The other day I watched parts of Saleem Safi’s interview of
general Pervez Musharraf on Geo TV’s program Jirga. I watch him because Saleem
has a decency that seems to be lacking in most TV interviewers. In reply to a
question about Kargil operation, the general replied that his troops were in
complete control of 5 posts on Kargil mountains and he had all but won the war
when Nawaz Sharif surrendered for no reason. He said it with such conviction
that I almost believed him until I recalled my own experiences. In those days I
was in Saudi Arabia and used to follow the Kargil story through broadcasts of
the Saudi youth radio station. The last broadcast I heard was a live interview
of one of the mujahideen commanders fighting on the Kargil front. He was
saying that fingers, noses and ears of many of his companions were falling off
due to frost bite and their food supplies were running low; but they had enough
ammunition and would rather die fighting than surrender.
If he was believing in
reports that his troops were winning, Musharraf was living in a fool’s paradise. Obviously the general
had chosen his allies carelessly and sent the soldiers to positions where they
could not be resupplied with provisions. That was bad planning. In fact even if
you look objectively at the conquests of Alexander the great, they turn out to
be meaningless meanderings with purposeless bloodshed ending in pitiable
misery.
