Archive for the 'Kashmir' Category

Pakistan - India War of 1965: The War in Kashmir – 1/3 (1965)

Athar Osama September 6th, 2007

By: Athar Osama

pk-220px-Time_ayub_shastri.jpgThe 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:

“Pakistan suffered a loss of a different kind…Soon after the War the GHQ ordered all the formations and units of the Pakistan Army to destroy their respective war diaries and submit completed reports to this effect by a given date. This was done…Their [the war diaries’] destruction, a self-inflicted injury and an irreparable national loss, was intellectual suicide.”

                                    — General Khalid Mehmood Arif, Vice Chief of Army Staff, Pakistan Army

While unofficial accounts of the 1965 War by several Pakistani figures that participated in that war, including Ayub’s biographer Altaf Gauhar, Major General Shaukat Riza, Lt. General Gul Hassan, and General Mohammad Musa have since come to the fore, the “official” version of Pakistan’s military plans and objectives from that and how the performance of our commanders and troops differed from these have not surfaced.

Additionally, no effort has been made to systematically evaluate Pakistan’s strategic and operational plans and attempt to learn some lessons from the preparation and conduct of the war. Much of this remains an official secret protected by the Official Secrets Act that does not allow anyone to compromise such information due to a perceived “national interest”. Even General K. M. Arif’s book, for instance, carries only a copy of a map depicting an Indian military plan but none from Pakistan which could have been easily accessible to a person of his stature and position.  This then sets the backdrop of this analysis of the preparation and conduct of the 1965 War between India and Pakistan.

Rationale and Preparation for the War

Several events such as the Sino-Indian War of 1962, the frustrations over lack of progress in the Kashmir dispute, and Pakistan’s own victory in the limited Runn of Kutch Affair, contributed to the events that led towards the 1965 War between India and Pakistan.

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Ayub’s Era II: National Security and Foreign Policy Challenges - 3/3 (1962-65)

Understanding Pakistan Project Team September 6th, 2007

pk5-514659187_d2b88fe2dc.jpgBy: Athar Osama

Ever since its creation, Pakistan’s national security challenges, primarily a threat from India, had occupied the minds of its defense and foreign policy planners. Just months after the country’s creation, a war broke out with India over the disputed territory of Kashmir. A day after its founder—Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah—passed away, India invaded the independent state of Hyderabad and annexed it with brutal force. Nothing it seemed was safe from Indian designs and the Indian leaders had made it amply clear that they would like the renegade Pakistan to return back to Mother India. (Figure: President Ayub Khan with Mrs. Kennedy during their visit to Pakistan. Foreign Minister Bhutto is seen in the background).

Pakistan’s Search for Security through Western Alliances

In this age of extreme paranoia—based on a fear that was justifiable or not—Pakistan’s leaders began looking for defense alliances, primarily with Western countries, to seek some level of comfort and security for its defense needs. The military had always been a pro-Western factor in Pakistan’s politics. The forces have been heavily dependent on foreign military trade and aid for their hardware and training needs respectively. In the initial years of the country’s independence, Britain provided some additional military hardware to stuff Pakistan’s virtually empty military arsenals. Britain, however, was not willing to meet all the defense procurement needs of the new country for it was also on friendly terms with India as well. During the late 1950s, therefore, there was a sharp switch towards a pro-America stance in Pakistan’s foreign in national security policy. Pakistan Army’s defense needs led this movement while the Airforce and Navy largely remained dependent on Britain and France for their weaponry.

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Guest Post: Hard Facts about 1965 War

Understanding Pakistan Project Team September 6th, 2007

 Guest Post* by: MAK Lodhi (published in The News International, Sept 7, 2007)

pk-p0807030301.jpgThe 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.

The war, fought for only seventeen days, is often drummed up as a great victory compared with the debacle of 1971 when the country split into two, more because of internal factors, which are often ignored, than external factors.

Even for the 1965 war, the blame is laid entirely on India as the aggressor and the nation is not allowed to have a realistic appraisal of the missteps and blunders that led India to attack. Nor has Pakistan’s establishment ever accepted that armed forces were totally unprepared for such an eventuality.

Was there any exigency plan ready to be implemented? Were the forces alert enough to face a counter-offensive before launching two adventures, one after the other, in the occupied Jammu and Kashmir prior to Indian invasion of Pakistan?

It is time the up-and-coming generations were apprised of true and bitter realities, of myopic vision of Pakistani leaders, of lack of planning and strategic fiascos.

From the 1965 war to Kargil in the spring of 1999, the military establishment seemed to have learned no lesson. “Pakistan’s behaviour is so unlike that of other vanquished powers that it belies Michael Howard’s dictum that ‘the vanquished are likely to learn more from their defeat than the victors from their victory”, writes Ahmad Faruqui in “Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan.”

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Ayub Khan Era-I: The Martial Law “Revolution” - 2/2 (1958-62)

Athar Osama July 23rd, 2007

By: Athar Osama

Socio-Economic and Political Reforms of Ayub’s Era-I (1958-62)

pk-p0806030301.jpgWith 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:

“He knew that he was expected to collaborate unstintingly with a government confessedly authoritarian, claiming to derive its sanction from the necessities of a desperate situation and promising, unequivocally, to justify itself by a resolute purification of public life, by a program of indispensable reforms, and by adoption of a fresh constitution which would adequately and appropriately satisfy the citizen’s right to speak and participate in his country’s affairs”

Ayub Khan adopted an essentially technocratic mode of government depending upon a number of committees and commissions to help in policy formulation. In all, the Martial Law Administration, during its entire tenure, set up as many as 25 different commissions to deliberate on policy matters within a wide variety of domains. These included:

- Company Law Commission                            - Constitution Commission                   - Credit Inquiry Commission
- Education Reform Commission                      - Federal Capital Commission              - Finance Commission
- Food & Agriculture Commission                    - Franchise Commission                        - Jute Inquiry Commission
- Land Reforms Commission                            - Land Revenue Commission               - Manpower Commission
- Law Reform Commission                               - Maritime Commission                        - Medical Reforms Commission
- Pay & Services Commission                           - Police Commission                              - Press Commission
- Price Commission                                            - Scientific Commission                         - Social Evils Commission
- Sport, Culture, Art, & Literature Com.         – Sugar Commission                             - Taxation Inquiry Commission
- Textile Inquiry Commission

The sheer scope of the subjects that these commissions dealt with makes one wonder about the volume of policy work carried out in the early years of Ayub Khan’s era. It also makes one think as to how, without carrying out these necessary reforms in a whole variety of different areas, the country was being run in the preceding nine years of its existence. Clearly, not every one of the commissions formed during Ayub Khan’s regime undertook work of equal importance, nor did they achieve similar results, but the fact that the government was able to devote its attention to all these areas cannot escape one’s attention. 

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