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| India-Pakistan |
| Kargil revisited on 10th anniversary |
| 2009-05-04 |
| By Rahimullah Yusufzai PESHAWAR: Ten years ago on May 3, 1999, the battle for Kargil erupted and continued for the next 71 days. It claimed hundreds of lives on both sides and brought a profound change in the way the world looked at India and Pakistan. Post-Kargil, India gained sympathy as a country that had faced aggression from Pakistan. It used the occasion to whip up patriotic sentiments and assert its right to defend its borders. Scenes from the Kargil battle were frequently shown on the Indian TV channels, thereby, enabling New Delhi to rally the people behind its cause. On the Pakistan side, there was ambiguity because the official line was that the Kashmiri freedom fighters had infiltrated the Indian Kashmir and occupied strategic positions in the Kargil sector. No proper media campaign could be launched to mobilise the public opinion, promote patriotism and seek popular support for the Kargil battle. A belated and half-hearted effort was made to this end but it was too late and too little. On this very day a decade ago, the Pakistani troops and the Mujahideen were first detected atop the Kargil ridges. The conflict that was triggered lasted until July 14. According to the Indian defence minister George Fernandes, the fighting left 524 of his soldiers dead and 1,363 wounded. The Pakistani death toll was put at 696. About 40 civilians were reportedly killed on the Pakistani side of the Line of Control (LoC), dividing the state of Jammu & Kashmir. India mobilised a large number of heavily-equipped troops to retake the Kargil mountain heights that Pakistani forces had occupied during the spring and early summer. It moved five infantry divisions, five independent brigades and 44 battalions of paramilitary troops to the area and made heavy use of its air force. By May 26, India was ready to launch its offensive named Operation Vijay. Pakistan’s military objectives in Kargil were clear but not much thought was given to the consequences of the adventure, or misadventure as it was subsequently derided. The main aim was to exploit the large gaps that existed in India’s defences on and near the LoC. The border positions vacated by Indian troops during winter were to be occupied and used to cut off their supply routes. Kargil was General Pervez Musharraf’s brainchild. Three other generals were apparently involved in the planning and fine-tuning of the Kargil plan. This is the reason that critics describe them as the ‘Gang of Four’. General Musharraf has stubbornly defended his decision to execute the Kargil plan. He still believes that it helped revive the Kashmir issue on the world stage. But the fact remains that the Kashmir issue was internationalised in a way that harmed Pakistan’s cause as well as that of the Kashmiri people. Unlike India where the military’s lapses in Kargil were probed by a commission and publicly analysed, no such initiative could take place in Pakistan for the simple reason that General Musharraf was in power. Even otherwise, Pakistan does not have any tradition of making our rulers accountable for their bad deeds. In the absence of a much-needed and high-powered probe into the Kargil misadventure, there is every possibility that such mishaps would occur again. There have also been speculations and conjectures concerning the happenings at the icy heights of Kargil, Drass, Batalik, Tololing and other sectors. General Musharraf has all along insisted that everyone was on board with regard to the battle for Kargil. It obviously included the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who was briefed about Kargil at the headquarters of the Pakistan Army’s 10th Corps in Rawalpindi. Nawaz Sharif, on his part, complained of not being fully in picture and still willing to bail out Pakistan from the Kargil fiasco by rushing to Washington to meet the US President Bill Clinton on the Fourth of July, an American public holiday. The truth must be told because the nation would like to know whether the Army chief General Musharraf tried to hide something from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif or the latter failed to grasp the importance of the military briefing on account of the widely held perception at the time that his attention span was always brief and unfocused. The late Benazir Bhutto also claimed that Musharraf had given the same briefing to her about Kargil when she was the prime minister and that she had shot down the proposal in view of its consequences. A probe would also settle this point once for all. |
| Posted by:john frum |