From Kargil to the Coup: Events that shook Pakistan

522 Pages·2018·2.05 MB·English

by  Nasim Zehra

From Kargil to the Coup

Events that shook Pakistan

Nasim Zehra

My Beloved Mother

(Late Begum Akhtar Akhlaque Hussain)

& my Beloved Motherland

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
7

WHY KARGIL?
10

THE ROOTS OF CONFRONTATION
21

THE KARGIL OPERATION: CONTEXT AND CONTRADICTIONS
47

DIVERGENT TRACKS: DIALOGUE VS. OPERATION KOH-I-PAIMA
86

NECKS ON THE LINE AND THE LOTUS LAKE
117

KARGIL UNCOVERED
138

BOLT FROM THE BLUE
153

IN THE FIRING LINE
180

FIGHT-BACK
193

MYTH-MAKING AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT
208

MAPPING EXITS
224

NUCLEAR CARD AND WASHINGTON’S GAINS
238

ALL FALLS APART
263

THE JULY 2 DCC MEETING
279

THE END GAME
289

IN THE EYE OF STORM
323

THE AUGUST QUADRANGLE
347

A BRIDGE TOO FAR
369

THE COUP
395

6
From Kargil to the Coup

READING KARGIL
422

CONCLUSION
463

SOURCES OF PRIMARY DATA (INTERVIEWS, CONVERSATIONS AND

WRITTEN EXCHANGES)
466

INDEX
471

END NOTES
475

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ook writing is seldom a solo effort; a book always flows from a web of
support, interactions and relationships. Acknowledgments often
sketch the web.

Here is the web from which From Kargil to the Coup, was produced.

My appreciation to all those civil and military officers, ministers and
politicians in Pakistan, and also in India and in the US (listed in the book)
who took time out and were willing to be interviewed.

At the core of this undertaking are the many courageous and
conscientious officers of the Pakistan army without whose cooperation the
story of Operation Koh Paima could not have been reconstructed. It
included, among others Lt general (r) Nadeem Ahmad, Lt general (r )
Gulzar Kiani, Lt general (r) Javed Hassan, Lt general (r) Amjad Shuaib,
Brigadier (r) Syed Azhar Raza, Brigadier (r) Khalid Nazir. While some
officers have been named many opted to remain anonymous. Some even
reached out to me to tell the incredible story that they were part of. I am
grateful to each and every one of them for their trust and confidence.

I am indebted to Professor Rifaat Hussain, Professor Ayesha Jalal,

Professor Hassan Abbas and Riaz Mohammad Khan who were particularly
generous with their time. At various occasions they acceded to my request
and reviewed my work. Jalil Abbas Jillani and Akbar Zeb among others
also patiently went through many chapters giving me candid and critical
feedback. On occasions friends including Mushahid Hussain Sayed, Dr.

B

8
From Kargil to the Coup

Moeed Yusuf, Kathy Gannon, Aga Imran Hameed, Dr. Maleeha Lodhi,
Zahid Hussain and Sherry Rehman also took time out to review sections
of my work. Dr. Shireen Mazari, throughout remained a dependable
friend.

My group of close friends, Shazreh Hussain, Fatima Hameed and

Humaira Sheikh helped along the way...they often prodded me to hurry
and cross the finishing line!

And to my family: my deepest gratitude to all of them for they
believed in me as their unstinted support throughout this long drawn out
book writing process. My late Mother’s ‘never give up and never grumble’
philosophy helped as did my family’s consistent interest in my work, to
soldier on and complete what at times seemed to be an impossible task.
When my attention was often captured by the more immediate, my
siblings- sisters Anjum Zehra, Shamim Zehra, Sharaf Zehra , Qudssia
Akhlaque, Asya Akhlaque , Ghazala Kazim and brother Khurshid Kazim-
kept me on track by caringly nudging me to carry on, by insisting my effort
was worthwhile. A warm thank you to my brothers-in-laws, Sadiq Bhai,
Jamshed, William , Mahmood, Humair and to my nieces Shahbano, Noor
Zehras (senior and junior!), Juggun, Sukaina, and nephews Zeeshan,
Farhan, Jaffer, Mehdi, Wali, Hussain, Zain and Raza for their affection
and encouragement through this journey. Manizeh, both friend and family
too had many wise words to share through this long journey.

