Kargil Revisited - II

Umrao
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by Umrao »

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2115/stories/20040730003903800.htm
Colonel Oberoi's letter was written after General Budhwar failed to respond to verbal pleas for troops, made during his visit to the sector on November 25, 1998. It would, ironically, have reached 3 Division Headquarters -and possibly the offices of the then Commander of 15 Corps Lieutenant-General Kishan Pal - at about the same time as the first reconnaissance groups of Pakistani intruders occupied these features. General Pal was dismissive of the prospect of a Pakistani offensive, an attitude founded on the fact that Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif were shortly to meet in Lahore. He clung to the illusion well after the Kargil war began. At a meeting of the Unified Headquarters in Srinagar on May 24, 1999, called to prepare an assessment for the Cabinet Committee on Security which was to meet the next day, General Pal insisted that there "were no concentration of troops on the Pakistani side and no battle indicators of war or even limited skirmishes". Paragraph 4(v) of the minutes of the Unified Headquarters meeting record his claim that the "situation was local and would be defeated locally".
General Budhwar, for his part, seemed to have men available for virtually every conceivable enterprise other than guarding India's frontiers. On May 16, 1998, 3 Division sent out instructions to all its field units informing them of their commanding officer's new pet project - building a zoo for Leh's few thousand residents. Lt.-Col. U.K. Singh sent out a second missive, marked 6361/9/ZOO/Q1, on June 8, 1998. "Please ensure", the Colonel's letter said, "that various types of wild animals/birds are procured and despatched to zoo at Leh at your earliest." "Cages required for transportation of animals/birds,"it continued, "will be made under arrangements of respective b[riga]de[s]." "No representation," the Colonel concluded sternly, "will be entertained." The project had no legal sanction and was executed in express violation of a plethora of wildlife protection laws - a fascinating glimpse into the mindset prevailing in 3 Division.
:roll:
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by pran »

General Pal was dismissive of the prospect of a Pakistani offensive, an attitude founded on the fact that Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif were shortly to meet in Lahore. He clung to the illusion well after the Kargil war began
It is the faith in Pakistans elected leadership's control over armed forces. After 3 wars was Indian intel ,armed forces and political leadership naive about millitary control over the elected leaders.
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by SaiK »

Kargil warning went unheeded
Kanwar Sandhu
Delhi/ Chandigarh, July 24

------------------
The Cassandra Effect

A report warning of possible intrusions into Dras and requesting permanent defences was shot down
Wargame conducted by Army's 121 Brigade before the Kargil intrusions had inferred that the enemy would try to "capture dominating heights in Dras Defended Area so as to interdict NH 1A".
The Brigade Major had made a written request to HQ 3 Infantry Division for permanent defences at Tiger Hill, Talab and Saddle. The request was turned down.
Pak intrusions into these areas were detected in May 1999. In the war that followed, the battle for Dras cost 474 Indian soldiers’ lives.

--------------- web page

Around January 1999, months before the Kargil war, the Indian Army conducted a wargame called Exercise JAANCH. Field commanders found weaknesses in the defence and inferred, among other things, that the enemy would “capture dominating heights in Dras Defended Area so as to interdict NH 1A (The Srinagar-Leh road)”. Their concerns were ignored and recommendations to strengthen defences shot down. Months later, Pakistani troops occupied those heights and the Kargil war followed.
A confidential letter of the then Commanding Officer of 16 Grenadiers, Col P. Oberai to Headquarters, 121 Brigade dated January 30, 1999 is telling. It mentions that during one of the visits of the Brigade Commander (Brig Surinder Singh) to Dras Defended Area it was felt that the defences needed a re-look in view of the possibility of the enemy capturing certain heights in the vicinity of the Indian Army's defences, thus rendering some posts untenable. Following this, the then GOC of 3 Division (Major General V.S. Budhwar), during his visit on November 25, 1998 ordered that the existing defences of Dras be wargamed.

Wargame “JAANCH” followed. Among the inferences drawn on the enemy’s likely aim was that he would “capture dominating heights in Dras Defended Area so as to interdict NH1A”. During “JAANCH” it was also found that there was a paucity of troops for holding defences at Gap, Hump, Tiger Hill, Sando and Bimbat LC.

Under the heading “Threat Perception”, it was mentioned that the forces which were likely to be available to the enemy for an offensive against the brigade sector included one reserve battalion each from the brigades of the Force Commander Northern Areas. In addition there were two Mujahid/ Chitral Scouts which were likely to relieve two regular battalions from an Infantry brigade. “Considering the above, the adversary is likely to muster 5-6 battalions for a meaningful offensive against own Brigade Sector”, the note said.

The note suggested that an ad-hoc battalion headquarter under the Second in Command of the battalion should be positioned at Talab. At Tiger Hill, a protective patrol was recommended.

Similarly, at Saddle, deployment of a section (about 10 troops) was suggested. Incidentally, while capture of Talab was essential to reach Tiger Hill, Saddle was in the vicinity of Tololing.

Giving a reference to the Brigade Commander's verbal directions in his communication, the CO concluded that the "adversary had the wherewithal of launching a brigade size force in the Dras Defended Area as the prevalent terrain favours such an operation. By incorporating the proposed deployment it would also ensure upsetting the time frame of the adversary and stalling his misdemeanour in the Dras Defended Area. As such it would be prudent to review the present deployment ..."

Subsequent to this communication the then Brigade Commander made a presentation on February 24, 1999. Following this on March 18, the officiating Brigade Major of the Brigade, Lt Col. Anil Pandey made a projection to HQ 3 Infantry Division for defence stores. Among the various places where permanent defences (PDs) were sought were Talab (four), Tiger Hill (one) and Saddle (3). In fact while demanding PDs, Tiger Hill and Saddle were put in "priority one". A PD is usually a cement and steel structure.

On March 1, the Brigade had also sent a seven-page note to the Division on counter-insurgency (CI) operations in the Dras sector stating ominously: “Militancy has taken roots in the Dras area and is likely to escalate in the coming months.” On March 31, the Brigade in another communication to the Division stated: “There is likely to be an upgradation in the anti-national elements (ANE) threat, with greater chance of interdiction of NH1A...”

The Division Headquarters turned down the demand for defence stores as requested by the Brigade on March 18, 1999. Ironically the letter of Major Pradeep Kumar, GSO2 Ops for Col GS of the Division, is dated May 3, 1999 when the first of the intrusions were detected in the Kargil sector. The letter to the Brigade stated: “Your report on defence stores has been perused by the GOC. Disparity between availability and your requirement is glaring.” It further stated: “This disposes of your letter under reference.”

This information adds a different dimension to the events leading to the war, which has so far been attributed mainly to failure of intelligence. The Kargil Review Committee in its report “From Surprise to Reckoning” had surmised that “Pakistan achieved surprise by carrying out an operation considered unviable and irrational by Indian Army Commanders.” The operation was not considered unviable or irrational.

The Army Headquarters, when asked, did not attach much importance to the pinpointed recommendations made after wargame “JAANCH”.

The then GOC, 3 Div, Maj Gen V.S. Budhwar, being abroad, could not be contacted. The then GOC, 15 Corps, Lt Gen Krishan Pal (Retd), said that he did not recall any such exercise.

“It must have been conducted at the brigade or division level.” But he refused to blame anyone, “The responsibility, if any, was mine”, he said.

The then Chief of Army Staff, Gen V.P. Malik (Retd), when contacted too did not recall any such exercise that pinpointed such concerns. "How come this has not surfaced all this while? If only Brig. Surinder Singh had done what I asked him to do during my visits, intrusions would not have taken place," he added.

Brig Surinder Singh, when asked about the steps taken by his Headquarters said that, "I was informed that patrols were sent out by the units but these made little headway in view of the weather conditions. However, had the concerns being projected repeatedly been heeded by the higher formations, the enemy could have been deterred from occupying those heights."

So who was responsible for glossing over the imminent security concerns in Dras, as the new set of documents show? Earlier only documents relating to Brig Surinder Singh's briefing of the then Army Chief and others in August 1998 had surfaced.

An Army spokesperson maintained that “comprehensive inquiries had been made into the Kargil war and appropriate action against certain commanders in the chain have been taken, commensurate with the degree of their culpability.”
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by Philip »

Well,here is a Pakistani viewpoint from Ayaz Amir ,writing in the dawn.He squarely blames both Gen.Bandicoot and Nawaz for their limited intellectual capacity,to see that the Kargil gambit was to lead nowhere.

The ghost that won't go away

By Ayaz Amir

The ill-fated Kargil operation - carried out for no rhyme or reason appealing to the rational mind - is Banquo's ghost at General Musharraf's table, a bitter reminder of a misadventure that resulted in hundreds of deaths and cost the nation dearly.

The ghost's latest appearance was triggered by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's claim to an Indian news magazine that Musharraf who was then army chief did not take him into confidence about the Kargil operation and that he (NS) was thinking of setting up a judicial commission to probe Kargil when he was ousted from power.

To which there has been a riposte from the transitional prime minister, Ch Shujaat Hussain, who says that he himself witnessed a meeting in which Musharraf, citing dates and time, told Nawaz Sharif that he had informed him (NS) about Kargil on six different occasions.

To all appearances Nawaz Sharif's claim about wanting to set up a Kargil inquiry is an afterthought, a bit of historical rewriting, because if he had been so keen on an inquiry he shouldn't have appointed Musharraf as Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, just a few days before he (Nawaz Sharif) was ousted from power.

Rest assured, however, that the would-be Guderians who launched Kargil will never face the music for their folly. This has never been the done thing in Pakistan. Was anyone ever prosecuted for the folly of the 1965 war or for the disaster of 1971? We can be reasonably sure no one is going to sit in judgment on Kargil. Generals have been the arbiters of Pakistan's destiny. We surely don't expect them to indict their own kind.

Kargil, by the standards of subcontinental warfare, was a minor affair. But its consequences were huge, with some of which we are living till today.

It may not have brought about the liberation of Kashmir any nearer but it paved the way for another military coup in Pakistan's ill-starred history. Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf were pretty thick before Kargil, Musharraf going out of his way to demonstrate that the trust placed in him (by appointing him army chief) was not misplaced. To quote but one instance, when the prime minister's father-in-law died, Musharraf and begum flew to Lahore by helicopter to offer condolences.

The first cracks in this cosy relationship appeared over the question of India, which is slightly ironical given Gen Musharraf's current status as great advocate of Indo-Pak ditente.

When the Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, took his famous bus ride into Pakistan, the service chiefs were averse to the idea of receiving him at the border. Only later that evening they offered their respects to him at the governor's House, Lahore. A minor point in retrospect but one indicative of military thinking at that time.

