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Friday, July 24, 2009

10 years later: The war that India forgot

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It used to be an eerie landmark; the tree I saw everyday in the summer of 1999, blackened and ripped by incessant bombing at the old brigade headquarters, is green again.

But much else has withered. The legacy of the Kargil war, one of the toughest wars of modern military history — far tougher than Iraq and Afghanistan — has been shortchanged by India’s politics.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government has mostly looked away since 2004 when it came to observing the anniversary of the BJP government-era war. President Pratibha Patil was requested to come to Drass, but declined, army sources said.

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Friday, June 13, 2008

Pakistan wanted Afghan jihadis to help in Kargil

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Pakistan had sought the services of "20,000 to 30,000" Afghan jihadis as possible rein forcements during the Kargil conflict nine years ago, a new book by Pakistani author Shuja Nawaz reveals.

"Mullah Mohammad Rabbani, the Afghan President at the time... was asked by Pakistan to provide 20,000-30,000 'volunteers' for the Kashmir jihad. He startled the Pakistanis by offering 500,000!" Shuja Nawaz, whose brother Asif Nawaz was army chief in the 1990s, says in his 585 page book Crossed Swords.

This damning nugget of information is attributed to an interview with Khwaja Ziauddin, who was the ISI boss during Kargil and the man appointed to replace Pervez Musharraf as army chief on October 12, 1999, by then PM Nawaz Sharif. According to the US-based author, there was a broader Kashmir plan at work that had been presented and discussed by Musharraf with Sharif and his key aides in 1999 though key Pakistani military officials involved in Kargil were unwilling to provide details.

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