Even as the Indian prime minister and his Pakistani counterpart hugged each other after signing the Lahore Declaration in February 1999, Pakistan Army personnel, in the garb of jehadi militants, infiltrated into Indian territory at Kargil (Located high in the Himalayas in the state of Jammu and Kashmir) and triggered off a limited conventional war between the world's newest nuclear-weapon states. The Pakistani Army achieved a tactical surprise, but failed at the strategic level. The outbreak of war at Kargil also revealed that the Pakistani political leadership was out of synch with the thinking and planning of the country's military top brass. The author analyses the reasoning behind the Pakistani Army's moves and tactics and also focuses on the individuals responsible. General Malik rounds off the book with a survey of Indo-Pak security relations in the post-Kargil era. In this context, he takes stock of the peace dialogue and the sustainability given the fact that Pakistan's military rulers have yet to shun terrorism as an instrument of state policy.

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