Written by: Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed
Posted on: September 05, 2022 | 
| 中文
President Ayub inspecting the frontlines. (L to R) Gen Musa, Maj Gen Rafi, President Ayub Khan, Air Marshall Nur Khan and Gen Yahya Khan
Wars, intended or unintended, often became a catalyst for changes of a profound nature. The First World War led to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and reshaping of the map of the Middle East, and the Bolshevik Revolution, the first serious challenge to Western capitalism and its version of pluralist democracy. The Second World War led to the dismantling of the British Empire, and spawned a Revolution in China, while the Falklands War proved to be the death-knell for the Argentine military junta. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq marked the beginning of the end of the ‘American Century’, while Iraq’s invasion of Iran and the resulting 8-year war, consolidated the Islamic Revolution.
The September War proved to be a watershed in Pakistan's chequered history. At one level, it was amongst Pakistan’s finest moments, uniting the nation with pride in their Armed Forces while resolutely resisting Indian aggression. It nurtured many a myth about white gowned “holy men” gently deflecting Indian bombs with an angelic wave of divine hands. It fed our hero-loving people with new tales of valour and glory in the tradition of Khalid bin Walid and Mohammad bin Qasim. The inspirational patriotic songs of Madame Noor Jehan raised national morale and was the maiden expression of Pakistani ‘soft power’. However, it also turned out to be the first step in accentuating the yawning chasm between East and West Pakistan, which subsequently gave birth to the Third World's first successful secessionist struggle culminating in the emergence of Bangladesh.
Madam Noor Jahan
The war also changed our geopolitical environment, unleashed dormant forces and generated a momentum which effectively destabilised a seemingly well entrenched dictatorship, while greatly radicalising the Pakistani political consciousness. The rise of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the decline of Ayub Khan are inextricably intertwined with the 1965 War. 57 years after the inconclusive Pakistan-India War of September 1965, cynics recognise that whatever success Pakistan managed to achieve on the battlefield was attributable to three A's: Allah, Artillery and Air Force.
The “thousand-year-war” which turned into a 17-day stalemate, and a resulting climb down in Tashkent, where Pakistan-India talks were mediated by the USSR, remains an essentially untold and largely forgotten story. Why did the normally cautious Field Marshal decide to take the initiative in 1965? He was a sure-footed General who avoided taking risks, particularly of the kind entailed by “Operation Gibraltar”. Even in the context of the Pakistan Army as compared to “hawks”, Ayub Khan was a “dove” on India. In November 1953, US vice President Richard Nixon visited Pakistan. Writing in his memoirs, Nixon says that he was impressed by General Ayub Khan, then head of the Pakistan Army. “He was one of the few Pakistanis I met who was more anti-communist than anti-India”, writes Nixon. In fact, it was such caution that held Ayub back from striking at India when it was having its conflict with China in 1962, an opportunity missed largely on account of American pressure, which Pakistan was to dearly regret.
Since no authoritative account of the 1965 War is available, it is difficult to really understand or analyse the reasons behind Ayub Khan's decision to launch “Operation Gibraltar”. Three explanations are generally offered. First, fresh from his “victory” over Miss Fatima Jinnah in the rigged Presidential poll of January 1965, Ayub Khan really wanted to do something spectacular so that he would go down in Pakistan's history as one of its heroes. His sycophants plus powerful nationalist-minded hawks in the bureaucracy egged him on about the Kashmiri issue. In this regard, his visit to China in March 1965 proved crucial. Ayub, and important members of his entourage, were very impressed by the zeal, dedication and sincerity of the Chinese, who were promoting their theory of “Peoples War”. This appealed to Ayub Khan and his colleagues in the context of a possible military adventure in Occupied Kashmir. It meant maximum gains (fermenting popular uprising in Occupied Kashmir with possible liberation) via minimum risks (Pakistan Army disclaiming involvement).
(L to R) Shastri, PM of India, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Foreign Minister and President Ayub of Pakistan, and Alexei Kosygin, PM of the USSR
Second, the brief successful military encounter with India in April 1965 over the Rann of Katch, had led to illusions amongst Pakistani policymakers. They derived broader conclusions from this limited engagement in a desert area, and this perhaps formed the basis of the confidence in GHQ that occupied Kashmir could be targeted. Third, was the apparent Foreign Office assessment conveyed to Ayub Khan that whatever Pakistan may do in Occupied Kashmir, India would never dare to violate the international border. Whatever may have been the Foreign Office view, and it would have been naive for Ayub to accept it as a fait accompli. As President, Supreme Commander and a professional soldier, ultimately the sole responsibility for his actions and its consequences rests on his shoulders. The war, which started as a two-phased military operation, combining guerrilla and conventional aspects of war, was undoubtedly a brilliantly conceived plan, but which fell victim to poor execution. Mediocre generalship, lack of coordination and jitters among the high command, managed to nullify the bravery and supreme sacrifices of jawans and officers on the battlefield. Inspired by the Maoist dictum that “guerrillas are like fish in water; just as fish cannot live without water, guerrillas cannot survive without people”, a “decisive solution” of the Kashmir problem was attempted by employing Chinese style ‘People's War’ tactics.
