Operation Gibraltar, R S Gull
August 10th, 2015 Kashmir Life. net
Half a century eclipsed since Pakistani
dictator Ayub Khan pushed regulars disguised as Mujahedeen behind enemy lines
into Kashmir thinking it would fetch him the Vale and arrest his unpopularity.
His coterie’s make-believe plan boomeranged, triggering a full blown war in
September 1965 that threatened Lahore. R S
Gull revisits
the forgotten era that marked death of Kashmir’s student activism, introduced
war-destruction, degraded the status of the dispute and changed Kashmir forever
by romanticizing violence.
Pakistan’s military historians
consumed last
50 years in understanding why Operation Gibraltar happened. Blame game is still
on. Diversity of narratives, however, indicates “interesting times” in Delhi,
Islamabad and Srinagar.
During October 1962 Sino-Indian war, US President John F
Kennedy offered military assistance to Delhi and ensured Islamabad stayed away.
Seemingly, US wanted using the conflict to bring reconciliation between the two
neighbours. Between December 27, 1962 and May 16, 1963 there were six rounds
between Foreign Ministers, Swaran Singh and Zulfikar Ali Bhutoo. Initiative
proved stillborn.
Srinagar erupted over the mysterious disappearance of
holy relic on December 26, 1963. Once it was rediscovered and restored, the
agitation diverted to the demand for releasing Sheikh Abdullah. Pandit Nehru
who understood the pulse, set Sheikh free and sent him to Islamabad on May 24,
1964 to become a bridge between the two countries. On the fourth day of his
visit, Nehru died, forcing Sheikh’s returnhome.
With Lal Bahadur Shastri replacing Nehru, Sheikh was
detained (May 1965) after his return from Haj pilgrimage via London and
Algiers. Holy Relic agitation endedBakhshi Ghulam Mohammad’s totalitarian and
corrupt regime and, for the first time, people were feeling they can breathe
easily. Initially Shamsuddin Kath, his puppet replaced him and later Ghulam
Mohammad Sadiq took over in 1965 till 1971. But Bakhshi had initiated certain
long term measures well before.
On October 3, 1963, Bakshi announced J&K’s Sadar-i-Riyasat and Prime Minister would now be
Governor and the Chief Minister. Six individuals representing J&K in Lok
Sabha and nominated by the state legislature would now be directly elected.
Delhi extended Articles 356 and 357 (imposition of
governor’s rule by the President and subsequent takeover of legislative
authority by the parliament) of Indian Constitution to J&K on December 21,
1964. Soon after, ruling Congress in Delhi announced on January 9, 1965 that it
would establish the party in J&K. Seeing deliberate and swift attempts at integrating
J&K into India, at the cost of autonomythat
was negotiated between 1947, at the time of accession, and 1952, Sheikh’s
National Conference (operating under Plebiscite Front then) drummed up protests
as Islamabad strongly reacted to the moves.
“Undoing of Bakhshi made Kashmir happy but the pent up
anger started coming out,” a top student leader of that era who retired as a
senior bureaucrat said on the condition of anonymity. “Chief Minister Sadiq
told us he would not stop youth activism as long as it is non-violent, no stone
pelting and it encouraged us to the extent that we had a one-mile long
procession to UNMOGIP and the then Australian Chief Military Observer
General Robert H Nimmo came out and made a speech to us.”
Islamabad, for the first time, was economically better as
its currency was valuing more against dollar than the Indian rupee. With US
tanks and aircrafts, it was feeling superior to India, especially after being
defeated by China. But there were apprehensions that Islamabad may lose its
assumed superiority in a few years as Delhi was on a shopping spree.
Icing on the cake was growing unpopularity of Ayub Khan.
The last push to his popularity was when his sons kidnapped the daughter of a
police officer and he looked the other way. Nawab of Kalabagh resigned in
protest. Soon after came his two sons opening fire in Karachi, killing 30
people and then rigging an election to retain power. “Perhaps he felt that by
becoming the liberator of Kashmir he would redeem himself in the eyes of the
people,” Brigadier Shaukat Qadir, a 1965 war veteran, wrote in his paper The
1965 War-A Comedy of Errors. “… such a venture he hoped to unite
the people, for there is little doubt that there has never been greater unity
in the country than in the period of the war and immediately after.” He flew to
China on March 2, 1965 for three days.
