“Kargil Ghazis,” they are sardonically called at officers’ messes across Pakistan: the warriors who received medals and promotions for fighting — and losing — a war Islamabad still refuses to admit it was involved in.
In order to legitimise the coup that brought him to power, President Pervez Musharraf insisted that the Kargil offensive he authored had been a success — and handed out sackloads of medals to prove it. In his version of events, the former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif’s perfidy cost Pakistan a certain triumph.
But earlier this month, a soldier, who was one of the retired General Musharraf’s closest aides, set about demolishing his one-time mentor’s account of what happened in Kargil. In print and television interviews, Lieutenant-General Jamshed Gulzar Kiani candidly described Kargil as a “debacle.” Mr. Sharif, he said, was not properly briefed on an ill-conceived operation in which Pakistani soldiers were sent to certain death. |