The Lahore Declaration - a reiteration of both countries' desire to live in peace - was signed in February 1999. March and April passed off uneventfully. But in May came strange rumours of 'mujahideen' activity across the Line of Control in Kargil. Which was a bit mystifying because the Kashmiri freedom fighters were always thought to be operating inside the Kashmir Valley. What were they doing along the LoC?

If the public was in the dark, for once it was in distinguished company. For even the navy and air force chiefs knew nothing. Nor, more alarmingly, did most of the corps commanders know what the hell was happening.

Only somewhere around May 20-22 were the other service chiefs and the formation commanders who were not in the loop informed about what was afoot, that too in heroic terms about the great successes registered in "filling the gaps" along and across the Line of Control.

But who were in the loop? As it turned out, rather a limited number of senior commanders: the commander of the northern troops, Major-General Javed Hasan, now a corps commander; Commander 10 Corps, Lt Gen Mahmood, now retired and heading Fauji Fertilizer (who says Pakistani generals are not versatile?); the Chief of the General Staff, Lt Gen Aziz, now as a four-star general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee; the DG Mily Ops, Lt Gen Tauqir Zia, later to become cricket czar (if Kargil is anything to go by, no wonder he made a mess of Pakistani cricket); and, of course, the Chief himself.

By this time the tone of radio and television broadcasts became notably patriotic. But even as the media played up 'mujahideen' successes, and the daily military briefings began increasingly to sound like war briefings, no one cared to explain to an increasingly befuddled populace as to what this fighting was all about. Were we embarked on another bid to 'liberate' Kashmir? If so, had we calculated the risk of all-out war? For it needed no Clausewitz to realize that India would not take losses in Kashmir lying down and that Kargil if continued would mean war.

Adding to the public's puzzlement was the signing of the Lahore Declaration just two months earlier. If we had resolved to tread the path of war, what was the point of that charade? If it was not a charade and we were serious about peace, what accounted for the change of heart now? It was all very confusing, with Kargil making no sense at all.On June 13, a grim council of war, presided over by the prime minister and attended by the service chiefs and some ministers, was held in the Governor's House, Lahore.

Once again the army's take on the situation was upbeat. Action was going on, it was said, and very good mountain positions had been occupied. But what was the political aim of the operation? What was the army hoping to achieve? Silence on this score.

Nawaz Sharif reportedly didn't say much, asking the participants for their views but not vouchsafing any opinion of his own. One of the participants asked whether we were hoping to take Kashmir militarily. No answer. When the question was pressed again, the answer was no. Then why were we sitting on a few hills in Kargil? No answer.

We were not prepared for war, we didn't want war, but our actions, if not reversed, had put the nation on a ski-run leading inevitably to war, trigger-happy and thoughtless Guderianism having placed Pakistan in this desperate position.

How to get out of it and how to save face at the same time? The gravity of the situation had dawned on all concerned. Then Centcom commander, Gen Anthony Zinni, takes too much credit for saying he helped convince the Pakistani leadership for a pullback by starkly portraying the consequences of "war and nuclear annihilation". Zinni was in Islamabad on June 24 and 25. By that time both Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf would have clutched at any straw to get out of the army's self-created mess. And Zinni was offering a meeting with Clinton which, although not much better than a straw, at least was a face-saving straw.

Look at newspaper photos of the Kargil period. The tension on the army commander's face is writ so large and plain that it is discernible even in black-and-white photos. Only after Nawaz Sharif visited Washington on July 4 and agreed to a troop pullback (the 'mujahideen' fiction then wearing thin) did this tension abate.

There was, however, the problem of explaining what had happened to an officer corps as mystified by the turn of events as the rest of the nation. If Kargil was such a good thing, why the abrupt withdrawal from captured positions? If the basic idea was unsound, why had it been started in the first place? In addresses at various garrison centres it was explained that Kargil had been an outstanding success which had 'internationalized' the Kashmir issue. The conclusion was left hanging in the air that but for the loss of nerve of the civilian government the successes from Kargil would have been still greater.

Was Nawaz Sharif kept in the dark about the genesis of Kargil? Of all the questions thrown up by the Kargil crisis this is about the most useless. He was the prime minister and should have known. But if, as he maintains, the wool was pulled over his eyes, what did he do when he came into the picture? He should have asked some searching questions. He seems to have done nothing of the kind, not even at the June 13 meeting in Lahore. Kargil put national security to its greatest risk since the 1971 war with India. Truman sacked Gen McArthur for much less.

All the evidence suggests that Nawaz Sharif was briefed or cursorily informed about Kargil sometime in April, probably at the Ojhri Camp, halfway between 'Pindi and Islamabad. He may not have been given all the details but then it was for him to find out. If he did not, he was at fault. If he did not understand, he was at fault again.

The real question about Kargil is not whether Nawaz Sharif knew or not. It is something else. What accounts for the army's institutional capacity to dream up ventures lacking any geostrategic or political context? The 1965 war (which ended up by derailing Pakistan and paving the way for the eventual separation of East Pakistan) was one such venture. The army crackdown on the Awami League in East Pakistan in 1971 was another. Kargil makes up the third of this holy trinity.

Nawaz Sharif was supposed to have a limited attention span. Kargil throws up an intriguing question. Whose intellect span was more limited, Nawaz Sharif's or the army command's?
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by RayC »

Philip,

Could you guve the link to this article?

TIA.
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by Vivek_A »

Originally posted by RayC:
Philip,

Could you guve the link to this article?

TIA.
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by RayC »

Vivek

Thanks
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by JaiS »

Kargil war pricked Pak. military's triumph bubble: Pak. weekly

New Delhi, July 25. (PTI): The Kargil war had its effect on the Pakistani military rulers as their propaganda and self-induced triumph bubble vis-a-vis the "cause of Kashmir" was pricked, reports Pakistani weekly "The Friday Times".

"The world is in favour of status quo on the Line of Control and even China has abandoned Pakistan on this front," it says in an editorial written by noted journalist Najam Sethi.

If Kashmir was an unalterable internal "solution" for the cause of military paramountcy in Pakistan until Kargil, it would henceforth have to be seen as an external "problem" to which a compromise resolution could be found, it adds.

Another lesson of Kargil was that the military establishment had come full circle by going back to the Simla Pact of 1972 in trying to resolve Kashmir by means of bilateral dialogue with India rather than by means of militancy or multilateral diplomacy and third party mediation, the weekly says.

The major benefit of the 1999 Kargil "misadventure" was that India and the US came close to each other and helped in an unprecedented strategic long-term bargain which was likely to transcend the current favourable US-Pakistan equation to be reviewed after the worst war against terror was over, it says.
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by putnanja »

'Unclaimed, unhonoured'
NEW DELHI, JULY 25. The Kargil War ended exactly five years ago to this day after the Indian Army claimed to have evicted the last Pakistani intruder who had attempted to change the contour of the Line of Control.

However, not all of them have gone home. The bodies of over 100 Pakistani soldiers lie buried in Indian soil, unclaimed and unhonoured in and around the heights of Tiger Hill, Tololing and other sectors that had become household names when hostilities broke out in mid-1999 and raged for three months.

The Indian Army, which had arranged for Moulvis to perform their last rites according to Muslim customs, would like these soldiers "who fought bravely" to be recognised by their home country and their close relatives to pay them their last respects.

The names of some of the dead soldiers were known from their identity cards and pay books.

A few were identified later.

"We know who is buried where. We would like to convey this message to their relatives in case they want to come and visit their graves. Despite the manner in which they intruded, those who fought and died against us were `gallant men' and the Indian Army never disowns the dead even if they were ranged against us," says a senior officer who was in the thick of the action in Kargil.

Only 5 bodies claimed

After protracted negotiations, the Pakistani army took back the bodies of just five soldiers, all from the plains. The others, mostly from the mountains of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, were disclaimed and the Indian Army took it upon itself to bring most of the bodies down from the heights and give them the respect due to fallen heroes.

Most of the men it has identified and buried come from PoK districts such as Skardu and Gilgit. As proof, the Army has released the names, units and home addresses of some of them: 12 Northern Light Infantry's (NLI) Havildar Syed Hussain Shah of village Shigar, Skardu; his unit mate Lance Naik Ismael Shah of Astone village, Diormon district; Lance Naik Mir Baaz Khan of 4 NLI from

village Dahima, Gilgit; Sipahi Mehboob Ali of 3 NLI from village Gopas, Gilgit and Sipahi Fida Hussain of 6 NLI from village Bangobashi, Skardu.

"Even if the Pakistan Army does not want them, their relatives can come to their graves after getting the necessary clearances from the Government," said the official.

A few of the dead soldiers, including two officers, are from the Pakistan heartland. They include Captain Imtiaz Ali of the 165 Mortar Regiment who was from Islamabad and 8 NLI's Lt. Maazullah Khan Sumbal from Lahore. "We want to tell them that the bodies were given due respect. Now that the war is five years behind us, the Pakistan army should come forward and claim them as their men," he added.
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by RayC »

Today is Op Vijay day.

I saw an interview on TV between Lt Gen Shankar Pershad, then DG Infantry, one analyst called Muraf of something and Brig Surinder Singh.

Brig Surinder Singh raised the issue that there was no Op Order for 3 Inf Div which the good General denied. I think the good General is a loyal soldier!

Muraf or whatever said that intelligence was OK and the Kargil Reveiew Committee said ASSESSMENT was wrong. One must understand that ASSESSMENT is based on INTELLIGENCE available! Say what one wants but Intelligence available was as old as Taxila and Mohenjodaro. ;)
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by Vivek_A »

Armymen celebrate Vijay Diwas in Jammu & Kashmir

Armymen and officers on Monday celebrated Vijay Diwas at Drass township in Jammu and Kashmir, which was a witness to the Kargil conflict five years ago.

The Army personnel, who took part in the ceremony, included those who had participated in the counter-attack to evict the Pakistani intruders from the high peaks of Kargil and Batalik sectors as also the Mushkoh Valley in May-June 1999.

The ceremony included laying of wreaths, a photo exhibition, a memorial service for the martyrs and lighting of candles, according to the Defence Ministry spokesman.

Among those who attended the ceremony were the Kargil Corps Commander Lt Gen Milan Nayudu and GL Batra, father of Param Vir Chakra winner late Capt Vikram Batra.

Drass township, which saw major action during the Kargil conflict, is overlooked by the known peaks of Tiger Hill, Hump, Three Pimples and the Saddle, which had been taken over by the enemy soldiers who were finally evicted.
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by putnanja »

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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by Airavat »

Originally posted by RayC:
Today is Op Vijay day.

I saw an interview on TV between Lt Gen Shankar Pershad, then DG Infantry, one analyst called Muraf of something and Brig Surinder Singh.

)
The interview was part of a comprehensive one-hour program called "Star Report" on Star News. The analyst was Major Maroof Raza, formerly of the Grenadiers.

