The Longest August (45 page)

There was nothing comparative produced in Pakistan. All that happened was that the actor-director-producer Abdul Rauf Khalid devoted the last of the twenty-seven episodes in the state-run Pakistan TV's
Laag
(Urdu: Roaming) series (1998–2000), centered on the trials and tribulations of the Kashmiris living in India-held Kashmir, to the Kargil War.
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This was partly because, unlike in India, there was no unanimity in Pakistan about the end result of the Kargil War. Far more importantly, that conflict heralded a new chapter in the rocky history of democracy in Pakistan.

The Sharif-Musharraf Battle

While Sharif was on his way back home on July 5, 1999, after several hours of tense talks with Clinton, Musharraf expressed his disapproval of “the surrender” by Sharif in his comments to leading newspapers. What had been gained on the military front had been lost on the political front, he claimed, without providing incontestable evidence to that effect.

Overall, though, Sharif's agreement to withdraw the Pakistani forces from Kargil without consulting the military high command angered the generals. He thus violated the cardinal principle guiding Pakistan since the deaths of its founding figures—Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan—that the ultimate authority for forming and implementing national security policies lay exclusively with the corps commanders. This paved the way for his downfall. In the words of an unnamed high military officer, “Sharif brought disgrace to the Pakistani army by bowing down before the US administration for an abrupt pullout from Kargil. In the aftermath of the Kargil crisis we went through almost a revolt in the army as the rank and file thought that the government had betrayed them.”
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In a way this was a repeat of what had happened after the 1971 Bangladesh War. The only difference was that whereas the Pakistani commander in East Pakistan signed the surrender document in the Indian-occupied Dacca, this time the DGs of Military Operations of the two sides signed the cease-fire agreement at the Attari border post in Indian Punjab.

Sharif could do little to counter the prevailing feeling in the army ranks that he had let them down. And his promise to Clinton to pressure the Taliban, whose government in Kabul had been recognized by Pakistan, had not gone down well with Musharraf and other generals.

On August 7, 1999, huge bombs exploding at the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam killed 227 people. Washington blamed bin Laden, then living in Kandahar, Afghanistan, as the mastermind. On the night of August 8 two planeloads of teams from the CIA's Special Activities Division arrived in Peshawar and Quetta to infiltrate Afghanistan, with the help of ISI agents, to capture bin Laden. But when Al Jazeera leaked the story on television, the project was aborted.

On August 20 Clinton ordered strikes at six terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, a landlocked country. Executing that order from the
Abraham Lincoln
aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea required firing cruise missile through Pakistani airspace. Since bin Laden was not present at
any of these venues, the strikes missed their prime target. Washington's action upset Sharif. “Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told President Clinton that the unilateral US action constituted violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of independent states,” said an official Pakistani statement. “This attack has caused anguish and indignation in Pakistan.”
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The casualties caused by the American attack on a training camp near Khost included members of the ISI-backed Harkat ul Mujahedin, a militant Kashmiri group. This evidence of the ISI's indirect links with Al Qaida deeply embarrassed Sharif.
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To placate Clinton, for whom capturing or killing bin Laden was top priority, Sharif dispatched ISI chief Lieutenant General Ziauddin Butt to Washington in early October 1999 to coordinate the next move to seize the Al Qaida chief. And to contradict the rumors of a falling-out between him and Musharraf, on September 30 he confirmed the remaining two years of Musharraf's term as the COAS and also appointed him the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, amid much fanfare. This was meant to signify a truce between the two protagonists. Sharif capped this by inviting Musharraf and his wife, Sehba, to dinner, where the prime minister's father, Muhammad Sharif, welcomed Musharraf as “my third son,” his second son being Shahbaz, the chief minister of Punjab.

Several earlier narratives of the run-up to the October 12 coup have to be revised in light of the revelations made by the coplotter Lieutenant General Aziz in his book published in October 2013. According to Aziz, during the last days of September Musharraf chaired meetings at the Army House in Rawalpindi to decide the right moment to oust Sharif's government in order to preempt the prime minister's anticipated move to replace the general as the COAS. The pivotal role was played by the MI's Ehsan ul Haq, who provided Musharraf and others close to him with up-to-date information on Sharif's plans.

