Lt Gen (retd) Shahid Aziz opens Pandora Box on Kargil issue

[batmannow]

Jitne marzi points laga lo. Th fact of the matter is that 1 mistake of Jinnah took the main part of Kashmir away from Pakistanis..

A spicy menage a trois: The shocking love triangle between Lord Mountbatten, his wife and the founder of modern India
By GLENYS ROBERTS
UPDATED: 00:45 GMT, 26 September 2009
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...-wife-founder-modern-India.html#axzz2K39dCD9U
**
'At the stroke of the midnight hour when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.'*
Those powerful words, memorable to everyone who loves India, were uttered by the father of the modern nation, Jawaharlal Nehru, when the country became independent more than 60 years ago.*
Behind this famous 'tryst with destiny' speech lay a deeply personal fight to escape the domination of the British Raj, a struggle all the more meaningful because of Nehru's private life.*

Special relationship: Lord and Lady Mountbatten with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru
For the handsome widower had formed a more than usually deep bond with, of all people, the beautiful wife of the chief representative of the occupying power, Edwina, Lady Mountbatten.*
If you came across their romance in a novel, you would dismiss it instantly as fiction.*
But the fact is the couple shared an extraordinary love. Their deep attachment lasted from the moment they met in 1947 in New Delhi until the day Edwina died 13 years later.*
It was such a meaningful relationship that even Lord Mountbatten himself found it best to turn a blind eye.*
Perhaps he even encouraged it, so that he could benefit from any insight into the Indian mind that his wife could pass him at this pivotal time in their history.*
This fascinating personal intrigue was to have been the basis of a new film, Indian Summer, starring Hugh Grant and Cate Blanchett as Lord and Lady Mountbatten.*
As for the handsome Nehru, rumour has it he was to be played by Irrfan Khan, star of the hugely successful Slumdog Millionaire.*
'Dickie was devoted to Edwina, but awkward in bed'
But so concerned are the Indian government to protect their favourite statesman's reputation that, after nine months of costly pre-production in Delhi, filming has been dramatically ordered to cease.*
Indian politicians have demanded to see the script to know just how explicitly the relationship will be portrayed.*
Hitherto, those who know the truth about the relationship between Nehru and Lady Mountbatten (including Mountbatten's two daughters) have always insisted the couple never consummated their great love, and that it was more spiritual than physical.*
But what is the real story? Certainly, there are aspects of Lady Mountbatten's early life that will shock India's ruling elite, who even today do not allow their Bollywood stars to kiss on screen.*
The spoiled favourite granddaughter of a Jewish financier close to the royals, Edwina Ashley was the richest and most glamorous deb of her time.*
In 1922, she married the handsome, though impoverished, 21-year- old Lord Louis Mountbatten. Known in the family as 'Dickie', he is nowadays best remembered as Prince Charles's great-uncle and mentor, tragically killed by an IRA bomb in 1979.*
Ostensibly it was the perfect match, but the sexually inexperienced couple had little in common.*

Perfect match? Lord Mountbatten and Edwina Mountbatten were married in 1922 but had little in common
After a fumbling honeymoon, some of it spent in Hollywood, Mountbatten resumed his career as a naval officer.*
Meanwhile, the stylish Edwina, described as one of the six best- dressed women in the world, shopped at Chanel, played bridge, and danced the Charleston until 3am, sometimes with Fred Astaire.*
At weekends, their country home was full of guests (including the Prince of Wales) arriving in fast cars and even aeroplanes.*
Vain, charming and boyish, Dickie was devoted to Edwina, but still awkward in bed. He famously named her breasts Mutt and Jeff - the nicknames that World War I soldiers gave their campaign medals.*
To him, sex was unromantic, 'a mixture of psychology and hydraulics'. There were also mutterings that he preferred men.*
Things went downhill after their daughter Patricia was born in 1924.*
While Mountbatten doted on the new arrival, the passionate Edwina was pathologically jealous of her own child being the centre of attention.*
'A divine little daughter. Too thrilling, too sweet,' she trilled to her diary *- *but then packed the baby off to nannies on the South Coast. The highly sexed Edwina then proceeded to look for lovers from all walks of life.
Nehru, like both Mountbattens, had bisexual tendencies
Her first was the aristocratic Lord Molyneux. He was followed by a rich, polo-playing American, Laddie Sandford, and then by Mike Wardell, the good-looking manager of a London evening newspaper. At times, she juggled all three at once.*
'Lord Molyneux is in the morning-room and Mr Sandford in the library, but where should I put the other gentleman?' asked a desperate flunkey when they happened to visit together.*
While her husband was posted to Malta in the early Thirties, she turned to American golf champion Bobby Sweeny.*
Next came playboy Larry Gray, before she went on a Mexican cruise and jumped into bed with the elder of two Californian brothers, Ted Phillips, quickly followed by his sibling Bunny.*
This serial sexual gallivanting went on until the birth of her second daughter Pamela in 1929.*
By now, Mountbatten, too, was seeking other women. In 1931, he was flirting with the 18-year-old future Duchess of Argyll and even kept her photo in his cabin.*
'The only photo of any girl!' he wrote to her. Later, there was Barbara Cartland and the Frenchwoman Yola Letellier, on whom Colette based her novel Gigi. Edwina was fiercely jealous, but she didn't think to change her own habits.*
Throughout the Thirties, she had dozens of admirers, known in the private slang of the Mountbatten circle as 'ginks'.*
As Mountbatten himself once put it: 'Edwina and I spent all our married lives getting into other people's beds.'*
She even dallied with conductor Malcolm Sargent, and then embarked on her most adventurous affair to date, with the bisexual West Indian cabaret pianist Leslie Hutchinson.*

