Pakistan is not as fond of winning wars as it is of making them. Nine years ago, on the 4th of July 1999, the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was forced to fly to the United States to meet the then President Clinton and announce a ceasefire on Kargil and withdrawal of Pakistani troops to the line of control.

Of course, a lot had happened on the Kargil front before this.

Kargil was variously described as a 'debacle', 'conspiracy', 'adventure' and 'fiasco' by independent analysts, albeit much later. Sadly, the independent analysts were not brought into the loop on this side of the border and the media was largely kept in the dark. The propaganda machines churned out photocopies of the ISPR version and only that. No consolation though that the Indian media was equally sensational and sentimental about war coverage.

The architect of Kargil, the then COAS Gen. Musharraf, declares in his book 'In the Line of Fire' that "whatever movement has taken place so far in the direction of finding a solution to Kashmir is due considerably to the Kargil conflict." The truth is that we lost and we lost badly. We suffered huge casualties and even though the military assured us that the enemy had suffered casualties too the fact remains that we made a war which was reckless and totally uncalled for .

Charges are that we did not even bring the political leadership into the loop on Kargil till quite late. Though one may not wholly agree with Nawaz Sharif when he says "it may have been a conspiracy to dislodge me from power, a conspiracy of hidden internal enemies of Pakistan to weaken the country and its government", Kargil indeed established once again the primacy of military establishment in Pakistan's polity.

Just when Lt Gen Jamshed Gulzar Kiyani was spilling the beans on Kargil and getting closer to the Nawaz Sharif version of events came the Shuja Nawaz book 'Crossed Swords' which offered a much more reliable account of the war based on the author's personal interviews with various actors on the scene.

Now there's a plethora of accounts. We have tried to put them together to bring out the contrast. Shuja Nawaz calls it the 'Rashomon Effect' where different people have "a different perspective on the same set of events." Isn't this enough reason to have an independent commission on Kargil after all?

The constitutional package that is being debated these days proposes the insertion of a new article in the constitution concerning the authority to declare war.

The article says: "Declaration of war: Notwithstanding anything contained in the constitution or any other law for the time being in force no authority shall declare war or use Armed Forces against any foreign government or country without prior approval of the Prime Minister or the Cabinet."

Since a formal declaration of war before commencing hostilities against any country has gone out of fashion, the provision has apparently been designed to prevent action against a foreign country, in defence as well as offence, by unauthorised agents (including perhaps the intelligence agencies). The text has obviously been inspired by the history of Pakistan's wars almost all of which are shrouded in mystery, especially as to how they began.

Otherwise it is not necessary to write of war in the constitution. Use of armed forces is an executive action which will be regulated by law (or at best by Rules of Business). There is no reference to declaration of war in the Indian Constitution, nor even any mention of a special process for appointment of service chiefs. The Indian President is the Supreme Command of defence forces , but he acts on Cabinet's advice and the use of defence forces is regulated by law.

In Pakistan the conflicts with foreign countries have followed a peculiar pattern. In the 1948-49 conflict with India over Kashmir, decisions to use armed forces were taken by the Governor-General (because he was the Quaid-i-Azam) and the cabinet (except, perhaps, for the induction of tribesmen into the conflict), and it was Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan who ordered the ceasefire. The only other instance of Pakistan's involvement in an armed clash with a foreign country while a civilian was supposed to be in power came in 1999 -- when we had the last Kargil affair.

Otherwise, during the 50 years between 1949 and 1999 all conflicts with a foreign country were begun, handled and ended by military custodians of Pakistani people's destiny. These included the military operation in the Rann of Kutch in the spring of 1965, the war with India in the following September, the 1971 conflict with India, the costly attempt Gen. Zia made in the 1980s to take Siachen that the negligence of his apparatus had enabled India to seize, and the unauthorised (according to Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords) bid to take Kargil by Gen. Zaheer Abbasi in 1990.

