach and believe a military solution is the only way to regain our lost lands.

Under the Bharatiya Janata Party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi which has strengthened its hold over India's political, economic and military narratives following a run of three consecutive victories in the general elections, India has, over the past decade, denounced Pakistan for what it is - a military-run garrison state with the sole Islamist objective of bleeding India by a thousand cuts - no matter the cost to itself; and taken the kinetic option where necessary to demonstrate its intent.

The scourge of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism has continued unabated, albeit with intermittent success over the past decade thanks to India's strong law enforcement and intelligence apparatus that has been refined over decades. But there have been successful terrorism incidents ranging from the odd skirmish to the spectacular, with three significant incidents forcing the military to strike across the Line of Control to reestablish dominance.

India's latest cross-border military action in 2025, possibly the most ambitious and robust since the military operation that liberated Bangladesh, saw the forces destroying terrorist headquarters, infrastructure and launch pads along with multiple Pakistani air bases and long-range radars for good measure.

Operation Sindoor, India's response to utter cowardice demonstrated by Pakistani terrorists when they massacred over two dozen unarmed Hindu tourists in Kashmir's Pahalgam region, was the closest the two countries came to full-scale war, and there is a significant possibility that the next confrontation could be much larger in terms of objectives and scale.

The Pakistani Military Playbook

For those who have followed the Pakistan military's playbook since its disastrous and humiliating defeat in 1971, its objective had always been to acquire nuclear weapons to deter an Indian invasion, particularly in the northern sector.

Under the nuclear umbrella, the Pakistani establishment has used terrorism as its state policy to drive demographic change in Kashmir, weaken the Indian military, turn Punjab, once one of India's most prosperous states, into a hub of drug trafficking and separatist movements, and use every means possible to make the Indian Muslim populace open a new front and break the nation from within.

The sustained, yet low-intensity approach has enabled Pakistan to avoid full-scale wars while doggedly pursuing its objectives to weaken India. Paradoxically, the country has seen itself falling deeper into poverty and frequent cycles of bloodshed, driven primarily by military overreach in regions where tribal and cultural identities hold much stronger value than the idea of the state itself.

Pakistan is today an abyss, a rotting socio-economic mass where the gulf between the haves and the have-nots has never been so stark. The military leadership is as obsessed with its medals as it is with amassing wealth and land or bending the political spine to its will. The Defence Day celebrations get grander each year, never mind the sheer scale of people escaping the country the moment they have collected enough money for a trip, or the presence of entire provinces where the military has no place to hide once the sun sets.

The Pakistan Army today finds itself stuck in prolonged conflict in Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where solidifying sectarian identities, decades of state-enabled economic and political repression, and growing fundamentalism have completely torn apart the fabric of a united state. The nation now relies on foreign aid to sustain itself as it fights perennial civil wars, struggles to control heavily armed and motivated Islamic movements, and watches as its neighbour redeems itself into a regional superpower with robust economic, social and military advancements.

For the Pakistani military, a setback on one front could become the harbinger of an apocalypse, which is why holding on to its share of Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan is absolutely essential for its survival. The fact that Kashmir has served as a convenient rallying ground to keep the Pakistani nation united, that it provides direct connectivity with China and enough forest cover to sustain cross-border infiltration, makes it the most powerful piece in the military's geopolitical chessboard.

India's Options

A negotiated settlement with Pakistan in India's favour is a lost cause, and India's current crop of policymakers know it too well. No amount of cross-border trade, promises of prosperity, peace or economic growth could sway a nation born out of hate, a sense of religious superiority, and which treats enmity with India as its raison d'être. "We shall eat grass, but we will have our own nuclear bomb," so said Zulfikar Ali Bhutto back in 1974. "The Hindu had no stomach for a fight," said Field Marshal Ayub Khan before the 1965 war. Fast forward to 2026, no Pakistani would beg to differ.

That leaves the kinetic option as the sole arbiter in the battle of ideologies, India's right to regain access to long-lost lands, and Pakistan's intent to keep the Kashmir pot boiling.

