By Prem Shankar Jha appeared in "The Hindu" on June 17, 1999

EVER SINCE the Kargil war began, Indian analysts have been at a loss to understand what Pakistan thought it could gain from invading India at a time when it did not have a billion dollar in foreign currency reserves and was just able to avoid defaulting on its international debt with transfusions from the International Monetary Fund. The perplexity, which extends to analyses of Pakistan's next moves, arises from Indians' visceral inability to understand that the initiative for planning and executing the Kargil operation has rested from the very beginning on the army and the Inter-Services Intelligence, and that the Nawaz Sharif Government may not even have known of it and is now at best a passenger, at worst a servant, of these agencies. The Prime Minister Mr. A. B. Vajpayee, was speaking with both knowledge and insight when he said, early during the conflict, that this was an army operation and that the civilian government had been left out of the loop.

To understand what Pakistan had in mind when it launched the Kargil operation and what it is likely to do next, it is, therefore, necessary to enter the mind of the army. This is a bleak and frightening territory, full of bitterness, rage and frustrated ambition, leavened with fanatical Messianism.

What is beyond doubt now, however, is that at some point in the winter of 1997-98, Pakistan's armed forces and the ISI deliberately chose not to accept the status quo in Kashmir and opted, instead, for war. The Sharif Government might have been kept in the loop then with the caveat that these were war games and contingency plans, but as the pressures of bankruptcy intensified after Pakistan's nuclear explosions, and Mr. Sharif turned to the IMF for a bailout, the army headquarters must have concluded that the civil government could no longer be relied upon. From then on Kargil became purely a military initiative.

In India and the Western democracies the idea that the armed forces could, on their own, decide to wage a war, let alone a nuclear war, is literally unthinkable. But one glance at Pakistan's Constitution, not to mention its history, shows that it is entirely possible in that country. The Zia-ul-Haq Constitution not only gave the President the right to dismiss the Prime Minister virtually at will but also gave the army a special position in the state as the guardian of Pakistan's nationhood.

For the army, there has only been one goal - to annex Kashmir and complete the unfinished business of 1947 and 1948. After the secession of Bangladesh, a second objective was added - to avenge the vivisection of Pakistan and the destruction of the dream behind its creation by dismembering India.

There was no disagreement between the army and the civilian establishment on either of these goals so long as Pakistan remained under one or the other form of army rule. Mutual suspicion dawned only after the return of democratic rule. Ms. Benazir Bhutto was the first to pay the price for what the armed forces establishment considered a treacherous softness towards India. As stated by Mr. Khaled Ahmed, former Editor of the Frontier Post, the charge on which it, and the hawks in the civilian government, prevailed upon the President to dismiss Ms. Bhutto the first time in 1990 was that she had ``betrayed the identity of Pakistan's agents in East Punjab'' to the Indian Government. Ms. Bhutto did not make the same mistake when she returned to power, but her recent statements regretting the backing she gave to the militancy in Kashmir give some indication of the chasm that now yawns between the democratic establishment, and the army and the ISI. By October 1998, when preparations for the Kargil invasion must have been finalised, civilian control over the army had reached its lowest ebb. At the same time, the army had gradually become convinced that the civilian administration would never on its own support another war in Kashmir. This suspicion was well-founded, for by then Pakistan had begun to default on its loans and had been saved from bankruptcy only by the U.S.' last-minute lifting of sanctions and withdrawal of objections to a continuation of the IMF aid - a move that India also wholeheartedly supported.

The army knew perfectly well that the IMF conditionalities would make it virtually impossible for a civilian administration to commit an act of aggression. It, therefore, took upon its own shoulders the role of defender of Pakistan's nationhood.

Militarily, its operation in Kargil was brilliant. It took full advantage of the operational lapses of an army that had been demoralised by 27 years of peace, 10 years of relentless financial strangulation and nine years of fighting a dirty, low- intensity war to occupy some of the most impregnable heights in the world as a prelude to unleashing the Taliban on Kashmir. But politically, it has been a disaster for Pakistan. In one stroke it has ripped the veil off Pakistan's seeming reasonableness and exposed it as the war-mongering rogue state that it really is. British intelligence has for the first time revealed to U.K. journalists details of the Pakistan army's involvement in Kargil and admitted that the ISI had recruited mercenaries from a loose international network of Islamic terrorists, which it has consistently sponsored.

The tape of army chief, Gen. Musharraf's talk with Lt. Gen. Mohammad Aziz, Pakistani Chief of General Staff, could have been supplied to India only by the Chinese or the U.S. National Security Agency. To quote a news advisory sent out by the Washington-based think-tank, Stimson Center, ``Pakistan is at a crossroads; ...One choice leads toward a more secure democracy, better relations with the West, and a better life for ordinary Pakistanis. The other choice leads toward the Talibanisation of Pakistan.''

But from the Pakistan army's viewpoint, this is only one more reason why there can be no turning back. Aware of the intense international pressure on Mr. Sharif, and unsure of what he might do, it handed back the mutilated bodies of the Indian soldiers whom it brutalised and murdered, two days before the External Affairs Minister, Mr. Sartaj Aziz's visit to India to make doubly sure that the talks failed. It will now spare no effort to hold on to the Kargil heights. It has already reinforced its positions and massed mercenaries, troops and helicopters immediately behind the LoC.

Evicting it will not be easy but Mr. Vajpayee needs to appreciate that success could almost prove more dangerous than failure. He must plan his next moves on the assumption that the Pakistan army is a cornered beast and will take almost any risk rather than face defeat in Kargil, the frustration of its long-cherished goal of annexing Kashmir and destroying India, and the loss of political legitmacy at home.

To steer India through what is undoubtedly the most dangerous moment in its history, Mr. Vajpayee needs to face the unthinkable squarely - that the Pakistan army, which alone controls the nuclear button, may gamble all on getting in a surgical strike first. To make sure that it does not think it can get away with this, he must arm India's missiles with nuclear warheads, rapidly decentralise and automate its second strike procedure, install backup command systems in different locations and make sure Mr. Sharif knows what he has done.