Re: Musharaf the greatest leader since 1971?
I agree that whole Kargil War was a mistake. Pakistan should have planned for a long war and analyzed all the ramifications for under taking such actions before it decided to do so.
Well as for such opportunities arriving in the future, I think both countries have progressed quite far.
We have moderate leaders, and with current world attention fixated on India with its out sourcing and Pakistan battling extremism, the world cannot afford to let India and Pakistan be enemies again.
I think it might take 4-5 years but India and Pakistan are now on a path for peace and we have Musharraf to thank for that.
Why I said "Golden Opportunity" was sabotaged due to Kargil incident is for obvious reasons--
(1) BJP was in power during that time---BJP is a right wing nationalist party any agreement would have carried more weightage and credibility to override RSS and other ideologues within BJP.
That is something, which will take at least 10 years for Pakistanis to understand.
Vajpayee was undisputed leader of BJP during his days as PM and he travelled all the way till Lahore on a Bus, so this would have been a major break-through if something like Line of Control issue in Kashmir could have been discussed subsequently.
Trust was their considering Nawaz Sharif as someone who belonged to a grass-root leader.
But thanks to then army-general Musharraf who fantasized that infiltrating in Kargil will bring Kashmir under Pakistan or bring some kind of "perceived" international media attention of so called "Kashmiri struggle"...nothing like this happened at the end.
Still in his book he claims very 'big" achievement----from India's point of view kargil destroyed any chance of peace with Pakistan achieveing nothing significant.
I still don't think Indian leaders will feel comfortable in dealing with Musharraf.
Say for example if-- Narendra Modi becomes Prime Minister of India, will Pakistan deal with him in the same way as they dealt with Vajpayee??
For Indian policy makers Musharraf is like what Modi is for Pakistan in terms of trust.
I still say Nawaz Shariff would have been the best option for bilateral relations from India's perspective.
Musharraf is a great leader for Pakistan and it's development/economy overall corruption free governance--No doubt.