Who's Telling The Truth?

Did President Pervez Musharraf, who was the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS)under Mr Nawaz Sharif when he was the Prime Minister before October 12,1999,inform Mr Sharif about his plans to send the Army to occupy the Kargil heights?If not, why not? If so, when did he inform him? What was the reaction of MrSharif? Did he concur with Musharraf's action or did he disapprove of hisaction? What is the truth?

These questions have assumed importance in the light of two interviews given byLt.Gen.(retd) Jamshed Gulzar Kiani on June 2, 2008, to the Geo TV and the Dawnof Karachi. Jamshed Gulzar Kiani was a Major-General in the Inter-ServicesIntelligence (ISI) at the time of the Kargil conflict and the subsequent coupagainst Mr Sharif. The ISI was then headed by Lt.Gen.Ziauddin, a Kashmiri ofPunjabi origin from the Engineer Corps. The differences between Musharraf andNawaz Sharif initially developed shortly after the appointment of Musharraf byNawaz Sharif as the COAS in October,1998.

These differences were due to Nawaz Sharif's over-ruling Musharraf'sobjections to the appointment of Ziauddin as the Director-General of the ISI.Ziauddin was a close confidante of Nawaz Sharif and kept him informed of allactions of Musharraf, who stopped inviting him to some of his meetings with theCorps Commanders.

Jamshed Gulzar Kiani ingratiated himself with Musharraf by keeping him informedof the activities of Ziauddin. A small coterie of Army officers headed byLt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz, the then Chief of the General Staff (CGS), staged a coupwhen Musharraf was returning to Karachi from Colombo on October 12,1999, and hadNawaz Sharif arrested because he dismissed Musharraf and appointed Ziauddin asthe COAS. They prevented Ziauddin from entering the office of the COAS. He wasarrested subsequently.

A question often debated in senior circles of the Pakistan Army is whether thiscoterie would have behaved in this manner if Nawaz Sharif had appointed aPunjabi Lt.Gen.from a fighting formation instead of an engineer as the COAS.Those, who held this view, used to argue that the objection of this coterie wasnot to the dismissal of Musharraf, a Mohajir, who was disliked by many of thePunjabi officers, but to his appointment of Ziauddin as the COAS. It isdifficult to know the truth.

A month after taking over power as the Chief Executive, Musharraf promotedJamshed Gulzar Kiani as a Lt.Gen and appointed him a Corps Commander. The twowere very close to each other. Musharraf greatly appreciated his action beforeOctober 12,1999 in keeping him informed of the activities of Ziauddin and hislinks with Nawaz Sharif.

When Jamshed Gulzar Kiani reached the age of superannuation in 2003, Musharrafrewarded his loyalty by appointing him as the Chairman of the Federal PublicServices Commission, which post had a fixed tenure of five years under the law.Serious differences developed between the two when Kiani as the Chairman of theCommission did not do the bidding of Musharraf and Mr Shaukat Aziz, the formerPrime Minister,in respect of some appointments and postings of officers.Musharraf asked him to resign. He declined. Musharraf had a bill passed by theNational Assembly in September 2006 reducing the tenure from five to threeyears. He was replaced at the end of three years.

A bitter Jamshed Gulzar Kiani, who felt humiliated by the treatment meted out tohim by Musharraf despite his loyalty to him when he was Maj.Gen. and Lt.Gen,joined the group of anti-Musharraf officers such as Gen.Mirza Aslam Beg, formerCOAS who succeeded Zia-ul-Haq, after he died in a plane crash, Lt.Gen.Hamid Gul,former DG of the ISI etc and has been keeping on a campaign against Musharraf.

In his interview to the Geo TV, he made various allegations against Musharrafregarding the Kargil episode, Musharraf's post-9/11 co-operation with the US inthe so-called war against terrorism and the commando raid into the Lal Masjid ofIslamabad in July last year. He stated on follows on the Kargil episode:According to his information, Nawaz Sharif did not know anything about theKargil episode. He was never thoroughly briefed on the same. He (Kiani)supported the holding of a probe into the Kargil fiasco. He had briefed NawazSharif and told him that it was a very sensitive issue and he could not unveilall the details to him. In a meeting of May 17, 1999, Nawaz gave a green signalto the operation. He assured conditional support to General Musharraf that theGovernment would back the operation when he successfully moved forward. Ifunfortunately the same failed, he would not be in a position to support him (Musharraf).

In his interview to the Dawn on June 2, 2008,, Kiani said: Nawaz Sharif,the majority of corps commanders and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) werekept in the dark about the Kargil operation in 1999.Although Nawaz was briefedon the Kargil issue, it was fairly late and the conflict had started by then."It was not a comprehensive briefing that the chief executive should have beengiven."

Talking to the media on June 3,2008, Nawaz Sharif demanded the trial ofMusharraf on treason charges for his illegal Nov 3, 2007, steps in imposing aState of Emergency, the Lal Masjid carnage and keeping the nation, militaryofficials and the then political leadership in the dark on the Kargil issue.Nawaz termed Musharraf’s account on the Kargil issue in his book, In theLine of Fire, a pack of lies and said the interview of Lt-Gen (retd) JamshedGulzar Kiani to Geo TV upheld his stance that he was not informed about theKargil operation.

Nawaz was being clever. Kiani did not tell either Geo TV or the Dawn thatNawaz was not informed. He only said that Nawaz was informed later and that toonot in a comprehensive manner. At the same time, he added that Nawaz approvedthe already on-going operation provided it would be successful.

Who is telling the truth--Musharraf in his book in which he claimed that Nawazwas on board or Kiani, who claims that Nawaz was informed in passing after thePakistan Army had moved into the Kargil heights and that he had not objected toit provided it would succeed or Nawaz, who claims that he like many CorpsCommanders was not informed at all?