Forbidden love: Edwina and Nehru in the Moghul Gardens of the Viceroy house during celebrations to mark the 10th anniversary of the Republic of India in 1960
Although Edwina successfully sued a newspaper for saying she had a black lover, there is not much doubt she conducted an on-off relationship with 'Hutch' for 30 years.*
She famously gave him a gold bracelet bearing her name, a gold cigarette case and, conclusively perhaps, a jewelled penis sheath from Cartier.*
This sexual track record seems like an unlikely apprenticeship for a woman to become the great love of the socialist founder of modern India.
But Edwina, the social butterfly, also had a strong streak of idealism. Never one for empty titles, she seems to have climbed in and out of bed looking for a cause.*
With the onset of World War II, her tireless work in the bombed- out East End was followed by a spell in South-East Asia repatriating British refugees from prison camps and hospitals.*
Not for nothing did the blood of her great-great-grandfather, the distinguished 19th-century reformer Lord Shaftesbury, run in her veins.*
Mountbatten's war service culminated, of course, in the recapture of Burma from the Japanese.*
Beside her bed was a collection of his letters*
Indeed, both had such a successful war that in 1947 they were posted by the new Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee to Delhi, as the last Viceroy and Vicereine of India to facilitate the smooth transition of power to Nehru, the country's nationalist leader.*
While the young Edwina had been playing the field, the patrician Nehru had been working hard for his country.*
Born in 1889, son of a leading lawyer, he came from a rich and influential family with distinctly Anglicised tastes in clothes and culture.
The boys were educated in England and the girls had English governesses who gave the children English names. Jawaharlal became 'Joe', his sisters 'Nan' and 'Betty'. After Harrow and Cambridge, Jawaharlal was called to the Bar in London, but he soon returned to India.*
In 1916, he had married the high-born Kamala, riding to his Maharajah-style wedding in Delhi on a white horse.*
But he had already come under the spell of the charismatic Gandhi, at the time a failed lawyer who, having been shabbily treated in British-owned South Africa, returned to his own country fired up against social injustice and determined to free it from foreign domination.*
Nehru sympathised with Gandhi's non-violent philosophy. At home, meanwhile, his frail wife started her own radical crusade to improve women's rights.*
Interestingly, the Nehru marriage somewhat mirrored that of the Mountbattens. In her 30s Kamala developed into an irresistibly attractive woman who was always surrounded by infatuated young men, including Feroze Gandhi (no relation to the Mahatma), the future husband of her daughter, Indira, who would of course later became the country's fiery leader.*
Many people are convinced Kamala and Feroze conducted a long and satisfying affair.*
However, Kamala died at a young age of tuberculosis in 1936. And though Nehru had also had affairs, he never remarried. His only love now was his country - until he met Edwina Mountbatten.*
It wasn't Edwina's first visit to India - she had engineered an invitation to the Viceregal Lodge before her marriage in hot pursuit of Mountbatten, who was also staying there.*
Neither was it the first time she had met Nehru. She and Dickie had warmed to the man, whose aquiline features resembled Mountbatten's own, in Singapore in 1946.*

Deep attachment: Those close to the couple insisted they never consummated their great love, and that it was more spiritual than physical
Now, with Nehru's mission to liberate his country at a time when war-weary Britain was desperate to get rid of it, the 47-year-old Edwina finally had a focus for her huge energy and political radicalism. Of course, British withdrawal did not go as smoothly as everyone hoped.*
Mass migration and massacres followed as Indians fought for territory with the new Pakistan.*
In this sensitive climate, Edwina put herself at great personal risk as she and Nehru tried to stop the looting and mob violence.*
Working alongside him in hospitals and refugee camps, she was fearless. At one Muslim refugee camp, she found a gang of Hindus and Sikhs trying to set it on fire and kill the inmates.*
Edwina stood in front of the crowd as calmly as though she were at a garden party, threatening to have her guards shoot the agitators. Improbably they backed off in the face of her natural authority.*
After independence, the Indophile Mountbattens made many visits to the country, and Edwina spent more and more time with the new prime minister Nehru.*
This is the point at which her younger daughter Pamela, the biographer in the family, acknowledges that love blossomed between the lonely Nehru and the Vicereine.*
What's more, says Pamela, her father condoned the friendship, even going so far as to call it a 'happy threesome'.*
'My mother had already had lovers. My father was inured to it. It broke his heart the first time, but it was somehow different with Nehru,' she has written.*
When parted, they wrote to each other constantly - and Edwina made no attempt to keep the letters secret from her husband*




