Daily Times

Many Pakistanis continue to believe that their national survival depends on their military. They feel that the military has saved Pakistan from certain destruction at the hands of India numerous times. They are confident that Pakistan defeated India in the war of 1965. They have even absolved the Pakistani military for the loss of East Pakistan in 1971, placing the blame instead on the squabbling politicians of West and East Pakistan.

History has shown that such overconfidence in the military can lead to war. I wrote a book in 2003 to set the record straight and to prevent a nuclear war with India. I argued that Pakistan’s war fighting was based on three flawed premises: overconfidence in its own abilities to fight wars, belittling the enemy’s capabilities, and being overly optimistic about the ability of its allies to bail it out in case things did not go according to plan. As a result, Pakistan’s warfighting was compromised by failures in the higher direction of war, failure to coordinate infantry-armor operations, and failure to coordinate army-air force operations.

However, some people dismissed the book as being biased against the military when all I was doing is presenting an honest appraisal of its history in warfare, with an eye toward improving its performance and preventing future wars. I felt vindicated when my book was cited by the Abbottabad Commission of Inquiry into the Killing of Osama bin Laden.

To set the record straight, I am citing in this article excerpts from seven books and three articles. These are written by experts whose loyalty to Pakistan is above reproach, many of whom have close ties to the military and three of whom served in the Pakistan Air Force. Because of its length, the article is divided into three parts.

I. Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords: Pakistan: Its Army, and the Wars Within, Oxford University Press, 2008.

[In] the wider 1965 war with India…tactical brilliance and gallantry at the lower levels of command were nullified by a lack of vision and courage among the higher levels of leadership of the Pakistan Army…In the end, what was portrayed as a magnificent victory over India by [President] Ayub Khan’s propaganda machine produced only disillusionment and catalysed his eventual fall from grace…The 1965 war had cost the country dearly, not only in terms of battlefield losses but also in economic terms. Economic growth stumbled badly.

II. Brian Cloughley, A History of the Pakistan Army: Wars and Insurrections, Fifth Edition, Carrel Books, 2016.

[In August 1965, infiltrators from Pakistan] were dispatched into enemy territory [in Kashmir] following inadequate training, and with only the haziest notion of what they were to undertake…They were in poor physical condition, and unfit to engage in protracted guerilla warfare…They revealed much information to their Indian captors when, as was inevitable, most of their efforts failed…Pakistan’s foray into the Chhamb sector [in Kashmir] … must be judged a failure if the aim was to cut the road to the north expeditiously.

One problem for Pakistan was it tended to think in terms of brigades, not divisions, and certainly not Corps. General Gul Hassan, the Chief of the General Staff, acknowledged in his memoirs that the decision to launch Grand Slam [in Kashmir] was inordinately delayed. Secondly, commandshould have been given to GOC 7 Division from the start or there should have been no change of command in the middle. To let things happen as they did is mind boggling and contributed immensely to our failure.

[In invading Kashmir,] Pakistan had miscalculated. The Indians were not prepared to treat the conflict in Kashmir as an issue divorced from Indo-Pakistan relations in the wider sphere.

III. Feroz Hassan Khan, Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb, Stanford University Press, 2012.

The failure of the 1965 Kashmir War deeply changed the nuclear perception in Pakistan. The Kashmir issue, instead of being resolved, remained a major irritant in India-Pakistan relations and apparently would not be resolved through military means. India’s military was far stronger than Pakistan had imagined.

IV. Anatol Lieven, Pakistan: A Hard Country, Penguins Books, 2011.

A common definition of tragedy is that of a noble figure betrayed and destroyed by some inner flaw. The Pakistani military is in some ways an admirable institution, but it suffers from one tragic feature which has been with it from the beginning, which has defined its whole character and world view, which has done terrible damage to Pakistan and which would in some circumstances destroy its army altogether. This is the military’s obsession with India in general, and Kashmir in particular. Speaking of the average Pakistani officer of today, General Naqvi told me: “He has no doubt in his mind that the adversary is India, and that the whole raison d’etre of the army is to defend against India. His image of Indians is of an anti-Pakistani, anti-Muslim, treacherous people. So he feels that he must be always ready to fight against India.”

V. Carey Schofield, Inside the Pakistan Army: A Woman’s Experience on the Frontline of the War on Terror, Biteback Publishing, 2011.

By 1965, buoyed by the supply of equipment from the US, the Pakistan Army believed that it was strong enough to solve the dispute with India over Kashmir by force. It was encouraged by India’s weak showing in its war with China in 1962… ‘We thought we could beat the Indians. We tried. We did not totally succeed,’ a retired army officer commented. ‘But we did not fail either,’ he added, grinning. A successful little war against India early in 1965 for control of the Rann of Kutch (a barren region in the Indian state of Gujurat) emboldened the Pakistan Army. Three hundred and fifty square miles of Indian territory was awarded to Pakistan by an international tribune in June. Pakistan had claimed ten times as much land, but the verdict was cheered nevertheless.

At this point Operation Gibraltar was conceived. Civil unrest was growing in Indian-occupied Kashmir, and Pakistan had become aware of what it saw as aggressive troop movements. Both [President] Ayub Khan and [Foreign Minister] Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto supported a plan, to be executed by the Pakistan Army, which involved a covert breach of the ceasefire line in Kashmir with the intention of encouraging an uprising of the Muslim majority in Kashmir. The plan, though considered well-conceived, was a failure. In the final analysis, the Pakistanis had underestimated the Indian Army. The Indian Army moved to secure the border immediately, most of the infiltrating forces were captured and counter attacks were launched across the ceasefire line by India, sparking the September War. The War resulted in thousands of lives lost and no clear winner.…Ayub Khan’s position was significantly compromised by the military failings.

VI. Farooq Bajwa, From Kutch to Tashkent: The Indo-Pakistan War of 1965, C. Hurst & Company (Publishers) Ltd., 2013.

Dr. Bajwa identifies five flawed premises in Pakistan’s decision to send guerillas into Indian-held Kashmir in August 1965, hoping it would lead out to a rebellion which would liberate Kashmir from Indian rule and critiques how Pakistan fought the all-out war with India in September.

VII. Hasan-Askari Rizvi, Military, State and Society in Pakistan, MacMillan Press Ltd., 2000.

The performance of the Pakistan Army in the limited war in the Rann of Kutch [in April 1965] was a morale booster for the military. The civil and military authorities launched a massive propaganda campaign to project the military as an invincible force. This sentiment was strengthened by a misperception that Kashmir was seething with so much disaffection that a limited external support would ignite a popular revolt, overwhelming the Indian civil and military establishment there.

The writer is a defence analyst and economist. He has authored “Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan” (Ashgate Publishing, 2003)

Published in Daily Times, September 7^th 2017.