“Telling everyone about it was not necessary at all. He claimed Aziz had an imbalanced personality and had resorted to character assassination by making these accusations. We lost the Kargil war, which was a big success militarily, because of (then premier) Nawaz Sharif... If he had not visited the US, we would have conquered 300 square miles of India.”

–President Musharraf, January 2013.

In the wake of allegations that he masterminded the intrusions, General Pervez Musharraf defended his action to launch the operation in Kargil specifically referring to Lt Gen (retired) Shahid Aziz’s allegations that he had kept other military commanders in the dark about the operation. Pakistan had initially claimed that the mujahideen were responsible for occupying strategic heights along the Line of Control in early 1999, Musharraf later revealed in his autobiography In The Line Of Fire that regular army troops had participated in the operation. General Aziz, who headed the analysis wing of the ISI during the Kargil conflict, had recently revealed that the operation was masterminded by a group of four generals led by Musharraf. In rebuttal he claimed that the action in Kargil was a local operation and although he would not go so far as to accuse former premier Nawaz of betrayal, but the PM’s decision to withdraw from Kargil had been a mistake.”Nawaz lost a political front which we had won militarily,” he claimed.