Musharraf & 'National Confidentiality'

In an interview with Business Plus Channel aired last night Musharraf said a great many things (as per usual) but what struck me was his use of a uniquely new concept, which he referred to as ‘national confidentiality’.

This is what Business Plus Channel’s sister newspaper the Daily Times had to say:

Sounding a note of warning, he said issues relating to Kargil were extremely confidential and of paramount national importance, and these should not be publicised in the way in which the former prime minister [Nawaz Sharif] was doing so consistently.

“I would advise him to talk economically on this issue because it is an issue of great national confidentiality,” he said.

Okay, since the onset of dictatorial power in Pakistan in the 1950s we, the uniformless civilians, have become accustomed to two commonly used words:

• ‘National Interest’ – which we can broadly translate as something specifically in the interest of the government of the day (this applies to both civilian and military regimes).
• ‘National Security’, are two words which encompass a whole host of Khaki matters, stretching from our nuclear hardware to more prosaic things like the military purchase of paper clips under our completely unscrutinisable Defence budget.

Having said that, your Blogger now wishes come to some sort understanding of this new term.

_________________________________________________

As Musharraf openly linked ‘national confidentiality’ to Kargil, let us briefly attempt to re-examine the Kargil conflict from a distantly neutral perspective – so here is what Wikipedia says about it (with links to its sources and footnotes):

According to India's then army chief Ved Prakash Malik, the infiltration was code named "Operation Badr",[8] and much of the background planning, including construction of logistical supply routes, had been undertaken much earlier. On more than one occasion, the army had given past Pakistani leaders (namely Zia ul Haq and Benazir Bhutto) similar proposals for an infiltration in the Kargil region in the 1980s and 1990s. However the plans had been shelved for fear of drawing the nations into all-out war.[9] [10]

Some analysts believe that the blueprint of attack was reactivated when Pervez Musharraf was appointed chief of army staff in October 1998. In a recent disclosure made by Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, he states that he was unaware of the preparation of the intrusion, and it was an urgent phone call from Atal Bihari Vajpayee, his counterpart in India, that informed him about the situation.[11] Sharif has attributed the plan on Musharraf and "just two or three of his cronies".[11]

According to Hassan Abbas (in his book - Pakistan's Drift Into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America's War on Terror) the Kargil operation was planned and managed by the Army led by General Musharraf who led a “Gang of Four [generals]” and quotes Pakistan High Commissioner to UK, Maleeha Lodhi as saying: “Even corps commanders and other service chiefs were excluded from the decision-making process.”

It is most likely that Musharraf and his generals, knowing that Nawaz Sharif wasn’t the brightest bulb on the planet, led the then prime minister down the garden path without letting him what really was in store.

Once the Pakistani forces commanded the heights of Kargil the Indians took heavy losses in futile frontal ground assaults. Logic dictated that the only way to deal with the Pakistani forces was for the Indian Military to blockade their supply route. Such a move would have involved the Indian troops crossing the LOC as well as initiating aerial attacks on Pakistan soil – in other words all out war with Pakistan.

As Wikipedia then informs us:

Meanwhile, the Indian Navy also readied itself for an attempted blockade of Pakistani ports to cut off supply routes. Later, the-then Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif disclosed that Pakistan was left with just six days of fuel to sustain itself if a full-fledged war had broken out. As Pakistan found itself entwined in a prickly position, the army had covertly planned a nuclear strike on India, the news of which alarmed U.S. President Bill Clinton, resulting in a stern warning to Nawaz Sharif.[13]

Now here is a pertinent quote from US journalist Mary Anne Weaver’s book Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan (Author - Mary Anne Weaver) regarding General Zinni who, then as the head of US Central Command, had been rushed to Pakistan by the Clinton Administration to arrange a ceasefire during the clash at Kargil. Zinni told the author:

…‘the danger of the situation was not fully appreciated, even in Washington. But certainly was on the ground. I think one of the reasons that Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif were glad to see me come was that they had really scared themselves to death’.

_____________________________________________

When the Kargil conflict is fully documented by future historians I am certain that they will lay the blame for the debacle squarely at Musharraf’s doorstep. Obviously the previous army chiefs who had rejected the plan as being potentially calamitous lacked Musharraf’s action-oriented commando mindset.

Having delved a bit into the Kargil conflict it becomes easier to understand Musharraf's extreme reticence in allowing anyone to re-hash the finer details of the fiasco.

So there you have it, ‘National Confidentiality’ in a nutshell.

Pakistan
Kargil
Musharraf