In all these cases, except for the last mentioned one, the decision to use armed forces and the decision to stop such use both were taken by military men who were supreme commanders and heads of state. And none became the subject of an authoritative probe that could inform the people as to who had played with their vital interests and how. There may have been departmental inquiries or perfunctory studies as part of military training but there was no independent inquiry worth the name. The obvious reason was that the cast of the play were not only allergic to truth they also had the means to suppress it. The sole exception to the rule, the Hamoodur Rahman Commission, despite the heroics of its chairman, did not qualify as a commission of inquiry with requisite powers. The way its report was suppressed (or how the film on the fall of Dhaka was taken out of the TV fare) reveals the rot in Pakistan better than its findings.

However, there is no end to controversy over the Kargil affair because at that time we not only had an army chief, we also had a prime minister. While there is no dispute as to who ordered (the unpopular) withdrawal -- of course, it was Mian Nawaz Sharif -- the controversy as to who, the PM or the COAS, was mainly, essentially, decisively or even largely responsible for launching the operation continues unabated.

Says Shuja Nawaz in his excellent study, Crossed Swords, "Regarding the 1999 Kargil battle, there are clearly many sides to the story: The Indian side, the Pakistani side, and within the Pakistani side, the story told by General Musharraf and his colleagues on the one hand and by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his colleagues on the other. There is a veritable 'Rashomon Effect', with all the participants having a different perspective on the same set of events."

Unfortunately, this play with events has been confined to a none-too-edifying blame game. While it is certainly necessary to fix responsibility for the start of the mystery drama, no less important is the need to scrutinise the quality of the professional advice on which decisions about war and peace are based and ought invariably to be based. It is also necessary to ascertain, besides the circumstances at the beginning and the end of a conflict, the conduct of the operations, the sense of responsibility and competence shown or not shown by the key players, and whether something needs to be done to those found wanting. All this can be done only after a thorough inquiry into the Kargil affair. Whodunit plots are enjoyable once in a while, and that too when handled by a Hitchcock or a Polanski, and they get boring if left to amateur managers of information such as we have in Pakistan.

Incidentally, there is something amiss in the Indian version too -- though there the facilities available to writers on defence matters are much greater than what can be claimed by independent analysts in Pakistan. A simple question is this: Kargil happened after Mr Vajpayee's bus-ride to Lahore and after he had seen the Minar-i-Pakistan; why did he not ask Islamabad what it was up to as soon as the conflict started? Perhaps the matter could have been resolved with minimum cost to either side (except for the loss of opportunities to manipulators of the media hype). A seasoned journalist in Delhi has an answer -- the conflict offered possibilities of deriving electoral advantage besides gaining marks on books kept in Washington.

Be that as it may, all the attributes of good governance -- accountability, transparency and respect for the people's sovereign rights -- demand that an independent, high powered commission should thoroughly investigate the Kargil affair of 1999. The probe should uncover how the operation was conducted and what were the consequences to the state.

I found in an article by Mr A G Noorani, prominent Indian lawyer and civil rights campaigner, an account of the British inquiry into the Gallipoli misadventure which cost Churchill his ministership and put Mustafa Kamal Pasha on the road to being hailed as Ataturk. It is a story worth telling to the people of Pakistan as it shows how responsible governments ought to behave when called upon to account for a military debacle.

The British War Council decided in January 1915, when the First World War was in its initial phase, to send a naval force to capture the Gallipoli peninsula, occupy the Dardanelles and eventually take Istanbul. Mustafa Kamal frustrated the plan. Before the year ended, Churchill resigned as minister for navy though he had the grace to ask the Prime Minister to disclose what had happened. The government first announced its decision to put the Dardanelles documents before parliament and then decided not to do so in 'national interest'. Eventually a royal inquiry commission, headed by Lord Cromer and including a Field Marshal, an Admiral, a judge and three MPs, was set up. The commission submitted its report in March 1917 and it was debated in the House of Commons the same month. The probe did not go in government's favour. All this while Britain was leading a frightful world war.