Khan’s discovery Bhuttoo wanted his pie in the cake.
Years later, Shabir Choudhary, the UK-based PaK academic-activist with clear
anti-Islamabad bias, quoted intellectual Tariq Ali saying in US: “Until these
generals are not defeated it is not possible to get in power in Pakistan.”
All this started showing. On
April 9, 1965 the rival armies in the Rann of Kutch exchanged fire and it
flared up. To reduce Islamabad’s advantage, India made deployments on Punjab
border and captured three of Pakistani outposts – Point 13620, Saddle and Black
Rocks, in Kargil. With third party mediation, the two sides signed ceasefire
agreement on July 1, 1965.
By May, Op Gibraltar was in fast forward mode. The plan
envisaged converting 5000 to 10000-strong Gibraltar Force into 10 groups with
separate identities and infiltrating them into in ten different areas of
J&K: Salahuddin for Srinagar,Ghaznavi (Rajauri), Tariq (Kargil), Babur (Nowshera-Sundarbani), Qasim(Bandipura), Khalid (Qazinag-Naugam), Nusrat (Karnah), Sikandar (Gurez), Khilji(Kel-Minimarg).
Every force controlled by a Major and commanded by
Captain rank officer was a mix of Razakaars, “civilian
workers” and soldiers from Azad Kashmir Regiment. Attired in green shalwar-kameez,
they would carry a cash of Rs 10,000, a lot of ammunition and sneak in. Unlike
soldiers, recoded evidence suggests Razakaarsjoined
involuntarily and the process had started soon after the Sino-Indian war.
They have radio sets but, a general belief in Srinagar
is, that they would get directions from the public broadcasts that a newly
floated radio station Sada-ie-Kashmir would make.
Available military commentary suggests the objectives
included provoking Kashmir to rebel, resorting to sabotage, destroying bridges,
police stations, barracks and infrastructure thus exposing Delhi’s claim that
Kashmir was its part or it was under her control and eventually forcing Delhi
to come on negotiating table. These objectives were to be achieved assuming
Kashmir will support infiltrators, and India may retaliate in PaK but
will never cross international border.
The brutally bold plan faced scathing criticism at home.
Soon after being briefed by General Akhtar Hussain Malik, the Commander of
Gibraltar Force at Muree, Colonel Syed Ghaffar Mehdi, who headed elite Special
Services Group (SSG) termed it childish and bizarre. “…I then asked him, when
he expected to launch theMujahedeen?”
Mehdi told in a long revealing interview to Sultan M Hali, a former PAF Group
Captain, now a defence analyst. “When he said July, the same year, I nearly
choked. I had initially assumed the plan to materialize in a year or two. I
told him ‘you will never get away with it’.” Mehdi sent an adverse
communication to higher ups against the idea and was eventually replaced by
July 30!
“According to (retired) Brigadier Isahaq and Brigadier Salahuddin 98% of the mujahids were forcibly
included in the force, and these were the people who had no means to pay bribe
to the local police,” Shabir Choudhary, wrote. “Even people from my own
village, including some of my relatives, were rounded up and taken to the
training camps.”
Two top Kashmir leaders Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas and K H
Khurshid had dissociated with the idea.
Operation was not a secret. Mohammad Din, a Gujjar
boy from Darra Kassi near Gulmarg, was approached by a group on August 5, 1965
and the official history credits him for the exposure. A quick encounter led to
seven killings of infiltrators. Almost same day, Wazir Mohammed of Galuthi
(Mendhar) altered army. On August 8, two Captain’s Ghulam Hussain and Mohammed
Sajjad were captured near Narian and they gave whatever they knew. Aakashwani
broadcast their interviews the same day!
In their joint IDSA (Institute of Defence and Strategic
Affairs) paper Operation Gibraltar: An Uprising that
Never Was, former top
soldiers P K Chakravorty and Gurmeet Kanwal said they were supposed to mingle
with crowds celebrating the festival of Pir Dastagir Sahib on August 8, 1965
and joining a political demonstration a day later and taking over the Radio
Kashmir, Airport and other vital installations. “Success in these operations
would lead to a Revolutionary Council proclaiming itself as the lawful
government, which would then broadcast an appeal for recognition and assistance
from all countries, especially Pakistan,” the paper reads. “This was to be the
signal for the Pakistani Army to move further and consolidate the process.”
