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Journalism of Courage
By a curious coincidence, two former elected prime ministers of Pakistan who had between them ruled the country for a decade8212;mostly under the patronage of the army leadership8212;have indicted General Pervez Musharraf in no uncertain terms, even while Musharraf concurrently seeks a road map to the Kashmir solution printed in the United States. Benazir Bhutto has asserted more clearly this time that she had denied permission to Musharraf, as the head of military operations, to launch a military offensive in the Kargil sector, a war plan put into practice when he became the army chief. The plan apparently had been in existence since 1987, when General Zia ul-Haq is believed to have vetoed it as militarily foolish and diplomatically disastrous.
Nawaz Sharif has also indicated that he, as the elected prime minister of Pakistan, had 8220;almost decided on a deadline for a peaceful resolution8221; of the Kashmir dispute, but it was sabotaged by the Kargil war. It needs to be recalled that Kashmir was not an issue during the election campaigns of either Nawaz Sharif in 1996 or that of Benazir Bhutto before that. The conclusion is inevitable: That the army in Pakistan purposely sought to derail any movement toward a solution to the Kashmir issue through its Kargil plan. In the process it sacrificed a lot of its brave soldiers who were also denied a honourable military burial, something that every professional military holds so dear as a tradition.
