May 12, 2021
As Zehra notes and as is pretty well known
Mahmud Ahmed, and Commander Force Command Northern Areas (FCNA) Brig. Nothing
was written and they only had symbols on them."It would be a five-phased
operation and the first phase has been completed," he explained." From Kargil to
the Coup: Events that shook Pakistan by Nasim Zehra, Sang-e-Meel Publications,
Rs 2,283 At the height of the Kargil crisis in June 1999, Nasim Zehra was one of
a handful of journalists who accompanied Pakistan’s foreign minister Sartaj Aziz
when he travelled to Delhi for talks with India’s foreign minister Jaswant Singh
and then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, where the Indian government made
it plain that Pakistan must withdraw its troops or face a full-scale retaliation
by the Indian Army. Gen. However, military maps without any text were used for
the briefing. Gen. Presented with a fait accompli, the Pakistan Army cleverly
fed him a back story — that this was not just payback for the Indian Army’s
occupation of Siachen, but also the re-taking of Kashmir through fair means and
foul. Musharraf had even presented to Benazir Bhutto when she had taken over as
Prime Minister. Gen.In her recently released book, From Kargil to the Coup:
Events That Shook Pakistan, Zehra does what few in Pakistan have had the courage
to do — nail the lie that the Pakistan Army attempted to perpetuate to the world
some 20 years ago: that it was not behind the hare-brained scheme to capture the
Kargil heights. By contrast, his foreign minister was perturbed.Zehra’s book
lays the blame for Kargil, and rightly so, at Gen. He recalled the hazardous
terrain he had personally visited. For example, the LoC was not clearly
demarcated on the map. nawaz sharif, book review, kargil crisis.On Kargil — and
the coup that was to come when Gen."
The retired general also asked the DGMO,
‘What if the Indians do not remove their troops from the Valley and instead
induct air power in the conflict theatre?’ Meanwhile, the silent worrier in the
room, Mr Sharif’s defence secretary, also a retired general, opted to not raise
any questions. At the conclusion of the formal meeting, he merely whispered to
other military officers, ‘The foreign office will never be able to handle this’.
Gen. Javed Hassan, as well the ISI’s top brass — the director-general ISI Lt. He
then proceeded to show on the map scores of positions that had already been
taken." "Sartaj Aziz Sahib, can we ever take Kashmir through paperwork? We have
here an opportunity to take Kashmir," was a relaxed Mr Sharif’s response. There
was no mention of Pakistani troops crossing the LoC, nor of the Pakistani troop
build-up 5 to 10 km beyond the LoC. Pervez Musharraf, to the Chief of General
Staff Lt. Tauqir Zia tells Mr Sharif: "Sir, as per your desire, we have made a
plan to upgrade the freedom movement in Kashmir. Normally, even military men
receiving briefings on such maps, with only symbols, first require orientation
to understand what these maps represent.As Zehra recounts in one of the book’s
most riveting chapters, Lt. Shahid Aziz, and ISI’s point man for Afghanistan and
Kashmir, Maj. Pervez Musharraf, on the undeclared war. Gen."The Kargil clique,
as Zehra names them, were in full attendance. But to my mind, for Mr Sharif to
endorse an infraction that had happened without his knowledge, but under his
watch, is the real story of the book. Gen."In the end, though, while Mr Sharif
may have been presented with a fait accompli, the question of why, as Prime
Minister, Nawaz Sharif did not call Gen. From Army Chief Gen. A retired general,
Malik grilled the Commander 10 Corps about the logistics for the forward
troops.Zehra writes, had not factored in the "critical problems of logistical
stretch.In a dangerously post-nuclear subcontinent, the crossing by Pakistan
troops of the Line of Control into India through April 1999, could have easily
led to a cataclysmic conflagration that could have annihilated both countries.
Gen. Mahmud’s curt response was that times had changed, that ‘our troops are
fully covered’. Only, she had the sense to shoot it down. Musharraf finally
overthrew Mr Sharif — Zehra had access to the Army’s top brass, including former
Chief of General Staff Gen. He was clear that this operation would not help
Pakistan get international support for Kashmir. Gen. Gen. Musharraf’s door. Ali
Kuli Khan and Gen. Tauqir Zia to Mr Sharif on May 17, 1999, well after Pakistani
troops, posing as mujahideen had occupied the heights, was kept deliberately
ambiguous even by military standards. Shahid Aziz. For Pakistan watchers like
me, it will be interesting to see if the author and now celebrated television
anchor will get the inside story on how the Army plotted the downfall of Mr
Sharif in yet another attempt to cut a homegrown political force down to size,
in a continuing game of one-upmanship that mars Pakistan’s fractured polity. The
other obviously perturbed man in the room was Mr Sharif’s minister for Kashmir
and northern areas, Majeed Malik. Ziauddin Butt, director, analysis wing, Maj.
He questioned how supplies would reach troops under "adverse weather conditions
and in a hostile environment". Musharraf’s bluff and call back the troops goes
to the heart of the systemic failure and the inability of one civilian
government after another to tackle the Pakistan military’s overreach."There were
glaring flaws in both the planning and execution of the so-called Operation Koh
Paima or Operation KP as it came to be called in Pakistan," Zehra says." It fed
into Mr Sharif’s pride — a Kashmiri native brought up in Lahore — that it would
be under his prime ministerial watch that Pakistan would wrest Kashmir away from
India, even if it meant breaking with the Lahore Declaration that he had signed
with Vajpayee. The troops — and not the shepherds and mujahideen that the
Pakistan Army said were behind the operation — were trapped in high-altitude
dugouts, with no food or water, surviving on grass as Indian soldiers retook the
heights and forced a surrender. Gen.As Zehra says in this eye-popping tell-all,
the briefing by director-general, military operations, Lt.As Zehra tells it:
"Sartaj Aziz pointedly asked his PM whether the plan, that the China
DIN975 standard carbon steel thread rod Factory Army had made, was not
contrary to the undertaking in the Lahore Declaration. Hence, during the
presentation, when Pakistani and Indian positions were pointed out to Prime
Minister Sharif, he was unable to fully comprehend the locations of these
posts.To my mind, while the book is extremely well-researched, especially when
recounting the role played by the Clinton administration in getting India and
Pakistan to walk back from the nuclear brink, Zehra has been braver still in
nailing the other, equally damaging half-lie that has continued to haunt former
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif: that he was fully and completely on board right
from the start and worked closely with Kargil mastermind, Gen.
Of all the
ill-conceived wars between these two neighbours in their often brutal 71-year
old history, Gen. Aziz Khan, commander 10 corps Lt. As Zehra notes and as is
pretty well known, it was a plan that Gen. Jamshed Gulzar. Musharraf and his
Kargil clique’s flawed strategy,Zehra writes, had not factored in the "critical
problems of logistical stretch.Clearly leavened with huge doses of flattery, it
was also meant to give Mr Sharif very little room to manoeuvre. Musharraf’s
Kargil misadventure must rank as the most foolhardy. To everyone else outside
that circle — especially a shocked Sartaj Aziz and the minister for Kashmir
Majeed Malik — it was military hubris by a general who lacked the tactical
ability to think beyond the immediate."Lt. Instead, for him, the main focus of
the briefing was the achievements of the Pakistani troops. Musharraf’s
"blue-eyed boy", Lt
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