As Mountbatten himself wrote to her sister Patricia at the time: 'She and Jawaharlal (Nehru) are so sweet together, they really dote on each other.'*
Undignifed as it seems against the backdrop of the huge historic events in which they were caught up, there are those who suspect that Nehru, like both Mountbattens, had bisexual tendencies, and that Dickie, in a last attempt to establish physical intimacy with his unresponsive wife, may have joined them in a physical menage a trois.
Whatever went on in the bedroom, the Mountbattens joined Nehru in a very public romance with India.*
This, though, didn't go down well back in Britain, where disapproval came to a head after Gandhi was assassinated in 1948.*
Seeing a newspaper photo of the grieving Viceregal couple squatting on the ground at Gandhi's cremation, Churchill angrily concluded that they had gone native, disgracing themselves as royal representatives. When they returned home, the old war hero refused to shake Mountbatten's hand.
The unconventional Lady Mountbatten, however, rose above all this. She visited Nehru every year and he (her soulmate) visited her in England, where his sister became High Commissioner.*
When parted, they wrote to each other constantly - and Edwina made no attempt to keep the letters secret from her husband.*
As she wrote to Dickie in 1952: 'Some of them have no "personal" remarks at all. Others are love letters... though you yourself well realise the strange relationship *- *most of it spiritual *- *which exists between us.'*
When the correspondence is eventually published in its entirety, perhaps we may know the whole truth.*
Meanwhile, one of Nehru's own last letters, written ten years after their first meeting, sheds a little more light. 'Suddenly I realised (and perhaps you also did) that there was a deeper attachment between us, that some uncontrollable force, of which I was dimly aware, drew us to one another.*
'I was overwhelmed and at the same time exhilarated by this new discovery. We talked more intimately as if some veil had been removed and we could look into each other's eyes without fear or embarrassment.'*
Intense words, yet Nehru was now 68, his romantic friend ten years younger.
No longer in the first flush of youth, perhaps there was no great urgency to climb into bed.*
Little did they realise how little time was left. A year later, in 1960, 58-year- old Edwina, by now leading a selfless life, died alone in her sleep while on a trip to Borneo on behalf of St John Ambulance Brigade. Beside her bed was her collection of Nehru's letters.*
And the love affair was not over yet. As her body was taken by the Royal Navy to its sea burial off Britain's south coast, Prime Minister Nehru made his last and most public declaration of his devotion, sending his own Indian Navy frigate to cast a wreath into the waters on his behalf.*
Such a dramatic farewell would make a stirring finale to any film. But as the director Joe Wright, who was behind the scheduled movie says, it will be a long time before it gets made, thanks to the explosive mixture of politics and forbidden love.



fact of the matter will remain there, on the beds exchanging wives, lord mount batten with J.nehru? kashmir was also decided on the same bed

 

[Saleem]

Almost all were on board on Kargil operation

Almost all were on board on Kargil operation - thenews.com.pk
Mian Saifur Rehman
Monday, February 04, 2013
From Print Edition





Kargil operation was an outcome of the strong, innermost desire of majority of the armed forces’ seniors to counterbalance Indian army’s illegal occupation of Siachen and it was not unknown to the commanders and other armed forces’ seniors in the 2nd-in-command and 3rd-in-command tiers, The News has learnt from reliable sources, one of them being a former officer of a very senior position, commanding an important formation in the region concerned.

The main source of information has requested anonymity for the reasons of security (as per his perception) and in view of the sensitivity of the issue. The News has more than reliable information available, through direct contact and through other channels, that this source happened to be one of the master planners and implementers of the Kargil operation and was based in the area.

According to the main source, the question does not arise that an operation of such a scale involving constant reconnaissance and surveillance, massive logistics, transportation and deployment would have gone unnoticed among the senior ranks that form the core of the decision-making body within the armed forces. This core body includes corps commanders, head of ISI, MI and other ranks next in command including the head of analysis wing of ISI, a post that was held by Lt Gen (R) Shahid Aziz who is now demonstrating total ignorance and innocence about the operation. Even other seniors of the same top category, from the top brass, were in the know of these things, plans.

Some might have been unaware of the details as to the timing of the operation in the minutest detail but that they didn’t have even a bit of idea about the operation, is unthinkable, says the main source and other sources acquainted with the functioning of armed forces’ and intelligence networks’ systems.

The sources say that there was nothing unusual about the Kargil operation which means there is usually nothing wrong with such strategies if they remain within the military tactical domain, particularly when two countries’ armies remain in a state of tension-ridden alertness against any possible clash or conflict, the like of which was witnessed a few days back on the LoC (Line of Control) where the soldier’s beheading episode (tragedy) became a very hot topic in Indian media in particular. When the situation is such, armies being positioned in such a state of unusual preparedness, strategic plans continue to be evolved to gain an edge or a strategic advantage against the adversaries, even during peace time. It is a routine practice building crisis scenarios, analysing them in depth and then finding solutions.

