There are a few interpretations on how the Kargil conflict of 1999 ended. On the face of it, military men (specially in India) believe that the grit and valour India troops in those icy Kargil heights that eventually evicted the Pakistani army led irregulars. True. But, nobody, except for General Musharraf and his handful of cronies believed that the world would buy their narrative: that it was a Mujihideen led operation to liberate Kashmir from India. Historians know that insurgencies are fought in jungles and built up areas, the occupation of which is essential to give territorial control and claim victory; but not on icy hilltops like to heights around Kargil.
So once the then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, felt Pakistan had lost the plot, he rushed – uninvited – to Washington, to try and get the US President to intervene, and announce a face-saving cease fire for Pakistan. Sharif ’s visit took place on the 4th of July, America’s Independence Day, where unlike India and Pakistan there are no grand speeches by the US President. It’s a public holiday and a day of retreat in the US. Even the White House is shut. Thus, Nawaz Sharif wasn’t even entertained over an official meal or even a high-tea, but pizzas were ordered to feed Sharif and his team of spin masters at Blair House across the street from White House, where Clinton chose to meet Sharif informally in its library.
After a long session trying to get Pakistan to agree to a withdrawal–even as Sharif and his advisers invented trick language to suggest that Clinton somehow blessed a Pakistani withdrawal, Clinton lost his patience, and said to Sharif: “Your Army is in the wrong here,” and that Clinton could not mediate over the Kashmir crisis without the consent of both warring nations and India adamantly refused,’writes Taylor Branch, Clinton’s friend and confidante, in the Clinton Tapes, A President’s Secret Diary (published by Simon & Schuster, in 2009). On Pages 560-561 of the book claims that the Clinton – Nawaz Sharif meet set the stage to end the Kargil War, that Clinton and his administration believed (may have) saved thousands of lives on the Indian and Pakistani sides, even though the book argues that Clinton refused to mediate.
For President Clinton, battered by the United States Congress, the media and his critics in his second term over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton still remembers his July 4, 1999 meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as his ‘most ferocious encounter in politics ‘.’Clinton put his position bluntly,’ Branch writes, ‘If Sharif withdrew Pakistani troops from Kashmir, the United States would express relief without praise. If Sharif refused to withdraw, the United States would be forced to shift its historic alliance with Pakistan publicly towards India.’
And once the room was cleared of aides, Clinton told Sharif forcefully that the Kargil conflict was not a border skirmish, it had the potential to set off a nuclear war. When the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 occurred, Clinton said, the US and the Soviet Union had more information about each other’s nuclear arsenal than India and Pakistan had in 1999. Also Clinton believed that Kashmir belonged to India, and that the LoC was the de-facto border.
Sharif was however relentless. This surrender for him, he told Clinton, was worse for him than war. He could either order a nuclear war as a patriot, Branch wrote, or risk being overthrown by Pakistan’s Army Chief, General Pervez Musharraf. By now everyone understood that Kargil was Musharraf ’s handiwork, but the Pakistani people would not tolerate a withdrawal from Kargil, said Sharif. ‘Sharif could yield to Clinton only by baring his neck to Musharraf,’ but so be it, Clinton said. Sharif, as head of the government, would have to withdraw, and cover himself however he could.
As a dejected Sharif trudged back home, after this meeting with Clinton, the Kargil conflict thereafter ended on India’s terms. But tensions persisted in Pakistan, between Nawaz Sharif and General Pervez Musharraf. It eventually led to a military coup that gave Musharraf a decade in power.
