A
wrong war, ZAHID HUSSAIN
IN marked contrast
to the pomp and show eulogising the fable of the 1965 war victory, the speech
of the army chief at the GHQ ceremony was sombre. There was no jingoism or war
rhetoric; just firm resolve. It was more about the internal and external
security challenges that confront the country at present than a show of
grandiloquence and bluster.
Indeed, the nation
is indebted to the brave soldiers who laid down their lives to defend the
motherland against a much bigger adversary. For this reason we mark Sept 6 as
Defence Day every year to pay homage to those brave souls. But there have never
been such celebrations of ‘victory’ as was witnessed on the 50th anniversary of
the war. Day in and day out TV channels aired a grand military spectacle and
display of modern weapons. It was in response to India’s own victory
celebrations, we are told.
For sure, all that
helps raise nationalist sentiments and boosts public confidence in our military
preparedness. What it also does, however, is gloss over the blunders that
brought us to the brink of a military debacle in a war which we had initiated.
The real story of the 1965 war has largely been missing in the media discourse
that only highlighted the false victory version.
The real story of
the 1965 war has largely been missing in the media discourse.
While remembering the sacrifices and
gallantry of our security forces, it is also important to let go of the myth of
a victory that never was. The limited success our forces achieved in certain
sectors must not be used to cover up the miscalculations and flawed military
strategy.
We have never
recovered from the effects of that military misadventure. It may have been
driven by India’s intransigence on Kashmir, but Pakistan has never been the
same again after that futile war. What happened in 1971 is also to some extent
linked to the events that followed the 1965 war.
In fact, the war
was started when we launched Operation Gibraltar in early July 1965,
infiltrating thousands of Pakistani soldiers into India-occupied Kashmir under
the assumption that Kashmiris would rise in revolt against the Indian forces.
That never happened and within weeks the entire operation had collapsed.
Meanwhile, the Indian forces launched a counteroffensive occupying parts of
Azad Kashmir.
Subsequently on Aug
30, we launched Operation Grand Slam that was meant to capture the strategic
town of Akhnur and to cut off held Kashmir from India. But it was too late.
Another disaster happened when halfway through Grand Slam, the command was
changed giving more time to the Indians to recoup and gather reinforcements. As
a result this operation too ended in a fiasco.
Altaf Gauhar, a
former information secretary and arguably the most powerful bureaucrat in the
Ayub regime, was a witness to the events. His book on Ayub Khan provides
perhaps the most authentic detail of the war planning. The disarray in the
military command was well-illustrated by his words: “Ayub Khan did not know,
even on Aug 29, nine days before the war started, that Gibraltar had failed and
that none of its objectives had been achieved, and that the enemy forces were
in commanding positions with Muzaffarabad within their reach.”
Even Ayub Khan, who
was also the supreme commander, was kept in the dark about the real situation
on the ground. While Operation Gibraltar had completely collapsed, Gen Mohammad
Musa, the then army chief, was telling him that everything was on course, some
setbacks notwithstanding.
The entire
operation was planned on the miscalculation that Indian forces would not launch
an attack across the international border. Except for a small coterie of top
generals, very few in the armed forces knew about Operation Gibraltar. The
foreign ministry under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto that was a critical part of the
entire operational plan had assured Ayub Khan that India could not afford to
expand the war.
According to Altaf
Gauhar, Mian Arshad Hussain, the Pakistani high commissioner in Delhi, sent an
urgent cipher message to the Foreign Office on Sept 4 that Indian forces would
launch the attack on Sept 6. The cable was never communicated to the president
or the army chief as the foreign ministry suppressed the message thinking that
the high commissioner had “unnecessarily panicked”.
So the persons most
surprised were the president and the army chief when the Indians launched the
attack on Sept 6. Ayub was woken up at four in the morning and given the news
of Indian advances towards Lahore by an officer of the air force on
reconnaissance duty. Ayub telephoned Gen Musa who said he had also heard the
news but was waiting for confirmation!
Gen Gul Hasan, who
was the then director general military operations, confirmed that the first
report of the Indian aggression on the Lahore front came from a PAF pilot.
“They were not located in Indian territory but on our land”, the general wrote
in his memoirs. Lahore was saved by the gallantry of our soldiers and the air
force which stopped the Indian offensive.
Ironically the air
force that played the most critical role in defending the country was kept out
of the joint planning of operations Gibraltar and Grand Slam; they were not
considered “sufficiently security minded”. There was hardly any coordination
among the forces even when the Indian offensive had started.
No wonder within a
few days into the war Ayub Khan was discussing the possibility of a ceasefire
as the war he had initiated had lost its way. Supplies of ammunition had dried
up and shortage of spare parts drastically reduced the capability of the air
force.
Air Marshal Nur
Khan, who led the air force, achieving complete superiority over the Indian air
force, called it a wrong war that was planned “for self-glory rather than in
the national interest”. History has to be put straight so that the mistakes are
not repeated.
The writer is an
author and journalist.
Published in Dawn,
September 9th, 2015
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