Explaining the dynamics of war, the sources disclosed that even wars don’t break out so abruptly most of the times, except on few occasions when suddenly emerging irritants trigger war.

According to sources, the illegal occupation of the highest battlefield of the world, Siachen, by Indian forces was the primary cause prompting the Pakistani armed forces to chalk out a strategy to gain a strategic advantage against Indian forces that can be termed in the special jargon as tit-for-tat. The predetermined constant factor was, however, remaining within the confines of tactical moves so that the matter doesn’t escalate beyond a certain limit to turn unmanageable.

That never meant occupation in the strictest sense of the term or in the international laws’ perspective, explained the sources, although India had violated the global norms and laws of territorial sovereignty by sending its troops to Siachen and by occupying it.

When asked to elaborate, the sources explained that, acting somewhat in the manner the Indian forces had conducted their matters prior to Siachen’s occupation, the Pakistani forces and surveillance setups carried out recce for quite some time to find out that more than two dozen peaks on the other side had continued to remain vacant. In a tit-for-tat move, plans were made to occupy the peaks that also provided Pakistani forces a tactical, strategic edge over Indian forces, being located at an advantageous height. Once occupied, there was no legal, military or international mechanism available to India to lodge a complaint or to force Pakistan to withdraw. The tragedy of Pakistan soldiers that followed, owes to different factors, that of political nature involving follies of the political bigwigs. The sources added that it was technically impracticable for India to prove that those peaks were its bona fide territory or were in its lawful occupation.

Among others, the sources were also asked the question as to how could the armed forces act in isolation from the world opinion and simultaneously without being in consonance with the government or the prime minister of the day and without the knowledge — if not endorsement — of other key stakeholders like the officers of the rank of corps commanders and ISI commanders.

When this information, of which one or two pieces were already known, was put to intelligentsia including those having deep insight into defence matters, they opined that either the then COAS General Pervez Musharraf was too clever and shrewd for his senior colleagues in the forces or the latter were mountains of complacency, never bothered about their surroundings or things brewing up right in their flanks, although they were officially duty-bound to be vigilant and well-informed. It was — and still is — the requirement of the military profession. And as for the innocence of the then civilian regime headed by a sharp-witted and versatile prime minister, it was unparalleled. Even a small departmental store is exempt from this much innocence.

Things happening (or even those brewing up) are in the knowledge of the people working there, at least to those who are key position-holders. In the armed forces, at the corps commanders’ level, the senses and reflexes rather get honed up to such an extent that your sensing-and-smelling instinct goes yet sharper.

These analysts and the sources even opine that it should be made mandatory not to induct so much naive and self-complacent people in sensitive positions on which hinges the fate, solidarity or dignity of a country.

About the anonymity factor, the intelligentsia, however, opined that it would have been yet more conscientious on the part of the main source had he allowed his name to be publicised.But anonymity is an accepted norm in media reporting insofar as the source concerned is totally relative and relevant to the situation.

These analysts also opine that people in other parts of the world might be laughing at our top brass’ innocence and self-complacency and more so on the eruptions of so many ‘Inkishifaat’ (disclosures at self-exoneration).

And before the talk concluded, the sources also suggested going further deep into the cases of court-martial instituted against Indian commanders and other officers. They were reportedly court-martialled for negligence of the worst order that resulted in the occupation of strategically advantageous peaks, by Pakistani forces.

Disclaimer: This story has nothing to do with General (R) Pervez Musharraf directly. The venue and timing of meeting with the main source can be disclosed if and when necessary/unavoidable.

8pm With Fareeha Idrees 04 February 2013 | Waqt News TV

gen aziz clearly chow who little everyone knew, he mentions that as CGS he did not know od US lanigs on coast and of airbases physically handed over to US etc....it was on man show with pervez selling the whole country to US to keep his control --just as zulfiqar [bhutto] sold of east pakistan----scum to the core....

 

[batmannow]

8pm With Fareeha Idrees 04 February 2013 | Waqt News TV

gen aziz clearly chow who little everyone knew, he mentions that as CGS he did not know od US lanigs on coast and of airbases physically handed over to US etc....it was on man show with pervez selling the whole country to US to keep his control --just as zulfiqar [bhutto] sold of east pakistan----scum to the core....

paid liar, got money from NS, his accounts should be checked!
& now been played by paid media, on the request of both PPP & PMLn , who dont want to see musharaf comming back pakistan?
What he was waiting for so long?
Why he was sleeping till now?
What happened to his memory before?
Was he the same friend uncle,of arsaln chodry who made his so rich in just 4 years,who is behind him still?kiyani or.....?
Its clear now, its all anti-musharaf,& all the political & unpolitical powers are behind it, with vasted agendas, & a croupt group or mafia ,who are too afraid to see a hawk like musharaf walking in pakistan?