Another example may be given from India. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had ordered his forces to take on the Chinese in 1962 and took full responsibility for what happened. A debate in the Lok Sabha was scheduled to analyse defence and foreign policies both and when the list of speakers who wanted to take him to task was not exhausted within the scheduled period Nehru extended the debate by a day. The moral of the story is that nations become stronger by owning and facing up to their mistakes and they become weaker by hiding behind walls of secrecy.

Thus if there must be a constitutional provision on use of armed forces, one may thus amend the new article (on declaration of war) proposed in the constitutional package by incorporating the idea that action must be taken only after its pros and cons have been discussed by the whole cabinet. A provision may be added to the effect that a joint parliamentary committee should be taken into confidence soon after a conflict occurs and a post-operation inquiry to facilitate a debate in parliament will be mandatory.

And why should we be talking only about use of armed forces against a foreign government or country? Why not include in the sphere of inquiry any use of armed forces against our own people. Time accountability meant something more that empty rhetoric.

Books and reports on Kargil

Books:

•The Kargil Conflict 1999 -- Separating Fact from Fiction By Dr Shireen Mazari. Printed 1999

•Guns and Yellow Roses: Essays on Kargil War By Sankarshan Thakur. 1999

(Sankarshan Thakur is an Indian print journalist.)

•Kargil 1999: Pakistan's Fourth War for Kashmir By Jasijit E Singh

•Kargil -- From Surprise To Victory By V P Malik. 2007

•Kargil: Blood On The Snow-Tactical Victory, Strategic Failure By Ashok Kalyan Verma. 2002

•With Honour and Glory: Wars Fought By India 1947-1999 With Special Focus on Kargil War and India's Defence Preparedness By Jagjit Singh. 2001

•India's Historic Battles: From Alexander the Great to Kargil By Kaushik Roy. 2004

•Dateline Kargil: A Correspondent's Nine-week Account from the Battlefront By Gaurav C Sawant. 2000

•Kargil Blunder: Pakistan's Plight, India's Victory By General Y Bahl. 2000

•The Real Story Behind Kargil, Coup and Hijacking By B K Chaturvedi. 2000

•Kargil-A Wakeup Call By Ravi Nanda & Col Ravi Nanda. 1999

•Should Kargil Be An Election Issue? By Janak Raj Jai. 2002

•War Ethics and the Kargil Crisis By Sita Ram Sharma. 2000

•Kashmir, Accession to Kargil By Bi Ela Panagariya. 2000

•A Soldier's Diary: Kargil, the Inside Story By Harinder Baweja. 2000

•From Hydaspes to Kargil: A History of Warfare in India From 326 BC to AD 1999 By Kaushik Roy. 2004

•Trishul: Ladakh and Kargil --1947-1993 By Ashok Malhotra. 2003

•Kargil 1999: The Impregnable Conquered By Y M Bammi. 2005

•Limited War: Revisiting Kargil in the Indo-Pak Conflict By D Suba Chandran. 2006

•Kargil War: Past, Present and Future By Bhaskar Sarkar. 1999

•Kargil War: A Saga of Patriotism By R N Sharma, Y K Sharma & R K Sharma. 2000

•Kargil and Pakistan Politics By Jatin Desai. 2000

•Kargil: The Tables Turned By Maj Gen Ashok Krishna. 2000

•Kargil and After -- Foreign Policy, Peace & Security Series By Kanti P Bajpai, Afsir Karim, Amitabh Mattoo & Afsim Karmin. 2001

•The Kargil Conflict and its Aftermath (Dictionary of Conflicts in South Asia) By Bhashya Kasturi. 2008

•Kargil Crossborder Terrorism By M K Akbar. 1999

•Despatches From Kargil By Srinjoy Chowdhury. 2000

•The Legendary Gorkhas: An Up-to-date Account Including the Kargil Operation By K K Muktan. 2002

•Pak Proxy War: A Story of ISI, bin Laden and Kargil By Rajeev Sharma. 2002

•An Army, Its Role and Rule: A History of the Pakistan Army -- From Independence to Kargil 1947-1999 By Muhammad Ayub. 2005

