Pakistan - India War of 1965: The Ground War - 2/3 (1965)
Athar Osama September 15th, 2007
By: Athar Osama
In the first of this three part episode, we looked at the War in Kashmir that began as a precursor to the broader conflict between India and Pakistan. Hostilities began on August 5th and 6th 1965 when Pakistan army regulars infiltrated the Cease Fire Line (CFL) in Kashmir. On August 7th 1965, Pakistani forces carried out a raid in the Kargil area to cut off the road links between Srinagar and Ladakh. Between August 12th and 16th, Pakistan continued its attack on an Indian Army post in Kargil accompanied by shelling in the Chhamb sector. Increasingly, both countries were employing their regular forces in these operations and a low-intensity localized war was already underway.
(Figure: A Map of Pakistan-India War of 1965: The Ground Battles created by the author is on the next page. Please click below.)
Brian Cloughley, in his “A History of Pakistan Army: Wars and Insurrections”, notes:
“There were statements in the respective parliaments, letters to the UN, and briefings of international media, but there was sense of buying time. On the Pakistan sided, it was still hoped that the actions of the Mujahids would persuade the population of the valley to rise up, whereafter the Pakistani regular troops could be deployed with a semblance of legality. The Indians were not averse to escalation of the conflict as it would, in their view, provide an opportunity to make up for the humiliation in the Runn of Kutch and settle things once and for all with their recalcitrant neighnour. They wanted to “get at and smash the Pakistani war machine’” (Cloughley, 1999, p. 63)
Here are a few videos of the 1965 War. The first of these is a typical motivational video (with a Pakistani-bent) that puts together a collage of pictures from the war itself. The second video (next page) is an Indian video of similar nature. The difference between how same events are potrayed by the popular press and public in the two countries couldn’t have been more stark. The third video (next page) is a brief actual clip of the War, perhaps taken from a Pakistani news report. (Courtesy: YouTube.com)
The origins of the 1965 War between Pakistan and India, its conduct over the course of several weeks, and its consequences are quite complex for one to be able to do justice with it. Add on top of that the fact that countries engage in one-upmanship to try to make exaggerated accusations of who started the war and claims of victory after it ends, primarily in order to manage “public opinion” at home, and it really gets very difficult and tricky. One additional unfortunate factor in lack of quality reporting on the 1965 War was the attempt by Pakistani leadership—both military and civilian—to attempt to destroy the evidence of the circumstances that actually led to this war. General K. M. Arif, in his biography “Khaki Shadows: Pakistan 1947-97” for instance writes that in the immediate aftermath of the 1965 War:
By: Athar Osama
The Indian army launched a three-pronged attack across a 50-mile wide front towards Lahore at 0530 hours on September 6, 1965. The Indian XI Corps, comprising the 7th and 15th Infantry Divisions and the 4th Mountain Division mounted the attack. Within a couple of days, the Indian army launched a full-scale attack with its 1st Corps directed towards Sialkot, in between Lahore and Kashmir.
Concerns over Islamic extremism, extensive in the West even before this month’s terrorist attacks in London, are shared to a considerable degree by the publics in several predominantly Muslim nations surveyed. Nearly three-quarters of Moroccans and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia see Islamic extremism as a threat to their countries. At the same time, most Muslim publics are expressing less support for terrorism than in the past. Confidence in Osama bin Laden has declined markedly in some countries and fewer believe suicide bombings that target civilians are justified in the defense of Islam.
In non-Muslim countries, fears of Islamic extremism are closely associated with worries about Muslim minorities. Western publics believe that Muslims in their countries want to remain distinct from society, rather than adopt their nation’s customs and way of life. Moreover, there is a widespread perception in countries with significant Muslim minorities, including the U.S., that resident Muslims have a strong and growing sense of Islamic identity. For the most part, this development is viewed negatively, particularly in Western Europe. In France, Germany and the Netherlands, those who see a growing sense of Islamic identity among resident Muslims overwhelmingly say this is a bad thing.
With the power firmly in the hands of the Chief Martial Law Administrator, he set upon the task of creating country of his vision. Feldman (1967, p. 44) describes the state of the President’s mind in the following words:
The Constitution of 1956 was a lengthy document—containing over 234 Articles in 13 parts and 6 schedules. By contrast, the American Constitution has a 3-line preamble, 7 articles, and 27 amendments over the last 200 years of existence. The Indian Constitution, on the other hand, has 395 articles and 12 schedules (Wikipedia, 2007). Clearly, in Pakistani Constitution of 1956, but also later ones, the framers adopted an approach, somewhat analogous to India’s, that explicitly stated many of the things that are generally left to convention in most well-developed constitutions of the world. Hamid Khan identifies several reasons for the length of the constitution including, but not limited to, complicated relationship between the federation and the provinces, special provisions for tribal areas and the Islamic character of the Constitution, emergency provisions, bill of rights, issues of state languages, election commission, and directive principles of state policy etc. (Khan, 2001, p. 102).
In this piece, we look at two other important aspects of Liaquat’s Premiership, namely, progress in constitution-making (most specifically the objectives resolution) and his foreign policy posture (i.e. Pakistan’s pro-Western foreign policy stance). Both these issues have defined Pakistan’s history over several decades that followed and remain, to this day, unresolved. Yet, it was during Liaquat’s momentous premiership that Pakistan first attempted to address these… 
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