Kashmir was not taken by surprise. “Far from rising up in
arms, the local population denied any support and, in many instances handed
over the infiltrators to Indian troops,” Shaukat Qadir wrote. But Colonel
Mansha Khan told historian Justice Yousaf Saraf: “They (infiltrators) could not
have come alive if the Valley people had not risked their lives and honour for
the Mujahideen.”
A young lieutenant Lehrasab Khan who was part of the
action and eventually became Lt Gen, experienced the crisis personally. “The
civilian population was also non cooperative because of the fear of Indian
retaliation,” Khan told Hali. “Even the logistic supplies reportedly dumped for
use by the Gibraltar Force were not available to us. We saw signs where perhaps
the dumping had been placed but was either pilfered or removed before we got
there.”
“Poor Kashmiris were
made the
scapegoats. They were never consulted, not even informed that a war of
liberation of Kashmir was being started,” Muzaffarabad journalist Mir Abdul
Aziz (died February 2002) has told many researchers. He had written on the
subject in newspapers too insisting the fighters infiltrated into Kashmir had
linguistic barrier. “The whole affair was a wild goose chase.”
“Mujahedeen went to shops and asked for dho
seir ata meaning two
kilo flour, but they asked in weights which were abolished a long time ago,”
Mir observed. “Also the request for atta was enough to expose them that they
were not Kashmiris.”
But how far is it correct that the Kashmir leadership of
that time was kept ignorant of the happenings.
Khawaja Sanaullah Bhat, the editor of Aftaab was contemporary and a well connected
editor. Personally informed by Chief Minister Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq about armed
Pakistani intrusion on August 8 – the day Kashmir was on a strike, Bhat in his Kashmir:
1947 Say 1977 Tak has
recorded the “mysterious” decision that “leaders of the Movement” took the same
evening. Venue for the public meeting at Khanyar on August 9 was shifted to
Mujahid Manzil where Moulana Mohammad Sayeed Masoodi advising people to
maintain peace and law and order and avoid taking rumours seriously.
“Whatever is happening around you, watch it patiently,”
Bhat quotes the political cleric saying. “These are critical times and any
small mistake can land you in problems. We are peace loving people, and want to
settle our issues peacefully and legally…”
Srinagar was disturbed, panicky and apprehensive. Clashes
were taking place in city outskirts and these reached near Bemina. Bhat refers
to the August 14, morning meeting between top Army commanders, Chief Minister
and his aides, where it was decided that Batamaloo, Sadiq’s ancestral mohalla currently in control of intruders
should be set afire, an operation accomplished same evening.
Biggest catch in Bhat’s book lies in his August 18,
meeting with Munshi Isaq, two days after latter’s “dramatic” resignation as
Plebiscite Front president.
“We have lost the best opportunity to get freedom,” Bhat
quotes Munshi telling him ‘almost in confidence’. “Nobody listened to me as
everybody in their bid to stay safe, destroyed the entire plan.”
“It had already been decided that we will not stay aloof
at this juncture. We had already talked to Pakistan and I had supported their
plan….But we (leaders) were frustrated, in a fix and cowards and avoided
supporting (to create public opinion),” Munshi tells the journalist. “I saw
tears in Munishi’s eyes and the room turned silent, I stayed a bit and then
left.”
In his book Nida-ie-Haq, Munshi Ghulam Hassan,
Isaq’s son offers a slightly detailed version. The news of the plan was shared
by Plebiscite Front’s underground leader Ghulam Mohammad Bhaderwahi to Isaq and
to Masoodi. “Sometime later, Rehmatullah, an informer from Pakistan High Commission
in Delhi came and had separate meetings with Molvi Masoodi, Molvi Mohammad
Farooq and Ghulam Mohuddin Qarra informing them they should arrange a public
meeting on August 9 which Mujahedeen will join,” Munshi wrote in his diary, on
basis of which his son compiled the book. “He had got some money too and later
through his brother-in-law Abdul Jabbar he sent lot of money to Molvi Farooq,
Ghulam Mohiuddin Qarra and Mubarak Shah Baramulla…I got to know all this on
August 5, 1954.”