For the Indian army, the shortest route to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan is the Line of Control, a 750-kilometre long mesh of electrified barbed wires, pillboxes, observation posts, machine gun nests, and tens of thousands of heavily-armed soldiers. Any invasion plan would entail entire divisions moving in treacherous terrain marked by thick forests, deep valleys, ridges and towering mountains, carrying heavy weaponry, logistics, artillery and armoured components at speed.

A mountain assault of such a scale would lose its element of surprise almost instantaneously, and slow-moving divisions would become easy targets for air and artillery assaults. The infrastructure on the other side of the Line of Control wouldn't necessarily facilitate heavy armoured movement and if we consider heavily-mined pathways, destroyed bridges, stiff enemy resistance and local support for the defenders, the job would become even more dire, throwing plans into disarray.

A possible way out is to move invading columns on all available roads and routes at great speed, reaching and destroying military installations and headquarters, taking control of cities and then digging deep to deter counter attacks and destroying the PAF in the air.

Such a plan could be a high risk one with the possibility of immense losses of men and equipment, but one that could turn the tide in the Indian army's favour if it demonstrates staying power, an efficient logistics chain, and timely deployment of force multipliers to bring the conflict to a quick end.

Talking about force multipliers, the ambitious approach would require hundreds of attack helicopters and armed long-range drones to dominate the battlefield and cause immense damage at scale as the infantry moves in for the kill. The impact of long-range artillery, missile barrages, and cutting-edge cyber capability to monitor or fry enemy communications cannot be overstated in such a scenario.

The Terrain

A look at the map of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan shows two distinct geographic bodies - a slender long line in the south that keeps Islamabad away from the range of Indian artillery, and a wider border to the south-east that curves slowly upwards towards the Saltoro Ridge that is adjacent to the Siachen glacier.

The southern region, stretching all the way from the vicinity of Baramula to Akhnur in Jammu, is a populated stretch of land, home to major cities and locations like Mirpur, Muzaffarabad, Keran, Kotli, Bhimber, Rawalakot, and the critical Mangla dam on the Jhelum river. Though the region hosts a sizable majority of non-Kashmiri inhabitants, it is particularly vulnerable due to its limited width that ranges between 16 kilometres and 64 kilometres at its widest.

Gilgit-Baltistan is different as much as in size and depth as it is in terms of population, ease of movement and the kind of terrain. Occupying an area of 73,000 square kilometres, it is home to the majestic Karakoram ranges to its west, the 8,125-metre high Nanga Parbat, the Hindu Kush mountain range to its east, and the Khunjerab and Mintaka passes at its north.

Microsoft Copilot. (2026). Road Map of Gilgit-Baltistan [Generated image].

Gilgit-Baltistan

The mountainous region, whose temporary border with India witnessed the bloody Kargil war in 1999 along the Kargil-Dras sector of Ladakh, is sparsely populated with a population density of about 22 people per square kilometre with most of its populace concentrated in and around the cities of Gilgit, Skardu, Astore, Chilas and Khaplu.

The road network runs along major rivers and streams, helping connect towns and villages close to the LoC with these major cities. One interesting road is the Astore Valley road. The road runs parallel to the Shigar river, which for all practices and purposes serves as the temporary border, and stretches from Minimarg, a remote tourist attraction on the banks of the Kishanganga river, known as the Neelum on the other side of the border, to a location just short of the Indian tourist village of Latoo just north of Kargil.

For context, Minimarg in Gilgit-Baltistan lies close to the town of Gurez and India's Kishanganga Hydroelectric Dam Project, so we can calculate the distance from Minimarg to the Astore road's far end near Kargil to be about 140 kilometres. If one drives from the east end of the Astore Valley road and crosses the Minimarg road, the road will lead up to Astore 80 kilometres to the north, and further up to Astore Morh at the Indus river where the road bifurcates.

The southern road, now known as the Karakoram Highway, hugs the Indus river all the way to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The northern road, also called the N35 or the Karakoram Highway, travels north towards Skardu Morr, where it again bifurcates, with the road heading west taking travellers to Gilgit, and the one heading east goes straight to Skardu and then further on to the Saltoro Ridge where it faces the Siachen glacier.

The Astore-Kargil road will interest Indian military planners if they seek to take control over the road not just to prevent the Pakistani army from reinforcing posts facing the LoC, but also to control the Shigar and Shingo river tributaries of the Indus, and set up a staging point for a direct thrust towards Gilgit by taking the Astore Valley road.