One interesting part was where the Brig claimed that he had briefed then COAS, Gen Malik, on the forward movement of a Brigade-size formation on the other side of the LOC.

Gen Prasad countered that such a briefing could not have bypassed the "chain of command", viz Div Commander, Corps Commander, Army Commander.

Where lies the truth?
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by Vick »

Maroof Raza?

Is that the same M-RAZA at AFM forum?
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by Airavat »

Originally posted by Vick:
Maroof Raza?

Is that the same M-RAZA at AFM forum?
Don't know. I met him in Delhi and told him about BR...he didn't seem very net savvy. Said he didn't have the time to browse.

BTW he is a good friend of one member of the BR Forum! But I promised not to reveal that member's identity. :)
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by Gerard »

US lessons on India and Pakistan
Clinton granted him a meeting in Washington on July 4, the US Independence Day, but on the condition that the Pakistani withdrawal would be "immediate and unconditional". "He then telephoned Vajpayee to report on Sharif's request and his own reply," Talbott writes. Vajpayee was full of anxiety that Sharif would "deceive or co-opt Clinton". But no such thing happened as the US president exerted all his weight on a feckless Sharif in a tense encounter in Blair House, a building opposite the White House. Sharif brought his family, leading the Americans to wonder if he was seeking asylum. He had to take a commercial flight since the Pakistani military probably refused to give him an aircraft. His relations with them were tense. The then military chief and now leader, General Pervez Musharraf, was the architect of the Kargil adventure.

Sharif first tried to get Clinton to mediate in Kashmir as a quid pro quo for Pakistani troops withdrawing from Kargil, an idea dismissed as preposterous by the US president. Then he asked Clinton to get India to resolve the Kashmir dispute in "a specific time frame". "Clinton came as close as I had ever seen to blowing up in a meeting with a foreign leader," Talbott says of the meeting. "I'm not - and the Indians are not - going to let you get away with blackmail," Clinton exploded. After some more time, Clinton asked Sharif if he knew that the Pakistani military was preparing nuclear-armed missiles for possible use against India. Sharif seemed surprised. But they were no closer to an agreement on the withdrawal of troops.

Finally Clinton threw in the big punch. He said he would call the press and lay the entire blame for failure of the meeting on Pakistan, and for good measure add that Pakistan was supporting terrorism in Afghanistan and India. At this Sharif became "ashen" and looked physically and emotionally exhausted. He agreed to a statement saying he would "take concrete and immediate steps for the restoration of the Line of Control". Kargil spelled the end of Sharif and he was ousted by Musharraf in a bloodless coup soon after and given a death sentence. But the Americans came to his rescue and arranged for him to go into exile in Saudi Arabia.
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by daulat »

Originally posted by Gerard:
[QB "Clinton came as close as I had ever seen to blowing up in a meeting with a foreign leader,"

Finally Clinton threw in the big punch. He said he would call the press and lay the entire blame for failure of the meeting on Pakistan, and for good measure add that Pakistan was supporting terrorism in Afghanistan and India. [/QB]
bolo hamri bill-ua raja ki jai!
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Post by svinayak »

THis author has figured out that something is not right.
After the fight only the defeated nation should hold an enquiry by commision.
But here we have both countries holding enquiry.


One more question this article rises is that why was Mushy keen to take the credit for Kargil and not let somebody else take it. It may explain the reason why he was made the COAS in Sept 1998 over the names of others.


Kargil Commission
by Asghar Butt
A commission of enquiry is normally set up by a government or a parliament where because of government’s action or inaction a country may have either suffered a defeat or a major loss. The government of India set up such a commission some years back to probe the heavy reverses it suffered because of the capture of some of its posts in Kargil. Similarly, the US Parliament set up a commission of enquiry to look at the failure of the government to prevent the 9/11 terrorist attack on America. Again, when the Pakistan army was defeated in East Pakistan a commission of enquiry was set up under Justice Hamoodur Rehman to look into the causes of the defeat. A victorious country is never known to set up an enquiry to find out the causes of its victory. India, therefore, had no cause to set up a commission on the causes of its victory against Pakistan.
Yet, surprisingly, a demand from the Opposition benches has been made in our Parliament to look into the causes of the alleged setback in Kargil. If this commission is set up it would probably be first time in the history of warfare where both the combatants (India and Pakistan) have felt defeated. The Opposition hopes that as a result of this enquiry, in which blame will be apportioned, General Musharraf, who was then the COAS, would come out as the main culprit, and not Mian Nawaz Sharif, who was then the PM. Before we look at this hoped-for outcome of the enquiry, let us look at some of the well-known facts of the case. Let us begin with the setback that our army suffered in Siachen. The record of Indian army’s capture of Siachen and our army’s failure to forestall it, is now easily available through the writings of various Indian military officers who participated in it or analysed it. We know that the Siachen venture took two to three years of planning and when the time came it was executed with ease. Pakistan army’s failure, on the other hand, to recapture it found widespread criticism of its performance. Under normal circumstances a commission of enquiry should have been set up on that but as the country was then under the army rule the whole episode got swept under the carpet.
It may have been swept under the carpet but it rankled and some army officers started thinking of revenge. While the retaking of Siachen in a direct attack was beyond the resources of Pakistan’s army, it began planning on an indirect attack through cutting off Siachen’s long and vulnerable supply line. That is where Kargil came in. Its planning also took some years and probably by those who were not under General Musharraf’s command. But by the time he became the COAS, it became his baby. His being made the COAS by Mian Nawaz too was an accident. He was not the senior most General, but Mian Sahib, not particularly known for observing conventions and rules, made him jump up a few steps. Its implication being that had he not been made the COAS Kargil’s credit (or discredit) would have gone to someone else. Be that as it may, the Indian army in its efforts to retake Kargil, inevitably suffered heavy losses because all the high ground was in the hands of Pakistanis. The Indians did capture back some lower hills at a huge human cost but the topmost points were still in Pakistan’s hand when a US-brokered ceasefire was announced.
That being the history of the case, the only possible conclusion that a commission of enquiry can come up with is that when defeated in one sector of war Pakistan army should not try to make things even by attacking a weaker sector of India because that would cause causalities. But to infer from this episode that Kashmir was lost because of Kargil, is a complete misreading of the Indian mind. India has never had any incentive to give any concession to Pakistan on Kashmir. Mian Nawaz’s Lahore declaration or no declaration. Mr Vajpayee’s visit to Lahore was prompted by two completely different factors. One, that Mian Nawaz Sharif being a businessman could be enticed to widen trade links and two, that Pakistan having already become a nuclear power, it may be difficult to browbeat it into accepting Indian hegemony. Of these two factors, the first one of the temptation on trade is now relatively weak but the other one of nuclear parity still works. So far as India’s hold on Kashmir is concerned it places a very high premium on two vital advantages that it acquires over Pakistan by remaining in Kashmir. From its military angle its armed forces are poised just above Islamabad and on the economic side, it sits on the heads of most of Pakistan’s rivers. The possibilities of blackmailing Pakistan into submission remain immense. The price India has to pay for it through the blood of its men in arms and the financial cost, running into millions of dollars each month, that readily bears, are apparently small enough for it not to give up the two advantages that it now has. Or so it seems.
All in all while one can understand the unhappiness of our out-of-power politicians feel against General Musharraf, they should also keep the realities on the ground in mind. India has never been a push-over on Kashmir despite what the PPP of the PML(N) may like us to believe. And Pakistan army, despite what happened in East Pakistan, etc, has never been unpatriotic as a whole. Needling it continuously is not in their or in the country’s interest.
E-mail queries and comments to: asgharbutt@nation.com.pk

http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/aug-2004 ... OR/op2.asp
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Post by Aditya Vikram »

The above article forgets 2 things

1) Pakistan had lost most of the important peaks namely" Tiger Hill" etc and were begging the US to Withdraw

2) that the NLI was decimated in Kargil and there causualties have never been reported. Nawaz sharief later stated some 2700 Paki solders had died
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Post by svinayak »

Kargil Debacle: Musharraf's Time Bomb, Waiting to Explode

By Rauf Klasra

ISLAMABAD, August 3: Five years have passed since Kargil but it continues to be debated in Pakistan mainly because it led to the fall of Nawaz Sharif and the rise of General Musharraf, changing the fate of both on the same day, one going to jail and the other crowned the king.

Kargil, nevertheless, established a bitter fact that Pakistan Army will continue to exercise its domination over the vulnerable civilians, both in political and militarily domains irrespective of the losses in the process to the country and its unfortunate 140 million people.

The five years since Kargil have also established the fact that the truth will not come out until the Army rules the roost. A Kargil Commission will never be set up like the Hamoodur Rehman Commission, unless a genuinely elected political government takes over.

The controversy, however, rages on. In a fresh interview, exiled Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told an Indian magazine a judicial commission was inevitable to determine who was responsible for the disaster.

Nawaz Sharif sounded quite aggressive and threatening in his latest interview when he made it clear that whenever he regains power, he would not spare those who staged Kargil.

Earlier, ‘Battle Ready’, a new book by American General Anthony Zinni, who worked closely with former president Bill Clinton during the infamous Pakistan-India stand off, revived the five years old controversy in Pakistan.

Despite claims and counter claims both from the military and civilians, the situation is still blur as General Musharraf claims that Nawaz had cleared the plan and military could not be held responsible for the debacle.

In a series of political profiles of leaders of the Nawaz government who were actively involved in all Kargil decisions, this scribe tried to get to the bottom but could only go so far as leaders who know would not talk and those who talk don’t know.

Ch. Shujaat Hussain, the current Prime Minister who was leading the ruling PML-Q when I interviewed him, was the first political leader who had disclosed many inside stories leading to the Kargil crises.

His disclosures had unleashed a storm in the political and military circles. However, when this scribe met Ch. Nisar Ali Khan who had accompanied Nawaz Sharif to meet President Clinton on July 4, 1999, a different perspective of the situation emerged.

Ishaq Dar who was the then finance minister and directly pumping money for defence requirements, gave another account of these events.

But one potential witness to Kargil, Mushahid Hussain, otherwise considered to be a bold writer, had flatly refused to talk over the issue after becoming a senator on the ruling party ticket.

Despite my best efforts, I could not interview the then Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz as he had refused to come on record though he confirmed to me that he knew much about Kargil. Likewise, General (Retd) Abdul Majeed Malik, who also knew a lot also shied away from talking on the subject.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid, also an important member of the Nawaz cabinet had simply told this scribe, without going into details of Kargil, that he endorsed the views of Ch. Shujaat Hussain.

Shujaat Hussain was interviewed in April 2003 and he was at best evasive and did neither support Musharraf nor Nawaz Sharif. He rather narrated a tale of one such meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Defence in which Kargil issue was discussed.

