Bharat Rakshak

America intervened decisively in 1999 to end the Kargil stalemate between India and Pakistan and provided a face saving exit to then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif but General Musharraf was the one who pushed Sharif to withdraw the Pakistani troops.

This has been revealed by General Anthony (Tony) Zinni, who was the Commander in Chief of CENTCOM, when Kargil took place, and who was sent on a special mission to Pakistan by President Clinton.

He makes the disclosures in his book, “Battle Ready” written with fiction writer Tom Clancy and published by GP Putnam’s Sons, a member of the Penguin Group.

The book covers Gen. Zinni’s career from Vietnam to Kargil but Pakistan is mentioned in less than 10 pages scattered over the 450-page copy in hard cover.

Zinni’s account of Kargil is, however, detailed and covers pages 346 to 350. Earlier he also devotes one page to Pakistan’s position when Nawaz Sharif was about to detonate the nuclear bomb in response to the Indian test.

In May, Pakistani forces made a deep incursion into an area called Kargil, on the Indian side of the Line of Control.

Though there was normally "fighting" near the Line of Control, the area for a long time had been quite stable. There would be probes and shooting during the good months of the year, but nothing ever changed much; and in wintertime, everybody would pull back down into the valleys, and the two sides would create a "no-man's-land." As spring came, they would go back up into their positions.

Every so often, somebody on one side would be a little late getting up to their spring position, and the other side could grab an advantage of a kilometer or so. It was like "Aha, I've gotcha!" on a tactical level. But it didn't really change things.

This time, however, the Pakistanis waylaid the Indians and penetrated all the way to Kargil. This was such a deep, significant penetration that it wasn't tactical; it threatened Indian lines of communication and support up to Siachen glacier.

The Indians came back with a vengeance. There were exchanges of fire, there was a mobilization of forces, there were bombing attacks, planes were shot down. Then the two sides started to mobilize all their forces all along the line; and it was beginning to look like the opening moves of a larger war. It got alarming.

I was therefore directed by the administration to head a presidential mission to Pakistan to convince Prime Minister Sharif and General Musharraf to withdraw their forces from Kargil.

I met with the Pakistani leaders in Islamabad on June 24 and 25 and put forth a simple rationale for withdrawing: "If you don't pull back, you're going to bring war and nuclear annihilation down on your country. That's going to be very bad news for everybody." Nobody actually quarreled with this rationale. The problem for the Pakistani leadership was the apparent national loss of face. Backing down and pulling back to the Line of Control looked like political suicide. We needed to come up with a face-saving way out of this mess. What we were able to offer was a meeting with President Clinton, which would end the isolation that had long been the state of affairs between our two countries, but we would announce the meeting only after a withdrawal of forces.

That got Musharraf's attention; and he encouraged Prime Minister Sharif to hear me out.

Sharif was reluctant to withdraw before the meeting with Clinton was announced (again, his problem was maintaining face); but after I insisted, be finally came around and he ordered the withdrawal. We set up a meeting with Clinton in July.

Originally posted by John Umrao:
because everybody gets hurt if truth be told.

(that includes the GOI political leadership, the IA top brass too)

The discord over the use of air power in Kargil
- By Mukund B. Kunte

It will be a long time before the last word on Kargil is written. General V.P. Malik, then at the head of the million-plus strong Indian Army, wanting to clear the air on an unsavoury controversy has written on behalf of the olive green community. His view My side of the Kargil story (The Op-ed Page, June 18) must be respected. However, there are some aspects which need to be looked at afresh because he has thrown light on the deliberations of the COSC and CCS and the day by day assessment of the war after he returned from a foreign tour.

First and foremost, the setting in of complacency at Raisina Hill and the "feel good" concept: Consider how in the wake of Pokhran II the BJP along with the Sangh Parivar had gone to town to wax eloquently, but a bit too loudly. Then came the Lahore Bus which was treated as a matchless triumph for Mr Vajpayee and the NDA. It was, however, far from a diplomatic success because at the very moment while the two Prime Ministers were shaking hands in Lahore (lest it is forgotten, on that historic day the three defence chiefs of Pakistan did not even greet our Prime Minister), Pak troops were in fact crossing into Kashmir in the Kargil-Drass sectors.

It is very surprising to know from Malik that the assessment in South Block was that the intruders were militants and not Pakistani troops. Surely, our peace time air surveillance on the border should have given better inputs than cursorily looking at suspicious movements in such a sensitive area. Or were they overtaken by complacency following the much hyped handshake? Our ground recce by the Army formations also failed to alert their senior Army commanders. This writer was told by some junior ranks serving on the Pakistan border how they had become lax after "the Bus" and did not always bother to reach their designated targets but instead filed "all clear" reports. Disastrous consequences followed which were corrected only after a superhuman effort by our brave soldiers.

Now, the role of the Air Force: As advocated by them, use of helicopters for surveillance and ground support wasn’t a wise option after the "intrusions" had turned out to be a combat situation between our two Armies. Furthermore, air power was ruled out on the premise that the conflict would have been enlarged. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, we lost two fighter aircraft on the very first day when air element was introduced in the war theatre putting brakes on that tactic. The general does not reveal the American role and President Clinton prevailing on New Delhi not to escalate. Or perhaps, Islamabad had let it be known that they had the nuclear option — they were never a party to our "no first use" doctrine. Thus, the breast beating by the leaders of the NDA in 1998 on India acquiring the status of a nuclear-weapon capable state was just "hot air."

It becomes obvious that the responsibility for the 500-odd fatal war casualties, never mind the coffin scam, must fall squarely on the government of the day, with the buck stopping at Atal Behari Vajpayee’s desk. An exceedingly pro-active Raksha Mantri, who had sacked the naval chief a few months earlier, could not have dared to touch the Army or Air Force chiefs between whom there appears to have been some mismatch about the use of air power. A discord on the use of air power had also surfaced in the 1965 war when an overbearing Army chief had not only ruled out the participation of the Navy but asked for air support only after his ground troops were facing impossible odds in the land battle. The Air chief (Arjun Singh) agreed but only after forcing the Army chief to take him to the defence minister. Government clearance was then given by Yeshwantrao Chavan. No such detail is available for Kargil except for what Malik has recorded now after a lapse of so many years. Perhaps if "Old George" had reduced the frequency of his tours to Siachen and more meaningfully visited other sectors in Kashmir, a different picture would have emerged. But then, the Lahore Bus got the better of him too!

Finally, intelligence, or lack of it as noted by Malik: It was concluded in the Subramaniam Committee report that there was a failure of intelligence assessment or rather the failure in correct interpretation by the CCS of all the intelligence reports. If there was indeed a failure of intelligence, why was the head of RAW promoted post-haste as a governor even before he had reached the age of superannuation?

n Mukund B. Kunte was secretary of the Chiefs of Staff Committee besides serving a long stint with the Research and Analysis Wing in the Cabinet Secretariat’s department of Cabinet Affairs