On August 5, 1965, a clandestine station calling itself the ‘Voice of Kashmir’ declared that the ‘war of liberation against Indian occupation has begun’. The “Gibraltar Force” of Pakistani regulars, said to number five thousand men, had started its work in Occupied Kashmir.
The conventional phase of the operation code-named “Operation Grand Slam” (like Gibralter Force, also a brainchild of Major General Akhtar Hussain Malik, an avid bridge-player) was aimed at the capture of Chamb, Jaurian and Akhnoor, the last a vital link in India's communication with Occupied Kashmir. A daring military commander, General Akhter Malik saw an opportunity offered by an Indian military machine that was still recovering from its humiliation at the hands of China in 1962, and the popular agitation in Occupied Kashmir over the Hazratbal incident in 1964, when the stealing of sacred hair and belongings of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), which were preserved in a mosque in Srinagar, had sparked serious riots. The Gibraltar Force plan was conceived in the cool comfort of 12 Division’s Officers’ Mess at Murree during the early summer of 1965. However, it was undertaken without reference to the Kashmiri people, the need for adequate groundwork or necessary psychological mobilization among the Muslims of Occupied Kashmir for an arduous liberation struggle. With the successful completion of “Operation Grand Slam” near at hand (Chamb and Jaurian had already been captured), General Akhtar Malik was relieved of command in the middle of the battle, and replaced by the then Major General Yahya Khan. By ousting a successful military commander and holding back on attacking Akhnoor, “Operation Grand Slam” was slammed shut! The decision remains inexplicable. One view which sounds plausible has it that Field Marshal Ayub Khan personally ordered the change of command and a halt to the attack on Akhnoor, under pressure from his former American friends. They had reportedly conveyed to him that an attack on Akhnoor would lead to a full-scale war with India. If the Field Marshal leashed his bridge-playing general, he was apparently assured that India would not attack West Pakistan. The other explanation for the change of command refers to the “credit” factor, that “credit” for the “victory” should go to the general being groomed for the top slot, i.e., General Yahya Khan, as military successor to Ayub Khan, rather than Akhtar Hussain Malik.
Maj General Akhter Hussain Malik
When the Indians did attack anyway on September 6, it was a beaming American Ambassador who told Ayub Khan with supreme arrogance: “The Indians have got you by the throat, Mr President, haven’t they!” Concurrently, the CIA was said to have planned a covert operation to oust Ayub Khan through a coup d’état. According to London’s “THE TELEGRAPH” (September 13, 1965), the CIA tried to recruit General Azam Khan, a former Governor of East Pakistan, as a potential coup-maker but, said the newspaper, he “refused to play ball” and promptly informed his former boss. Copies of this article were later circulated among senior Pakistan Army officers as an example of American perfidy.
Ayub had earned the wrath of the United States because of his ‘flirtation’ with Peking, then Uncle Sam’s enemy number one. Pakistan was punished by Washington in another important way, for although it as its sole supplier of weaponry, all arms aid was cut off during the war.
President Ayub with Premier Zhou Enlai at the Great Wall
The American view of growing Pakistan-China relationship was somewhat graphically summed up by President Lyndon Johnson when he received the Pakistan Foreign Minister, who had arrived to attend President John F. Kennedy’s funeral in Washington in November 1963. Criticising Pakistan’s “flirtation” with China, Johnson told Bhutto: “Look here, I have a teenage daughter and she goes out with her boyfriend. I don’t care what she does with him behind my back, but I’ll be damned if she does anything in front of me”. While America was giving this treatment to its “most allied ally”, the attitude of China and the Soviet Union was markedly different. The latter had adopted a neutral posture, offering its services as a mediator. China gave all out support to Pakistan. At the height of the war, in mid-September, Ayub Khan made a secret visit to Peking where he met Chairman Mao and other Chinese leaders. When Ayub Khan went to Washington for a bridge-building visit in December 1965, he was candid enough to tell Johnson, explaining Pakistan’s intimacy with Peking: “If we break with America, at best we may damage our economy. But if we break with China, we might even lose our country”.