If the objective is to reach Skardu, the Astore Valley road is a long and winding one, so the ideal route is to start from the Kargil LoC point, drive north along the path hugging the Shingo river, which the Pakistanis have conveniently named the Kargil-Skardu road, cross the heavily-militarised city of Olding, and further cross the towns of Totli, Manthokha and Hussain Abad to reach the city of Skardu which is about 126 kilometres away from the starting point.

A major catch is that the Skardu-Astore-Minimarg road stays closed for at least six months every year due to severe weather conditions such as flash floods, landslides and heavy snow, and the fate of the Skardu-Kargil road remains in the hands of the weather gods, contributed by the fact that the road is in a sorry condition.

There is also the Minimarg-Domel road that runs much closer along the LoC for a short distance before scampering north to rejoin the Astore-Kargil road. What makes Minimarg strategically important is that it not only serves as a junction for roads running across the LoC, but also the Azad Kashmir-Baltistan Link Road that connects Pakistan Occupied Kashmir with the Baltistan province.

An Indian occupation of Minimarg and its adjoining roads could cut off the vital transport and communication line between the two illegitimate Pakistan-occupied provinces. Realising this, Pakistan is hurriedly constructing a 14-kilometre road west of Minimarg that connects the Kamri Pass to the village of Taobat in PoK. The route may save travel time but is basically a small diversion in the Astore Valley Road connecting to Minimarg that lies well within the range of Indian guns.

To explore further avenues for a possible military excursion into Gilgit-Baltistan, the Turtuk-Khaplu road can serve as a staging point for a foray in the direction of Skardu, possible as a diversionary exercise to pin down local Pakistani defences if not as a main point of thrust.

The road begins at Turtuk, a small town east of Kargil at a height of 3,000 metres above sea level which India wrested from Pakistan in 1971 along with the villages of Tyakshi and Thang further north, and travels a further 50-60 kilometres north-west towards the town of Khaplu in GB.

Also known as the Shyok Valley road as it runs along the Shyok river, the path is a two-lane road meandering through some breathtaking sights. An invasion on this channel will require engineers to quickly construct a bridgehead in place of an old, rotting wooden bridge constructed near the border town of Frano, or plan a more workable route to bypass the rocky terrain to enable the forces to dash northwards through the villages of Thongmus and Siksa, the latter lying approximately 150 kilometres from Skardu.

The road to Khaplu serves a dual purpose. It not only connects Skardu with the LoC line bordering Turtuk, but also connects to the Saltoro Valley road through a river bridge just south of Surmo. The Saltoro Valley road, as the name suggests, runs east along the Saltoro river towards the Saltoro Ridge right at the doorstep of the Siachen glacier. It ends close to the frontier camp of Gayari where a severe avalanche in 2012 buried 129 soldiers of 6 Northern Light Infantry under 80-100 feet of snow.

Any armed expedition through the Shyok Valley road from Turtuk could involve a pincer movement at the river bridge to strike at the rear of the Pakistan army formations facing Siachen with no secondary route available for the defending forces to escape the trap. The weather conditions will be key to a successful offensive in this sector.

Pakistan-occupied Kashmir

If the Indian army chooses to go for multiple chokepoints in the unforgiving heights of Gilgit-Baltistan and force a concession, it cannot do so without dedicating sufficient forces and air power to pin down a powerful Pakistani military presence all along the Line of Control stretching southwards from Gurez all the way to Akhnoor.

Though Pakistan may activate the entire frontline in the event of aggressive Indian moves, considering the strategic depth PoK provides to Islamabad and its jugular vein called Rawalpindi, Indian forces may devote more interests to some vital routes, most prominently the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road that passes Uri, crosses the LoC and runs along the Jhelum river towards Chakothi and then to Muzaffarabad, the capital city of PoK.

Another important route leading to vital chokepoints in PoK is a road heading from the city of Poonch in Jammu that follows the path of the Poonch river deep into the southern mass of PoK, crossing cities like Madarpur, Kakuta, Sarda, Kotli and Pind Khurd near the Mangla Dam lake. Given the population, the terrain, and the proximity to Islamabad, any war this this region could be a bloody affair.