 

[Capt.Popeye]

Almost all were on board on Kargil operation


Disclaimer: This story has nothing to do with General (R) Pervez Musharraf directly. Neither does it have anything to do with the TRUTH or anything even remotely resembling the TRUTH. The venue and timing of meeting with the main source (who happens to be my Mother-in-Law's Sister's Cousin's Daughter-in-Law) can be disclosed if and when necessary/unavoidable. But I will have to disappear then.[/I][/B]

Ah, Batmannow your old story again surfaces..........

 

[batmannow]

Ah, Batmannow your old story again surfaces..........

That's what it meant,drakknight rises again?lol
How it feels,new bruise with old pain?lol
Genious?lol

 

[baqai]

Elections are near ... NS will pull out any dirty card out of his ***... enuff said ...

 

[Capt.Popeye]

Lt Gen Shahid Aziz's book has brought forth another reaction/comment. This is from William Milam; a former US ambassador to Pakistan whose stint in Islamabad coincided with the Kargil episode.

It appeared as a Comment in "The Friday Times" in Pakistan.

Kargil revisited

By the time I saw the press coverage provoked by what Lt Gen (r) Shahid Aziz wrote about the Kargil conflict in his recent book, the media furor had died down, at least in the English language papers. In this case, the short-lived media attention to his book seemed appropriate to me, as there is less there than met the eye. In truth, almost all of these implied revelations were well known long before he published the book, and much of that has been known for almost a decade.

What kept the subject alive for a couple of days, I imagine, was the OTT (over the top) reaction of the then-leaders of Pakistan. General Musharraf spoke up in an interview defending his actions on Kargil, and he blamed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif for the failure of that fiasco. Sharif responded by blaming it all on Musharraf. For a few moments, as I read through the press items, it was summer 1999 all over again. But the unhappy memories soon passed, and ultimately only the sad lessons of this monumental strategic miscalculation will remain forever imbedded in our minds.

The assertion that the prime minister was not briefed before the operation began is, I believe, incorrect. As far as I can tell from the media reports, General Aziz's assertions about the Kargil operation ("operation" is, perhaps, too generous a word), offer nothing that is new or startling; they only perpetuate the myths and misinformation that still surround the entire episode. The interventions of both Musharraf and Sharif, however, rather than adding clarity to the issues that Aziz raised, served only to contribute even more misinformation and mythology about the political and military disaster that was Kargil.

There has been much scholarly work on Kargil since it transpired almost 13 years ago. I am familiar with most of it and contributed to some because of my role in Pakistan at the time. I drew upon that scholarly work, and my own experience, for the brief description of the Kargil episode in the book I wrote which was published in March 2009. I was not able to draw on the book that heads the list of scholarly works, a taxonomic work of several hundred pages, edited by Peter Lavoy, which includes the contributions of a number of highly regarded Pakistani scholars, published six months later, in November 2009.

Gen Musharraf showed all the signs of wanting to find a way out of the box he was in
The latter book offers much that is of value, particularly in its expansion of the analytic implications of the conflict to include the issue of nuclear deterrence (the question of whether two nuclear powers can fight "limited war" without resorting to nuclear weapons), and the issue of whether this was a true example of "asymmetric" warfare (the theory that a clearly inferior power can by selective and surgical military surprise win territory and/or concessions from a clearly superior one). However, while a valuable addition because of its analytic reach, even the Lavoy work added only minor details to the basic facts we already knew of Kargil, no new exciting revelations. There are many other studies by both Pakistanis and Indians, as well as others, but while differing in their political orientation and thus in their political conclusions, they offer little new evidence beyond what was known at the time.

How so many of the misleading assertions and myths can have lasted so long when so much was known about the incursion, almost from the day it ended, is a mystery. Kargil was, as General Aziz asserts, and General Musharraf admits, a tightly held tactical incursion into Indian territory, leapfrogging the Line of Control in Kashmir, along which the two sides had for many years tried to nibble away at the territory held by the other. It went much beyond nibbling, however, by sending regular Pakistan Army troops well inside Indian controlled territory, and thus was a significant departure from LOC skirmishing.

The question of whether it began and was conducted then or later by regular Pakistani troops remains contentious in Pakistan, but in fact, it was known almost at the beginning that the fighters were troops from the Northern Light Infantry, a regular Pakistani army unit. Strangely enough, the Indian military believed they were civilians for several weeks. The myth that they were civilian fighters, either "mujahideen" or Kashmiri militants, was a convenient shield for Pakistan to deny its responsibility for the incursion at first, but this shield faded quickly as GHQ in Rawalpindi admitted as early as May to the US and UK military attaches that the incursion was mainly by the regular army. Nonetheless, Pakistan still hides behind this fiction.