My late father Mianjan’s tough work discipline and brother Abbas’s
intensely chaotic energy still stays afloat within the family zone…and I
benefitted from that too!

In what was so often also a lonely and tedious effort, it was my
Mustapha’s delightful energy, first as a little boy and then as a teenager,
that helped me bounce back.

For their guidance in especially my down and confusing moments,
special gratitude to Suhail Bhai, late Shah sahib and to Mian sahib.

Beyond primary sources my research was primarily dependent on
newspaper and journals. Nasir Zaidi, the star researcher at the Islamabad
Regional Studies Institute provided me the gold mine of Indian and
Pakistani newspapers, critical to reconstructing the events from Kargil to

Acknowledgements
9

the coup. At the Harvard University libraries many unnamed individuals
also pulled out microfiche copies of newspaper reports and journal articles.
Their ‘giving’ attitudes made my research task truly gratifying.

Without Adil Abbasi’s support on the multiple demands I
simultaneously worked on, this project would have been an arduous task.

Special appreciation also for Shehrbano Kazim, who remained
steadfast in her support especially in the last few years of this undertaking.

A big thank you finally also to all those individuals in the various
libraries and coffee shops in Pakistan and abroad, where I intermittently
‘resided’ over the years for very long hours to work on my manuscript.
Whether it was the management and tea-providers at the library of the
Institute of Strategic Studies or the program officer Jorge Espada and Holly
Angel at the Harvard University’s Asia Centre, their friendly demeanors
energized me to work untiringly in solitude.

There are indeed many others and especially the management and
publishing team at Sang e Meel without whose special interest and effort
this work would not have found its way to you !

Introduction

WHY KARGIL?

n recent years, across the Pakistan-India border and the Line of
Control(LOC), guns have tended to converse more often than policy-
makers. While the relationship between these two nuclear-armed states,
Pakistan and India, influence the lives of almost one fifth of humanity, yet
unfortunately hostility appears to be the only real durable factor in this
inter-State relationship. This hostility rules out genuine cooperation while
minimizing the possibility of resolving outstanding issues ranging from
Siachin, Sir Creek, Kashmir, to water and trade disputes. Against the
backdrop of this abiding antagonism South Asia remains the world’s least
economically integrated region. Regional trade in South Asia accounts for
only 5% of the overall trade. The people of South Asia are confronted with
grave environmental threats including global warming, rising water levels
leading to water and food scarcity, displacement of large populations, rise
in infectious disease epidemics.

South Asia, the world’s most potent nuclear flash point, is a region in
desperate need of peace and security.

Yet why is Pakistan-India peace illusive?

The 1999 Kargil battle, code-named Koh-e-Paima (Operation KP),
explains this well. Its events weave the story of repeated blunders, involving
national and regional players, that prevent genuine peace efforts from
succeeding.

I

Introduction
11

My work on Operation Koh-e-Paima (Operation KP) began as a
chapter in a book I started writing in 2002 on Pakistan-India relations
during the period after the May 1998 nuclear tests. When the chapter on
Kargil had crossed ninety typewritten pages, various friends who read it,
insisted that the book should be exclusively on Operation KP.

Operation KP had suddenly surfaced in the news only weeks after the
Nawaz-Vajpayee Lahore Summit, which had ended with the Lahore
Declaration, in which both governments had decided to open discussions
on the perennial and intractable Kashmir dispute. Initial news of
heightened fighting along the LOC (Line of Control) had taken Pakistanis
by surprise. It raised endless questions regarding the operation: Why was
it conducted? Who gave the go-ahead for it? Who participated in it? What
was its outcome? What should have been publicly known facts had turned
into deep mysteries because the operation itself was a covert undertaking.
For example: Who was actually fighting? Was Operation KP government
approved? Was it across the LOC in Indian Held Kashmir (IHK) or in
Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK)? Was the operation proving difficult and
costly for Pakistan? Had it hurt India in any way? In retrospect, it became
evident that there was a deep split over Operation KP between the civilian
and military leaderships.

