Pervez Musharraf was the one Pakistani ruler post-Zulfiqar Bhutto whom India distrusted most, yet also thought could deliver. He used military deception to attain his objective, but once he became a politician he turned incredibly straight, with no care for the nuances of diplomacy or politics.
Take Kargil, an example of military deception of the worst kind—getting your military to plan an operation even as your political leadership was parleying.
Musharraf was reputedly planning (or plotting) the Kargil incursion even as Indian Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee's Lahore peace bus was rolling into Pakistan in February 1999. There was much hullabaloo then about Musharraf’s absence at the Minar-e-Pakistan meeting and his refusal to salute the visiting prime minister. Musharraf kept quiet about it at the time but later clarified that he had indeed saluted the guest at the state event, and had kept away from the Minar-e-Pakistan ceremony because it was a political event.
Within weeks, the chicanery was out. By May, the Indian Army spotted intruders on the Kargil heights from where they would direct Pakistani artillery to fire at the Indian military convoys driving up the Srinagar-Leh national highway with supplies to the troops in Ladakh. It took a little while for the Indian military to appreciate the gravity of the situation. Musharraf's intent, it dawned on them, was to cut off the Indian troops in Ladakh and Siachen, and perhaps capture the territory.
That was Musharraf. A military man inside out, he could hardly understand the dynamics of politics or the niceties of diplomacy. Like all field generals, he could think only in terms of territory. For him, the Kashmir issue was a territorial issue pure and simple—territory for militaries to manoeuvre, or territory for mining resources. Months later, he would propose formulae by which the territory of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh could be bifurcated or trifurcated. In his scheme of things, there was no place for the sentiments of the people, their culture, or other affinities.
In Kargil, Musharraf proved to be brilliant tactician, but a poor strategist. He had not factored in the political and diplomatic heft that India commanded. As Vajpayee's diplomats launched a brilliant campaign across the world capitals highlighting India's cause, even Pakistan's friends in Washington and elsewhere came to be convinced that Pakistan—and its Musharraf-led military—was the nasty aggressor. To cut a long story short, he lost the Kargil war.
Musharraf lay low for a while, committing no mistakes in word or deed. But, by now, his prime minister Nawaz Sharif sought to blame the Kargil misadventure on the army—which would prove to be a costly mistake. As troop and officer morale started to sag, Musharraf undertook a whirlwind tour of military stations where he gave pep-talks to his soldiers, taking care not to blame the political leadership. It was clear by now that the civilian-military rift was widening.
The rest is history—how Nawaz Sharif sacked Musharraf when the latter was away in Colombo and tried to prevent the commercial aeroplane carrying Musharraf from landing in Karachi. Musharraf's loyal staff officers and corps commanders quickly mounted a coup, kicked out the prime minister, captured the airport, and let their chief's plane land safely. In short, Musharraf didn't mount a coup. His men mounted a coup for him and made him the ruler.
Having captured political power, Musharraf tried diplomacy. He opened backchannel talks with India, and the Indian foreign office naively allowed itself to be led up the garden path to a summit at Agra. Looking back today, one wonders how Vajpayee, his foreign minister Jaswant Singh and a bunch of brilliant diplomats agreed to a summit with no specific agenda or even a few bracketed paragraphs of a draft joint statement.
Today it would sound incredible—that the reservations expressed by the Indian foreign office were not about agenda or issue, but largely over protocol matters. Musharraf was still only a military chief; he held no civilian post; how could the prime minister of India be talking to a military chief. Musharraf had no problem—a day or two before emplaning for Delhi he designated himself as president.
The man who had launched a war of deception on India landed to almost a hero's welcome in Delhi. Dressed right for every occasion—sherwani at state events, a bright blue bush-shirt and khakis while visiting his ancestral home in Chandni Chowk, a smart western suit and tie at a breakfast with editors, a light white slack while posing with his wife in front of the Taj Mahal—he made a sartorial aggression on the psyche of the Indian civil elite. A man who you could trust your wife with for a walk in the woods, someone commented.
But across the conference table, the Indian delegation, used to good old diplomacy, was flabbergasted. Musharraf wanted to talk about just one issue—Kashmir. Everything else was secondary. Whereas the Indian side, used to the step-by-step approach, wanted to have comprehensive dialogues over a host of other issues ranging from trade and Sir Creek to cultural tries and Siachen standoff.
To cut a long story short, the talks flopped. A seething Musharraf took a midnight flight back to Islamabad. There, he called a press conference to denounce Indian diplomacy's round-about ways and importance being given to joint statements which he called “one and a half pages of English composition”. The military man had clear contempt for diplomatic niceties.
Relations remained cold for the next few months. Then, Osama bin Laden launched his infamous attack on New York City's World Trade Centre.
A horror-struck George Bush launched a war against the Taliban regime sheltering bin Laden. The commando in Musharraf quickly spotted his chance. In another famous typically military-style television address, he asked India to “lay off” Afghanistan and declared support to the Bush war. This, despite his regime having supported the Taliban and his own commanders having been its military advisers. He quickly pulled them out (as THE WEEK reported then, the prison riot in Mazar-e-Sherif was caused when the Taliban prisoners objected to Pakistani officers being rescued), and now began hunting with the American hound.
India looked the loser in the new Great Game. But, it soon became clear that America's war was getting nowhere. The Taliban held on, and the military objectives that Musharraf had promised were elusive even after weeks of pounding from the air. With no other option, Bush sought the help of Russia. Putin asked him to co-opt the Northern Alliance which had the support of Russia and India into the military and political scheme. As Musharraf seethed, soon the Northern Alliance walked into Kabul which had been deserted by the Taliban.
A much-chastened Musharraf now began reaching out to India again, but India demurred. “Why doesn't Vajpayee talk to me?” he asked THE WEEK correspondent in one of his outbursts at an event in Almaty. And, in yet another commando-style move, he lunged towards a sulking Vajpayee at the Kathmandu SAARC summit, grabbed his hand and shook it.
Backchannel diplomacy started again, and by now India too decided that Musharraf was there for good and that it was better to do business with him. But, now it also decided not to be naive. Indian diplomats haggled hard and finally made Musharraf agree to the famous 2004 Islamabad declaration by which Pakistan agreed not to allow its territory to be used for launching terror strikes against India.
File photo of Pervez Musharraf and Atal Bihari Vajpayee | PTI
The new Manmohan Singh government continued the trust-but-verify policy that Vajpayee had followed towards the end of his regime. Diplomats and even leaders of the two countries met on the sidelines of multilateral summits where Musharraf proposed varied formulas. But, as Indian diplomats found, Musharraf could never get over his obsession with territory and that proved to be the undoing of all attempts at peace-making.
Soon domestic issues distracted his attention. In the end, it was his handling of the judiciary—also in his commando-style—that proved to be his undoing. He sacked chief justices, arrested lawyers and alienated the Pakistani elite who had been warming up to him, especially for his secular and modern outlook. The dictatorial streak in him bared itself.
Finally, the forces of political democracy asserted themselves. He was forced to let Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif return from their exile. Finally, when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in a terrorist strike, the needle of suspicion turned against his regime.