Firstly, the tapes showed that it was the Pakistani Army which had occupiedthe Kargil heights violating the Line of Control (LOC) and not the KashmiriMujahideen as claimed by Musharraf. Second, it was the Pakistan Army which hadshot down an Indian Air Force plane and asked the Hizbul Mujahideen to claim theresponsibility for it. Third, the tapes showed that Musharraf had launched hisoperation without the knowledge of Nawaz, many of his Corps Commanders, the ISI,the chiefs of the Air Force and Navy and his Foreign Office. He got nervousafter the IAF went into action and there were reports of the Indian naval shipsmoving from the East to the West coast.

Worried over the possibility of the conflict spreading outside Kashmir,Musharraf authorised Lt.Gen.Aziz from Beijing to brief other officers about theoperation at an inter-ministerial meeting chaired by Nawaz on May 29,1999. Atthis meeting, as reported by Aziz to Musharraf, there were objections toMusharraf's keeping others in the dark. According to the account of the meetingas given by Aziz to Musharraf in Beijing over telephone, Nawaz defendedMusharraf's action in not informing others as due to the demands of operationalsecrecy. Nawaz claimed that he himself and other Corps Commanders were informedonly a week earlier. He made it appear that Musharraf's action wasunderstandable.

A careful examination of the tapes as released by the Vajpayee Government wouldindicate the following:

• Musharraf launched the operation without taking the clearance of Nawaz and without the knowledge of most of the senior officers.
  
  
• When the Indian Army hit back and the IAF went into action, he lost his nerve and informed firstly Nawaz and then other senior officers and the Foreign Office.
  
  
• Instead of rebuking Musharraf for launching the operation without his clearance and asking him to stop it, Nawaz went along with it hoping that the operation would succeed. When it did not, he flew to the US and sought the US assistance in bringing the fighting to a halt.

It is clear that neither Musharraf nor Nawaz nor Kiani is telling the wholetruth. Each is telling only a part of the truth which, they think, would servetheir purpose.

On June 14,1999, I had done a detailed analysis of the tapes as released to themedia by Shri Jaswant Singh, the then Foreign Minister, and written an articletitled PakArmy Chief Caught Yapping, relevant extracts from which are appended below


ANNEXURE

(Extract from my article of June 14,1999)

At what stage did Mr Sharif become aware of the Pakistani Army's proxy invasionplans? The CGS, while reporting on May 29 to the COAS on a meeting held by Mr Sharif says: "He said I (Sharif) came to know seven days back, when CorpsCommanders were told. The entire reason for the success of this operation wasthis total secrecy. Our experience was that our earlier efforts failed becauseof lack of secrecy. So, the top priority is to accord confidentiality, to ensuresuccess. We should respect this and the advantage we have from this would giveus a handle."

There are two ways of interpreting this. First, as claimed by Mr GeorgeFernandes, our Defence Minister, the Army secretly planned and started theexecution of this operation and informed Mr Sharif thereafter.

The second interpretation is that at the inter-departmental meeting convened byMr Sharif, the Foreign Office representative expressed their unhappiness overthe Army not keeping them in the picture since they had to handle the diplomaticfall-out.

Mr Sharif tried to soothe their ruffled feathers by claiming that he himself wasinformed only seven days earlier in the interest of operational secrecy. Thisdoes not necessarily mean that Mr  Sharif was not in the picture from thevery beginning.

While the Pakistani Press and public are expressing their solidarity with theirArmy, one could discern in the comments of some independent analysts gnawingfears that Gen. Musharraf is becoming over-assertive at the expense of thecredibility of the elected political leadership and that this operation couldultimately boomerang on Pakistan.

Thus, the "News" said in an article on May 29: "It is undeniablethat armed men have crossed the Line in large numbers, if only because theythemselves have admitted their presence and given Press statements by satellitetelephone. They were not stopped by Pakistan Army patrols."

Mr Azhar Abbas said in an article in the May issue of the "Herald",the monthly journal of the "Dawn" group:" The assumption here (inPakistan) is that India cannot respond to this kind of (covert) warfare with aconventional attack on Pakistan....

"The Army appears convinced of the wisdom of keeping India bleeding inKashmir and in the presence of an effective deterrent (in the form of nuclearweapons in the hands of Pakistan), the temptation to do so would be evengreater.....

"Several retired Army officers believe that the new Army Chief is far moreassertive than his predecessor (Gen. Jehangir Karamat) and, in the event of theNawaz Government taking issue with the new doctrine, is unlikely to bow out aseasily as Karamat. This points to troubled civil-military relations in thefuture...."

The article concludes: " Skeptics are already warning that in the guise ofchanging threat perceptions and bailing out the (internal) system, the Army mayonly be searching for a new power-sharing formula after the dissolution of theinfamous Troika. If the Army's new doctrine is, indeed, little more than thequest for a new power-sharing arrangement, it is time for the Nawaz Governmentto disillusion the Army....If the Government fails to do that, in the words ofDr. Eqbal Ahmad (a highly-respected Pakistani analyst), this change of threatperception can cost us, in the long run, our entire future."

The article was analysing not only Gen. Musharraf's perception of India, butalso his vigorous justification of the Army agreeing to take over purelycivilian responsibilities such as running the Water and Power DevelopmentAuthority (WAPDA). Mr Sharif asked the Army to run the WAPDA to end corruptionand to improve its efficiency.

After taking over, Gen. Musharraf, to the discomfiture of Mr Sharif, is reportedto have issued orders that the Army would not only be responsible for theday-to-day running, but would also conduct all future negotiations with theindependent power producers, thereby denying any role in this matter to thepolitical leadership and civilian bureaucrats.