The National Identity XXX: Kargil, the Bodyguard of Pakistan’s Lies

Kargil failed because Pakistani reading of tactics, geopolitics, and history, was, as ever, wrong

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and COAS General Pervez Musharraf at Keil sector near Rawlakot on the Line of Control, February 1999. Examining plans for a Mujahideen operation or an Army one? Is there even a difference left after the Islamisization of the Army during General Zia’s years in power? Source: AFP, Dawn

“Thence north to the glaciers” — Karachi Agreement, 1949 and Simla Agreement, 1972

The Line of Control — demarcated till Pt. NJ9842; beyond which lies the Siachen Glacier

Those four words legitimised the daring escape Siachen Glacier managed from the clutches of cartographic aggression from time immemorial to the early 1980’s. Those very words brought back into sharp focus, what it means to be an unclaimed piece of land in the most militarised zone in the world.

In two landmark agreements, both when India held the upper hand, in the aftermath of the Indian victory in the Kashmir War in 1948 and the Bangladesh War in 1971, the Siachen Glacier was left untouched and uncharted. However, with India’s conventional military superiority in no question after 1971, and having lost half their territory and population, Pakistan knew it had to shift tact.

Pakistan’s reading of the situation in the 1970’s and 1980’s was clear — they seemed to have a more logical claim to…