American Version of Kargil Conflict

A view from America By Shaheen Sehbai
The News, October 10, 2006
The writer is a senior Washington-based Pakistani journalist

President General Pervez Musharraf has reignited the explosive and controversial issue of Kargil by making direct and categorical statements about his own role and that of the then prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. The contradictory versions of these two leaders accuse each other of lack of vision, leadership and courage. But the role of the US in the conflict has been elaborated by the man in the middle, the then commander-in-chief of the US Central Command (Centcom), General Anthony Zinni, who penned down his version in a book after his retirement.

Zinni's book, "Battle Ready" written with fiction writer Tom Clancy and published by GP Putnam's Sons, a member of the Penguin Group in May 2004, covers Zinni's career from Vietnam to Kargil and Pakistan is mentioned in less than 10 pages scattered over the 450-page hard cover edition. 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 in 1998 Nawaz Sharif was about to detonate the nuclear bomb in response to the Indian test.

According to him America intervened decisively in 1999 to end the Kargil stalemate between India and Pakistan and provided a face saving exit to Nawaz Sharif. General Pervez Musharraf, according to Zinni, "encouraged the then PM to hear out the US withdrawal proposal". When Kargil took place General Zinni was sent on a special mission to Pakistan by President Bill Clinton.

The Pakistan Army had at the time claimed that its troops were not involved in Kargil and it were the Kashmiri Mujahideen who were fighting but Zinni writes with full authority and knowledge that the entire operation was carried out by the Pakistan forces. More proof of this was, incidentally, provided in the Punjab Assembly on June 1, when the provincial government placed data in the house stating that 2,000 acres of special land in Punjab had been allotted to the Pakistan Army for distribution among the families of the troops killed in the Kargil war.

General Zinni writes: "On the 21st of April, (1999) I traveled to Pakistan for several days of meetings with the new Chief of Staff General Pervez Musharraf. The two of us connected quickly and easily. He was bright, sincere, and personable. A fervent nationalist who nevertheless leaned toward the West, he was as appalled as General Karamat over the ever-worsening corruption within the civilian government.

"He also understood the various, powerful Islamist currents running through his country, and saw them as the threats they were to bringing his country into the twenty-first century; yet he also understood that his country would never modernise and solve its myriad ills without the emergence of some kind of religious accommodation, and hopefully religious consensus.

"It was a great meeting, despite the chill cast by our sanctions. As I was leaving, we both agreed to stay in close touch (we exchanged our home telephone numbers). Our friendship would later prove to be enormously valuable to both our countries.

"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, he finally came around and he ordered the withdrawal. We set up a meeting with Clinton in July."

This is General Zinni's account of Kargil and what he says is the US version of how things were perceived in Washington and how they were settled. No matter what Nawaz Sharif or General Musharraf may claim, the truth has to be sifted out from what the others have to say about the issue and Zinni has given the most authentic third-party account. Analysts and historians can now determine whether General Musharraf has written the truth or what Nawaz Sharif has been saying is right.