•Kargil: Inside Story By A K Chakraborty. 1999

•Rape of the Mountains: Kargil, the Untold Story By Virendra Kumar. 2001

•The Kargil Conflict and the Role of the Indian Media (Delhi papers) By Ajai K Rai. 2001

•The Kargil Strike: A Study of the Failure of Indian Strategic Thought By Kuldip S Ludra. 2000

•The Kargil Combat By Sukh Dev Singh Charak. 1999

•A Ridge Too Far: War in the Kargil Heights-1999 By Amarinder Singh. 2001

•Kargil By S Nayar. 2001

•Kargil Betrayal By B K Chaturvedi. 1999

•Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace -- One School At A Time By Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin. 2007

Reports:

•War in Kargil By Center for Contemporary Conflict. May 29-June1, 2002

(The Center for Contemporary Conflict (CCC) conducts research on current and emerging security issues and conveys its findings to US and allied policy-makers and military forces.)

•Higher Altitude Warfare: The Kargil Conflict and the Future Thesis By Marcus P Acosta. June 2003

•Limited Conflicts Under the Nuclear Umbrella: Indian and Pakistani Lessons from the Kargil Crisis By Ashley J Tellis, C Christine Fair, Jamison Jo Medby, 2001

•Preparing for Limited War By Air Marshal (r) Ayaz Ahmed Khan. 2001

•Kargil Adventurism: Another Huge Defeat After Dhaka Fall -- Who is responsible? A 100-page white paper issued by PML-N. Aug 2006.

•Asia Country Report, India. 1999

•Kargil Committee Report. 2000

•Democratic Peace in South Asia: Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics By Christian Wagner Working Paper No.16. June 2003

The News on Sunday: What official procedures are usually followed while planning large-scale operations like Kargil?

Lt Gen (r) Talat Masood: When you are planning to launch an operation against an adversary which is also likely to escalate into a full-fledged military operation or conventional or unconventional war as both the countries are nuclear, then it has to be discussed at the highest level within the military hierarchy and approved by the top executive body such as the federal cabinet.

TNS: In military hierarchy what forums are available for discussing such operations?

TM: As far as the military is concerned, before initiating an operation of such a scale they should brief the prime minister, the foreign and defence minister. And, after formally taking their approval, it should come up with a plan of its own and then give it back again to the prime minister and the defence committee of the cabinet. Thereupon the pros and cons of the operation should be discussed and harmonised with the country's foreign and defence policy goals. In Kargil's case, we had peace discussions with India going on on the one hand and, on the other, Kargil was being planned.

TNS: So you believe that Nawaz Sharif was not taken into confidence?

TM: Well, the exact details are not known (to me), but one thing is for sure that Nawaz Sharif was not the initiator of the venture; he was brought on board later. He might have been briefed about it, but briefing in the middle of the operation is different and is not what a democratic government expects from its military.

TNS: Couldn't Nawaz Sharif have also gone for a similar operation?

TM: Nawaz being a peacenik or a hawk is a different matter. But when you are in the government you have to be very careful and take all the implications into consideration. Particularly, when you are taking action against another country you have to be extremely sensitive about your own security. In Kargil, regional and global implications were very severe. They should have realised how the international community was going to react and how they were going to receive the support of a close ally like China. I think nothing of this sort was either discussed or analysed.

TNS: Do you see any similarities between Gibralter and Kargil?

TM: To some extent, yes. The motive in both operations was probably the same. But in Kargil we were trying to bring Indians to the negotiating table whereas in Gibralter we also had this in mind but were actually forcing the issue. There is a parallel that we were trying to cut off the logistics and in a way forcing the Indians to come to a negotiated settlement.

TNS: In a follow-up to Kargil what was the Indian approach?

TM: They acted very professionally, because by having a commission to conduct an in-depth inquiry they were able to find out their weaknesses and strengths.

TNS: What were their weaknesses?