First it was portrayed that the army was in support of the civilians, but it quickly became apparent that the army was doing all the fighting, and the civilians limited to logistical support. This early knowledge that Pakistani regular troops were heavily involved is what drove the Western governments to come down on Pakistan as the instigator and to press hard for it to withdraw. The immediate and continuing Western concern was that the conflict would escalate into a nuclear exchange. Though known by the governments involved by May 1999, and widely known by the public through the Western media, the role of the army was, perhaps, first acknowledged publicly in Pakistan in 2002 by a retired Pakistani military officer, Brigadier Shaukat Qadir, in a monograph (though it appears that he badly overestimated the civilian numbers and underestimated the army's). In the final analysis, the Lavoy book finds that almost all the Pakistani forces involved at Kargil were regular army.

The tightness of the hold on knowledge of the operation is demonstrated by the fact that the Foreign Ministry may have first learned of the presence of Pakistan Army troops from me on one of my first demarches about Pakistani responsibility for the incursion. (I cannot say for sure that the foreign minister didn't know, but am pretty sure that none of his minions did.) However, the assertion that the prime minister was not briefed before the operation began is, I believe, incorrect. Though I cannot prove this, nor do I have any desire to do so, a very good source who claimed to have attended the meeting asserted to me that there was such a briefing at GHQ sometime after the infiltration had begun but before the shooting broke out. There were many "bells and whistles," much finger food, and assurances that this was a minor tactical operation that held no danger for Pakistan and would prove an irritant to India that it would not, or could not, respond to effectively, and possibly might bring it ultimately to the table on Kashmir.

Whether this was the aim of the Kargil incursion or not, it failed because it underestimated India's ability and/or will to respond with the full force at its disposal before winter closed down the conflict. It was, I suppose, a test of Indian conventional military superiority, and whether the Indians could and would respond to surprise as well as tactical disadvantage, and assert their conventional superiority, in a brief time period, before winter froze the conflict in place until the following summer. The Pakistani planners underestimated Indian ability and/or will to do so. By late June, the Pakistani positions were slowly being overrun despite the heavy cost.

This may point out a weakness of asymmetrical warfare strikes that need to be held so tightly as to freeze out political and diplomatic analysis. They risk not understanding the likely political consequences. What the army did not foresee nor anticipate was the BJP's need to run for re-election. It is hard to imagine a Hindu Nationalist Party, facing an election, letting the incursion go unnoticed or unanswered.

Musharraf's claim that PM Sharif, by acceding to US demands that Pakistan withdraw, lost the opportunity for Pakistan to conquer 300 square miles of Indian territory is simply wrong. In late June, in his meeting with General Zinni, the US envoy sent by President Clinton, the general showed all the signs of wanting to find a way out of the box he was in. I think he knew then that his gamble had failed, and the Indian army was likely to overrun Pakistani positions before the advent of snow.

I do not know whether the briefing of PM Sharif took place before or after the February Lahore summit, which seemed to all of us to open the prospect of a peace process between the two countries. I do know, however, that Kargil knocked that prospect into a cocked hat for several years, as the Mumbai attack, which was carried out by civilians, also did 9 years later. It also, of course, was the proximate cause of the October 1999 army coup, after Musharraf and Sharif spent the post-Kargil summer months slanging and blaming each other for the diplomatic and military disaster.

By William Milam; Comment in The Friday Times, March 01-07, 2013
The author is a former US ambassador to Pakistan whose stint in Islamabad coincided with the Kargil episode.

Source: Comment: Kargil revisited by William Milam

N.B. It is good that Parvez Musharraff has just made a statement that he intends to return to Pakistan. He will then be able to answer more questions about the "Kargil Misadventure" when he does return.

 

[RazPaK]

@batmannow, aren't you a veteran of Kargil?

 

[batmannow]

@batmannow, aren't you a veteran of Kargil?

Yes I, was!

 

[RazPaK]

Yes I, was!

Can you please tell me the reality of Kargil that you saw with your own eyes. Open up another thread If you have to.

Counter the bhart-i propaganda.


I want to hear your story, sir.

 

[batmannow]

Lt Gen Shahid Aziz's book has brought forth another reaction/comment. This is from William Milam; a former US ambassador to Pakistan whose stint in Islamabad coincided with the Kargil episode.

It appeared as a Comment in "The Friday Times" in Pakistan.

Kargil revisited

By the time I saw the press coverage provoked by what Lt Gen (r) Shahid Aziz wrote about the Kargil conflict in his recent book, the media furor had died down, at least in the English language papers. In this case, the short-lived media attention to his book seemed appropriate to me, as there is less there than met the eye. In truth, almost all of these implied revelations were well known long before he published the book, and much of that has been known for almost a decade.

What kept the subject alive for a couple of days, I imagine, was the OTT (over the top) reaction of the then-leaders of Pakistan. General Musharraf spoke up in an interview defending his actions on Kargil, and he blamed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif for the failure of that fiasco. Sharif responded by blaming it all on Musharraf. For a few moments, as I read through the press items, it was summer 1999 all over again. But the unhappy memories soon passed, and ultimately only the sad lessons of this monumental strategic miscalculation will remain forever imbedded in our minds.

