‘Nawaz Sharif was unaware of Pak army infiltration in Kargil’

ISLAMABAD: THE KARGIL CLIQUE HAD NO PLANS FOR THE TROOPS WHEN INDIAN FORCES STRUCK BACK FEROCIOUSLY. BY JULY 1999, FULLY AWARE OF THE SITUATION, SHARIF STARTED TALKING OF A WITHDRAWAL.

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and several senior officials, including Pakistan Army generals, were unaware of the military operation to occupy strategic heights in the Kargil sector of the Line of Control in 1999, according to a new book by a leading journalist.

Nasim Zehra’s From Kargil To The Coup, launched this week in Islamabad, adds to the longstanding debate on just how much the three-time premier knew about the operation launched by then army chief Pervez Musharraf, who ousted Sharif in a coup months after India repulsed the Pakistani intruders.

The book says Sharif was presented with Kargil as a fait accompli much later when he confronted Musharraf to explain what was happening.

It was on January 16, 1999 that the operation was formally approved in the military operations directorate. By that time, Zehra writes, Pakistani troops had infiltrated almost seven kilometres into Indian territory from seven directions. This meeting of key generals took place less than five weeks before the historic Lahore Declaration on improving relations between Sharif and his then Indian counterpart Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Zehra writes that Musharraf and his colleagues isolated themselves and made some tactical errors. They underestimated the response from India and the international community. After initial successes, there were reverses, and it was only in May 1999 that Musharraf and his generals took the civilian leadership into confidence. By that time, the Indian side had detected signs of the operation.

The main Pakistani players have offered widely differing accounts of the operation. Sharif has contended for long that he knew nothing of the operation and only learnt of it from Vajpayee. In 2006, Musharraf dismissed this claim and even provided pictorial evidence that Sharif had been briefed on the plan during a visit to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to the south of Karin gil on February 5, 1999.

In the new book, The Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI And The Illusion Of Peace, former ISI chief Asad Durrani says Sharif “knew a bit, not the whole thing” about the Kargil operation “but he had given the go-ahead”.

Zehra’s book finally gives Pakistani readers an alternate point on a conflict of which they had little information to go on. Till now, much of the Pakistani version was a sanitised account of what happened in Kargil. She brings out the nitty gritty, peppering her information with anecdotes and memorable quotes by the key players. She also links the blunders in Kargil to the eventual exit of Sharif as prime minister in 1999.

Zehra, a national security analyst, interviewed a wide range of personalities for the book, including the main players in the conflict from the Pakistani side such as a number of senior serving and retired military officers, diplomats, government officials and politicians.

This is possibly the most extensive research done on Kargil on the Pakistani side.

There are also interviews with Indian diplomats and politicians and a sprinkling of US diplomats and other relevant officials.

The result of this research is a book.