Shujaat said a Brigadier was briefing participants of the meeting including Sartaj Aziz, Shujaat, Nawaz and General Musharraf who was then the COAS.

Shujaat claimed that at one stage Musharraf observed that Nawaz was not following what the Brigadier was trying to convey on Kargil. So Musharraf himself sprang from his seat, took the stick from the Brigadier and started to explain.

According to Shujaat, when at one stage of the briefing by General Musharraf, the dismal picture of Kargil and its implications sank home, Nawaz Sharif almost shouted at Musharraf by saying: ‘This means an open war with India’.

Nawaz genuinely complained to Musharraf as to why was he not told earlier that this kind of military activity on Kargil could lead to a war like situation with India, Shujaat continued.

“Upon this, Musharraf produced a pocket note book and started to give details of all those meetings in which, he claimed, Nawaz was given briefings about Kargil. But this further annoyed Nawaz. At this stage a cool and diplomatic interior minister (Shujaat himself) proposed that what had happened was past now. He proposed that it was better that a press release should be issued after the meeting saying that both the military and political leadership was on board on Kargil.

Shujaat said his proposal greatly annoyed Nawaz as he refused to do so. “Nawaz was so annoyed with me for making the proposal that when he left the meeting he did not even bother to look at him or shake hands.”

When this scribe met Ch. Nisar Ali Khan, he gave a different account of events leading to the fall of Nawaz. Nisar had clearly said during the Kargil crisis that Nawaz had decided to visit the US to protect the honor of the military endangered in face of Indian threats.

Ch Nisar held important ministerial portfolios in the governments of General Ziaul Haq and Mohammad Khan Junejo and was also a leading figure in both the tenures of Nawaz government from 1991 to 1993 and 1997 to 1999.

Nisar said, "Kargil was badly conceived, badly planned and badly executed". He said the timing was so bad that when the political leadership was told about this misadventure, the PM could not reverse or stop it even if he wished to because it would have had serious fallout, both for the army and the government.

Nisar said Nawaz and his team were told by military leadership only what was needed according to their requirements and perception. The nation, he said, should be told about the reaction of the then Naval Chief Admiral Fasih Bukhari and Air Chief Pervez Mehdi when like civilian leaders they came to know about Kargil for the first time.

Declining to discuss what these reactions were, Nisar said let the nation ask that question from the former naval and air chiefs and they should tell what their comments were about the possibility of war with India.

Nisar said if Nawaz had been aware of the Kargil adventure, he was not so foolish to invite the Indian prime minister to Lahore.

About Nawaz’s mad rush to Washington, Nisar said he received a call from Nawaz who asked him to get ready to go to the US. Nisar opposed his visit saying: "Mian sahib let those people face the music who had planned all these things without taking politicians into confidence." But, Nawaz replied: "No Nisar, I cannot see my army face humiliation at the hands of India".

Nisar said Shahbaz Sharif is a witness to his opposition to Nawaz dash to the US. He recalled: "ZA Bhutto, with his political wisdom, saved 90,000 Pakistani POWs but was later hanged by the military. The same happened with Nawaz after 27 years. Nawaz went to US risking the negative fallout but saved the military honor that was under serious danger because of Indian threats". Nisar lamented that the same army rescued by Nawaz sent the man to hell.

Ishaq Dar, who was the then Finance Minister, said he knew too much about the troubling issues between military and the civilian leadership of that time. Dar demanded that a judicial commission should be set up where he would give all the inside information and details that would shock the entire country.

He said that the most important details pertain to briefing of General Pervez Musharraf to Dar and Sartaj Aziz in the Military Operation Room of the GHQ towards the end of May 1999 and the meetings of the Defence Cabinet Committee (DCC) during May and June 1999 under the chairmanship of PM Nawaz in which Majeed Malik, Raja Zafar ul Haq and Mushahid Hussain also participated in addition to permanent members of DCC.

But, Dar said before Nawaz dashed to the US for the July 4 meeting with Clinton, two important meetings were held to review the situation. Nawaz had gone to US only to bail out the Pakistan Army. Dar said General Musharraf was very keen to involve US for mediation between India and Pakistan.

Was Nawaz Sharif on board about Kargil operations from the beginning? Dar categorically denied this by saying "not at all".

Most of the Corps Commanders, Air Force and Naval Chiefs were also not aware of the operation on day one. PM Nawaz was in fact informed on May 17, he claimed.

However Ishaq Dar revealed another interesting fact that supported the point of view of General Musharraf that Nawaz Sharif was informed about Kargil, although he might have not taken it seriously.

Dar revealed that many months before the Kargil operation, a strategic briefing on different locations including Kargil was held in Skardu. But, Dar hastened to add that this causal briefing could in no way be termed as an approval from Nawaz for the Kargil Operation.

He said Kargil was launched without meeting the required formalities and a proper approval. The then political leadership was approached for immediate rescue only when operational problems started to surface at Kargil. When Musharraf briefed Nawaz about troubling development, the first abrupt question Nawaz asked from his army chief was: why he was not informed in advance about the operation, Dar claimed.

Dar said Nawaz had gone to the US not on his own but on the personal request and insistence of Musharraf who saw Nawaz off at the Airport. Dar said Nawaz had sincerely tried to save the dignity and honor of Pakistan Army and to protect the Mujahideen on Kargil front lines for whom inadequate arrangements were made by the Army.

But, Dar was not ready to speak more on Kargil though he claimed that he knew much more. He said he would tell everything to a judicial commission if formed on the issue because he believes that such revelations would not be in the national interest.

So, no one, neither the military nor the political leadership, is ready to accept the responsibility of this disaster that not only brought two neighboring countries to the brink of war but also led to the dramatic fall of Nawaz and rise of Musharraf.

The issue, however, is far from dead and sooner than later, Kargil will blow into a real crisis for the Pakistan Army.

The writer is a senior journalist working for The News, Islamabad. E-Mail: klasra@hotmail.com


SAT report
http://www.satribune.com/archives/august04/P1_rauf.htm
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Moral of the story

Post by Joeqp »

He recalled: "ZA Bhutto, with his political wisdom, saved 90,000 Pakistani POWs but was later hanged by the military. The same happened with Nawaz after 27 years. Nawaz went to US risking the negative fallout but saved the military honor that was under serious danger because of Indian threats". Nisar lamented that the same army rescued by Nawaz sent the man to hell.


Moral of the story: Paki RATS are bloody traitors, haraam khor, if you will. This doesn't surprise me, as it shouldn't anybody else.
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Post by Arun_S »

The leader of haraam khor open his mouth to save pisky TSP Army H&D :lol:
Reminds me of Hijda claiming high manhood & valor :lol:

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/00 ... ~Musharraf
India suffered more casualties in Kargil than Pak: Musharraf
Islamabad, Aug 5. (PTI): In a rare reference to Kargil, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has disputed deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's account that more Pakistani soldiers were killed during the conflict than the previous two wars against India, claiming New Delhi suffered more casualties than Islamabad.

"It hurts me when an ex-premier undermines his own forces," Musharraf said while responding to Sharif's comments made in an interview to an Indian weekly that Pakistan lost more soldiers in Kargil conflict that the 1965 and the 1971 wars put together. Indian casualties were more than that of Pakistan, he claimed in an interview to daily 'Dawn.'.
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Post by Jagan »

He has to point out that India lost more than Pakistan

Its always a case of "Mine is bigger than yours" isn't it? :roll:

The guy is cracking if he is resorting to answering the allegations 8)
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Post by JTull »

Quite an interesting read. I do subscribe to the view that India did lose more precious lives than Pakis did. They simply abandoned all and sundry, that says a lot of how precious those lives were to them. Though we must still admit to an intelligence failure, barring which many hastily conducted operations wouldn't have been needed, saving many brave soldiers. Maybe the lessons have been learnt on both sides.

TSP is increasingly fighting battle on many fronts within their country, a notion they held for India. Their contradictions and short-sightedness will take them further down the drain once Mushy is forced out of power. That is simply inevitable.
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Post by Vivek K »

The important facts are that:
1. India was able to recapture her territory
2. All Indians that died in the battle were brought back to their loved ones and received their last rites as per their religion.
3. Pakistan deserted its dead and did not bother to have them buried as per their customs

The rest is as Jagan put it - 'Mine is bigger than yours'! What arrogance from a defeated General
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Post by ramana »

But, Nawaz replied: "No Nisar, I cannot see my army face humiliation at the hands of India".

Nisar said Shahbaz Sharif is a witness to his opposition to Nawaz dash to the US. He recalled: "ZA Bhutto, with his political wisdom, saved 90,000 Pakistani POWs but was later hanged by the military. The same happened with Nawaz after 27 years. Nawaz went to US risking the negative fallout but saved the military honor that was under serious danger because of Indian threats".
This is very crucial point that the leadership always have protected the H&D of the RATS. This is because the RATS are the state. The state exists because the RATS exist. Try to understand this key point.
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Re: Moral of the story

Post by Umrao »

Manavendra wrote:He recalled: "ZA Bhutto, with his political wisdom, saved 90,000 Pakistani POWs but was later hanged by the military. The same happened with Nawaz after 27 years. Nawaz went to US risking the negative fallout but saved the military honor that was under serious danger because of Indian threats". Nisar lamented that the same army rescued by Nawaz sent the man to hell.


Moral of the story: Paki RATS are bloody traitors, haraam khor, if you will. This doesn't surprise me, as it shouldn't anybody else.
If this be so then how come Atalji was rushing to 'Gale milao' the Badmash? I fondly ask.
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Re: Moral of the story

Post by JTull »

John Umrao wrote: If this be so then how come Atalji was rushing to 'Gale milao' the Badmash? I fondly ask.
You can't blame him as serious statesmen don't indulge in a game of oneupmanship. But then he was not dealing with a statesman, but more like a conman.
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Re: Kargil Revisited - Thread 3

Post by Luxtor »

Ashutosh wrote:Going by the outcome of Kargil and what later happened to TSP and it's then existing rulers and political setup, I would not be surprised if the government allowed Kargil to knowingly happen - as I have mentioned in the past. It could have very well been a ploy to make TSP puke in the peace party - jeez the amazing things that TSP does when you offer peace to them.

Going by that measure, I would suspect that the current peace process initiated by ABV also intends to invite TSP into blundering again - and then we have nothing to lose if the peace process works. Well, if TSP decides to do another Kargil then we will be more ready military wise than we were last time.

