The September war that was, I A REHMAN
THE September 1965 war days were, to borrow from
Dickens, the best of times (for the people of Pakistan) and the worst of times.
For 17 days in September 1965, the Pakistani nation
achieved a unity of action and purpose it had not demonstrated before and has
not displayed since.
The people of Lahore woke up on the morning of Sept
6, 1965, to realise that what they had been told could not happen had come to
pass. Contrary to the authorities’ belief that India could not attack Pakistan
across the international border, its troops had actually crossed Wagah and then
driven up to Jallo and withdrawn a little, frightened by the lack of resistance.
Several
questions were asked in the aftermath of the conflict.
Within
no time the undefended city found defenders who wrote with their blood tales of
matchless valour and commitment to protect the motherland. Names of Sarwar
Shaheed, Aziz Bhatti Shaheed and Shafqat Baloch rose to the top in the people’s
pantheon of heroes.
The list soon grew with the addition of more heroes
— Sarfaraz Rafiqui Shaheed, Cecil Chaudhry, M.M. Alam — who shot down many
planes in the air and on the ground.
The Lahore front was soon stabilised and quick
victory was won in the Khem Karan sector. The Lahorites could not decide what
they liked better — the spectacle of aerial dogfight in daytime or the roar of
Rani (a heavy gun) at night.
Soon afterwards the tank battle at Chawinda in the
Sialkot sector caught the people’s imagination. The battle was grim but the
spirits were high. Poets offered soul-lifting lyrics and Noor Jahan led a
galaxy of singers to inspire soldiers and citizens alike.
It was wonderful to be buoyed up by belief in the
justness of the national cause and confidence in the state’s capacity to meet
the challenge.
But the heady feeling of victory faded quickly and
many in Pakistan realised they had gone through a poor patch in their history.
The story of those days has been told so often. How the victory in the Rann of
Kutch was exaggerated, how the situation in Kashmir after Sheikh Abdullah’s
arrest was misread, how the plan of sending guerrillas there did not work out,
how the thrust towards Akhnoor was thwarted, and how Ayub Khan lost his nerve
when his tanks sank in the marshes. Eventually, the international intervention
and ceasefire came as a relief.
The question as to who won the war has been answered
many times over. But soon afterwards questions began being asked; why was
intelligence about India’s troop movement ignored? Why was the theory of
inviolability of international borders accepted? Why were soldiers provided
with old maps? Why was faith pinned on ‘guerrillas’? And why was US support
expected when it had consistently declared that its arms could not be used
against India?
The aftermath of the September war was far from
pleasant. The objectives of Operations Gibraltar and Grand Slam were not
realised and Pakistan’s case on Kashmir suffered a setback. The number of
Kashmiris who backed Pakistan declined and so did Islamabad’s ability to invoke
the UN resolutions.
For reasons still largely obscure, Pakistan did not
derive full advantage of the Tashkent Declaration, whose denunciation started a
new phase of Moscow’s disenchantment with Pakistan and ultimately persuaded it
to sign the Friendship Agreement with India, without which the East Pakistan
war of 1971 might not have ended the way it did.
In 1965, Pakistan received wholesome support from
China and a number of Muslim countries — Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and
even Afghanistan. Malaysia fell out of line and Islamabad had to break off
relations with it. Factors as yet unknown caused these countries’ support to
Pakistan to wane considerably by the time Islamabad landed itself in the fatal
crisis of 1970-71
The 1965 war did the Indian Muslim some good in the
sense that many of them stopped looking at Pakistan for succour and accepted,
as Mohammad Ali Jinnah had advised them in 1947, their responsibilities as
citizens of India.
The battle of Chawinda, which filled most Pakistani
hearts with pride while tanks wrestled with one another, failed to impress the
experts later on. They said the ritual of daily clash of metal, with neither
side showing skill and capacity to clinch the issue, did not merit mention
along with the tank battles in Africa during the Second World War.
On Sept 6, President Ayub appealed to the people to
fight in the name of religion. His campaign for keeping faith out of politics
came to an end. It was left to the editor of a Dhaka daily, Zahoor Husain
Chaudhry, to remind him,” the more you swear by religion the smaller will your
state become”.
One consequence of the war was a belated inquiry as
to who had pushed Pakistan over the precipice. The story that Ayub was led up
the garden path by his advisers is belied by his statements on the days
preceding Sept 6. However, he dropped Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto from the cabinet, and
Kalabagh forced a battle on him. The result: Pakistan was never the same again.
Meanwhile, throughout the 17 days of the conflict
the East Bengal people were isolated from Pakistan and they were feeling
defenceless and abandoned. The theory that East Bengal’s defence lay in West
Pakistan was finally buried in 1971. The war directly led to the emergence of
the Six Points.
Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2015
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