It was vital for the two rivals to show that it was “business as usual.” But before departing for Colombo to attend the October 9 celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the Sri Lankan Army, he told Lieutenant Generals Aziz Khan, Mehmood Ahmed, and Aziz: “All three of you would be individually authorized to issue orders for the removal of the government. I hold you three responsible for this [to act and remove the government].”
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As the DG for Military Operations, Aziz issued written orders to the commander of the Rawalpindi-based Brigade 111 to be ready for the critical operation.

Musharraf's return flight from Colombo by the Pakistan International Airline (PIA) got delayed—twice. In Islamabad, Sharif realized that his words and deeds were being monitored by the military's intelligence apparatus. Therefore, accompanied by one of his sons and Lieutenant General Butt dressed in civilian clothes, he flew to Abu Dhabi on October 10 to confer with Butt in an espionage-free environment. After a courtesy call on the UAE ruler, Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan, followed by the fine-tuning of Butt's rise to the COAS, Sharif's team returned home the same day. This vital information was conveyed to Musharraf in Colombo by Ehsan ul Haq.

Drama in the Air

As finalized in Abu Dhabi, Sharif prepared to announce the promotion of Butt as the COAS on October 12. Just as the PIA flight, carrying two hundred passengers including Musharraf took off at three
pm
(Pakistan time) from Colombo for Karachi, Sharif appointed Butt as the COAS at the prime minister's official residence in Islamabad in a fitting ceremony. This was aired on the sole state-run Pakistan TV.

But at the GHQ in Rawalpindi, twelve miles from the capital, Lieutenant General Aziz Khan, chief of the general staff, denied Butt the control of GHQ. Spiked at this level, Butt's orders could not go further down the chain of command. This was coupled with the refusal of Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmed, commander of the Rawalpindi-based Tenth Corps, to accept Butt's authority.

Around four
pm
Sharif's office announced that General Musharraf had retired. An hour later soldiers from the 111 Brigade of the Tenth Corps rushed to Islamabad in trucks. Arriving there, they started pouring out onto the streets. Watched by curious onlookers, they seized the state television station and switched off the signal.

This compelled Butt and Sharif to stop the airborne Musharraf from reaching Karachi. They were unaware that at the GHQ in Rawalpindi, Aziz Khan had phoned Lieutenant General Muzaffar Usmani, commander of the Fifth Corps in Karachi, to ensure Musharraf's safe return to the city. The PIA flight from Colombo approached Karachi airport around six thirty
pm
, but air traffic control refused permission for the plane to land.

High drama followed. Sharif ordered air traffic controllers to redirect the flight to the airport in Nawabshah, southern Sindh, where Sharif had
dispatched his own plane and a security team to arrest Musharraf. Inside the PIA aircraft, Musharraf entered the cockpit. He instructed the pilot to keep circling the Karachi airport while he personally urged the air traffic controllers to let the plane land.

They refused—until the control tower was seized by troops of the Fifth Corps. By the time Musharraf touched down on Pakistani soil, it was 7:47
pm
, with the now stationary PIA airliner having only seven minutes of fuel left. He was instantly whisked away by officers of the Fifth Corps.
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In Islamabad, soldiers of the 111 Brigade disarmed the security force at Sharif's official residence. Soon Lieutenant General Ahmed arrived and asked Sharif to resign or rescind his order promoting Butt. Sharif refused both options. He was then escorted out by soldiers and detained at a government guest house near the airport. By now the troops controlled all TV stations, administrative offices, and the power and communications infrastructure throughout the country. They placed the entire cabinet under guard and cut international telephone lines.