The only error in the judgement by ABV was that he probably assumed he would be voted back into power. Now the ball is in Kangress court.
It could've been very much a possibility that the Indian Intelligence & ABV knew of Kargil as the intrusions were taking place and they let it happen. The Americans were suspected of letting the Jap attack on Pearl Harbor happen in order to get into WW II. How many lives were lost in Pearl Harbor? I'm not saying that it is right, but sometimes national outrage is necessary to mobilize the whole country for war. All in all I think the Kargil war had the intended effect on TSP. Due to their defeat there was a coup. More than anything else this is telling... no victorious country would end up with a coup toppling its gov't. A coup only happens in a country when there is defeat, infighting, blame game and scape goating are going around. Mushy and his army buddies clearly over threw the civilian gov't in order to escape the inevitable punishment and retribution that was about to come from Nawaz Sharif as he has said that he was in the process of setting up a commission to investigate Pak army's Kargil debacle.
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Post by jrjrao »

Kargil Commission to sabotage peace process
ISLAMABAD (APP) - Prime Minister Ch Shujat Hussain has said the demand for constituting a commission on Kargil is an effort to sabotage the Pakistan-India dialogue process at a time when the two countries are moving toward peace.

In an interview to India Today on Wednesday night, the prime minister said former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was lying that he did not know about the Kargil plans.

Following is the text of the interview in a question-answer format.

Question: In his recent interview, Nawaz Sharif says he was not briefed by General Pervez Musharraf, then chief of army staff, about the 1999 Kargil War plans. You said he had been. What is the truth? When exactly was Nawaz briefed?

Answer: Nawaz lies when he claims that he knew about the Kargil intrusions only when he got a call from Prime Minister Vajpayee. I was interior minister during that period and there were six separate occasions when he was briefed on Kargil. It began when Nawaz visited Skardu on 29 January 1999. He was again briefed by the army on February 5 (just two weeks before Vajpayee’s visit to Lahore). Then he along with some cabinet colleagues, including me, was updated by senior military officials on March 12. I went late for it. At the end of it, Nawaz asked all of us to pray for the success of the mission.

Q: What was the nature of the plan?

A: Nawaz used to be very sketchy in telling his cabinet colleagues about important issues. But in a meeting at the office of the director-general of military operation (DGMO) on 17 May 1999 (day before the full-fledged war began), I remember Nawaz asking whether the Dras-Kargil road led to Srinagar. He also said the Kashmir issue could not be resolved through bus journey and the military should keep up its operations.

Q: Isn’t it strange that just three months earlier he had signed a historic peace agreement with Vajpayee at Lahore?

A: Nawaz wanted to move on both tracks. He was not so interested in Kargil as much as he was in getting his name associated with the success in Kashmir.

Q: But Sharif was categorical that barring a few generals no one, even the chiefs of air force and navy, was briefed.

A: Nawaz is just trying to confuse the issue. Musharraf didn’t embark on this mission on his own. It is practically impossible. Now Nawaz says the air force and navy chiefs did not know. But were not the three services meeting regularly? Also when something is happening in the country and the prime minister does not know of it, then what kind of a prime minister is he? For Nawaz to say that he knew absolutely nothing about the Kargil War plans is wrong. As a Punjabi saying goes, he may want to close his eye like a pigeon but the cat will not go away.

Q: Sharif claims General Musharraf had mentioned to him only about a mujahideen-like operation and never talked about employing the Pakistan Army to attack the Indian posts.

A: Just before Nawaz left for the US on July 2, there was a detailed briefing by the chiefs of army, navy and air force for the Defence Cabinet Committee. I was also there along with foreign minister Sartaj Aziz. At first, the briefing was conducted by a brigadier. Then General Musharraf stood up and took over. When he sat down Nawaz told him, ‘General Sahib, I didn’t know about these things before.’ Then Musharraf took out a diary, turned page after page and gave the dates on which he had briefed Nawaz. To this, Nawaz had no answer. Then I said this should be the last meeting on this issue. That instead of blaming each other, the message should go out to the public that it was a joint effort and a collective responsibility. Nawaz did not respond to my suggestion. He just got up and shook hands with everyone seated on his left. I was on his right side, he didn’t shake hand with me.

Q: Sharif, however, remains categorical that he had been kept largely in the dark by General Musharraf on all Kargil plans.

A: During detailed briefings, Nawaz would listen but he didn’t seem to register anything-he had an attention span of five minutes. He also had a cavalier style of taking decisions. At the start of cabinet meeting, he would go through the agenda items and say ‘1,2,3,4 - all approved’ without consulting us. In the corridors, he would at times reverse cabinet decisions soon after they were approved. Nawaz also has had a history of memory lapses. In 1992, he ordered an operation against the MQM in Karachi but when he was out of power he denied any involvement and instead blamed it on the then army chief.

Q: Nawaz says there is a need of a commission on Kargil to examine who was responsible for the war.

A. Nawaz was prime minister for four months or so after Kargil and he could have easily set up a commission during that time. Why didn’t he do so? He had the powers to sack Musharraf with the stroke of a pen. But he did not use it. Instead, he misused his powers by trying to divert the aircraft carrying Musharraf from Sri Lanka and precipitated events. It doesn’t behove a former prime minister to undermine national interests by revealing state secrets while sitting in a foreign country. He acts like the prime minister of a hostile country. He should not have gone to this extent.

Q: Why don’t you set up a Kargil commission?

A: Will the Kargil Commission end unemployment? Will it provide bread or remove poverty? Will it bring prices down? If the only purpose is to make political gain, then why raise this dead issue? There is a time and place for everything. This is an attempt to sabotage the Pakistan-India dialogue at a time when we are all moving toward peace. A Kargil commission would lead to allegations and counter allegations and the peace process will get derailed. Far from being patriotic, the call for a Kargil commission is a conspiracy.

Q: Nawaz says he had not entered into any deal for going into exile in Saudi Arabia.

A: There is no doubt that he left the country as part of a deal. There were two types of deals. One was for a pardon against his conviction which he signed along with his brother Shahbaz and Abbas and his son Hussain. The other deal was between the government of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in which Nawaz gave a list of 30 people or so and it was agreed that they go into exile in Saudi Arabia for a period of 10 years. It was also decided that this deal would not be made public and if the matter ended up in Supreme Court, the judges would be briefed about the deal in the chambers. Nawaz convinced the Saudis that they should ask President Musharraf to let him go since he feared he would be hanged. The Saudis guaranteed that he would not take part in any political activity while in exile.

Q: Sharif complains that the Pakistan government refuses to renew his passport though he has been twice prime minister.

A: Is General Musharraf a passport officer? The fact of the matter is that the passports of Nawaz and his entourage were seized by the Saudi authorities on their arrival. How can Nawaz apply for renewal of the passport when he doesn’t have it?

Q: Nawaz says he is willing to join hands with Bhutto to come back to Pakistan and bring about a change.

A: It is curious that they want to join hands while in Parliament their parties accuse each other every month of creating security risks for the country. When you call a person an enemy of the country, how can you make friends with them even in politics?

Q: If Sharif comes back, will he be arrested.

A: He himself doesn’t want to come back. According to the deal, he cannot go out of Saudi Arabia without the joint permission of Saudi and Pakistani governments. Even if he wants to come back there is only one proviso for that-both the governments should amend the agreement. On the other hand, Benazir Bhutto can come back any time but she will have to face the legal cases. By the way, Nawaz shares this trait with Benazir in that when they are in power everything is hunky-dory. Once they are out of it, everything in Pakistan looks terrible.

Q: Sharif also says there is a deep resentment about the way General Musharraf has increased the role of the military in running the things.

A: Why is he talking about military interference? In 1981, he himself was introduced to politics by Punjab Governor Gen Gilani, a military man. Musharraf has taken steps to end the repeated imposition of martial law by setting up a National Security Council. The majority in this council is of civilians. Also, the army is not an enemy-they are Pakistanis first and they are relevant to Pakistan. Their main purpose is to defend the country from both internal and external threats.

Q: The other big issue is whether Musharraf will give up his post as chief of army staff by December 31 as agreed upon with the passage of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution.

A: Now they have made an issue out of Musharraf’s uniform. The 17th Amendment carries everyone’s signature, including mine. It is an unnecessary demand to get Musharraf to say right now at what place and at what time he will take off his uniform. I assure you that the decision will be made in accordance with the provisions in the amendment. It can be interpreted in many ways and only the Supreme Court can do it.

Q: Did differences between Musharraf and Zafarullah Khan Jamali lead to the latter’s resignation as prime minister?

A: There was no bad blood between the two. Even after Jamali’s resignation, the families invited each other for dinners and they are still doing so. I don’t want to go into the reasons of his resignation except that they were personal.

Q: Why did you accept a limited term of 45 days as prime minister?

A: I didn’t accept the post earlier when I was leader of the parliamentary party. Jamali himself had proposed my name. There were two reasons why I didn’t do it then. We had the example of one brother being prime minister at the Centre while the other was chief minister of Punjab when the Sharif family was in power. (Pervez Elahi, Shujat’s first cousin, is now chief minister of Punjab). Secondly, I insisted from day one that I wanted the prime minister to come from the smallest province. Jamali from Baluchistan was the most suitable candidate. Regarding my 45-day tenure, in our culture if someone offers you something, you don’t want to seem ungrateful and turn it down. When Musharraf embarked on this new experiment, I went along with his new thinking. Moreover, Shaukat Aziz (the prime minister-designate) is a senator and has to be elected as member of the National Assembly to become a prime minister.

Q: Are you happy with the pace of Pakistan-India peace talks?

A: I look at the talks in a positive way and I am very hopeful. The chances of a war between the two countries are less than one per cent now. I give full credit to India for its willingness to have a dialogue on the Kashmir issue after a lapse of 30 odd years. We are also ready to discuss other issues. We need to break down these walls of hatred quickly. If we do not find a solution now, then maybe we never will.
http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/aug-2004/6/main/top1.asp
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Post by Arun_S »

Every man think he is at the center of the world. So Haram Khor Mushy was being tushy when he said India lost more then TSP Army, becuase he did not honestly account for TSP-Army Pigs that were unclaimed by Pukis and buried by Indian Army. The only count that is valid per Jihadi-Koran is Body-Count and TSPA had none.

Per Mushy TSP-Army lost Zero, beacuse it never fought at Kargil (Choodian Pahni thee).
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Post by svinayak »

Psy ops article

The Indians are Also Debating Their Kargil Failure

By Vinod Vedi

NEW DELHI, July 30: That an internal review by the Indian Army of the Kargil war was deliberately leaked to the Press with malice aforethought just before the anniversary was bad enough but its contents reveal a horrendous state of affairs within the military establishment raising grave doubts about off-repeated assurances that the nation is in safe hands.

The polemics that the leaked report has generated shows up the then apex military advisory body—the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee – in extremely poor light and raises apprehensions about whether the post-Kargil “improvements” like the institution of the post of Chief of Integrated Defence Staff and the insistence, by the Army in particular, on the creation of the post of Chief of Defence Staff will improve national security.

