Pakistan has had difficulty learning from its past military failures, but the learning process from the Kargil conflict has been a particularly tortuous and private affair for the country's civilian and military leaders and national security institutions. The Pakistan government's ability to discuss the Kargil operation and ensuing military crisis was – and still is – constrained by its determination to maintain the mujahideen cover story. Several nongovernment analysts in Pakistan have questioned the army's official version. However, the official narrative still dominates Pakistani writings on the Kargil conflict. While more thoughtful, internal reviews reportedly have taken place within various organizations of the armed forces, they remain classified and have not been released to the public. For its part, the Nawaz Sharif government did not institute any official or semi-official inquiry of the Kargil operation largely because it feared opposition from the military.

The task of explaining what lessons Pakistan has learned as a result of the Kargil conflict is further complicated by the fact that the military operation and its aftermath became closely intertwined with the nation's civil–military political debate. In the months leading up to the October 1999 coup, and even in subsequent years, military officers and civilian officials from the Nawaz Sharif government have sought to pin the blame for the Kargil debacle on each other. These obstacles notwithstanding, this chapter analyzes if the Kargil operation was an isolated incident or instead conforms to a broader pattern of Pakistani strategic conduct. I argue the latter.