At 10:15
pm
the military restored television broadcasts. Minutes later an announcement running across the bottom of the screen announced the dismissal of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Musharraf's prerecorded message to the nation at 2:50
am
on October 13 cited Sharif's attempts to divide the army as one of the chief reasons for the coup. “This is not martial law, only another path towards democracy,” he added. “The armed forces have no intention to stay in charge any longer than is absolutely necessary to pave the way for true democracy to flourish in Pakistan.”
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This was the fourth power grab by the military in Pakistan's fifty-two-year history. It was triggered by its involvement in the Muslim separatist insurgency in India-held Kashmir and the fate of bin Laden. It highlighted the fact that the military was the final arbiter of power in Pakistan. There were historical, ethnic, and socioeconomic reasons for this state of affairs. The armed conflict over Kashmir came within a few months of the birth of the new country. That accorded the military the highest priority. Most of the ranks and officers of the army have come from Punjab, which accounts for 55 percent of the national population. The resulting ethnic homogeneity imparts the military extra strength. In a predominantly agrarian, largely illiterate or subliterate society, the army stands out as a paragon of discipline and order. And unlike all other institutions, it has remained almost free of corruption. As a consequence, it is held in high esteem by the public at large.

By a strange coincidence, it was on October 13, 1999, that Vajpayee was sworn in as prime minister. As leader of the 303-strong NDA, he enjoyed a comfortable majority in the 545-seat lower house of Parliament.
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The contrast between India and Pakistan could not have been starker.

Musharraf, the “Chief Executive”

Two days later Musharraf declared an emergency, suspended the constitution, and assumed supreme power as the chief executive. He closed down the prime minister's secretariat while leaving in place the incumbent Muhammad Rafiq Tarar as president. On October 17, during his second nationwide TV address, he announced the formation of a seven-member military-civilian council under his chairmanship.

Washington was quick to condemn the coup and urged a return to democracy. The reaction in Delhi, however, was mixed. “He is the man who attacked us in Kargil,” said Jyotindra Nath Dixit, former foreign secretary and advisor to the National Security Council. “We should be much more alert about General Musharraf.” Having just taken the oath of office, Vaj­payee was diplomatic. “We are willing to talk to any regime in Pakistan,” he told reporters. “It is for Pakistan to create a climate for resumption of dialogue between the two countries.” Unsurprisingly, the response of pro-Pakistan Kashmiris was euphoric. “It is good to see military rule in Pakistan but the step was delayed,” said a spokesman of the Hizb ul Mujahedin. “It should have come earlier at the time of the Kashmir [Kargil] war when Nawaz Sharif betrayed us.”
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Following the Kargil debacle, the separatist Hizb ul Mujahedin and Harkat ul Mujahedin stepped up their attacks on the security forces in Indian Kashmir. Harkat ul Mujahedin hit the headlines in the international media when five of its militants, armed with pistols, knives, and hand grenades, hijacked an Indian Airlines (aka Air India) aircraft flying from Katmandu to New Delhi on the morning of December 24. After refusals by several airports in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, the plane landed at the Kandahar airport in the early hours of Christmas Day with 155 passengers and crew.

The hijackers demanded the release of thirty-six Kashmiri prisoners and a £125 million ransom. After refusing to deal with them, the Vajpayee government entered into staggered negotiations through the Taliban authorities in Kabul. As days passed, the passengers, crew, and hijackers
cooped up inside the plane kept warm in the freezing temperature of an Afghan winter by the power generated by the plane's engines. The Indians managed to bring down the hijackers' demand to just three names from the top of their list.

By the time they arrived at the Kabul airport, accompanied by the Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh, it was December 31. The released men included Maulana Masoud Azhar, a Pakistani cleric whose brother, Muhammad Ibrahim, was one of the hijackers. Azhar had gone to Indian Kashmir to conciliate the two feuding factions of Harkat ul Ansar (later renamed Harkat ul Mujahedin) and was imprisoned. One of the remaining two freed men was Ahmad Umar Shaikh, a Pakistan-based British national involved with the separatist movement committed to separating Kashmir from India. At Kandahar airport, the gun-toting hijackers along with the released militants boarded a van provided by the Taliban, whose government refused them asylum. It let the van cross the Afghan-Pakistan border, with its passengers disembarking in Pakistan to shelter in safe houses briefly before going underground.