That there was a difference of opinion between the Chief of Army Staff and the Chief of the Indian Air Force over the employment of the IAF to strike at the entrenched positions of the intruders in the Kargil heights is to be welcomed in the expectation that in this scenario of “let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend” Indian national security would have benefited.

It did not. And the outcome was finally decided on the basis of a self-confessed threat by the Chief of Army Staff that he would veto the Air Chief’s contentions within the conclave of the Cabinet Committee on Security which was to give sanction for air strikes. The intent and purpose of the leak was to blame the IAF for the delay in resorting to air strikes and, therefore, causing the heavy casualties that the Indian Army suffered during the duration of the war.

The new Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee was constrained to clear the air immediately on taking over that the high casualties were not because of the delay in deploying the IAF in Kargil. The former Cabinet Minister Jaswant Singh was quick to heave a public sigh of relief that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance had been let off the hook for a botched campaign it was fond of describing as a “Great Victory”.

The irony of Pranab Mukherjee’s clarification escaped Jaswant Singh: That even though it could be said that the delay in deployment of the IAF did not result in heavy casualties on the ground the issue of why there were such losses is still very much alive.

Reading between the lines of the leaked report the following points emerge:

- Nobody in the entire military establishment had the faintest clue of who was lying in wait in the snowy heights.

- Nobody knew what aircraft to use or what procedures to follow because they did not know the nature of the enemy.

- Even after a guesstimate was made (after an aerial reconnaissance) that the intruders were Mujahideen guerrilla fighters nobody in the entire military establishment could conjure up the image of a fully equipped “mujahid” as he was in the Afghan battlefield or as he was in his Taliban reincarnation and come to the conclusion that he could very well be armed with shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles and, given that the world knew that the Pakistan Army Inter-Services Intelligence handled and equipped the “Mujahideen”, that it could have laid out an air defence umbrella over its terrible progeny.

- The bald-faced admission contained in the leaked report that maps and charts of the terrain were not accurate raises the issue as to why they were in the possession of the Indian armed forces 52 years after the attainment of sovereignty from British rule and 15 years after Siachen? We are still quibbling whether point 5353 on the grid reference belongs to India or not.

- Another bald-faced admission that Pakistan was able to eavesdrop on the Indian communications network and knew of attack plans in advance underscores the dishonesty of the serving Brigadier’s contention that the Press was responsible for supplying Pakistan Indian military secrets.

Given that self-serving reviews are being prepared and leaked by the armed forces the Government of India needs to find out for itself the answers to the following questions:

1. Why, after Siachen, was Kargil left unguarded?

2. Why is it that a forward post does not produce proper charts and drawings of the area under its responsibility and should it not be the responsibility of Military Intelligence (which has a component in every company level unit if not in the platoon and section) to update these in the light of the long and arduous deployment after the Siachen experience?

3. Why is it that the Indian armed forces did not have secure communications facilities decades after newsmen were shown troposcatter and meteor-burst communications systems by the Defence Research and Development Organization? These are supposed to be useful in mountainous terrain.

4. Why, after it was decided that the intruders were Mujahideen did the IAF not equip its strike aircraft and helicopters with chaff dispensers and decoys to divert surface-to-air missiles which every group carries (at least one US supplied Stinger missile launcher was recovered in Kargil). This would have prevented the shooting down of the first aircraft that was sent to deal with the intruders and also the helicopter gun ship with troops aboard would have had a chance of escaping. To this extent, at least, the casualties were totally unnecessary.

So far as the total number of casualties in the Kargil war is concerned a great deal of destruction was caused by the fact that while Indian troops were rushing up the mountainside to uproot the entrenched Pakistani soldiers of the regular army, Northern Light Infantry, they were confronted, very literally, head-on with gunfire resulting in head injuries.

While it is acknowledged that there is no military headgear extant that will enable the soldier to survive a direct hit to the head it was clear from the moment the Cabinet Committee on Security ordered the armed forces to clear the Kargil heights of the intruders that the casualties would be very high because an attacking force under such circumstances is extremely vulnerable to fatal wounds.

If anything, it underscores in stark detail the bravery of those young men and their commanding officers (many a Lt-Col was killed while leading his battalion into battle) who were forced to fight under such adverse conditions when a proper military appreciation of the enemy mind set at Army Headquarters should have made it clear what was the true intent and purpose of the Pakistan Army to subject Dras and Kargil to heavy artillery bombardment the previous summer. “Intelligence failure”, therefore, is nothing but a red herring to divert attention away from this classic ineptitude.

The massive purchase of bullet-proof jackets from foreign sources and long-range anti-material rifles with sniper scopes accentuated this ineptitude because no one in the military hierarchy anticipated a war in the high Himalayas even though 10 divisions of the Indian Army are deployed there.

The Kargil war made it plain that the military thought that went into the design and development of the Indian National Small Arms Systems (INSAS) 5.56 mm caliber weapons with a range of 300 meters did not envisage the requirement for a longer range anti-material rifle as part of the infantry requirement in mountain warfare and this had to be rectified post-haste even as the battles were raging in the Kargil sector.

Further, in a pitiable show of trust the NDA Government gave the Pakistan Army time to withdraw its troops instead of insisting, as one journalist suggested at the time, that the International Society of the Red Cross take command of Pakistani troops and ensure their orderly repatriation. Instead, the Pakistani troops utilized the grace period to lay anti-personnel mines which added to the death list of Indian soldiers.

The Subramanyam Committee’s recommendations on Kargil have been expunged from public scrutiny and it may be in the national interest that they be kept a secret but it does not serve national interest if in-house reviews are leaked to the Press to serve some personal interests. The Government must by its own transparent study of what had happened before, during and after the intrusions were discovered, clarify why Indian defences were so ill-prepared.

That on the other side of the border divide, Kargil continues to be remembered for altogether different reasons is no comfort for India. The continued refusal of the regime in Islamabad to go for an inquiry into Kargil comes as no surprise, though. You cannot expect a General, who, according to a commentator, had planned the war keeping his own country and the prime minister in the dark, to face a judicial scrutiny. But why he is not claiming the bodies of over 100 Pakistani soldiers still on the Indian soil is a mystery.

These bodies are buried in and around the heights of Tiger Hill, Tololing and other sectors. Even by the Indian army accounts, these intruders had fought bravely and that should be reason enough for Pakistan to recognize their valor.

Is this neglect due to the fact that they were from Skardu, Gilgit and other mountain districts of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir? That it could be and that there is a class divide in the Pakistan army is given credence to by the fact that, the Pakistani army took back the bodies of just five soldiers from Kargil heights. And all of them hailed from the plains. Look at the proof.

The bodies disclaimed are of 12 Northern Light Infantry's (NLI) Havildar Syed Hussain Shah of village Shigar, Skardu; his unit’s Lance Naik Ismail Shah of Astone village, Diormon district; Lance Naik Mir Baaz Khan of 4 NLI from Dahima village, Gilgit; Sipahi Mehboob Ali of 3 NLI from Gopas village, Gilgit, and Sipahi Fida Hussain of 6 NLI from Bangobashi village of Skardu were disclaimed and the Indian Army took it upon itself to bring most of the bodies down from the heights and give them the respect due to fallen heroes.

Even if the Pakistan Army does not want these ‘forgotten’ heroes, who had fought for a futile cause, India should welcome their families and relatives to visit the graves and to pay their last respects. Because, whether any body likes are not, any soldier who dies on the battle field is a gallant man. And he deserves respect! :wink:

- Syndicate Features

http://www.satribune.com/archives/july04/P1_vedi2.htm


Nawaz Revealed National Secrets About Kargil, Says Shujaat Hussain

Special SAT Report

ISLAMABAD, August 6: Pakistan Prime Minister Choudhry Shujaat Hussain has accused exiled prime minister Nawaz Sharif of revealing national secrets about Kargil in his India Today interview some time back. Shujaat gave the magazine his own interview to counter Nawaz.

But the interim Pakistani PM stopped short of saying what exactly had been revealed by Nawaz Sharif because he denied everything Nawaz had stated in his interview. Shujaat's interview to India Today was published in its latest issue.

Shujaat also confirmed an earlier report published in the South Asia Tribune by Rauf Klasra in which Shujaat had disclosed the details of a meeting in which Nawaz Sharif got angry with General Musharraf for not telling him that his Kargil Plan could lead to an India Pakistan war.

Klasra had reported the following: "Shujaat said a Brigadier was briefing participants of the meeting including Sartaj Aziz, Shujaat, Nawaz and General Musharraf who was then the COAS.

"Shujaat claimed that at one stage Musharraf observed that Nawaz was not following what the Brigadier was trying to convey on Kargil. So Musharraf himself sprang from his seat, took the stick from the Brigadier and started to explain.

"According to Shujaat, when at one stage of the briefing by General Musharraf, the dismal picture of Kargil and its implications sank home, Nawaz Sharif almost shouted at Musharraf by saying: ‘This means an open war with India’.

"Nawaz genuinely complained to Musharraf as to why was he not told earlier that this kind of military activity on Kargil could lead to a war like situation with India, Shujaat continued.

“Upon this, Musharraf produced a pocket note book and started to give details of all those meetings in which, he claimed, Nawaz was given briefings about Kargil. But this further annoyed Nawaz." Click to Read Full Report of Rauf Klasra

In his India Today interview, Shujaat stated: "Just before Nawaz left for the US on July 2, there was a detailed briefing by the chiefs of army, navy and air force for the Defence Cabinet Committee. I was also there along with foreign minister Sartaj Aziz. At first, the briefing was conducted by a brigadier. Then General Musharraf stood up and took over. When he sat down Nawaz told him, ‘General Sahib, I didn’t know about these things before.’ Then Musharraf took out a diary, turned page after page and gave the dates on which he had briefed Nawaz."

Following is the full text:

Question: In his recent interview, Nawaz Sharif says he was not briefed by General Pervez Musharraf, then chief of army staff, about the 1999 Kargil War plans. You said he had been. What is the truth? When exactly was Nawaz briefed?

Answer: Nawaz lies when he claims that he knew about the Kargil intrusions only when he got a call from Prime Minister Vajpayee. I was interior minister during that period and there were six separate occasions when he was briefed on Kargil. It began when Nawaz visited Skardu on 29 January 1999. He was again briefed by the army on February 5 (just two weeks before Vajpayee’s visit to Lahore). Then he along with some cabinet colleagues, including me, was updated by senior military officials on March 12. I went late for it. At the end of it, Nawaz asked all of us to pray for the success of the mission.

Q: What was the nature of the plan?

