Sandy Berger is a not a name that every Indian has heard of. But the Kargil War has left an impression on the minds of even those who were only children in the year 1999.
Kargil district (near the the LOC, facing Pakistani administered Gilgit-Baltistan to the west and Indian administered Kashmir Valley to the south) was left ravaged by the two warring nations.
As The Daily Beast writes, the part that Sandy Berger played in all of it was mostly through his wise political manoeuvre that averted a possible nuclear warfare in South Asia.
In the spring of 1999, Pakistan had secretly sent hundreds of troops of Pakistani soldiers and Kashmiri militants across the LOC to infiltrate the Indian side of the line of control. When India discovered the Pakistani ploy, it launched a rapid counter-attack through air and ground forces. That was when Sandy Berger, Security Advisor to former President Clinton met Brajesh Mishra, National Security Advisory to then Indian PM, Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Mishra told Berger that the Kargil War would esclate out of control if Pakistan did not start withdrawing its forces. Berger conveyed the same message to Clinton urging him to speak to Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif and advise him to pull back troops lest the two nations turn to their nuclear weapons.
Berger’s secondary role in the Kargil War indeed helped both nations. Pakistan called its troops back although Sharif was sacked from his ministerial post in an army coup and had to spend a decade in exile until he made a comeback as Prime Minister of Pakistan for the third time in 2010.
Berger who remains unknown to most Indians and yet played a very important role to fend off a crisis died on December 2 in Washington DC at the age of 70 after being diagnosed with cancer.
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