The end phase of Operation KP proved traumatic for Pakistan. The
Prime Minister suddenly left in the early hours of 4 July 1999 for
Washington DC where the Clinton-Sharif meeting produced the Pakistan-
US statement calling for the ‘withdrawal’ of troops. At home the fierce—
if subdued—contestation began in civil, military, and public circles as to
whether Pakistan had ‘gained’ or ‘lost’ from the operation. In this highly
toxic environment, despite efforts at keeping the civil-military trust intact,
the proverbial ‘man on horseback’ did ride in. Pakistan had twice before
experienced coups d’état. This time, however, it happened with the military
chief in the air and key operation planners leading the coup! My chapter
had covered Kargil from various angles, including civil-military relations,
decision-making processes, comparisons between Operation KP and the
1965 Operation Gibraltar, the triangular Pakistan-US-India relations
during the Op, and the impact of the nuclear factor on this kind of limited
operation.

12
From Kargil to the Coup

In my original chapter on Operation KP, there was some new
information on most of these issues. I had written on the operation in real-
time with access to key Pakistani decision-makers. Later, in 2002, I also
met key Indian decision-makers. However, it was not until the end phase
of the operation that I had begun to grasp the facts about it. Until then, I
had believed the official narrative that the Mujahideen were the ones doing
the fighting in Kargil. After it ended, I occasionally wrote about the facts
of the operation, but nothing comprehensive.

Significance of Op KP

However, given the broad canvas over which Operation KP was
spread—ranging from Pakistan-India relations to civil-military relations
and the decision-making process—I was convinced that a fuller account of
the dynamics and implications of Operation KP was needed. The
operation had not only brought down an elected government but had
replaced it with the longest military regime in Pakistan’s coup-studded
political history. There had to be a comprehensive narration, one that
would weave in critical dimensions of statecraft and policy-making while
unravelling the mystery of a military adventure planned for the world’s
highest and toughest battle-ground. Other themes that would emerge
within the narrative of the operation include civil-military relations,
Pakistan-India, big power-small power dynamics, and the nuclear factor.

The facts of a controversial operation also needed to be revealed to a
people who, in the past too, have had to pay heavily for serious policy
blunders of Pakistan’s policy-makers, including the ultimate price of the
country’s breakup.

In 2003, I began writing my book on Kargil. This was, at first, a part-
time undertaking; family and professional obligations were preventing me
from taking it up full-time. I was able to take only a few months out every
few years to exclusively focus on writing. As a fellow at the Harvard
University Asia Centre, I was able to work in undisturbed space and access
the excellent research facilities. In 2006, I was asked to teach a course at
the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University,

Introduction
13

in Washington DC. All this meant time away from working on Operation
KP.

Deviations and Information Collection

The silver lining to these detours and writing spread over many years
was that that new information kept trickling in, especially about Operation
KP. Information about the military aspect of the operation was especially
a boon since initially hardly any first-hand accounts from the field fighters
were available. The key planner of the operation, General Javed Hassan,
had talked about it in two extensive sittings and so did a senior officer from
the Directorate of Military Operations (DMO) during multiple meetings.
Over the years, moreover, several key field commanders were willing to
share critical, field-level information regarding the operational aspects and
progress of the operation. There was also open debate between recently
retired generals on the merits and de-merits of Operation KP. For example,
responding to General Musharraf’s defence of Operation KP, the former
Chief of General Staff (CGS), General Ali Kuli Khan, attacked the army
chief for launching the operation. Similarly Lieutenant General Shahid
Aziz, Musharraf’s once blue-eyed boy, wrote extensively about it. Another
book by a then serving officer, Colonel Ashfaq Hussain (Retd), Witness to
Blunder: Kargil Story Unfolds (Idara Matbuat-e-Sulemani, 2008), also
deviated from the dominant narrative. This book had a different
perspective from that of Dr Shireen Mazari’s book, The Kargil Conflict,
1999: Separating Fact from Fiction (Institute of Strategic Studies, 2003).
Dr Mazari’s book details specific Indian military and diplomatic actions
arguing that ‘Pakistan got sucked into an ever-widening conflict as a result
of (these) pre-planned Indian actions’. All this published information and
the facts collected first-hand from active field commanders were especially
valuable, given the Army’s super-secrecy syndrome. The illustration of this
was my failure to get a copy of the pre and post Op curriculum of strategy
courses taught at the Command and Staff College, Quetta. I wanted them
because former Army Chief General Pervez Ashfaq Kayani had said in an
interview that as a result of learnings from Operation KP, the strategy
courses taught to military officers at the Command and Staff College were
changed. Repeated requests at the highest level bore no fruit.