A: Nawaz used to be very sketchy in telling his cabinet colleagues about important issues. But in a meeting at the office of the director-general of military operation (DGMO) on 17 May 1999 (day before the full-fledged war began), I remember Nawaz asking whether the Dras-Kargil road led to Srinagar. He also said the Kashmir issue could not be resolved through bus journey and the military should keep up its operations.

Q: Isn’t it strange that just three months earlier he had signed a historic peace agreement with Vajpayee at Lahore?

A: Nawaz wanted to move on both tracks. He was not so interested in Kargil as much as he was in getting his name associated with the success in Kashmir.

Q: But Sharif was categorical that barring a few generals no one, even the chiefs of air force and navy, was briefed.

A: Nawaz is just trying to confuse the issue. Musharraf didn’t embark on this mission on his own. It is practically impossible. Now Nawaz says the air force and navy chiefs did not know. But were not the three services meeting regularly? Also when something is happening in the country and the prime minister does not know of it, then what kind of a prime minister is he? For Nawaz to say that he knew absolutely nothing about the Kargil War plans is wrong. As a Punjabi saying goes, he may want to close his eye like a pigeon but the cat will not go away.

Q: Sharif claims General Musharraf had mentioned to him only about a mujahideen-like operation and never talked about employing the Pakistan Army to attack the Indian posts.

A: Just before Nawaz left for the US on July 2, there was a detailed briefing by the chiefs of army, navy and air force for the Defence Cabinet Committee. I was also there along with foreign minister Sartaj Aziz. At first, the briefing was conducted by a brigadier. Then General Musharraf stood up and took over. When he sat down Nawaz told him, ‘General Sahib, I didn’t know about these things before.’ Then Musharraf took out a diary, turned page after page and gave the dates on which he had briefed Nawaz. To this, Nawaz had no answer. Then I said this should be the last meeting on this issue. That instead of blaming each other, the message should go out to the public that it was a joint effort and a collective responsibility. Nawaz did not respond to my suggestion. He just got up and shook hands with everyone seated on his left. I was on his right side, he didn’t shake hand with me.

Q: Sharif, however, remains categorical that he had been kept largely in the dark by General Musharraf on all Kargil plans.

A: During detailed briefings, Nawaz would listen but he didn’t seem to register anything-he had an attention span of five minutes. He also had a cavalier style of taking decisions. At the start of cabinet meeting, he would go through the agenda items and say ‘1,2,3,4 - all approved’ without consulting us. In the corridors, he would at times reverse cabinet decisions soon after they were approved. Nawaz also has had a history of memory lapses. In 1992, he ordered an operation against the MQM in Karachi but when he was out of power he denied any involvement and instead blamed it on the then army chief.

Q: Nawaz says there is a need of a commission on Kargil to examine who was responsible for the war.

A. Nawaz was prime minister for four months or so after Kargil and he could have easily set up a commission during that time. Why didn’t he do so? He had the powers to sack Musharraf with the stroke of a pen. But he did not use it. Instead, he misused his powers by trying to divert the aircraft carrying Musharraf from Sri Lanka and precipitated events. It doesn’t behove a former prime minister to undermine national interests by revealing state secrets while sitting in a foreign country. He acts like the prime minister of a hostile country. He should not have gone to this extent.

Q: Why don’t you set up a Kargil commission?

A: Will the Kargil Commission end unemployment? Will it provide bread or remove poverty? Will it bring prices down? If the only purpose is to make political gain, then why raise this dead issue? There is a time and place for everything. This is an attempt to sabotage the Pakistan-India dialogue at a time when we are all moving toward peace. A Kargil commission would lead to allegations and counter allegations and the peace process will get derailed. Far from being patriotic, the call for a Kargil commission is a conspiracy.

Q: Nawaz says he had not entered into any deal for going into exile in Saudi Arabia.

A: There is no doubt that he left the country as part of a deal. There were two types of deals. One was for a pardon against his conviction which he signed along with his brother Shahbaz and Abbas and his son Hussain. The other deal was between the government of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in which Nawaz gave a list of 30 people or so and it was agreed that they go into exile in Saudi Arabia for a period of 10 years. It was also decided that this deal would not be made public and if the matter ended up in Supreme Court, the judges would be briefed about the deal in the chambers. Nawaz convinced the Saudis that they should ask President Musharraf to let him go since he feared he would be hanged. The Saudis guaranteed that he would not take part in any political activity while in exile.

Q: Sharif complains that the Pakistan government refuses to renew his passport though he has been twice prime minister.

A: Is General Musharraf a passport officer? The fact of the matter is that the passports of Nawaz and his entourage were seized by the Saudi authorities on their arrival. How can Nawaz apply for renewal of the passport when he doesn’t have it?

Q: Nawaz says he is willing to join hands with Bhutto to come back to Pakistan and bring about a change.

A: It is curious that they want to join hands while in Parliament their parties accuse each other every month of creating security risks for the country. When you call a person an enemy of the country, how can you make friends with them even in politics?

Q: If Sharif comes back, will he be arrested.

A: He himself doesn’t want to come back. According to the deal, he cannot go out of Saudi Arabia without the joint permission of Saudi and Pakistani governments. Even if he wants to come back there is only one proviso for that-both the governments should amend the agreement. On the other hand, Benazir Bhutto can come back any time but she will have to face the legal cases. By the way, Nawaz shares this trait with Benazir in that when they are in power everything is hunky-dory. Once they are out of it, everything in Pakistan looks terrible.

Q: Sharif also says there is a deep resentment about the way General Musharraf has increased the role of the military in running the things.

A: Why is he talking about military interference? In 1981, he himself was introduced to politics by Punjab Governor Gen Gilani, a military man. Musharraf has taken steps to end the repeated imposition of martial law by setting up a National Security Council. The majority in this council is of civilians. Also, the army is not an enemy-they are Pakistanis first and they are relevant to Pakistan. Their main purpose is to defend the country from both internal and external threats.

Q: The other big issue is whether Musharraf will give up his post as chief of army staff by December 31 as agreed upon with the passage of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution.

A: Now they have made an issue out of Musharraf’s uniform. The 17th Amendment carries everyone’s signature, including mine. It is an unnecessary demand to get Musharraf to say right now at what place and at what time he will take off his uniform. I assure you that the decision will be made in accordance with the provisions in the amendment. It can be interpreted in many ways and only the Supreme Court can do it.

Q: Did differences between Musharraf and Zafarullah Khan Jamali lead to the latter’s resignation as prime minister?

A: There was no bad blood between the two. Even after Jamali’s resignation, the families invited each other for dinners and they are still doing so. I don’t want to go into the reasons of his resignation except that they were personal.

Q: Why did you accept a limited term of 45 days as prime minister?

A: I didn’t accept the post earlier when I was leader of the parliamentary party. Jamali himself had proposed my name. There were two reasons why I didn’t do it then. We had the example of one brother being prime minister at the Center while the other was chief minister of Punjab when the Sharif family was in power. (Pervez Elahi, Shujaat’s first cousin, is now chief minister of Punjab). Secondly, I insisted from day one that I wanted the prime minister to come from the smallest province. Jamali from Baluchistan was the most suitable candidate. Regarding my 45-day tenure, in our culture if someone offers you something, you don’t want to seem ungrateful and turn it down. When Musharraf embarked on this new experiment, I went along with his new thinking. Moreover, Shaukat Aziz (the prime minister-designate) is a senator and has to be elected as member of the National Assembly to become a prime minister.

Q: Are you happy with the pace of Pakistan-India peace talks?

A: I look at the talks in a positive way and I am very hopeful. The chances of a war between the two countries are less than one per cent now. I give full credit to India for its willingness to have a dialogue on the Kashmir issue after a lapse of 30 odd years. We are also ready to discuss other issues. We need to break down these walls of hatred quickly. If we do not find a solution now, then maybe we never will.




Sharif wanted to wrest Srinagar: Pak PM


Monday, 09 August , 2004, 21:25

New Delhi: In a startling disclosure, Pakistan's interim Prime Minister Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain has debunked former premier Nawaz Sharif's claim that he was kept in the dark about the 1999 Kargil intrusion by Gen Pervez Musharraf, who was then the Chief of Army Staff.
Nawaz Sharif had not only given the go-ahead for the Kargil operation, but also wanted to wrest Srinagar, Hussain told Aaj Tak news channel in an interview at Islamabad.



''Nawaz Sharif wanted to reach Srinagar. It was his desire. People should keep one face. Sharif has kept a dual face,'' said Hussain, who was Interior Minister in the Nawaz Sharif government.

Hussain said he was a part of the meeting where Sharif was briefed about the Kargil situation. ''I was present there.''

Asked to elaborate on Nawaz Sharif's mission in 1999, Hussain said Sharif's sole mission was ''he, himself.''

''He was very self-centred, casual in his dealings, and thought he could take on anyone since he had enormous powers,'' Hussain added.

Asked why no commission of inquiry was instituted by Pakistan on Kargil, as being demanded by Nawaz Sharif, Hussain gave President Musharraf a clean chit, stating that this should have been ordered by Sharif, who remained prime minister until five months after the war.

In reply to a question on the likelihood of Kargil conflict leading to a nuclear conflagration between India and Pakistan in 1999, the interim Prime Minister said this was highly unlikely.

''I'm happy that even now, there is no such possibility since both countries are aware of each other's nuclear capabilities,'' he said.
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Arun_S
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For those who refuse to see reality of Pakistani Army it is the first one in modern time to throw uniform and dissolve in civilian cloth: Thankyou Mr. Syed Saleem Shahzad

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FH12Df03.html

Cracking open Pakistan's jihadi core
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - The recent arrest of two top Pakistani jihadis, Maulana Fazalur Rehman Khalil and Qari Saifullah Akhtar, marks the beginning of the end of an era that started in the mid-1980s when the dream of an International Muslim Brigade was first conceived by a group of top Pakistan leaders.

The dream subsequently materialized in the shape of the International Islamic Front, an umbrella organization for militant groups formed by Osama bin Laden in 1998 and loosely coordinated by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) of Pakistan.

The arrests in Pakistan, made under relentless pressure from the United States, are aimed at tracing all jihadi links to their roots, which are mostly grounded in Pakistan's strategic core.

As a former Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) operator and air force official, Khalid Khawaja, commented in the Pakistani press on the arrests of the two jihadis, "Every link of the arrested jihadi leaders goes straight to top army officials of different times."

At one level the arrests are linked to conspiracies against the government - including assassination attempts on President General Pervez Musharraf - and the recruitment of jihadis to fight against US troops in Afghanistan, but the real motives are much more far-reaching.

The present problems in the "war on terror" are linked to the labyrinth of groups developed during the decade-long Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sponsored much of the jihadi movement, using the ISI as a front and a conduit.

For example, US planes used to fly supplies, arms and ammunition for the Afghan fighters to Islamabad, from where they were transferred to the ISI Afghan cell's facility at Rawalpindi, from where the ISI had its own network to distribute the merchandise to the mujahideen groups of its choice.