TM: I think the intelligence's failure was their biggest weakness. They failed to detect that the Pakistan military was building its logistics in those areas for several months. And they failed to track those activities and, in a sense, the credit goes to the Pakistan military. So the best part of Pakistan's operation was that it was able to conduct secret activity. But our army should have realised that if Indians failed to re-occupy heights they would have opened other fronts to get Pakistan army drawn in.

TNS: So where do you think the Pakistan military went wrong? Were there some lapses in command and control or was there no grand strategy?

TM: They did not have any strategy. They failed to anticipate how India was going to react. And if you cannot anticipate reaction you don't have a strategy. You just thought unilaterally that India would give in and never took alternatives into consideration. Enemy does not choose your area to fight, it chooses its own.

TNS: Recently, many retired generals are demanding constitution of an inquiry commission on Kargil. What are their motives? Is this only Musharraf-bashing?

TM: Well, what they are saying is that it was a big professional blunder. And that Musharraf let down the army as so many lives were purposelessly lost. They are saying that as Army Chief Musharraf has done great blunder and then he took over the country and ruled it for eight long years.

TNS: Why these ex-servicemen are demanding it now after the passage of ten years when Musharraf is quite weak.

TM: Well I agree with you that they should have come out earlier. This also shows their weaknesses. But there has been a lot of criticism on Kargil in the past.

TNS: Who should be there in the inquiry commission? Should it have judges or retired generals?

TM: If such an inquiry commission is to be formed it should comprise people from military or those who had served in military, from civil service and civil society, etc.

TNS: Do we have precedents of conducting such inquiries?

TM: We don't have any precedent but we should set one.

TNS: Official secret laws are often cited to pre-empt such investigations into military affairs. How do you see this when the army is not ready to surrender to civilian command?

TM: Secrecy acts are fine but one cannot use them to prevent accountability and not being held responsible for any act that was harmful to the nation. There has always been a question of dominance of civilian government over military. Now we have a democratic government and expect the supremacy of the civilian government over all the affairs of the state.

Ziauddin maintains that as far as the need to bring the prime minister on board is concerned, local actions, such as Kargil, are within the purview of the local commanders and stayed within the army's chain of command. There was no need, in his view, to openly bring the prime minister into the plan. But he believes also that once the secretary of the Ministry of Defence, a retired general, who was known to have the ear of the prime minister, was briefed, then it could be assumed that Sharif knew what was happening. In any case, both sides routinely made small ingresses along the LOC. The real issue this time was, as another senior retired general stated, the Pakistanis went in too far.

It was at the 17th May briefing that General Ziauddin of the ISI recalls a discussion of the Kashmir operations in general and Kargil in particular. He recalls the presence of former CGS and retired Lt Gen Majeed Malik and the Secretary of Defence, retired Lt Gen Iftikhar, both of whom took part in the discussions. The briefing map indicated the location of the 108 bunkers that Pakistan had occupied or constructed, and the briefing stated that the 'Indians could not oust us'. At the end of the briefing, there was a suggestion (reportedly by General Mahmud Ahmed) for a 'dua' or prayer for the success of the venture.

Before they dispersed, Zia recalls Nawaz Sharif stating: 'This is a military operation. All I can say is that... there should be no withdrawal, no surrender of any post because that will greatly embarrass us'. He asked if 'we could hold on'. Both Aziz Khan and Mahmud Ahmed said they could. In assessing the Indian reaction, they talked about the possibility of attacks across the international boundary, but also thought that the Indians would be unable to counter-attack in force. Zia believes that the prime minister left 'everything to the army to decide'. Yet, surprisingly for him, he actually 'asked questions', as did Majeed Malik. The DGMO, Tauqir Zia, responded to their concerns. So, in Zia's view, Sharif was fully in the picture from that point on. Zia also states that Mahmud used to take maps to the PM House to brief him as posts fell. According to Zia, the prime minister had the authority to order a halt to the operation at any point if he had serious doubts. But he did not. This is damning testimony from a man whom Sharif was later to appoint Musharraf's replacement and who was then under threat of a court martial and under house arrest for almost two years on Musharraf's orders.

