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THIS past week the Commando, and his sidekick the Private Banker, or shall we say Tweedledum and Tweedledee, were interviewed by a private TV channel in London, where they live in the lap of luxury after shoving the country into the pit it is in. By gad, do they have brass, the both of them!
The most interesting part of the Commandos interview was the Kargil misadventure. As usual, he stood the matter on its head and, again as usual, fibbed away to glory with panache, and flair that only the very brazen have, and asserted that he never advised Nawaz Sharif that we should withdraw from Kargil.
On the July 3, 1999, the Commando tells us, he briefed the defence committee of the cabinet on the military aspects of Kargil. He says he told the DCC that of the five places (whatever the term means), the Indians had only taken one back; had taken two or three posts in one, and that three were completely untouched because they did not even know we were there un ko pataa hee nahin tha.
He also analysed a limited war with India in Kashmir, whatever that means, as also the air and naval aspects of a total war with India. According to himself, he told Nawaz Sharif and 15 others present there, including the air and navy chiefs, that we were militarily alright and that the Indians were on a very, very weak wicket. They were weak said the Commando because they had moved all their forces to Kargil as also all their artillery. ALL their forces; ALL their artillery?! Little wonder that we got ourselves in the sort of trouble that we did under his able command, what?
Throughout the briefing, says the Commando, Nawaz Sharif kept asking him if we should withdraw from Kargil to which he replied that he had given his military assessment and that it was now for the prime minister to take the political decision.
Then he goes into the details of how, a day later, he was called back from a weekend in Murree with his family this weekend at a time that our poorly equipped and poorly fed soldiers were dying in Kargil please note to meet Nawaz Sharif at the Islamabad airport where the PM told him he was off to Washington, and asked him yet again if we should withdraw from Kargil. To which he answered as theretofore.
Of course, the Commando conveniently forgot to tell us poor Pakistanis who were witness to the Kargil disaster these many years ago, and who were now listening agog to this nonsense, that his tight buddy Marine Gen Anthony Zinni, then commander US Central Command, had visited Pakistan in the third week of June and had met him first and then the PM.
In Gen Zinnis own words in his book Battle Ready (GP Putnams Sons): I was
directed by the administration to head a presidential mission to Pakistan to convince Prime Minister Sharif and General Musharraf to withdraw their forces from Kargil. I met with the Pakistani leaders in Islamabad on June 24 and 25 and put forth a simple rationale for withdrawing: If you dont pull back, youre going to bring war and nuclear annihilation down on your country. Thats going to be very bad news for everybody.
Nobody actually quarreled with this rationale. The problem for the Pakistani leadership was the apparent national loss of face. Backing down and pulling back to the Line of Control looked like political suicide. We needed to come up with a face-saving way out of this mess. What we were able to offer was a meeting with President Clinton, which would end the isolation that had long been the state of affairs between our two countries, but we would announce the meeting only after a withdrawal of forces. That got Musharrafs attention and he encouraged Prime Minister Sharif to hear me out.
Sharif was reluctant to withdraw before the meeting with Clinton was announced (again, his problem was maintaining face); but after I insisted, he finally came around and he ordered the withdrawal. We set up a meeting with Clinton in July.
Again, exactly a year later (June 20, 2000) this is what Gen Zinni said in Abu Dhabi: I talked to Mr Sharif and the chief of staff and convinced them to take steps to ease tensions and to withdraw from Kargil. They agreed. There was no interest I found in the Pakistanis to see the situation escalate beyond control from either side and they cooperated, making the decision on their own, he said.
If this doesnt prove beyond a shadow of doubt that the Commando played fast and free with his office and the authority flowing from it then nothing will; from first starting Kargil, and then lying about how well we were doing. Nor was this the only misstatement of facts indulged in by him during the interview which the interviewer should have pointed out. In the matter of the mayhem in Swat, and the delayed action of the security establishment, he has tried to put the main blame on the elected government that was nowhere on the scene when he and his cohorts were making a mess of things.
. From zinnis account, everyone in pakistan was interested in saving face and withdrawing. NO country withdraws from a winning position . 
