How the 1999 war exposed Pak policy

The 84-day battle in Kargil, and what followed, unmasked Islamabad’s sponsorship of cross-border terrorism.

A quarter of a century ago, the 84-day war fought (and won) by India on the glaciated heights of Kargil sector in 1999 marked the beginning of the end of the West’s pro-Islamabad stance, with much of the world waking up to the fact that cross-border terrorism was part of the state policy of the country that had gone nuclear a year before.

Kargil war: In the end, India emerged victorious, stamping its military superiority in the region while Pakistan lost face both domestically and internationally.

The war in which the Indian Army lost 527 soldiers (with another 1363 injured ) was not only a betrayal of the Lahore peace process by then Pakistan Army Chief General Pervez Musharraf but also showed the extent to which Rawalpindi GHQ would go to claim Jammu & Kashmir. It later emerged that while then Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was celebrating a bus trip to Lahore with then Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif in February 1999, Gen Musharraf had already given a green signal to his Rawalpindi Corps and Force Commander Northern Areas to cross the verified Line of Control (LoC) in Kargil sector using Pakistan-based terrorists as cover. Keeping PM Sharif in the dark, Musharraf visited his Northern Light Infantry (NLI) troops at Gultari, opposite Mushkoh sector, in March 1999 as recorded in the recovered diary of a fallen Pakistani army captain.

The Pakistani army’s intrusion into Kargil with terrorists as a cover became evident from the intercepted conversation between Gen Musharraf (while visiting Beijing) and his Chief of General Staff Lt Gen Mohammed Aziz in Rawalpindi on May 26 and May 29. According to the intercepts, Rawalpindi told the terrorists and mujahideen to claim the shooting of IAF Mi-17 helicopter over Drass on May 28. Musharaff’s plan was to seize Indian territory in Jammu and Kashmir as revenge for India’s Operation Meghdoot in Siachen (in 1984, to take full control of the glacial heights); internationalise the Kashmir issue; and disrupt Indian supply lines to south Siachen glacier and weaken the hold of the Indian Army on Saltoro Ridge.

The war, fought over a 200 kilometer range from Mushkoh to Chorbat La all within Indian territory was an eye-opener for western supporters of Pakistan, who had chosen to side with Islamabad for the Great Game in Afghanistan; it was the tipping point after which cross-border terrorism replaced terms such as militants and freedom fighters in the context of Jammu and Kashmir. While India decided to evict the intruders by force after PM Vajpayee’s speech on June 7, 1999, it was US President Bill Clinton who forced PM Nawaz Sharif to order the withdrawal of Pakistan Army troops from Kargil sector during the July 4 meeting at Blair House in Washington. Clinton’s message was reinforced by US Central Army Commander to Musharraf. Sharif would later pay the price in a coup by Musharraf and his generals on October 8, 1999. But there was also another more insidious trend that Kargil ushered.

While Pakistan was rooted and booted out by July 26 with the largely Shia Northern Light Infantry troops bearing the brunt of the Indian Army’s offensive, its policy of using terrorism against India did not change. Indian Airlines IC-814 flight was hijacked by Harkat-ul-Ansar terrorists to Taliban held Kandahar on December 25, 1999 to free terror kingpin Masood Azhar and two others from Indian custody in a hostage swap deal negotiated by then Intelligence Bureau Additional Director Ajit Doval. The same Azhar, who formed Jaish-e-Mohammed group in Bahawalpur later, targeted the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly using suicide bombers on October 1, 2001 and Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001.

That attack almost led to another war with India mobilising its troops in the western sector on December 17 to take the war to Pakistan. The West, particularly the US, was forced to put pressure on Islamabad to take steps against terrorism as detailed in the January 12, 2002 speech of then President Musharraf.

The US pressure on Pakistan was not a result of the country’s affection for India or sympathy for the latter’s concerns but to ensure that its war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban post the 9/11 terror attacks was not affected by the Indian offensive on Islamabad from the east. After the September 11 attacks, Pakistan was back in western currency as the US under George W Bush needed Islamabad to take on Osama bin Laden and his jihadists within the Islamic Republic as well as Afghanistan with the war on terror being waged across the Durand Line. Still, ties between India and the US , frozen after the 1998 nuclear test , did thaw on account of the Kargil war.

Not that this changed Pakistan’s approach. The proscribed Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists attacked an Indian Army camp in Kaluchak on May 14, 2002, with some of the victims being barbarically skinned by the jihadists. Seething with rage, PM Vajpayee ordered massive Indian armed forces mobilization under Operation Parakram to teach Pakistan a lesson but frenetic diplomatic effort by the US and UK ensured that India called off strike against Pakistan in the first week of June.

But Operation Parakram yielded a diplomatic dividend in January 2004 when Musharraf bilaterally agreed not to export terror to India from any Pakistan territory. But internally nothing changed in Pakistan as its deep state shifted gears and focused on training radicalized Muslims within India to target Indian cities through the Indian Mujahideen group from 2005 to 2013 with nearly 500 innocents losing their lives and limbs in the process.

It was only on November 26, 2008, when 10 LeT gunmen massacred innocents in Mumbai that the West woke up again to the threat of Pakistan-based (and sponsored) terror groups.

The western alliance with Pakistan took another turn when Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was gunned down in Attock in Pakistan on May 2, 2011 by the Americans who realized that Pakistan had been playing a double game all along in Afghanistan and taking the Pakistan-friendly US State Department and Pentagon for a royal ride.

This was a major turning point in the Af-Pak region with the US and other western powers giving up on Pakistan -- a fact leveraged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to defang and attack the terror apparatus in Pakistan without any fear of a nuclear strike. After the JeM attack on Pathankot airbase on January 2, 2016, Modi gave an opportunity to then Pak PM Nawaz Sharif to bring the culprits to book. It was after the terror attack in Uri on September 18, 2016, that the NDA government ordered a surgical strike across LoC (on September 29, 2016 ). This strike ensured that Pakistan kept its terror groups under leash till 2019 when the Pulwama attack took place on February 14. The Indian response this time came in the form of IAF’s Mirage-2000 fighters launching a strike at JeM training camp at Balakot .

India’s response to Uri and Pulwama have signalled that New Delhi is prepared to respond to Islamabad in the language it understands. While Pakistan has yet again activated the Jammu sector with terror strikes since 2021, Islamabad today faces full fledged insurgencies in Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa apart from Taliban taking on the Pakistan Army on the border as it refuses to recognise Durand Line as the international border.

During Kargil, Pakistan used the Afghanistan issue to its advantage. Today, the tables have turned with the Taliban turning against Rawalpindi and the West running out of steam in the Af-Pak region.

(The author covered the Kargil war for Hindustan Times and has reported on Pakistan terror in Kashmir since 1994)