Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's 'approach of peace', manifested by his bus yatra to Lahore, appears to have lulled his government into a false sense of security vis-a-vis a hostile neighbour. Fragments of disquieting information on heightened activity by Pakistan in the Kargil sector were obscured or ignored in the exhaust fumes from Vajpayee's bus.
While the government hasn't yet clarified when and how much data on the Pakistani build-up was received, scattered information from multiple sources did trickle in several months before the extent of intrusion into Kargil became public knowledge. Outlook's investigations are borne out by a National Security Council member, who says there was no lack of information. The government apparatus failed in the collation and assessment of that information, which was trickling in as early as February '99, if not earlier.
Evaluation of intelligence, he says, should be in the light of the prevailing atmosphere, which the government determinedly projected as one of peace in fact, as the biggest thaw in Indo-Pak relations in three decades. Treating information about unusually high post-winter infiltration with a business-as-usual approach, no one pieced together the big picture: that Pakistani regulars were grouping across the LoC to occupy strategic peaks.
Intelligence gathering, says cabinet minister Pramod Mahajan, is not an exact science: 'We conducted nuclear tests without anyone knowing. You could say that was a failure of the American intelligence. Indira Gandhi was assassinated. You could say that was an intelligence failure too.' Likewise, Chrar-e-Sharif, Hazratbal and the Babri demolition could be described as intelligence failures. And in '62, despite years of constant nibbling at Indian territory by the Chinese in Ladakh, the government of the day was caught unawares when there was a full-fledged attack.
The fact remains that even on the eve of the PM's bus yatra, no effort was made to obtain an integrated composite intelligence evaluation, the bare minimum when a head of state calls on a neighbour. The approach to the Lahore process was, to quote Congress leader Natwar Singh, 'casual, complacent, sloppy'. 'They couldn't not have known, given the scale of the preparations. It is not possible that some indication of the activities did not come our way and when it did, one would have thought that the government would have wanted to know more,' said aicc secretary Mani Shankar Aiyar.
When Pakistani service chiefs did not greet Vajpayee at Wagah, as protocol demanded, it ought to have been a warning signal, observes Aiyar. Knowing full well there were hostile elements within the Pakistan establishment, the government should have been more vigilant.
But the government appeared to have had other things on its mind: namely, the furore over the summary sacking of navy chief Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat.
With the polls a few months away, the bjp was banking on the four Bs the Bus, the Budget, the Bomb and Bihar to push it through to a majority. Of these, the Bus was clearly the closest to Vajpayee's heart. 'He wanted to do an Indira Gandhi. She had the Simla Agreement. He wanted the Lahore Declaration,' said Natwar Singh. 'The bus yatra was a sincere attempt at friendship. By behaving this way, Pakistan has been discredited,' counters Mahajan.
The Bus was to be a personal feather in Vajpayee's cap, the enduring legacy of his second and what looked like his last term in office. A bjp prime minister could hope for no greater tribute to his statesmanship than a breakthrough in Indo-Pak relations. 'They invested too much in the bus trip and got taken in by the euphoria. In February, Jaswant Singh hailed it as a historic change,' Singh adds.
The Bus was viewed against the backdrop of the Bomb. 'Shanti and Shakti' offered the twin perspective which guided the bus journey, Vajpayee said. The Bomb contributed to the complacency vis-a-vis Pakistan, maintains Aiyar. He points out that defence minister George Fernandes, who had earlier described China as threat number one to India, went so far as to state (in the foreword to a new edition of Guilty Men of 1962) that the danger to India's security from Pakistan was but a myth that now stood exposed. Subsequently, Fernandes persistently sought to downplay the extent of intrusion into Kargil. In Darbhanga on May 16, he told reporters the operations against infiltrators would be over in 48 hours.
