NEW DELHI, Sept 7: In a rare public acknowledgement by a serving Pakistani Army chief, General Asim Munir has mentioned the involvement of Pakistan army in the Kargil war as he listed the 1999 conflict with India among the major wars fought with the eastern neighbour.
Munir, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) was speaking during the Defence and Martyrs Day event here at Rawalpindi on Friday. The Kargil conflict of 1999 had brought India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear conflagration. Pakistan says it pulled out after the U.S. intervened to cool the frayed tempers while India claims a decisive victory in the war that took place in the Himalayan heights.
In his speech, General Munir highlighted the role of the Army in defending the motherland with the support of the people of Pakistan and also touched upon various conflicts with India, including the Kargil war. “Indeed Pakistani nation is a courageous and bold nation, which understands best the importance of independence and how to protect it at any price. Whether the Pak-India wars of 1948, 1965, 1971 and Kargil or Siachen conflict, thousands of martyrs gave sacrifices for the security and honour of the country,” Munir said.
Pakistan had initially distanced itself from the conflict by saying that only private “freedom fighters” were involved in it. However, soon the scale of fighting revealed that the armies of two countries were fighting against each other.
But in the 2006 book ‘In The Line Of Fire’ written by the then Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, who was the Pakistan army chief during the Kargil war, had clearly acknowledged the Pakistan Army’s role. Musharraf had sent in the Northern Light Infantry men in the Kargil theatre of war.
Pakistan had awarded Captain Karnal Sher Khan of 27th Battalion, Sind Regiment and Havaldar Lalak Jan of Northern Light Infantry with the highest gallantry award called Nishan-e-Haider after the Kargil war was over.
The former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif had in May also admitted that Islamabad had “violated” an agreement with India signed by him and ex-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1999. “On May 28, 1998, Pakistan carried out five nuclear tests. After that Vajpayee Saheb came here and made an agreement with us. But we violated that agreement…it was our fault,” Mr Sharif told a meeting of the PML-N general council that elected him president of the ruling party six years after he was disqualified by the Supreme Court.
Mr Sharif and Vajpayee signed the Lahore Declaration on February 21, 1999, after a historic summit. The agreement that talked about a vision of peace and stability between the two countries signalled a major breakthrough, but a few months later Pakistani intrusion in Kargil in Jammu and Kashmir led to the Kargil War.
(Manas Dasgupta)