Closed Door In-Fighting

In case someone missed it, Praveen Swami provides an excellent background, as always, on the current in-fighting going on in the Land of the Pure's Army - between Gen. Musharraf and his former loyalists using the trouncing of his Kargil adventure as the focal point.

Kargil is merely an instrument for discrediting President Musharraf’s anti-Islamist campaign. Many of the ‘Kargil Ghazis’ occupy important positions in Pakistan’s war against the Taliban and the al-Qaeda. Peshawar-based XI Corps commander Masud Aslam, for example, commanded 80 Brigade which was decimated in Kargil. He won a Sitara-e-Jurrat, or Star of Courage, for allowing the men he sent to be sent to their slaughter in an ill-conceived operation — a taint that hangs over his conduct of operations in the NWFP. Incidents like the destruction of the Spinkai town by the Pakistan Army’s 14th Division, which is reported to have displaced thousands, are represented by the army’s in-house hardliners as examples of just how little President Musharraf’s loyalists care for their own people.