Of course, one can fool some of the people some of the time: The initial reaction of the State Department was to equate India and Pakistan in urging mutual restraint. Asked how well-armed infiltrators came to be on the Indian side of the Line of Control after obviously traversing Pakistani territory, State Department spokesman James Rubin would only say: “We do have our own view as to how this situation developed. But that doesn’t excuse heightened action by the other side either.’’ What did Rubin expect? That in the face of naked aggression, India would shy away from “heightened action’’ and resort to “low-key’’ action or perhaps lie low altogether?

But Rubin had already let the cat out of the bag in his initial statement when he talked of Indian air strikes and ground attacks continuing “against positions occupied by infiltrators from Pakistan that are in India’s side of, but very close to, the Line of Control.’’

That apart, the fact that the Clinton administration had instructed its ambassador in Pakistan to meet senior officials in Islamabad to express US concern gave the lie to Pak claims that they did not even know who the intruders were. By the beginning of this month, the US knew — no doubt assisted by satellite surveillance — that the misadventure in Kargil was an unabashed proxy war by Pakistan — with the difference that regular Pak army troops in guerrilla garb were also involved. It was then that the tide of US official opinion began to turn publicly against Pakistan.

For instance, Karl Inderfurth, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, declared unambiguously that the Kargil fighting would end only when the infiltrators had left. “Clearly, the Indians are not going to cede this territory that these militants have taken,’’ he asserted. “They have to depart, and they will depart, either voluntarily or because the Indians take them out.’’ That statement, incidentally, indicated certainty in the official US mind that despite a few initial setbacks suffered on account of the well-prepared and massive intrusion, India would ultimately prevail.

Although Islamabad had hoped to internationalise the Kashmir issue on the strength of the drummed up fear that the clash between two new nuclear powers might spiral out of control, Washington, in effect, appeared willing to look on benignly while India slowly but surely ground down and eliminated the aggression on its soil.

The unkindest cut for Islamabad was the Chinese reaction. As usual, the Pakistani Foreign Minister ran to Big Brother in Beijing before facing its angry neighbour in New Delhi, but reportedly to no great avail. Pakistan forgot that solidarity with China only goes so far. Beijing will never back a lost cause at the cost of its own national interests, as it proved in siding with the US in the nuclear defanging of North Korea.

India will, no doubt, win the undeclared war on the ground. But it also has to hone its effort in the propaganda war in which, for Pakistan, the Kargil action was but a prelude. A propaganda war, however, is never a one-shot affair. It has to be kept going, by reiteration and fuelled by new facts. Obviously, Pakistan chose the Kargil sector for two main reasons: One, it was easy to infiltrate during the icy winter months, when it was unoccupied. Once in, the high ground of peaks and ridges was easy to defend and difficult to assault. Of course, the tactical mistake Pakistan made was that it never expected India to use air power.

Secondly, Islamabad has for long been frustrated at its inability to make any dent in India’s position of strength atop the Siachen glacier. The Kargil operation, had it succeeded, would have been Pakistan’s answer to Siachen. It was to that end that Islamabad began telling the world that the Line of Control in that area was not clearly defined. The White House scotched that claim too by declaring that the LoC had been clearly demarcated and there had been no dispute on that account. In every propaganda effort, therefore, Pakistan has come up short.

Officials in Islamabad have labelled the Kargil infiltrators as “indigenous Kashmiri freedom fighters,’’ thus suggesting that they are legally and morally justified in their struggle for “self-determination’’ of the contested area. Identification cards found on the bodies of dead infiltrators prove conclusively that their ranks are laced with regular Pakistani army personnel. That apart, the group consists not only of Kashmiri militants, but also extreme Muslim mercenaries linked to a network of international terrorists.

According to intelligence information, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), an Islamic terrorist group based in Pakistan and operating primarily in Kashmir, is supported by Pakistanis, Kashmiris, Afghans, and Arab fanatics of the Afghan war. HUM is linked with the Kashmiri al-Faran group, which abducted and killed five Western tourists in 1995. HUM is also associated with Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born terrorist.

Western intelligence sources are also certain that in March this year, a leader of the Lashker-e-Toiba, another Islamic terrorist movement, welcomed Bin Laden (who had been asked by the Taliban to leave Afghanistan) to join the “freedom struggle’’ in Kashmir. Lashkar leadership recently indicated that Muslim “volunteers’’ from all over the world were joining the “jihad’’ in Kashmir. Apart from local militants, these volunteers include Mujahideen from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkey and Yemen. It is this motley, but deadly bunch that Pakistan has been exploiting for its nefarious ends.

As the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies here points out, the main goal of these Islamic fundamentalist groups is to undermine pluralistic states like India. The Institute warns that “if we continue to tolerate, appease and glorify terrorists as heroes, the phenomenon of international criminal behaviour will persist well into the 21st century with an ominous threat to the survival of civilisation itself.’’

Yet, various nations urge restraint and suggest that India should keep a bilateral dialogue with Pakistan going. Where on earth is the basis of trust for such talks when it is known that Pakistan was diabolically planning the details of its Kargil operation even as Nawaz Sharif was effusively promoting friendship in Lahore?

Given that scenario, it is totally incomprehensible for South Asia experts here why George Fernandes should have given a clean chit to Nawaz Sharif and the ISI in the Kargil affair. With every item of proof pointing unmistakably to the Pakistan government, it is totally unconscionable for India’s Defence Minister to absolve the Pakistani Prime Minister of all blame. Such mindless statements do raise serious doubts whether he should continue to be in charge of the nation’s security.

There is also puzzlement in Washington how the Kargil intruders were able to enter Indian territory, bring up sophisticated weapons, and set up fortifications and supply lines over a period of several weeks without Indian authorities having any inkling of what was going on. Such a massive intelligence failure is unpardonably embarrassing for a nation that projects itself as a superpower.