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Kargil red-hot again

Nirupama Subramanian

The renewed controversy over the 1999 operation spurs demands for an enquiry commission.

THE 1999 Kargil war was between India and Pakistan, but it has taken on a red-hot new avatar as an unending war of words between President Pervez Musharraf and the former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif.

The two protagonists were at each other's throats over Kargil even before the publication of In the Line of Fire, but the book has injected steroids into the controversy. Kargil was always going to be one of the main draws in General Musharraf's memoirs. But even he may not have imagined that the operation, which he planned, executed and to which he so proudly and fondly devoted an entire chapter in his memoirs, would unleash such a storm in his own country.

Since then, each side has been loudly proclaiming their version to be God's own truth, and the other's as lies and nonsense. From exile, Mr. Sharif has been pulling out every shred of evidence to make his case — the former U.S. Centcom chief, General Anthony Zinni, is a star Sharif witnesses — while General Musharraf, true to his commando outlook, has preferred to go it alone.

"What I have written in the book is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," he said of his best-selling oeuvre. In a recent interview, he dismissed Mr. Sharif's version as bakwaas or nonsense, and General Zinni, who visited Pakistan at the time on a presidential mission to find an exit to the Kargil caper, as "irrelevant." The underlying implication is that his is the final word. But while people may be lining up to buy his book in the thousands, few, even in Pakistan, are prepared to buy his line.

Instead, the Kargil chapter of his memoirs has added vigour to an old demand for an enquiry commission to investigate the episode, similar to India's Kargil Review Committee.

A quick recap of how the battle-lines are drawn in this ongoing war: Mr. Sharif insists that as Prime Minister he was not in the Kargil loop, and came to know that the Pakistan military was involved only when he got a phone call from Atal Bihari Vajpayee, then India's Prime Minister. General Musharraf begged and pleaded with him to bale out the Pakistan army by using the offices of the Americans to arrange a withdrawal, and this is what Mr. Sharif did when he went to Washington for his famous meeting with President Clinton.

Different version

General Musharraf, who shortly after the Kargil war ousted Mr. Sharif in a coup, has a completely different story. According to him, the Prime Minister was fully in the know about Kargil. Withdrawal was the last thing on his mind because Pakistan was militarily on a sound footing. But Mr. Sharif botched it all up by going to Washington where he succumbed to American pressure for an unconditional withdrawal. Still, Kargil was a victory because it helped to "internationalise" the Kashmir issue, and all the progress that has been made with India can be traced back to this.

Over the last few weeks, the Pakistani media have aired two other versions of the Pakistan army's withdrawal from Kargil. The first is General Zinni's version as it appears in his 2004 book Battle Ready. He said he offered a simple rationale to the Pakistani leadership for withdrawal from Kargil — pull back or face nuclear annihilation.

"We needed to come up with a face saving way out of the mess [for Pakistan]. 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," General Zinni wrote.

"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 I insisted, he finally came around and he ordered withdrawal. We set up a meeting with Clinton in July," General Zinni wrote in his book.

The other version is Clinton special adviser Bruce Riedel's, which paints a picture of a pathetic Mr. Sharif, afraid for his job and life if he went back to Pakistan after agreeing to a withdrawal without getting anything in return. But he agreed finally because President Clinton was not budging one bit.

According to Mr. Reidel, who was present through the meeting, it was "clear [that] the civil-military dynamic between Sharif in Islamabad and Musharraf in Rawalpindi was confused and tense."

Others have waded into the controversy, most notably a retired general, rubbished by General Musharraf in his book, and the former Foreign Minister, Sartaj Aziz, calling the operation a big mistake.

Since the publication of the President's book, there have been many voices demanding a commission of enquiry that can establish answers to vital questions about Kargil that remain shrouded in mystery. In this, Mr. Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League has been most vocal, and it has been joined by Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party. The daily Dawn too called for an "impartial enquiry" as the differing accounts were making "the confusion worse confounded." The newspaper said Kargil had thrown questions such as who has the final authority in taking the country to war or agreeing to a ceasefire, the military or the civilian government?

"Let the government appoint a retired judge of the Supreme Court to hold a thorough investigation and let the nation know the truth about Kargil," it said.

For senior journalist Afzal Khan, two questions are central, and the current slanging match has bypassed both. "Beyond who said what to whom and when, two questions need to be answered. What were the objectives of the Kargil operation? Were they achieved?"

President Musharraf has made it clear he does not favour the idea of an enquiry commission. A TV interviewer asked him why, if he believed so strongly in his version as the truth, he was so reluctant about a Kargil enquiry commission. For good measure the interviewer brandished a copy of India's Kargil Review Committee Report in the General's face, asking him if India could have one, why not Pakistan? But the President was unmoved.

"There are many sensitivities relating to Mujahideen," he said at first. Pressed further, he said: "Old corpses need not be dug out. It's an old story, there are lots of sensitivities, and lots of differences have been created without any purpose."

Will this end the controversy? Unlikely. Columnist Ayaz Amir wrote more than two years ago that Kargil is Banquo's Ghost at Musharraf's banquet. It does seem as if this ghost is going to keep appearing at regular intervals, at least as long as President Musharraf remains in power, and Mr. Sharif remains his political adversary.

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