The assertion that the prime minister was not briefed before the operation began is, I believe, incorrect. As far as I can tell from the media reports, General Aziz's assertions about the Kargil operation ("operation" is, perhaps, too generous a word), offer nothing that is new or startling; they only perpetuate the myths and misinformation that still surround the entire episode. The interventions of both Musharraf and Sharif, however, rather than adding clarity to the issues that Aziz raised, served only to contribute even more misinformation and mythology about the political and military disaster that was Kargil.

There has been much scholarly work on Kargil since it transpired almost 13 years ago. I am familiar with most of it and contributed to some because of my role in Pakistan at the time. I drew upon that scholarly work, and my own experience, for the brief description of the Kargil episode in the book I wrote which was published in March 2009. I was not able to draw on the book that heads the list of scholarly works, a taxonomic work of several hundred pages, edited by Peter Lavoy, which includes the contributions of a number of highly regarded Pakistani scholars, published six months later, in November 2009.

Gen Musharraf showed all the signs of wanting to find a way out of the box he was in
The latter book offers much that is of value, particularly in its expansion of the analytic implications of the conflict to include the issue of nuclear deterrence (the question of whether two nuclear powers can fight "limited war" without resorting to nuclear weapons), and the issue of whether this was a true example of "asymmetric" warfare (the theory that a clearly inferior power can by selective and surgical military surprise win territory and/or concessions from a clearly superior one). However, while a valuable addition because of its analytic reach, even the Lavoy work added only minor details to the basic facts we already knew of Kargil, no new exciting revelations. There are many other studies by both Pakistanis and Indians, as well as others, but while differing in their political orientation and thus in their political conclusions, they offer little new evidence beyond what was known at the time.

How so many of the misleading assertions and myths can have lasted so long when so much was known about the incursion, almost from the day it ended, is a mystery. Kargil was, as General Aziz asserts, and General Musharraf admits, a tightly held tactical incursion into Indian territory, leapfrogging the Line of Control in Kashmir, along which the two sides had for many years tried to nibble away at the territory held by the other. It went much beyond nibbling, however, by sending regular Pakistan Army troops well inside Indian controlled territory, and thus was a significant departure from LOC skirmishing.

The question of whether it began and was conducted then or later by regular Pakistani troops remains contentious in Pakistan, but in fact, it was known almost at the beginning that the fighters were troops from the Northern Light Infantry, a regular Pakistani army unit. Strangely enough, the Indian military believed they were civilians for several weeks. The myth that they were civilian fighters, either "mujahideen" or Kashmiri militants, was a convenient shield for Pakistan to deny its responsibility for the incursion at first, but this shield faded quickly as GHQ in Rawalpindi admitted as early as May to the US and UK military attaches that the incursion was mainly by the regular army. Nonetheless, Pakistan still hides behind this fiction.

First it was portrayed that the army was in support of the civilians, but it quickly became apparent that the army was doing all the fighting, and the civilians limited to logistical support. This early knowledge that Pakistani regular troops were heavily involved is what drove the Western governments to come down on Pakistan as the instigator and to press hard for it to withdraw. The immediate and continuing Western concern was that the conflict would escalate into a nuclear exchange. Though known by the governments involved by May 1999, and widely known by the public through the Western media, the role of the army was, perhaps, first acknowledged publicly in Pakistan in 2002 by a retired Pakistani military officer, Brigadier Shaukat Qadir, in a monograph (though it appears that he badly overestimated the civilian numbers and underestimated the army's). In the final analysis, the Lavoy book finds that almost all the Pakistani forces involved at Kargil were regular army.

The tightness of the hold on knowledge of the operation is demonstrated by the fact that the Foreign Ministry may have first learned of the presence of Pakistan Army troops from me on one of my first demarches about Pakistani responsibility for the incursion. (I cannot say for sure that the foreign minister didn't know, but am pretty sure that none of his minions did.) However, the assertion that the prime minister was not briefed before the operation began is, I believe, incorrect. Though I cannot prove this, nor do I have any desire to do so, a very good source who claimed to have attended the meeting asserted to me that there was such a briefing at GHQ sometime after the infiltration had begun but before the shooting broke out. There were many "bells and whistles," much finger food, and assurances that this was a minor tactical operation that held no danger for Pakistan and would prove an irritant to India that it would not, or could not, respond to effectively, and possibly might bring it ultimately to the table on Kashmir.

Whether this was the aim of the Kargil incursion or not, it failed because it underestimated India's ability and/or will to respond with the full force at its disposal before winter closed down the conflict. It was, I suppose, a test of Indian conventional military superiority, and whether the Indians could and would respond to surprise as well as tactical disadvantage, and assert their conventional superiority, in a brief time period, before winter froze the conflict in place until the following summer. The Pakistani planners underestimated Indian ability and/or will to do so. By late June, the Pakistani positions were slowly being overrun despite the heavy cost.