The war had deep ramifications both in foreign policy and domestic politics. The Sandhurst-trained Field Marshal, with an impressive appearance, emerged with a much-reduced stature. He was found lacking in both military decisiveness and political astuteness. He was unable to stand up to external pressures when he had the entire nation’s support with patriotic fervour from both wings of Pakistan. For a fleeting 17 days at least, there was a mirage of a unified monolithic nation. Never again was Pakistan to witness such national unity among the people, between the political forces and the government, between the civil and the military. The September War effectively sealed Ayub Khan’s political fate. He had failed in his attempt to liberate Occupied Kashmir. At Tashkent, he reneged on his solemn commitment that Pakistan would never withdraw its troops from the borders until the Kashmir issue was resolved. Kashmir wasn’t even mentioned in the Tashkent Declaration. In fact, when Shastri died, soon after signing the Tashkent Declaration, the standing joke in Pakistan was that the Indian Prime Minister’s death had occurred on account of the immeasurable joy he felt at his own success! At his suite in Tashkent, when the Pakistan Foreign Minister was woken up to be told by his Foreign Secretary that the “bastard is dead”, the weary but mentally alert Minister retorted: “which one?”
(From L to R) Foreign Minister ZA Bhutto with President Ayub Khan
The basis of political ferment was laid at Tashkent. It was the beginning of the end for Ayub. For the first time, Bengalis, still certified then as patriots by Islamabad, experienced a strange feeling of being physically separated from West Pakistan, of being left alone, defenceless against India. Since Pakistan’s military planners all along saw East Pakistan’s defence linked to West Pakistan (in effect the East’s war would be fought on the plains of Punjab), only one division of 12,000 men was placed at Dhaka. When awkward questions were asked in the National Assembly by irate Bengali parliamentarians, they were answered by charges of treason. NAP’s Masihur Rahman, later Prime Minister of Bangladesh, asked what would have happened had India attacked East Pakistan. The confident answer was that China would have defended East-Pakistan. Well, came the logical query from East Pakistan opposition leader Masihur Rahman, “If China is to defend us, what do we need West Pakistan for”.
In foreign policy too, the repercussions were wide ranging. September 1965 marked the nemesis of Pakistan’s policy of alliances with the United States, and of seeking external props for its security. In the eyes of the Pakistani people, America had betrayed a faithful, longtime ally and had befriended its enemy. The current popular aversion to any “special relationship” with the US stems from the premise of mutually conflicting interests, first manifested in 1965. The Soviet Union gained a great deal of prestige post 1965, largely due to its mediation at Tashkent, for it had managed to gain the concurrent trust of New Delhi and Islamabad. Pakistan-Soviet relations also flourished amidst the fast diminishing “Spirit of Tashkent”, and Pakistan began to get Soviet arms by 1968, although on a relatively small scale. It was, however, China which emerged as the biggest winner of the 1965 war, for it won the hearts and minds of Pakistanis. All shades of opinion have since agreed on close ties with China, and socialist ideas acquired a legitimacy, hitherto unknown in Pakistani politics.
President Ayub and the PM of India, Lal Bahadur Shastri
Years later, it is very easy to be “wise after the event”, and to sermonize about what went wrong, but if being wise means correcting past errors to ensure future successes, then this would be a worthwhile exercise. Three lessons are noteworthy about a war that neither side wanted, but both sleepwalked into. First, September 1965 exemplified at the heart of Pakistan’s defence lies a fundamental conceptual error in military thought: a tendency to view national security only in terms of military might (tanks, planes, armies, missiles etc.). The intangible non-military factors, which are often decisive in the long term, have been largely Ignored: popular support, grassroots institutions, morale building, will to survive, sound diplomacy and quality of leadership. Second, no honest post-mortem or review of the 1965 War has taken place, rather, there is a tendency to falsify facts, cover-up mistakes and tailor history to suit the interest of incumbent rulers. And to top it all, there was no accountability; instead medals were liberally showered to show a “victory” instead of the reality of the stalemate and setbacks of the war. The stage for the 1971 debacle was, in fact, laid in 1965, with catastrophic but predictable consequences. Third, the abysmal absence of institutionalized decision-making, whether civil or military, has been the bane of Pakistani governance. The proclivity for secretive actions taken by a cabal in power, has brought us repeated setbacks, followed by cover-ups.
Since no lessons were learnt from the 1965 war, not surprisingly, 34 years later in 1999, the military high command repeated precisely the same mistakes that were committed in 1965, namely, launching a covert war in Kashmir without broader consultation or coordination or awareness of the consequences, and with the assumption that the ‘enemy’ would not hit back. Kargil conceived, planned and executed by a small, secretive coterie had the same disastrous consequences as the military adventure 34 years earlier. No lessons were learnt during these 34 years!
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