In 1999, Nawaz Sharif was overthrown in a military coup. His vanquisher, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was broadly welcomed in Pakistan, and later, by the international community. Sharif was first thrown in jail, and later dispatched into exile for seven years. In his absence, some claimed that Sharif’s party — and his political career — was finished. Now, in an astonishing turn of history, Sharif is set to become Pakistan’s first-ever third-time Prime Minister, while his once powerful nemesis Musharraf is under arrest and possibly facing trial.
"There are new forces emerging in Pakistan. President Musharraf had arrived expecting to make a big impact." Salman Khurshi said on April 26, 2013
As results trickled in on May 11, 2013 evening, Mr Sharif told The Daily Telegraph that he planned to get to work straight away. He promised a 100-day plan to begin overhauling the economy, adding that he wanted better relations with India, Pakistan's oldest rival.
BBC reported: “As an opposition leader, Mr Sharif advocated negotiating with the militants instead of fighting them, and wanted an end to US drone strikes in Pakistani areas where they have sanctuaries.
He has had problems with the military in the past - he was toppled in a coup by Gen Pervez Musharraf ..”
Victory of Nawab Sharif is a setback to former Cricketer Imran Khan! What does happen with Musharraf?
Mirror of UK reported: “Millions of people defied threats of suicide attacks from the Taliban to cast their votes in Pakistan's landmark elections yesterday…. Mr Sharif now faces the monumental task of governing a country beset by rising inflation, rolling blackouts and a powerful Taliban insurgency.”
Obama hails Pakistan for elections, pledges equal partnership
Indian PM congratulates Nawaz Sharif
Here I am updating my article of July 7, 2007:
(1) LONDON, MAY 12, 2002:
The Pakistani Army mobilised its nuclear arsenal against India in 1999 — during the Kargil conflict — with the full knowledge of its then prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the Sunday Times reported today, quoting Bruce Riedel, who was a senior adviser to the then US President Bill Clinton on India and Pakistan.
While Clinton reminded Sharif how closes the US and Soviet Union had come to nuclear war in 1962 over Cuba, Sharif agreed it would be a catastrophe even if a single bomb was dropped.
John Pike, director of the Washington-based Global Security Organisation, said intelligence channels could have become aware of the trucks that carry Pakistan’s nuclear missiles being moved from their bases at Sargodha, near Rawalpindi.
(2) MARCH 29, 2005:
Ex-defence minister Jaswant Singh said a former US ambassador was responsible for spreading paranoia about an impending India-Pakistan nuclear war during the 1999 Kargil war. There was this US ambassador, whom I shall not name, who was saying these things. And I asked (former minister of state for defence) Arun Singh to go and have a word with him," Singh said.
(3) As news agencies reporting on July 7, 2006:
There was a deployment of certain variety of missiles that Indian Authority saw. Jaswant Singh has sighted that site in his book which is under print and will come in public soon.
(4) "American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House,"
by former White House official Bruce Riedel, says whole truth of the kargil War:
Prime Minister Sharif had seemed genuinely interested in pursuing the Lahore process when he met with Vajpayee...he wanted an end to the fifty year old quarrel with India. His military chief, General Pervez Musharraf was said to be a hardliner on Kashmir, a man some feared was determined to humble India once and for all.
When Clinton later reveals the extent of Islamabad's nuclear preparedness, Sharif "seemed taken aback and said only that India was probably doing the same," Clinton then berates Sharif, asking "did he know how crazy that (getting nuclear missiles ready) was?"
An angry Clinton had asked repeatedly for Pakistani help to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice from Afghanistan. Sharif had promised often to do so but had done nothing. Instead the ISI worked with Bin Laden and the Taliban to foment terrorism, Riedel discloses Clinton as telling Sharif. (More recent reports say Musharraf sabotaged a CIA project to train Pakistanis commandos to catch Bin Laden).
Sherif tells Clinton that unless the US gives him some face-saving formula for withdrawing from Kargil, the fundamentalists back home will gun for him and this might be his last meeting with the US President.
Sharif had a choice, withdraw behind the LoC and the moral compass would tilt back toward Pakistan or stay and fight a wider and dangerous war with India without American sympathy.
Finally in September 1999, Sharif sends his brother Shahbaz. But all that Shahbaz wants to discuss is what the US could do to help his brother stay in power. "He all but said that they knew a military coup was coming," recalls Riedel. It did, a few weeks later, when Musharraf toppled Sharif.
The above printed version of Riedel is now in public domain.
Spokesman, Colonel Bikram Singh, said there was every reason to believe the Pakistanis were equipped with chemical weapons as they had left behind some gas masks. Pakistan is a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention and has declared that it does not have any chemical arms.
In the summer of 1999, India and Pakistan fought a 73 day military conflict merits intensive study.
We should salute our soldiers when they are alive, not just when they become martyr?
(5) General Ved Prakash Malik
He said in an interview: Also, though India and Pakistan are nuclear nations, it is not true to say there cannot be a conventional war between them. Kargil proved that. There is a threshold under which a conventional war is possible. We must always be conscious of the fact that terrorist operations and militancy are part of a conflict spectrum. It can escalate and shift into a conventional war quite easily. It happened in 1947, it happened in 1965 and it happened in 1999. Today's law-and-order problem can turn into a war tomorrow. We need to monitor the situation carefully and be prepared physically and mentally in case it escalates.
'Kargil is not the end. Militancy is not going to die down' Lieutenant General Y N Sharma (retired), who lost a leg in the 1971 Indo-Pak war, said Pakistan had fought five jihad wars, including a proxy from 1985-98. The neighbour was repeating 'a cycle of hate and aggression'.
Santosh Kanwar, widow of Martyr Mangej Singh swore ''I shall not hesitate to send all my three sons to the front and will be proud if they die defending the country like their father”
High than Mount Everest height emotional words of the martyr-memorial at Kohima:
When you go home
tell them of us
And say
for your tomorrow
we gave our today
