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Time to expose facts on Kargil war
By Dj Mathal
WARS always bring destruction and the claims that wars are fought to achieve peace at the end is baseless and a mere propaganda. For the greater good of humanity it is imperative that there should be no war at all. If a government or a state, how strong it may be, goes to war for any reason its consequences shake the lives of the people for a long time. When we look at the short history of Pakistan and India, we find that it is mired in big as well as small wars. The last war between the two nuclear powers was fought on the mountains of Kargil. Today the mountains of Kargil, which remained in peace for centuries, stand silent taking in its midst some of the world�s biggest secrets. In 1999, all of s sudden the Kargil mountains were engulfed in unmanageable fires. Its usual scent of the spring was taken over by the sudden blast of gunfire and aerial bombings and its white-blanketed peaks were coloured in innocent human blood. More heart-wrenching was the fact that even today � after the passage of a whole decade � many dead bodies still lie on the mountains without shrouds and graves. These bodies were not of alien people but of our own sons who laid their lives for the country. But, alas, in return after their merciless killing, we even refused to own them.
Kargil was a war which we ourselves had created and in which thousands of soldiers belonging to Gilgit-Baltistan were killed. Today even after the passage of a whole decade, there is no chance in sight of knowing the fact that why the war started in the first place. It is imperative to find out the truth behind the war because not only thousands of our troops lost their lives but also the war tarnished the image of Pakistan in the world. In the recent past, the man behind the war was in power and though even during that period there were a number of demands for holding a probe into the incident, there was no one to seriously pursue and take the matter to its logical conclusion. Today democracy has been restored in the country. The most affected person of the Kargil war, Nawaz Sharif has today emerged as a strong political force and a popular leader of the country and here is the time to get answers to all the questions relating to Kargil. The former president, Pervez Musharraf, should be made accountable to launching the war in the first place. There is also the question as to why NLI personnel were pushed forward to take on one of the mightiest armies of the world after dressing them in tracksuits. Why these brave soldiers from Gilgit-Baltistan were left in the lurch after they were faked as mujahideen instead of being identified as Pakistan Army personnel.
The war at last was halted with the interference of another country but even after the passage of ten years the relatives the martyred NLI personnel are looking for the bodies of their near and dear ones. It is unfortunate and it still saddens the whole region that the bodies of the NLI personnel were even not picked up from where they were mercilessly killed. The NLI personnel who returned alive from the Kargil war have revealed that they had seen many dead bodies with grass and other items in their mouths because ration supply had also been stopped to them after they were sent into the enemy territory disguised as mujahideen. Many of the brave NLI personnel were reported to have died of hunger. Had these soldiers even been provided with proper ration, the result of the war would have been completely different today.
Today the main agenda of the democratic government should be to probe the Kargil war. As a first step, a fact-finding mission should be constituted so that it can expose those behind initiating the war and, subsequently, cases are registered against them to bring them to justice. Besides, efforts should also be made to bring back the dead bodies of the soldiers killed during the war. Time has come to give credit to those who fight the war for Pakistan. The separate identity of the people of Gilgit-Baltistan should also be ensured.
Recently, there has been much talk about a new package for the region but the people of Gilgit-Baltistan do not need any package and should be given their basic right of self-governance. The people of the region should also have a system of their own without any interference of Pakistan. The people who have been rendering sacrifices have become disappointed and they do not believe in any drama in the name of packages etc.
When the powerful military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, could not get its package announced for the region implemented, how people of the region today can believe that a weak democratic government would be able to compel the bureaucracy to sincerely implement another package in the region. If any package is to be implemented, it should be first presented in parliament and PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif and the prime minister should guarantee its implementation. The Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, should also be involved in the para-wise enforcemnet of such a package.
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