Pakistan lost the Kargil conflict because it "misjudged" India's "ability and will" to fight back besides failing to factor the reaction of major powers which declined to support Islamabad and ended up backing New Delhi, a former Pakistan foreign official has said.
"The operation also misjudged the Indian ability and the will to fight back and had assumed that India would never retaliate with an all-out offensive against Pakistan," Former Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad has said.
"In other words, it (Pakistan) was not prepared for what Musharraf describes (in his book In the Line of Fire) the unreasonably escalated Indian response," Ahmad said in an article published in Dawn in Islamabad on Sunday.
In the first part of his article called 'The truth about the Kargil episode,' Ahmad, in a detailed account to Musharraf's book which sparked off war of words between the President and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said "the biggest flaw of the plan was that it had not catered for the global environment."
"Indeed, it was an aberration to the global environment, and the international reaction soon left no doubt about it. In the given situation, no political leadership or diplomatic strategy could have changed the global perception of the crisis or reversed the deteriorating situation on the ground," he said.
{{/usCountry}}"Indeed, it was an aberration to the global environment, and the international reaction soon left no doubt about it. In the given situation, no political leadership or diplomatic strategy could have changed the global perception of the crisis or reversed the deteriorating situation on the ground," he said.
{{/usCountry}}Ahmad also said that in whatever way one looks at the Kargil events, the episode did mark a "watershed in India-Pakistan relations."