Pakistan suffered more casualties in the Kargil operation than in any of its previous wars with India. But as a reflection of the embarrassment this conflict arouses, the precise number of the dead and wounded remains a closely-guarded secret.
So rest assured there wont be any audit of Kargil on this side, the barest mention of it an embarrassment, a spectre at the feast, a reminder of something best forgotten.
Kargil may not have liberated Kashmir but, indirectly, one thing leading to another, it set the stage for October 12, 99, when the present set-up came to power. The masterminds of Kargil, in the forefront of the days events, may not have made much headway against the Indians but they made short work of Nawaz Sharif and his wobbly government. As the next day dawned, they were masters of the country.
But Kargil was a real watershed in another sense. The actual operation as much as its aftermath finally put paid to the idea much favoured by military minds that Pakistan could take on India in an armed conflict or that there was a military solution to the Kashmir problem. Kargil proved to be the last frontier of Pakistani militarism in Kashmir.