Isaq has recorded that a herdsman informed him about the
intrusion of hundreds of Mujahedeen on August 5. “I took them to Masoodi and
Qarra and they were not surprised,” Isaq wrote. Next day when a Front worker
Ahmad Shah Bazaz of Khanqah got one of the intruders with him, Masoodi and
Qarra informed him that the local government is aware of the intrusion and army
is ready. “Go home or you will be killed,” they advised him. “…These two
leaders had alerted the government …On August 9, 1965 Molvi Mohammad Farooq
insisted the procession be taken out but the two leaders used their influence
and cancelled the procession.” Isaq singled out that while Batamaloo was
destroyed, Qarra’s property stayed untouched.
It lacks any reference to its sources but
Shabnum Qayoom’s Kashmir Ka Siyasi Inquilab offers a literally damning version of
things. Ayub Khan, the book says had sent two army officers Colonel Mushtaq
Ahmad and Subaidar Major Sadiq Ali to Srinagar for a meeting with Isaq, Masoodi
and Farooq on June 12. “They gave them four lakh rupees and left with a promise
of two more,” Qayoom writes. By then intrusion had started and the basic idea
was to implement the plan on July 13 itself when 150 armed men were there at
the martyr’s graveyard. “At the last moment, Molvi Farooq decided against taking
the procession to Amira Kadal.” The same evening there was a fight between the
two army officers and the leaders at Mirwaiz Manzil and it was decided that the
procession will take place on August 9. “Regardless of everything (allegations
of treason), they unwittingly saved Srinagar from a major bloodshed,” Qayoom
adds.
Qayoom, however, makes two more sensational disclosures.
Firstly, the intruders met a herdsman in Gulmarg and paid him to get 100
Kashmiri caps from Srinagar and that led to the expose. Once it was exposed,
the people who were already sheltering the intruders in their homes started
throwing them out, some even handed them over to police for rewards.
Secondly, the then Chief Minister Sadiq was personally
aware and taken into confidence by Pakistan! “In a private conversation he
refused to be part of the plan but he could not deny the fact that two
Pakistani army officers stayed at his residence and one of them actually took
Professor Zainab of Women College along with him to Muzaffarabad,” writes
Qayoom. He says Sadiq would have supported the intruders had they succeeded and
even in their failure he helped them save lives and return home.
But alternative accounts exist. “It is incorrect
that all the infiltrators were sold and handed over to the police,” Anwar
Ashai, the only surviving son of legendary Ghulam Ahmad Ashai said. Then, a
final-year engineering student and a top executive of Youth Students League, he
was arrested along with scores of local youth. “Their campaign was highly successful
in Budgam where they even affected change in the administration and they got
massive support in Poonch too.” Ashai says most of the youth was supportive of
them.
After engaging the security forces in a series of pitched
battles, infiltrators installed a local Sattar Khanday as the Deputy Commission
of Budgam with his brother-in-law Ramzan as his Deputy, Ashai said. “I saw one
infiltrator in Red-16 and later two more in Central Jail including the one who
escaped in a jail break and left with a school teacher whom he married later,”
Ashai said. Though a few infiltrators captured were imprisoned in Central Jail,
most of them, however, were driven to Jammu where a special lock up was set up
in Wazir Villa not far away from Talab Tiloo.
The then Home Minister D P Dhar, Delhi’s most trusted man
in Srinagar, was handling the situation.
Ashai said the infiltrators being professionals rarely
fell into the trap because they moved in groups but there were instances in
which some lost track and landed in police custody. Lot of public property and
infrastructure was destroyed but not many figures are available.
Undoing started very soon. By the end of August, Indian
army had managed occupying crucial Haji Pir Pass, a crucial bulge on the Gurez
divide and key positions in Kargil. These were the main advantages for Pakistan
to push in people and manage the control.
Wresting strategic 9000-Haji Pir on August 28, 1965, was
a Himalayan success. India failed in its capture in First War on Kashmir.
Immediately after its capture, Delhi ensured it is stabilized. The then Works
Minister Ghulam Rasool Kar visited the populations in the belt
and soon Mrs Indira Gandhi landed and visited the Pass. Traffic resumed on the
46-Kms highway connecting Poonch and Uri.
