Published in Urdu in June 2006, the book is based on detailed interviews with Nawaz Sharif conducted in Saudi Arabia and London

On judiciary in Pakistan

The role of the judiciary in history has been suspicious. In my view Pakistan has been wavering from its path due to the collusion of the judiciary with the army’s top brass. The basic reason why democracy could not take root was the existence of such an alliance. Even if the army leadership was doing something wrong, the present situation could have been avoided and Pakistan would have stuck to democracy to some extent if at least the judiciary had acted correctly. If the judiciary had taken its first decision against the onslaught of the army, we would not have reached such a pass...

On appointing Musharraf

There is no doubt that we took this decision (of appointing Pervez Musharraf as army chief) in a hurry. We should have chosen the number one according to seniority. This was my mistake. I should have, at that time, made the senior-most General Ali Quli Khan or General Khalid Nawaz the chief of army staff...

The recommendations of intelligence agencies were against the appointment of Musharraf... In their opinion he was not an appropriate choice for the post of chief of army staff, because he was very impatient (jaldbaaz) and an agitated type of person (mushtaiil ho jaane wala banda). I am talking about the most directly concerned agencies and their view was that Musharraf should not be made chief of the army staff because he was not suitable for this post...

On Kargil

I have not been able to understand the logic as to why Kargil had been started, what we had to achieve in this and what were our targets. At least the political leadership should have a clear knowledge about what we were to achieve by this. I think it was not clear even to the army leadership... It is my personal view that the only target the army leadership had was that we would be able to highlight the Kashmir problem at the international level and it would get publicity. What happened with Kargil, instead, was that we subjected our country to added pressure from the world community...

Even if the objective of Kargil was to highlight this issue globally, what was the need for offering such great sacrifice, so much so that units after units of the Northern Light Infantry were perished. The number of our men martyred there was greater than the combined number of martyrs in the 1965 and 1971 wars...

At that time there was an opportunity when people were feeling that India was behaving unfairly with Pakistan and did not want to resolve the Kashmir issue either though negotiations or through any other means. The pressure was on them, and then nuclear explosions were conducted first by them. We did it subsequently in retaliation; we would not have done so ever otherwise. The responsibility for all this was on India. Kargil has put all that responsibility on our shoulders. Tell us, is this the wisdom of our generals?...

On Kashmir & back channel diplomacy

It is true that there had been enough progress on this matter (resolving Kashmir issue through back channel diplomacy). Before the Lahore Accord, Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee had told me that 1999 would be the year of solution of the Kashmir problem, acceptable to both India and Pakistan. I told Vajpayee that a solution should be found acceptable to Kashmiris as well. Vajpayee expressed his agreement and thus back channel diplomacy started. Then, the Kargil episode took place, and India stopped the dialogue. India’s view was that it was stabbed in the back, and this was not untrue either.

On Intelligence Agencies

Intelligence agencies in Pakistan have become very powerful. Action is taken without informing the president or the PM. Nowhere else in the world it is thought that intelligence agencies could work without the permission of the government...