Defence
NOT Victory
“6 September, 1965 ki ALAS-SUBAH, Hindustan
nay baghair ailan-e-jang, Pakistan per, Lahore ki janib se hamla kar diya”
[Translation – In
the wee hours of 6 September, 1965 Hindustan launched an attack on Pakistan
from Lahore without a prior declaration of war]
`
Or
so read the text-books of the consolidated subject of Pakistan Studies, that I
read, and coming generations would be forced to read too. Please note the
deliberate use of “Hindustan” instead of the 23 constitutionally recognized
official names of India, a term charlatan historians and lackeys of the old
apparatus use to distinguish the Hindu-Muslim existence of the two nations. (Urdu newspapers in India also use Hindustan
instead of the official Jamhuriya-e-Bharat, it’s a
cultural adaptation immersed in the language).
This single
sentence in our text books covers more than just the launch of a war. It is
emblematic of the perpetual lies that have been spread in our history books,
symbolic of how adventurism, mostly failed, has been covered up so that the
adventurers could continue to claim moral and intellectual superiority and is
representative of a major flaw that ails our society. A common anecdote, often
written down too, is that Brigadiers from the Indian Army had planned to have
breakfast at Barki. The history books, the accounts on television, the
anecdotes, the verbal recitals from right wing “intellectuals” goes that the
war was ostensibly thrust upon Pakistan by cunning, nefarious, hungry India.
When it was not!
Unfortunately, we are the nation
who is constantly playing with our history. Even what they are teaching to our
new generation is extremely wrong and one sided. History from making of
Pakistan to current era, everything is now biased and one sided. In grade 5, we
read that when Mohammad bin Qasim attacks debal, this act was first brick in
the making of Pakistan. With respect, I didn’t agree with this statement.
Attack of Mohammad bin Qasim on Sindh was against Raja Dahir. Not for forming
Islamic state.
Same happened with 1965 war.
Pakistanis celebrate it like as they won the battle. Although officially, 6th
September is declared as DEFENCE DAY. But we celebrated it like we won that
battle. Even in our history and course books, it’s written that Pakistani armed
forces defence very well etc etc. But it’s not mentioned that what was the
conclusion of WAR? Who won it or loss it? Even it’s not mentioned that UN
intervened in it. This is extremely wrong. Same is with 1971 WAR & Fall of
Dhaka. Even discussing Fall of Dhaka is like sin. I personally think that we
should let our generations know that what we have done with East Pakistan
(Bangladesh). No one remember Operation Gibraltar. That was Disaster, (something our books fail to remember of course).
General Ayub khan prepared
to send in the “Gibraltar Force” to wage a guerrilla war in Kashmir. Colonel S
G Mehdi, the commander of the SSG just before the start of the war said about Gibraltar, “the plan was so CHILDISH, so bizarre as
to be unacceptable to logical, competent, professionally sound military persons
anywhere in the world” and Mehdi’s reward was being posted out of the SSG for disagreeing with the “competent”
assessment of his seniors (he said the plan would have been “a fiasco greater than the ‘Bay
of Pigs’ operation”).
The Army’s closest
version of an official historian, Maj Gen Shaukat Raza, has amongst others
tried to put all the blame of the 1965 war on Foreign Minister Bhutto and
Foreign Secretary Aziz Ahmed. Bhutto’s warring habits – again in contrast to
being socially liberal – do not even require debate, but to imagine that a
Minister and a bureaucrat could push an entire military apparatus, a Field
Marshal/President, a General and the entire GHQ, to war is unimaginable and
laughable. After all, it was the GHQ’s job to make realistic predictions about
the success of an armed invasion and to prepare for a response from the enemy.
If they could not do their own job, and were relying on a civilian and a
bureaucrat to do that, one wonders what it says about their own capabilities. A
funny fiction created remains that Bhutto assured the generals that India would
never attack from the Lahore sector either. One wonders what the creators of
these fictional stories think about us, the people, that we are willing to blame
Bhutto for the war hearing these stories, and not wonder what it says about the
ability and command performance of our “only institution”. The reality is that
the war was as much a product of DGMO Gul Hasan and Akhtar Husain Malik’s, as
it was Bhutto’s and Ahmed’s.
Pakistan’s
intelligence failures, having come to spotlight recently in Kakul, PAF airbase,
Kamra etc and have a long history to them too. In 1965, it was the DG IB, the
legendary Aijaz Baksh Awan, who was relied upon to deliver a message about the invasion and start of guerrilla war
to Sheikh Abdullah and garner his support (which Ayub decided against later).
Pakistan’s intelligence apparatus, the ISI and the MI, completely failed to
give accurate analyses of the level of support armed intruders would enjoy.
When the planned guerrilla war failed, and All India Radio played the
interviews of some of the raiders, DG MI Brig Irshad is reported to have said, “The bastards have spilt the beans”. It was
a miracle that Pakistan survived 1965, much credit to the PAF’s legendary
operations, after we were caught unaware and off guard in the Lahore sector.
Brig Irshad even dismissed a crucial piece of evidence that could have pointed
towards India’s approaching tank divisions in Sialkot. A military dispatcher caught on the Jammu-Pathankot road was carrying information
about the approaching attack. Summarily sent to MI HQ via a Cessna L19, it was
dismissed as an Indian deception and plant and we continued to imagine the 1st Armoured Division to be at another
location entirely. It was our luck that Indian commanders mistook a tank
regiment for a tank division at Chawinda even after we were unable to locate a
tank division where the convoy is reported to have been at least a hundred mile
long, from head to tail. The news of the imminent attack at Lahore was caught from a Radio Jammu transmission (brilliant intelligence
source, I must insist), and all forward formations having retreated to the
cantonments, the Punjab Rangers were the only ones left to confront the Indians
and DG Rangers went around alerting formations in his sleeping suit.
Ayub
Khan had meanwhile manufactured a cult around him and his figure loomed large
over the government. But the self-styled Field Marshal was an incompetent
soldier to the core. Gohar Ayub has tried to fudge history by lying that Ayub
was an active soldier during World War II with the Assam Regiment. In fact,
Ayub never had any war experience in his entire career and a below par record. During WWII,
he was with the Chamar Regiment that was disbanded soon after war. During the
War of 1947-8, he was in East Pakistan, far away from the war. He was made the
Commander in Chief (CnC) only after the man selected to succeed the British
general was killed in an air-crash and he was selected above others like Maj
Gen Nazir and Maj Gen Majid because of his closeness to Iskander Mirza, who was
Defence Secretary. Ayub would later get Nazir involved in the Rawalpindi
Conspiracy Case on flimsy evidence and force him into retirement. With Mirza,
he would later formulate our policies of the Cold War, twist and manipulate the
politics of the land, and ultimately exile him and take over. He was, all
historians conclude, not a proponent of war with India during his rule, but
this was due to a host of reasons including the fact that he was a poor
decision maker when it came to the subject of war. His own handpicked CnC, Gen
Musa Khan’s terrible command performance during 1965 is available for all to
read. Ayub was a man of such impeccable morals that besides rigging the
election against Fatima Jinnah, in an already manufactured franchise, he called her an Indian agent. The moral superiority is for all to
witness.
I
know what I have written in this BLOG is extremely disappointing for many. But
unfortunately it’s true, a Bitter Reality. What I tried to focus is on reality
which is forcefully hided from us. OR we are forced not to discuss those facts.
If we really want to make Pakistan, a prosper country; first we should maintain
& remember our REAL HISTORY.
(Ref: Tariq Rahman)