This modus operandi exposed a serious flaw in US strategic thinking. By not dealing directly with the Afghan groups, the US had no control over which ones benefited, and invariably only those factions that were both anti-Western capitalism and anti-Soviet socialism were cultivated by the ISI.

In this environment, late Pakistani dictator General Zia ul-Haq and his closest associate, the then director general of the ISI, Lieutenant-General Akhtar Abdur Rehman, both of whom died in a plane crash in 1988, saw their opportunity to lay the foundations for a global Muslim liberation movement.

Blissfully unaware of this perspective, the CIA supported Pakistani efforts to recruit Muslim youths from the Pacific to Africa, and a whole generation of youngsters was trained in jihadi, and, importantly, with strong anti-US overtones. Youngsters were drawn from groups such as Abu Sayyaf from the Philippines and Muslims from Arakan province in Myanmar.

To keep the movements under the strict control of the ISI, the ISI established proxies such as al-Badr, the Harkat-i-Jihad-i-Islami and Harkatul Ansar (or Harkatul Mujahideen as it was once known). Akhtar, incidentally, was leader of Harkat, while Khalil was head of the Harkatul Ansar.

Crucially, all this was done without the CIA and, for that matter, the leaders of the Islamic movements knowing just how much control the ISI actually had.

To keep the Arab movements under control, an al-Badr facility was organized in Khost province in Afghanistan. A dynamic law and master of arts graduate from Karachi University, Bakhat Zameen Khan, a member of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), a powerful religious party (who originally hailed from Dir in North West Frontier Province), was chosen as commander. He brought together all Arab jihadis at the facility, and linked senior ones to the ISI. Out of this camp, the Palestinian Hamas emerged, as well as the Arab-sponsored Moro liberation movement led by Abu Sayyaf.

Khan was gradually weaned from the JI, and he exclusively allied al-Badr with the Hezb-i-Islami (HIA) led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who today plays a key role in the Afghan resistance. As a result, the JI announced its separation with al-Badr when it launched the Hizbul Mujahideen militant movement in Kashmir in 1989.

Al-Badr was kicked out of Afghanistan after the emergence of the Taliban in the mid-1990s because of its affiliation with the HIA. The ISI then set up new camps for al-Badr in Pakistani Azad Kashmir - that portion of Kashmir administered by Pakistan.

In the Kargil operation of 1999, which almost brought Pakistan and India to all-out war, al-Badr fighters were initially sent by the Pakistan army to occupy Indian bunkers. Later, another ISI connection, the recently arrested Khalil, and his fighters battled side-by-side with Khan and the Pakistan army against Indian forces.

ISI makes up ground
Former Afghan prime minister and legendary mujahideen Hekmatyar went into exile in Tehran once the Taliban came to power in 1996. But as the Taliban regime disintegrated in late 2001, the US put pressure on Tehran to expel Hekmatyar, planning to arrest him as soon as he returned to Afghanistan, where he believed he could reinvent himself as an anti-US resistance guerrilla leader.

By this time, though, Islamabad, having been persuaded to abandon the Taliban and join the United States' "war on terror", was in the process of finding a substitute connection in Afghanistan. Hekmatyar was the obvious choice. Khan was sent to Tehran to assure Hekmatyar of Pakistan's support should he return to Afghanistan.

Al-Badr members were tasked to escort Hekmatyar from Iran to Afghanistan and to keep him away from the Americans. He was kept in a safe house in Chitral, where al-Badr members, along with Pakistan commandos, guarded the premises. As soon as al-Badr members located other diehard HIA commanders, such as Kashmir Khan and Ustad Fareed, Hekmatyar was launched in Afghanistan's Kunar province to reorganize the HIA as a proxy of the ISI in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, al-Badr, with its long experience in the region, helped many Arabs and their families, desperately wanted by the US, by providing them shelter and arranging fake passports for them to return to their countries of origin.



From the mid-1980s, then, to the present the ISI and al-Badr have virtually been one and the same thing. The US State Department declared al-Badr a terrorist organization a few years ago, and has steadily put pressure on Islamabad to arrest its operators. However, Pakistan, for obvious reasons, has been reluctant to comply with US demands.

The Harkat
The Harkat-i-Jihadi-i-Islami was the first-ever Pakistani militant organization to be formed by clerics of the Deobandi school of Islamic thought. The organization was soon cultivated by the ISI, which provided its jihadis with special training facilities in the Pakistani tribal area of South Waziristan, as well as in Khost in Afghanistan.

The organization's conservative and traditional outlook was well suited to militants from other countries, such as from Bangladesh and Muslims from Myanmar. They were grouped under the Harkat-i-Jihad-i-Islami al-Alami (international) led by Akhtar (now under arrest). Later, when Harkat was outlawed by the US State Department, Harkatul Ansar was formed. However, in secret, Harkat's structure was kept intact.

Akhtar was a main character in the infamous "Operation Caliphate" in which several Pakistani army officers attempted to topple Benazir Bhutto's government in 1995. Other leading players were Major-General Zaheer ul-Islam Abbasi and Brigadier Mustansir Billah.

The officers planned a coup with the help of civilian guerrillas (in fake army uniforms) led by Akhtar. The plotters aimed to occupy General Army Headquarters during a corps commanders' meeting and arrest key leaders and then take over the government and proclaim the formation of an Islamic caliphate. The plot failed miserably, many officers were arrested, and huge piles of ammunition and army uniforms were recovered from Akhtar's car.

The rebel officers were released when Musharraf came to the power in a bloodless coup in October 1999, as was Akhtar. He immediately made his way to Kabul, where he became close to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who only elevated Pakistanis once the ISI had approved. Akhtar was subsequently put in charge of several important assignments, such as training police and armed forces, and some administrative matters.

Khalil, meanwhile, was a veteran of the Afghan war against the Soviets and acclaimed by his Afghan colleagues for his heroic role in the conquest of Khost city by defeating the communist forces there in 1991. Khost was the first Afghan city to fall to the mujahideen after the withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan in 1989, after which the central communist government fell like a house of cards. The conquest of Khost was conceived in the safe houses of the ISI in Peshawar in Pakistan's tribal area by the then director general, Lieutenant-General Asad Durrani.

In 1989, after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, the ISI, then headed by retired Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, had devised "Operation Jalalabad" in which the HIA, led by Hekmatyar, was given a key role. The plan was to capture the strategic city of Jalalabad, and then march on Kabul to topple the communist regime. However, the operation came to nothing.

When Durrani took over the ISI he revamped its strategy. Instead of Jalalabad, the center of operations was focussed on Khost, from where the army would mobilize the mujahideen movement for Kabul.

At first Hekmatyar's HIA called the shots for the Khost operation. Under the new strategy, the HIA was removed from the front line and Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani was given the leading role, along with Pakistani fighters commanded by Khalil. This combination worked much better, and Khost fell to the mujahideen in the holy month of Ramadan (1991). All mujahideen circles still admit that "Khost was captured by Punjabis".

Khalil's Harkatul Ansar was a signatory of a ruling issued by Osama bin Laden in 1998 in which he announced war against the United States after the Americans fired cruise missiles on Afghanistan in retaliation for al-Qaeda attacks on US embassies in Africa. The missiles targeted positions in Kandahar and in Khost, where several members of the Harkatul Ansar were killed. Khalil publicly denounced the US and vowed to take revenge, and soon after made his way on to the United States' list of "most dangerous" people.

At this time Khalil was chosen by one of the architects of the Kargil operation, then lieutenant-general (now General) Aziz Khan to take part in the daring raid into Indian territory. After Bakht Zameen Khan captured some Kargil peaks, Khalil fought side-by-side with the Pakistan army and al-Badr fighters, and remained part and parcel of all military strategies.

After September 11, 2001, Khalil sent several thousand fighters to Afghanistan well in advance of the US-led attack on the country, and personally commanded the forces.

However, after the then director general of the ISI, Lieutenant-General Mehmood Ahmed, retired the day the US attacked Afghanistan, Khalil returned to Pakistan and was placed under house arrest as Islamabad had done an about-turn, under US insistence, on support for the Taliban.

The ISI, jihadi leaders and the Pakistani army have over the years been inextricably linked, especially in Afghanistan. Now that two key jihadi figures, Khalil and Akhtar, have been arrested, it can easily be deduced that the story of their involvement, and the quest to stamp out the jihadi movement at its heart, will not end with them being incarcerated: there has always been someone in the Pakistani establishment, whether active or retired, to pull the strings, as was the case with Khalil and Akhtar, and with Bakhat Zameen Khan.

Now, with the arrest of the the jihadi leaders, the "cover" has been broken and there is little place left for the "operators behind the scenes" to hide.

"The cat is cornered against the wall and the much-awaited game within the army is about to start," commented an observer based in Washington.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is bureau chief, Pakistan, for Asia Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com .

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
Last edited by Arun_S on 14 Aug 2004 09:22, edited 1 time in total.
svinayak
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Post by svinayak »

The rebel officers were released when Musharraf came to the power in a bloodless coup in October 1999, as was Akhtar. He immediately made his way to Kabul, where he became close to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who only elevated Pakistanis once the ISI had approved.
It looks more and more that Mullah Omar is a Paki ISI officer who is working as head of Taliban for ISI. All dissident ISI officers are going towards him.
ramana
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Post by ramana »

Even more important the jihadis are part and parcel of the TSP Army. They are manned and commanded by TSP regulars who dont wear uniform. This links a jihadi strike on India directly to the TSP Army and makes them a legitimate target for any JDAM in India as it activates the NFU.
Ashutosh
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Post by Ashutosh »

Anyboy recall the comments made by Khalid Khwaja on a certain forum some time ago?
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Post by Vivek_A »

‘Sharif was unaware of Kargil operation’

LAHORE: Former president Muhammad Rafique Tarrar on Friday said the Sharif government was unaware of the Kargil operation.
Addressing a seminar “Real Democracy and our Responsibilities”, organised by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz on Friday, he claimed that Prime Minister Sharif ordered the troops to withdraw from Kargil on the request of Chief of the Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf.
He said the killing of children in Muridke would pave the way for dissolution of the government. “The bloodshed of innocent children will not go waste and the rulers have to pay for it,” he said.
Gerard
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Post by Gerard »

http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/aug/10spec1.htm
A village waits for its hero
Kharkhoda Mundali, a nondescript village about 25 km away from Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, is celebrating the return of one of its residents, Sapper Mohammad Arif of 108 Engineers, to India.

Arif and Lance Naik Jasgir Singh were repatriated to India through the Wagah border in exchange for four Pakistani prisoners on Monday, August 9.

The two Indian Army soldiers spent almost five years in Pakistani prisons.
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