One myth is that the operation was launched without the army's taking the political leadership into its confidence... This is a very unfortunate perception, because nothing could be farther from the truth. First, as noted above, there was no deliberate offensive operation planned... The move to establish our defenses along the line was approved at both the corps and the army headquarters. The Army briefed the prime minister in Skardu on January 29, 1999; and in Kel on February 5, 1999. During these briefings, our defensive manoeuvre was explained as a response to all that was happening on the Indian side. Subsequently, the prime minister was also briefed on March 12 at the Directorate General Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), which included a detailed survey of the situation inside Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and also along the LOC. As the operation developed, he was briefed in detail by the director general of military operations on May 17. Later, briefings were also arranged on June 2 and June 22... A second myth is that the military situation on the ground was precarious, and the prime minister dashed to Washington to get the army out of it. This disinformation is a much bigger lie. In their two months of operations the Indians came nowhere near the watershed and our main defenses. As a result of the ingresses ahead of the line, the Indians were able to clear only a few outposts in three (of five) areas. The briefing given by me personally to the Defense Committee of the cabinet on July 2, 1999, actually laid out the entire military picture... The conclusions that I derived were:

*That the Indians were in no position to launch an all-out offensive on land, at sea, or in the air.

*That Pakistan was in a strategically advantageous position in case of an all-out war, in view of the massive Indian troop inductions inside Kashmir, resulting in a strategic imbalance in India's system of forces.

*That the Indian forces, despite their massive strength, would never be able to dislodge the freedom fighters and the NLI from the ingresses and positions held by them.

At that briefing the prime minister asked me several times whether we should accept a ceasefire and withdraw. My answer every time was restricted to the optimistic military situation; I left the political decisions to him. He wanted to fire his gun from my shoulder, but it was not my place to offer this... A third myth is that the military hierarchy was not informed, and that even the senior army leaders were unaware of our manoeuvres... Any military professional would understand that our strengthening of defensive positions in a single formation's (FCNA's) area of responsibility was properly ordered. All formation commanders of the Rawalpindi Corps and all relevant officers at army headquarters were made aware of it as needed. The other commanders were informed immediately on the unreasonably escalated Indian response. All military information is shared on a 'need to know' basis, and before this juncture they had little need to know it... A fourth myth is that we came to the brink of nuclear war... I can also say with authority that in 1999 our nuclear capability was not yet operational. Merely exploding a bomb does not mean that you are operationally capable of deploying nuclear force in the field and delivering a bomb across the border over a selected target... A fifth myth is that the Pakistan Army suffered a large number of casualities... The Kargil conflict, as compared with earlier wars against India, was more intense and of longer duration. The Indians had mobilised troops far out of proportion to the situation, by massing a large number of infantry and artillery assets. The mountains favour defense. The Indians, by their own admission, suffered over 600 killed and over 1500 wounded. Our information suggests that the real numbers are at least twice what India has publicly admitted... Our army, outnumbered and outgunned, fought this conflict with great valour. ... I would like to state emphatically that whatever movement has taken place so far in the direction of finding a solution to Kashmir is due considerably to the Kargil conflict.

