Pakistan and the Neighbourhood - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 321

supports the Sharif line and says he was not told till May 24 . Mani Dixit, a former Indian
foreign secretary, wrote in a book published in 2002 that Sharif was briefed 'at the general
headquarters of the Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi in January 1999'. 25 The controversy con-
tinues - as recently as January 2013, a retired Pakistani army general claimed Kargil was
planned by a 'four-man show' run by Musharraf, though Sharif had 'not' been kept totally
in the dark. 26
A Novelist's War Secret
As a footnote to the story, having missed my scoop at Kel, I was forewarned of the Kargil
offensive by Humphrey Hawksley, an old friend and a BBC journalist. He was in Pakistan
at the end of February 1999 researching a novel called Dragonfire that was published a
year later 27 . He came to Delhi on 1 March and told me confidentially that (as a novelist re-
searching material) he had been informed in Pakistan that there would soon be a cross-bor-
der invasion. I laughed and said that could not be correct because, just eleven days earlier,
Vajpayee had done his bus trip to Lahore, but Hawksley was sure.
He later explained what happened in a (non-fiction) book, 28 where he wrote that a former
head of the ISI had told him that 'Pakistan needed to conduct military operations inside In-
dia and that would happen very soon'. (This was an intriguing example of how journalists
are trusted more when they switch roles and become novelists!). In Dragonfire, Hawksley
utilized the former ISI chief's Briefing, and Pakistan invaded India. He also included a nuc-
lear attack on India, which derived from another conversation with a former top Pakistani
diplomat, who told him that 'although we say the use of the [nuclear] bomb would be our
last resort, it would in fact be our first resort'. 29 The Pakistani diplomat's argument was
that, because India's conventional forces would be so overwhelming, the only way they
could be stopped would be with nuclear weapons. 'Therefore last resort becomes first re-
sort,' says Hawksley. 30
The extent of the Pakistan civilian government's prior knowledge and approval of the
Kargil affair is significant because it goes to the heart of how much India can now trust
peace initiatives from Sharif, as well as other civilian leaders. Would Sharif have taken a
foreign correspondent on the trip if he had known how sensitive it was? And even if he
thought it safe with a business-oriented Fortune reporter, his spokesman had also invited
Ken Cooper of The Washington Post. 31 Cooper did not come because of an appointment
elsewhere, but might have been more focused on border questions. So maybe Sharif did not
know what he would be told, or at least not its full extent and implications - and maybe, as
others have suggested, he was not fully briefed.