Elaborate Web Of Lies

In his address to the nation, General Pervez Musharraf justified the military coup in Pakistan on the grounds that it was necessary to save the country from turmoil and economic collapse. "You are all aware of the kind of turmoil and uncertainty that our country has gone through in recent times. Not only have all the institutions been played around with, and systematically destroyed, the economy too is in a state of collapse." This is a sorry fig leaf for a barbaric act. But the act itself has not come as a surprise. Ever since the Kargil war, Pakistan has been living within an elaborate web of lies. That web has strangled its frail democracy: within the next half-decade it will destroy the nation.

The first great lie, around which all others were woven, was that Kashmiri freedom fighters and Islamic mujahideen had occupied the Kargil heights and not the Pakistan army. The second was that the 'mujahideen'had been winning the war in Kargil when Nawaz Sharif made his unsolicited visit to Washington on July 4, and was trapped by President Clinton into agreeing to a ceasefire and withdrawal from Kargil. Nawaz Sharif thus betrayed the country. These lies sired a host of others.

If Pakistan had been winning the war, then how was it that the Indians had so many corpses? For corpses are usually left on the battlefield by the vanquished and not the victors. And if the Pakistan army was not involved then the people whose names, ranks and serial numbers India was reading out on the TV and posting on the Web, must still be alive. Then why were they not responding to their relatives'frantic letters?

Over the past four months Pakistan has been unable either to live with these lies or to own up to them and tell the truth. This had thrown its people into a nightmarish world of doubt, suspicion and anger that had began to tear society apart. The coup d'etat by General Pervez Musharraf was its inevitable outcome.

It was obvious from the start that civilian rule would be the first casualty. The real reason why Nawaz Sharif went to Washington was his fear, probably well founded, that the army was out of control. It was losing the war in Kargil. The Indian army had wrested back the Tololing heights, and two out of four of the Batalik ridges. On the very day that Nawaz Sharif flew to Washington, the Indian army recaptured Tiger Hill. In several sectors it had scaled the ridges behind the Pakistanis and cut their supply lines and escape routes. The Pakistan high command faced two choices-to let their soldiers be driven from the heights or be killed, or to unleash its air force against the Indian artillery batteries that were the mainstay of the Indian attack. Nawaz Sharif knew that the second option would lead to total war.

India had moved five divisions to the western front from the east. It had also moved its entire eastern fleet to the Arabian Sea. Its air force vastly outnumbered Pakistan's. It had incomparably greater economic staying power than Pakistan. Not only would Pakistan lose the war, but there was no certainty that it would remain non-nuclear. So he turned to President Clinton to give him another way out.

Nawaz Sharif probably saved Pakistan (and India) from a holocaust but, trapped in his own lies, he could neither tell his people that the army was losing the war, nor that it was perfectly capable of turning the entire country into a latter day Valhalla rather than lose to India. He therefore claimed that he had saved the country, but lacked the means to convince his people. In their eyes, therefore, he became a traitor and has now paid the price.

The same lies put Gen. Musharraf in an impossible position and virtually ensured his estrangement from Sharif. For Musharraf knew that he had sent only Pakistani regulars into battle. So sooner or later he would have to deal with the body bags. Initially, he was trapped into denying that the dead were Pakistanis and refusing to accept their bodies. But as the numbers mounted, he quickly realised the folly of this course of action and began to concede that the army had been involved.

On July 7, the Pakistan army pro, Brigadier Rashid Qureshi, admitted that 178 Pakistani soldiers had been killed. On July 16, Musharraf admitted during a bbc interview that the Pakistani army had engaged in aggressive patrolling across the loc. A month later he handed out decorations for valour in the Kargil war.

With each admission it became more and more necessary for him to insist that the Pakistan army had been winning the war when it was pulled back. Each assertion made Sharif more firmly the villain of the piece. A falling out was therefore preordained.

The only gainers from this sorry state of affairs are the mujahideen and Islamic fundamentalists. The tacit agreement to give them the credit for the so-called victory over Indian forces in Kargil has overnight turned them into heroes in the eyes of the people. What is more ominous-the undercurrent of sympathy and admiration for them in the Pakistan army has strengthened.

Nawaz Sharif's government had been deeply worried by this trend. He had criticised Afghanistan's support for fundamentalism in other countries only two weeks ago, and the isi chief, General Ziauddin, had visited Washington to solicit help in combating extremism in Pakistan only a few days later.

With the fall of democracy, with no end in sight to Pakistan's economic woes, and no let-up in its frustrated hunger for Kashmir, the country's drift towards Islamic extremism and Talibanisation is certain to accelerate in the coming months.