14
From Kargil to the Coup

Beyond Pakistan’s Binary Debate

Interestingly, much of Pakistan’s political and security debate has
veered towards the civilian versus military binary. Pakistan’s political
journey, with military rule spanning more than half its history, lends itself
to such an approach. In mainstream debate, this promotes a flawed reading
of decision-making, policies, and policy impacts. States and societies with
a flawed understanding of policy matters can rarely become effective
advocates for policy change. Acquiring consensus on Pakistan’s India
policy has been especially difficult as official and public debate has tended
to follow the civil-military binary path. Acquiring consensus from a deeply
divided narrative is often challenging, if not impossible. For example, on
wars, the critical landmarks in Pakistan-India relations, the narratives have
been influenced by this civil-military binary approach and are deeply
divided on who started which war, which political and diplomatic
environment were the wars initiated in, what was achieved or lost, etc. In
some cases, distance in time has allowed a review of the original text on the
wars. For example, the 1948 and the 1965 wars now have a revisionist
historiography written even by military generals. But this has not been the
case with Operation KP, the most recent—albeit limited—Pakistan-India
military encounter. As of now, very little comprehensive work on Kargil
has been produced. The common narrations either eulogize the army while
critiquing the civilians or extol the civilians while critiquing the army.
Paucity of information from both civilian and military perspectives has also
fed this situation.

The Historical Context of Operation KP

The significance of Operation KP also flows from what triggered it:
the Kashmir issue, around which a never-ending confrontation simmers
between the two South Asian neighbours.

In June 1947, the Muslim League leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah had
concluded that the 527 princely States, including Jammu and Kashmir,
could remain independent while his Congress counter-part, Jawaharlal
Nehru, had insisted that they could not be ‘allowed to claim
independence’.1 Jinnah had anticipated a far less complex challenge at

Introduction
15

Independence. Closer to Partition, mindful perhaps only of the sentiment
in the State including the anti-Maharaja developments in Poonch, Jinnah
predicted that ‘Kashmir will fall into our lap like a ripe fruit’.2 Nevertheless,
Jinnah had not registered Nehru’s political machinations over Kashmir.
India’s historian-lawyer, A. G. Noorani, writes in his seminal essay Bilateral
Negotiations on Kashmir: Unlearnt Lesson,3 ‘Nehru and Vallabhai Patel, the
Deputy Prime Minister and the one appointed by Nehru to formulate the
strategy to deal with the princely States, were fast sewing up arrangements
for Kashmir’s accession to India even before Sheikh Abdullah’s release from
prison on 29 September 1947 and well before the tribesmen from Pakistan
entered Kashmir on 21 October.’ Elaborating this point, Noorani writes
that earlier, on 28 May 1947, Patel had said, ‘Kashmir remains within the
Indian Union even if a division of India and partition of Punjab takes
place.’4 Subsequently, on 3 July 1947, he wrote to the Jammu and Kashmir
Prime Minister, Ram Chandra Kak, ‘I realize the peculiar difficulties of
Kashmir, but looking to its history and traditions it has, in my opinion, no
other choice but to accede to India.’5

Nehru, too, was single-minded on accession of Kashmir to India.
Even to his friend and India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan, Sri
Prakash, Nehru had admitted on 25 December 1947, ‘The fact is that
Kashmir is of the most vital significance to India as well as to Pakistan.
There lies the rub.’ He added: ‘Kashmir is going to be a drain on our
resources but it is going to be a greater drain on Pakistan. In a military
sense, we are stronger.’6 Equally, Nehru’s 21 November 1947 exchange
with Sheikh Abdullah lays bare the Indian Prime Minister’s true thinking
on the accession issue: ‘Referendum and plebiscite are ill-advised but must
only tactically be supported to avoid world criticism; that referendum is
merely an academic issue and that after all for the Kashmiris, likely to be
defeated in their “little war” against the State and the Indian forces, it
would be absurd to want a referendum.’7

As early as 1951, Nehru was slipping away from the plebiscite option
and from international mediation and calling for merely negotiating
adjustments to the ceasefire line. At the 9 January 1951 Informal
Conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers plebiscite, Nehru argued,
was tantamount to ‘upsetting of the somewhat unstable equilibrium’.8 The