Kargil was simply launched to bring the Kashmir issue back on the agendas of all global meetings etc. Pakistan achieved its goal and inflicted a serious blow to the Indian Army and did take casualties on our side as well, however, our politicians and weak media (those days) couldn't take credit of the victory.
Yeah, indeed. What did you eat before writing this? (Not meant to be offensive)
To the world, it made only clear that Pakistan has hegemonic ambitions and it is not willing to discuss anything on the table and relying on military power again to get what it believes is its rightful possession.
To discuss whether the UN role on Kashmir has been redundant and hopeless and whether diplomacy could ever work is not the point of this argument, you stated that somehow it brought Kashmir to global limelight again. To say that bad press is press coverage anyways is not applicable in military maneuvers.
The Lahore Peace Process was working quite fine, amicably and Vajpayee pissed a lot of people in his country when he jumped on a bus to come to Lahore. The meetings in Colombo had borne fruit as well. It is utterly wrong to assert that Kashmir wasn't being discussed for long and it was necessary to use military power to bring to it limelight. Both were nuclear powers by then and such a skirmish only showed to the world the hegemonic ambitions, strategic myopia and adventurous nation of our goals and objectives.
Nawaz Sharif and Tarar claim that they didn't knew, however, the ISI chief was NS' man and I have seen interview of Ch. Shujaat where he accused NS of lying as Ch. Shuajaat was present in the briefing regarding Kargil.
Tarrar obviously didn't know ****. As for Nawaz, it is wrong to assert that he didn't know anything and anybody claiming that he was out of the loop until the very end is fooled.
The point is to determine when he was informed and what he was informed about. In his book, Sartaj Aziz (I don't have a copy right now, I'll confirm dates when I get a look at it again) says that they were invited for a briefing in March (something like late March) and he, Nawaz and Majeed Malik went to see a briefing by the three generals (Musharraf and the two others I'm not sure maybe DGMO Tauqir Zia and somebody else) and they were informed that the plans had been laid out over the past year and troop movement had already started. Sartaj Aziz says that he was horrified and expected Nawaz to interrupt and angrily ask questions from the very start but Nawaz kept listening and to his horror asked whether this road would lead to Srinagar. Nawaz, I guess was also dreaming about getting Kashmir like every myopic leader we have had and on their way back Sartaz Aziz says that Majeed Malik was apprehensive and said that Musharraf had landed them in a mess but Nawaz (went in another car) was calm, happy and delighted.
Musharraf has time and again tried to assert that Nawaz was informed something like in February in a visit to to the front line (a visit to Siachen base camp or Skardu) but Sartaj Aziz has doubted that.
Even then, it is upto the military to present the reality of the situations and expected outcomes to the leaders, who are not supposed to be military theorists or educated in warfare. While they might have presented a strategic evaluation to the elected government, it would be hard to say whether they were realistic in their objectives and whether they were again myopic when it came to evaluating the Indian response and the support/sanctions from our allies. If the serving chiefs of the PN and PAF maintain that they were kept out of the loop until the very end, it goes to show that the PA generals were nothing more than adventurous, self righteous and arrogant in their behaviour and their operation of their roles.
"In an effort to keep the plan secret—which was the key to its successful initiation, so it was thought—the Army trio took no one into confidence, neither its operational commanders, nor the heads of the other services. This, regrettably, resulted in a closed loop thought process, which engendered a string of oversights and failures.
Kargil, I suspect, like the 1965 and 1971 Wars, was a case of not having enough dissenters (‘devil’s advocates’, if you will) during planning, because everyone wanted to agree with the boss. That single reason, I think, was the root cause of most of the failures that were apparent right from the beginning. If this point is understood well, remedial measures towards tolerance and liberalism can follow as a matter of course" - Air Commodore Kaiser Tufail - Director of Operations, PAF in 1999