This may point out a weakness of asymmetrical warfare strikes that need to be held so tightly as to freeze out political and diplomatic analysis. They risk not understanding the likely political consequences. What the army did not foresee nor anticipate was the BJP's need to run for re-election. It is hard to imagine a Hindu Nationalist Party, facing an election, letting the incursion go unnoticed or unanswered.

Musharraf's claim that PM Sharif, by acceding to US demands that Pakistan withdraw, lost the opportunity for Pakistan to conquer 300 square miles of Indian territory is simply wrong. In late June, in his meeting with General Zinni, the US envoy sent by President Clinton, the general showed all the signs of wanting to find a way out of the box he was in. I think he knew then that his gamble had failed, and the Indian army was likely to overrun Pakistani positions before the advent of snow.

I do not know whether the briefing of PM Sharif took place before or after the February Lahore summit, which seemed to all of us to open the prospect of a peace process between the two countries. I do know, however, that Kargil knocked that prospect into a cocked hat for several years, as the Mumbai attack, which was carried out by civilians, also did 9 years later. It also, of course, was the proximate cause of the October 1999 army coup, after Musharraf and Sharif spent the post-Kargil summer months slanging and blaming each other for the diplomatic and military disaster.

By William Milam; Comment in The Friday Times, March 01-07, 2013
The author is a former US ambassador to Pakistan whose stint in Islamabad coincided with the Kargil episode.

Source: Comment: Kargil revisited by William Milam

N.B. It is good that Parvez Musharraff has just made a statement that he intends to return to Pakistan. He will then be able to answer more questions about the "Kargil Misadventure" when he does return.

You will never find, this american once musharaf in pakistan?lol
Bt jst remember if indian army can take Siachen & can sustain it, pakarmy could be sitting & drinking another cup of tea on tiger hills till now?
if nawaz sharif nt got affraid that time, we still be sitting over on kargill till now ?
Its the same equation & cause siachen VS kargill???

 

[batmannow]

Can you please tell me the reality of Kargil that you saw with your own eyes. Open up another thread If you have to.

Counter the bhart-i propaganda.


I want to hear your story, sir.

Dear friend, plz strt frm page 1 to the end page mostly, you will find, me telling wht I can, but friend I hve to keep many state secret too?
Even though I got court marshalled just, few months after kargill, I still love & trust PAKARMY & its commnd then?
On PDF its been, 1000th thread on kargill, I feel borring to discuss, same thing again & again?
Bt it was pakistan,s right whatever we hve done there,as india done that before in siachen?
Wht you want more?

 

[RazPaK]

Dear friend, plz strt frm page 1 to the end page mostly, you will find, me telling wht I can, but friend I hve to keep many state secret too?
Even though I got court marshalled just, few months after kargill, I still love & trust PAKARMY & its commnd then?
On PDF its been, 1000th thread on kargill, I feel borring to discuss, same thing again & again?
Bt it was pakistan,s right whatever we hve done there,as india done that before in siachen?
Wht you want more?

I understand that you have to keep state secrets.


Tumse main kya chahta hun.

I want your entire story from when you joined military to the end of Kargil war.

Sensitive information can be left out.

I am a big fan of yours, so I hope you can write a detailed report on Kargil.

 

[batmannow]

I understand that you have to keep state secrets.


Tumse main kya chahta hun.

I want your entire story from when you joined military to the end of Kargil war.

Sensitive information can be left out.

I am a big fan of yours, so I hope you can write a detailed report on Kargil.

Went to militry in 90!
My report was dumped & was court marshalled , when I came out of hospital! End of story?lol
Was bieng treated 3 more years,went out of pakistan,enjoying life ?
All tht happened just because,ignored the direct orders from higher ups, which resulted in deaths of my team, cause like others we, didn't wanted to be back alive?
Hope you understand, I belong to that dam jazbati group of soilders who,don't like to write reports,bt like to fight more?
Friend, no u need to shine in the world, stupid soilders like me , can't be anyones role models?
Hope, you understand , remembring all that is a consistant pain for a soilder like me , forever?
& the best thing I can do?
Is just to forget tht all for now?
All my love & respects to those indian soilders, who hve been hunted by me & got eyeballs headshots!
Before getting injured, I counted them 200?
Bt my late havldar, zain khan ever told me , they were more, which I couldn't counted!
Thts it, didn't want to remember more, cause it can bring tears to my eyes, for my fallen tigers!
& I never cried in my life!

 

[Pulsar]

I hope Some Pakistani Does not call his own Retired General "Indian Stooge" or Discredit him on his viws just becuase it does not go with the popular one in Pakistan .

Some scatterbrains have already dubbed Gen Shahid as a RAW agent!! Lol! It's their habit of terming all who speak out the truth as Indian stooges and RAW agents. Because truth hurts. After all they have been psyched by their propaganda machine that works overtime into believing that Pakistan won all wars against India. How could it be otherwise when 1x Pak soldier = 10 x Yindoo banyas?