If the Indian army's military planners have a plan in place to attack PoK, they do because it has been attempted before. During the 1965 war, after turning Field Marshal Ayub Khan's Operation Gibraltar on its head, the Indian army went on the offensive, capturing the strategically-located Haji Pir Pass as well as the Haji Pir bulge which helped it secure the area between Uri and Poonch and stabilize the front. In 1971, the army also undertook infantry assaults to occupy 900 square kilometres of Pakistani territory around Turtuk which it has held ever since.

A Tale of Two Frontiers

A future amalgamation of Gilgit-Baltistan could give India vital access to central Asia through the Wakhan corridor bordering Afghanistan, but for the political establishment, the first possible priority could be an investment of epic proportions on humanitarian grounds to alleviate the immense suffering of multiple ethnic communities inhabiting the harsh region.

For someone travelling along India's National Highway 44 (formerly NH 1) south of the temporary border with Gilgit-Baltistan, the fruits of economic development will be evident. The highway, which runs very close to the LoC, originating in Uri, passing through Srinagar and zig-zagging through treacherous curves and heights to connect the towns of Dras, Bhimbat, Thasgam, Kaksar, Chanigound, and Kargil before heading east towards Leh, now features a diverse network of tunnels, bridges and infrastructure projects that make traveling faster, more comfortable, and makes the highway strategically essential for military movements.

The Ladakh frontier faces harsh weather conditions for most of the year, and India is spending billions to continuously resurface and widen existing roads, build all-weather tunnels and bridges, and carry the fruits of economic development to the remotest of villages.

It now takes just fifteen minutes for one to cross the 6.5 kilometre Sonamarg tunnel which replaces an avalanche-prone zig-zagging route that took hours to cross. The strategic Zoji La tunnel is another architectural marvel. Soon to be completed, it lies close to the Sonamarg tunnel and features a 14 kilometre all-weather curved road that reduces a travel time of 1.5 hours to just 15 minutes. The two tunnels, along with 29 other road tunnels in J&K and Ladakh, have seen investments exceeding $17 billion.

In December, the government inaugurated the Shyok Tunnel, a 920 metre stretch at over 12,000 feet on the Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldie (DS-DBO) Road in eastern Ladakh that bypasses a long stretch of road vulnerable to heavy snowfall, avalanches, and landslides.

The National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation is upgrading and widening in earnest a 200 kilometre stretch of road on the NH-301 Kargil- Zanskar Road, of which a 97.7 kilometre section has been completed. Other major road projects in the region include the 1.96-kilometre twin-tube tunnel at Fotu La Pass, the Pandach-Manigam project that will be a 12-kilometre, four-lane highway project connecting Ganderbal with Leh, road widening between Rafiabad and Kupwara, and Shinkun La Tunnel, a strategic tunnel at a height of 16,580 feet which will connect Ladakh's Zanskar Valley with Darcha in Leh.

NHIDCL is also constructing a 30-kilometre brand new road connecting the Sonamarg and Zoji La tunnels, and the Border Roads Organisation recently inaugurated the upgraded Kargil–Dumgil Road, Leh–Chalunka Road, and the new 90-metre Harka Bahadur Bridge in Kargil on the Srinagar-Leh highway.

The land to the north of the LoC, however, is utterly desolate, shorn of economic development, devoid of quality roads or bridges, and immune to the passage of time. It pains to see the woeful condition of the Balti communities that reside in remote villages across Baltistan, completely cut off from the rest of civilisation and crying out for someone to bring succour.

It appears that the roads available in Gilgit-Baltistan, including large stretches of the Astore Valley Road and the Shyok River Valley Road, are there simply to serve the Pakistani military, with check points vastly outnumbering even semi-decent guest houses, eateries or resting points. Access to remote villages are limited even for Pakistani citizens, and the odd vehicle on these roads attracts the curiosities of poor people with no jobs and dependent on meagre farm incomes if the weather permits.

The shackled province of Gilgit-Baltistan has suffered long enough, and India, which considers the province a part of its sovereign territory, must step in.

COMING SOON: The second edition of the Reclaiming PoK & Gilgit-Baltistan series will cover Indian and Pakistani force structures close to the Line of Control and their respective military strategies.