“I had just passed the matriculation and was appointed as
a teacher and my first place of posting was Khawja Bandi (a village on the
slopes of the pass) on September 8, 1965,” says Mohammad Hasan Din, an Uri
resident who retired as a teacher in 2004. “We were three teachers posted to
run the school. I remained there till February 1966 when Tashkent Agreement led to our return. The USSR-brokered
agreement enforced status quo ante.
In response to these successes, Pakistan
moved army into Jammu’s Chamb sector – the beginning of Operation
Grand Slam, the
Second War on Kashmir, on September 2, 1965, to capture key Akhnur town. The
idea was to block supply lines to Pir Panchal belt and wrest Rajouri where the
infiltrators had done phenomenally better than Kashmir. Pakistan delayed the
operation by a day (originally planned for September 1) and later at the last
moment replaced Major General Malik by Major General Yahya Khan as the
commander.
After defending Akhnur, Delhi crossed the IB on September
6, and marched towards Lahore and Sialkote. Western diplomacy got involved
massively, stopped ammunition supplies to both and the ceasefire on September
23, 1965 ended the 22 day war. India’s entry into Pakistan marked
begining of ex-filtration by Pak intruder for J&K.
It eventually led to eight-day Tashkent summit between
Ayub Khan and Shastri on January 10, 1966. Under Chile Brigadier-General Tulio
Marambio, UN set up UN India-Pakistan Observation Mission (UNIPOM) to mediate a
ceasefire that ceased to exist on March 22, 1966 after status
quo ante was
restored.
Shastri died in Tashkent. Bhutoo resigned saying
“whatever was earned in the battleground was lost on the talks table”.
Costs were enormous: India lost 3000 soldiers and
Pakistan slightly more; PAF lost 20 and IAF 60 aircrafts; and the world’s
biggest tank battle after World War-II led to Pakistan losing most of its
American Paton tanks. In one Punjab village, there were so many tanks left that
people called it Paton Nagar. India held three times more territory on the
other side than Pakistan occupied on this side.
But legacy of the war still lives. Residents in Tai
village, located on the Poonch River in PaK’s Kotli, not far away from the LoC had
forgotten their seven soldiers, who went missing on September 6, 1965, and
presumed them dead.
In 2006, Ayub Khokar, a JKLF militant from Sarhot village
was set free from Jammu jail and repatriated. He went and met Mohammad Bashir,
a resident who was barely three when his father Barkat Hussain disappeared.
This reopened the wounds and the hunt for getting the detained reached Delhi.
By 2011, the families of six Tai residents were fighting a legal battle in the
Supreme Court for release of their aged parents who spent more than 46 years in
jail!
Khokhar later told BBC he met Barkat and Sakhi Mohammad
in Jammu jail in 1998 and they told about four others too. After the court
issued a notice, J&K government confirmed their detention and added one
more soldier Aziz. In 2012, Delhi informed the court directly that neither of
these people were ever arrested in J&K. Nobody knows who was correct. On
July 24, Defence Minister Manoj Prabakar informed the parliament that 54
soldiers from 1965 and 1971 wars are still detained in Pakistan!
While military histories suggest the war was
no-win-no-defeat, long term consequences of the misadventure reshaped
subcontinent. Coinciding with the fall of Dacca in 1971, the Ceasefire Line
became Line of Control (LoC), UNMOGIP existed in disuse and Tashkent
bilateralism helped Kashmir move out of Security Council, apparently forever.
Contemporaries remember Army scanning villages and
collecting the ammunition that fleeing Pakistanis left and it was assumed that
Srinagar could have been defended for six months. People supportive of
infiltrators were punished. In Pir Panchal belt, where the infiltrators had got
immense support owing to their ethnic homogeneity, Zafar Choudhary in his Kashmir
Conflict and Muslims of Jammusays “no less than 2000 people were
killed” till December 1, 1965 under Operation Clearance.
Operation Gibraltar infused the new romanticism in
Kashmir. In UN Bhutoo threatened a “1000 year war on Kashmir”. Ashai remembers
two young men from Chenab Valley crossing over and seeking details of some
ammunition dumps left untouched. “They were given access to a dump buried near
Malangam (Bandipore) far away from the Aka Baji shrine,” Ashai remembers. “And
they could only get 12 grenades which various boys lobbed in the city, they all
were arrested.” A year later on September 14, 1966 Maqbool Bhat’s group had the first encounter,
changing Kashmir forever.
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