There is also a fair amount of scepticism of the economic crunch really leading to a change in behaviour of the people and the state. The ‘too dangerous to fail’ logic-a nuclear weapons armed country with unhinged Islamists running around everywhere-works quite well for Pakistan because it facilitates perpetual bailouts. Many analysts, both in the West and in India, tend to take a rather conventional view that a collapsing Pakistani economy will make Pakistan a more dangerous state. For evidence, look no further than Pakistan, which has lost enormously because of its use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy.īlogger Joins Activists Living In Exile Who Faced Murder Plots For Criticising PakistanĪLSO READ | Pakistan Power Play: Imran Innings Coming to a Close but Nawaz Will Not Get to Bat They might seem to be low cost options, but aren’t. Even proxy wars have serious economic consequences. Wars being terribly expensive business cannot be fought on an empty treasury, and certainly not with a begging bowl. None of Pakistan’s traditional benefactors and supporters-the US, China and Saudi Arabia-were ready to condone, much less fund Pakistan’s adventurism. The G-8 had already issued a strongly worded statement against Pakistani actions in Kargil. There was a real danger that both these economic lifelines would be jeopardised because of Pakistan Army’s adventurism in Kargil. Pakistan was negotiating debt relief from the G-8 and was already in an IMF programme. Its foreign exchange reserves (almost all of it made up of borrowed money) were just over $1 billion.
A day after the DCC met, Nawaz Sharif left for Washington where, after a meeting with US President Bill Clinton, he announced withdrawal of Pakistani forces from Kargil.Īt the time of the Kargil conflict, Pakistan was still struggling to recover from the near-economic meltdown that followed the nuclear tests of 1998. Senior Pakistani officials informed the DCC that they needed to get out of the conflict because the Pakistan Armed Forces could not sustain even a limited conflict beyond two weeks. It needed a face-saving exit because the war was proving economically ruinous for Pakistan’s tottering economy. The Pakistan Army was losing ground, losing men, and losing face. By this time, the tide of the war had shifted in India’s favour.
On July 2, 1999, some two months into the limited war being fought between India and Pakistan on the icy heights in the Kargil sector, a meeting of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC) was called in Islamabad.
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