Former
Lt Gen (retd) Shahid Aziz’s upcoming book has already raked up the Kargil
episode and the book is not even about Kargil! From what has so far appeared,
there’s nothing he has said that is not already known.
Yet,
there’s back
and forth between Aziz and Musharraf. This is the problem with avoiding
closures. It is somewhat ironic that any mention of Kargil, the operation
Musharraf defends with such vehemence, upsets him greatly. It’s almost like he
knows that operation is unlikely to place him in the hall of fame. Infamy is,
of course, another matter.
Consider.
The
first and the most important issue is whether the civilian government gave a
nod to the operation. Musharraf says then-prime minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif was
in the know of it. Perhaps, but the question is: when was the PM told about it;
or, to what extent? It is one thing for a civilian government to order the army
to start a conflict and quite another for a cabal of generals to initiate
hostilities and then inform the PM and other services that the bow is bent and
drawn.
Available
evidence points to the fact that Sharif was given fait accompli and thus placed
in a terribly unenviable position — especially if we note that Sharif was
already committed to a process of rapprochement with New Delhi and had hosted
the Indian PM, oblivious to what the generals had pulled.
Musharraf’s
assertion becomes doubtful also because the operation was kept hush-hush to the
point where even chiefs of air force and navy were not informed until the Northern
Light Infantry — then a paramilitary force — troops and other support
elements had occupied some 500 square miles of the area. In fact, the DGMO, Lt
Gen Tauqir Zia (retd), was ordered, ex post facto, to come up with a rationale
to justify the operation.
If
there ever was a classic example of situating the appreciation rather than
appreciating the situation, this was it.
If
truth be told, they had no plan, neither strategic nor tactical. No thought was
given to whether the environment at the regional and global levels was
conducive for such an operation. There was no proper assessment of the Indian
response and it was assumed, arbitrarily, that India would resign to the
occupation instead of mounting a maximum effort to evict our troops. Or what
options, if any, Pakistan could exercise in case the Indians decided, which
sure as hell they would have and did, to sacrifice any number of men to regain
lost positions. How would our troops survive beyond a certain point in the
absence of a secure line of communication; what will happen when they run out
of rations and ammunition and when casualties begin to mount and the men left
to fend for themselves?
Did
the plan cater to that? Were we prepared to open another front across the LoC
to force the Indians to reorganise and thereby ensure that the mounting
pressure on the men we had left trapped on those heights was released? And if
that scenario was indeed war-gamed, did the game factor in the Indian response
if we chose to expand the zone of conflict? From the conversation between
Musharraf and then-CGS Aziz Khan, which was intercepted, it doesn’t seem to me
that any of these scenarios were war-gamed. Oh, and that conversation not only
gives the lie to Musharraf’s Sharif-knew-it position but also makes a mockery
of his great insistence on secrecy, exchange notes as he did on a top secret
operational matter on an open, unsecure line. And CGS Aziz’ boasts show how
poorly they had assessed India’s response and their own perceived advantage.
Secrecy
has levels and Musharraf was not mounting a Special Forces operation which
required going in, executing a mission and getting out. Even such an operation
would have required political consent.
At
some point the Indians would have known about the occupation. If Musharraf and
his lieutenants had worked out the scenarios, they would have known that they
could not finger India without the other two services onboard and, in the
worst-case scenario, preparing the nation for a possible broader conflict.
In
his book,
in the chapter on Kargil, Musharraf keeps talking about deploying troops to
cover gaps along the LoC, why others outside the FCNA and 10 Corps were not
informed, why India was in no position to opt for an all-out war and in the
same breath talks about India’s use of air force, its disproportionate response
and the war hysteria that had gripped India and which necessitated pulling in
the CAS and the CNS. The chapter is remarkable for its disingenuousness and
inconsistencies.
Brig
Shaukat Qadir (retd) in his article for the RUSI (Royal United Services
Institute) journal argues that the operation began with limited objectives but
acquired a bigger momentum. That is possible, though I can’t see how it could
have expanded so much on the spur of the moment. But if it indeed did, that
still reflects poorly on the commanders who turned salami slicing into a huge
embarrassment for the Indian Army which it just could not swallow.
At
the politico-strategic level, Musharraf made no serious attempt to understand
the impact of diplomacy being conducted between Islamabad and Delhi. Nor does
it seem that he realised how effectively India would combine its local military
response with its diplomatic offensive.
His
assertion that Sharif lost the war on the political front which he (Musharraf)
was winning on the ground is nothing if not dishonest, the bravery of the men
on the ground notwithstanding. US General Anthony Zinni, a Musharraf friend,
has a different account and informal talks with a number of officers over the
years corroborate that account.
Some
former officers on internet discussion forums fault Shahid Aziz for not taking
to the grave service matters. That’s poppycock. Kargil requires closure not
just because we need to honour those who fought like dickens and fell to a
harebrained plan as much as enemy fire, but also because we need to identify
the structural flaws in decision-making that now threaten to unravel us.
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