Gen. Zinni on Pakistan —Khalid Hasan
The moral of this tale is that had there been no 9/11, the US would have continued to ignore Musharraf, but what it did not realise was that Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Chief of Army Staff, was born under a lucky star
Gen. Anthony Zinni, who ran the US Central Command at an eventful time in our history, has just published a book, co-authored with novelist Tom Clancy. What it establishes is something that has always been suspected, namely that regardless of the state of relations between Islamabad and Washington, the two armies have always had a one-on-one equation.
Gen. Zinni writes that in 1998 after India carried out its nuclear test, the US was deeply concerned about Pakistan following suit. In an effort to persuade Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to desist, it was decided to fly a delegation to Islamabad made up of Zinni, Strobe Talbot and Karl Inderfurth. Pakistan, he recalls, was bitter because of US sanctions and the F16 issue. “Our treatment of Pakistan was working against our interest,” he writes. The three men were about to take off from Tampa for the direct 22-hour flight to Islamabad when word reached them that they were not welcome. In desperation, Zinni phoned Gen. Jehangir Karamat, whom he calls a “man of great honour and integrity, and a friend.”
“Relations with Pakistan hung on a thin thread of a personal relationship that Gen. Karamat and I agreed to maintain,” he writes. Karamat “promised to take care of the problem and a few minutes later we were in the air”. This means that the army chief had overridden the decision of the prime minister. The delegation met several times with Sharif and his ministers but was unable to convince them.
At his last private meeting with Karamat, the Pakistani COAS shared with him “his frustration with his corrupt government”. Karamat also assured him that though his military colleagues had urged him to take over, he could “never do it”. Zinni’s next reference to Pakistan takes him to April 1999 when he went there to meet the new army chief, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, whom he found “bright, sincere and personable ... a fervent nationalist who leaned toward the West”. Zinni recalls that Musharraf was “as appalled as Gen. Karamat over the ever-worsening corruption within the civilian government”. He says “we both agreed to stay in close touch”. They also exchanged home phone numbers, thus forming a “friendship” that would prove to be “enormously valuable to our two countries”.
Then came the conflict with India where “the Pakistanis waylaid the Indians and penetrated all the way to Kargil” threatening Indian communications and support up to Siachin. The Indians came back “with a vengeance” and the situation began to worsen, bringing the two countries to the brink of war. Zinni was asked to rush to Pakistan and make it withdraw from Kargil. Zinni held meetings in Islamabad on June 24 and 25 and told his hosts, “If you don’t pull back, you are going to bring war and nuclear annihilation down to your country. That’s going to be very bad news for everybody.” He writes that no one quarreled with his “rationale” but no one wanted to “lose face”. Withdrawal to the LoC was seen as “political suicide”, so a face-saving device was found in the form of a meeting with President Clinton, but only after a “withdrawal of forces”. Zinni writes, “That got Musharraf’s attention; and he encouraged Prime Minister Sharif to hear me out.”
In other words, the man who had brought about Kargil was prepared to back down. Sharif, Zinni adds, was “reluctant to withdraw before the meeting with Clinton was announced, but after I insisted, he finally came around and he ordered the withdrawal. We set up a meeting (with Clinton) in July”. Does anyone remember that Musharraf came to see Sharif off at the airport. Zinni’s account reveals that the army pulled out of Kargil willingly and not because of Sharif. In fact, if there was any resistance to pull back, it was on the part of the prime minister not the army chief who later made many heroic claims about Kargil, accusing Sharif of “surrender”.
Washington did not like the Musharraf coup and told the Pentagon to scale down contact with Rawalpindi. It was Musharraf who called Zinni and told him what had led to the coup and why “he and other military leaders had no choice other than the one they took”. He told Zinni that in Pakistan democracy was a sham as everything the government controlled was “up for sale”. He said he wanted a democracy, not of form but substance (I suppose that is what we have four years later). Though Zinni tried to talk his superiors into resuming contacts with the new government in Islamabad, they were not convinced.
In December 1999, Zinni was asked to call Musharraf and ask him to arrest certain terrorists whose cohorts had been picked up in Jordan. Musharraf obliged, but when Zinni asked the administration to “reconnect” with Musharraf, he was refused. Zinni called Musharraf and gave him the bad news. Musharraf answered, “I don’t want or expect anything for what I’ve done. Tony, I did it because it was the right thing to do.”
The moral of this tale is that had there been no 9/11, the US would have continued to ignore Musharraf, but what it did not realise was that Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Chief of Army Staff, was born under a lucky star. |