As prime minister I was not taken into confidence at all... I am yet to say many things about Kargil that I still have in my heart... Armed Forces of Pakistan are not allowed under law to deploy without prior approval of the Federal Government or the prime minister... War is not fought only by the generals but by the entire nation... I cannot understand till now why the Kargil expedition was launched, what our targets were, what we wanted to achieve and what were the army's aims... It is my personal view that the army leadership had no objectives except to publicise the Kashmir issue in the international community. ... Unfortunately, the tables were turned on us; the international community pressurised us, alleging that we were terrorists and that ours was a rogue army... I may reach a definite conclusion after evidence is collected. It may have been a conspiracy to dislodge me from power, a conspiracy of hidden internal enemies of Pakistan to weaken the country and its government... Even if the aim was to highlight the issue internationally, there was no need to sacrifice so many men of the Pakistan Army; all the Northern Light Infantry units perished, a death toll even higher than that of the 1965 and 1971 Wars combined... The operation was in the knowledge of General Pervez Musharraf, Lt Gen Aziz, then Chief of General Staff, General Mehmood, the Corps Commander of the area, and General Javed Hassan, the Division Commander of the Northern Areas. It was not in the knowledge of even any other corps commander. The Naval and Air Chiefs were also not informed. Just think, the prime minister was not informed, the Defense Minister and even the Defense Secretary were not informed... It was bound to fail... General Musharraf asked me to conclude a solution to the Kargil problem, and then a number of meetings were held... In the course of discussion, it was resolved to talk to President Clinton to intervene and broker a ceasefire... The impression communicated to me was that if we delayed a ceasefire we would lose the war. We were on the verge of a very disgraceful retreat, an ultimately dishonourable defeat. Now they shifted all responsibility to the prime minister's shoulders to bail out the army at any cost. Then I used all of my energies to get the army out of this disgraceful situation. I called Bill Clinton and had to listen to his hot words. Tony Blair also flared up and asked why we had launched the operation at Kargil unduly... We bore everything with silence for it was a matter of our honour and of our motherland's.

The terrain here is so inhospitable that the intruders could not have survived above 4000 metres for long without comprehensive and sustained re-supply operations. They were even running short of water at these heights towards the end of the operations. Though heavily armed, the intruders did not have rations for more than two or three days in many forward 'sanghars'. Re-supply could have taken place only if there was no air threat and the supply lines could not be targeted by Indian artillery. In other words, it would appear that the Pakistani intruders operated on the assumption that the intrusions would be under counter-attack for only a few days and thereafter some sort of ceasefire would enable them to stay on the heights and be re-supplied.

Such an assumption would be totally unsustainable in purely military terms. It would only be logical on the expectation, based upon political considerations, that Pakistan would be able to engineer international intervention to impose an early ceasefire that would allow its troops to stay in possession of the territory captured by them. Such an assumption could not have been made without close consultation with the Pakistani political leadership at the highest level.

General Musharraf has disclosed that the operations were discussed in November 1998 with the political leadership and there are indications of discussions on two subsequent occasions in early 1999. The tapes of conversations between General Musharraf and Lieutenant General Aziz, Chief of General Staff, also revealed their expectation of early international intervention, the likelihood of a ceasefire and the knowledge and support of the Foreign Office. ... Some Pakistani columnists claim that Nawaz Sharif thought that if he succeeded in seizing a slice of Indian territory in Kashmir, he would be hailed as a 'Liberator' and thereby enabled to gain absolute power through amendment of the Shariat law. There is no clear evidence on the basis of which to assess the nature and extent of Nawaz Sharif's involvement in the Kargil adventure. The balance of probability suggests that he was fully in the picture. This is borne out by the tapes referred to earlier and the repeated assertions of General Musharraf.

Those who know Nawaz Sharif personally believe that he has a limited attention span and is impatient with detail. Accordingly, it is reasonable to assume that Nawaz Sharif was at least aware of the broad thrust of the Kargil plan when he so warmly welcomed the Indian Prime Minister in Lahore.

Influential sections of the Indian political class and media have been outraged at the duplicity of the Pakistani leadership. Some argue that Nawaz Sharif could not have been so duplicitous and therefore tend to absolve him and lay all blame on General Musharraf. However, having a declaratory policy different from that actually pursued is not unknown in international realpolitik and diplomacy. This existentialist divergence between the two necessitates diplomatic interaction, continuous political analysis, Track-II diplomacy and intelligence collection, collation and assessment. ...

If the media served the country well, much of the credit goes to the initiative it itself took and to some individuals within the Government and the Armed Forces. Information is power, especially in this Information Age. The media moulds national and international opinion and can be a potent force multiplier. This was evident at Kargil - India's first television war.