Perhaps the biggest gaffe clearly an exercise in wishful thinking by the government was to exonerate Nawaz Sharif by saying that the intrusion was purely an army operation, conducted without the connivance of the isi or the government. 'Either the government of Pakistan knew about these preparations when the Lahore Declaration was signed or it wasn't aware of them,' says Vajpayee's security advisor Brajesh Mishra, non-committally. Fernandes went a step further, virtually absolving Sharif of wrong-doing.
Off the record, bjp leaders admit it was a silly statement, perhaps prompted by a misplaced desire to give Sharif a face-saving way out.
It was May 25 before Vajpayee admitted a violation of the Lahore Declaration. So caught up was he in the peace process he had initiated that even after May 6 when, by its own admission, the bjp learnt of the intrusion he was reluctant to order air strikes. A full three weeks elapsed before he made up his mind.
Overall, the PM's marked reluctance to take any step which might escalate the conflict has earned approval even from his critics in the opposition. Despite considerable pressure, he insisted on maintaining the sanctity of the LoC. 'Without a full-fledged war we have regained our territory. It has never happened before,' said bjp MP Vijay Kumar Malhotra.
The Congress may belittle 'Operation Vijay' by saying that the only achievement is the eviction of a bunch of infiltrators, but it has to be seen against the backdrop of past conflicts, Malhotra says. He cites Nehru's speech of 1962: 'Between the line of actual control prior to September 8, 1962, and that on November 7, 1959, there is a difference of 2,500 square miles of Indian territory which China occupied.' This time, not even an inch of territory was ceded, Malhotra observes.
Diplomatically and militarily, Vajpayee is perceived to have handled the crisis competently, throwing Pakistan's calculations out of gear. For Pakistan, it was a win-win situation. It would either succeed and redraw the LoC, or withdraw its troops after extracting concessions on Kashmir from the international community. What it didn't expect was that its intruders would be bodily thrown out and that India's restrained approach at a time when military and political logic dictated that it should cross the LoC would win international approval.
'They did not think we had the guts and the stamina to evict them. Our military response surprised them,' observed former foreign secretary J.N. Dixit. Given the fact that the prevailing international atmosphere wasn't in India's favour and that Indian troops were not in a state of high preparedness, he feels Vajpayee's done pretty well both diplomatically and politically. 'The government has met the politico-military crisis with diplomatic flexibility,' he says. Despite hiccups like the exposure of 'channel two' diplomacy.
The Congress contends that Pakistan has achieved its objective of internationalising Kashmir, but the bjp has a ready counter. 'When was Kashmir not internationalised? It has been so since 1947.' Malhotra points out that Vajpayee's refusal to accept Clinton's invitation was a rare instance of a Third World leader saying 'no' to a US president. Nor has the issue been internationalised in Pakistan's favour.
The Congress, which has shied away from criticising the conduct of the conflict, is focusing its attack on why it was necessary in the first place. Regardless of whether the failure was one of intelligence or administration, the buck stops with the government of the day, says Natwar Singh. 'The government is responsible for the breach of security. They must say where the failure was.' They had also not shared information with the opposition, prompting the demand for a Rajya Sabha session, he added.
The bjp, which clearly did not have any answers to the hard questions posed by the opposition on the breach of national security, thought up one excuse after another to avoid convening a Rajya Sabha session. With elections barely two months away, it did not want to take the risk of Vajpayee being put on the mat and the focus shifting from the victory in Kargil to the high cost it had entailed.
While the bjp regime is considering a commission of inquiry to pinpoint the lapses, Union cabinet minister Pramod Mahajan points out: 'We're not out of the woods yet. It's still not over. You don't post mortem a living person.' Given the fact that military and intelligence officers could form part of the inquiry, it's still not an appropriate time to start apportioning blame, he feels.
Dixit feels any post mortem must have the specific objective of preventing any future Kargils: 'A post mortem must be in terms of a national perspective and not a party perspective. Any political party which indulges in a motivated, partisan post mortem will reduce its credibility in the eyes of Indian citizens.'
