Operation Gibraltar was carried out by the Pakistani army in August 1965. It was an audacious operation intended to defreeze the Kashmir situation by seizing the Vale of Kashmir from India. Unfortunately the operation went awry and precipitated a full-scale war between India and Pakistan in September. That war ended in a stalemate. Lives and treasure were lost. And then the blame game began. More than five decades on, it’s worth revisiting the lessons of the operations since many Pakistanis have been taught that the Indo-Pakistan war was an act of naked aggression by India. Operation Gibraltar involved the injection of guerrillas into the Vale to instigate a revolt and grab it before India achieved military dominance in the region. It failed to trigger a revolt and drew a sharp Indian riposte along the ceasefire line. Pakistan upped the ante and launched Operation Grand Slam on the 1st of September. Infantry units of the army backed by armour over-ran the Indian outpost in Chamb, crossed the Tawi River and were headed toward Akhnur in order to cut off India’s line of communication with Srinagar. A vast majority of historians has concluded that the Indian response on the 6th of September across the international border at Lahore was a natural counter-response to the Pakistani incursion in Indian-administered Kashmir, not an act of unprovoked aggression. Earlier that year, in April, skirmishes had taken place in the Rann of Kutch region several hundred miles south of Kashmir. In that encounter, the Pakistanis prevailed over the Indians. The humiliation suffered by the Indians brought Prime Minister Shastri to the conclusion that the next round would be of India’s choosing. The Indian army chief prepared for a war that would be fought in the plains of Punjab. Under “Operation Ablaze,” it would mount an attack against Lahore, Sialkot and Kasur. Of course, the trigger would have to be pulled by the Pakistanis. On 12th May, an Indian Canberra bomber flew over the Pakistan border on a reconnaissance mission. The PAF scrambled interceptors which got within shooting range of the intruder. Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s permission was sought to bring down the intruder. He sought clearance from the President on the newly installed direct line but Field Marshal Ayub denied permission fearing Indian reprisal. He had served as commander-in-chief of the army for many years and supposedly knew the thinking of his counterparts. Oblivious to what had just taken place in the skies above Punjab, and failing to anticipate how India was gunning to equalize the score, Ayub gave the green light to Operation Gibraltar on the advice of his foreign minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (later president and prime minister). Bhutto had sought out the opinion about Indian intentions from Chinese Foreign Minister Chen Yi during a meeting at the Karachi airport and concluded from the latter’s body language that India would not respond. And so it was that 8,000 infiltrators were sent by Pakistan into Indian-administered Kashmir. They were mostly youth from Azad Kashmir who had less than four weeks of training in guerrilla warfare. The entire plan was predicated on a passive Indian response. The response was anything but passive, proving once again General Von Moltke’s dictum: “No war plan survives the first 24 hours of contact with the enemy.” Was the Pakistani military prepared for an all-out war with India, a much bigger country with a much bigger military? Clearly not. It was the army’s war, since the other services had been kept in the dark It is also worth recalling what the Kaiser had said to the German troops that were heading off to fight the French in August 1914: “You will be home before the leaves have fallen off the trees.” The three-month war turned into the Great War which lasted for four years, and is best described in the classic by Barbara Tuchman, “The Guns of August.” In Kashmir, Operation Grand Slam abruptly ground to a halt. An Indian stated in his memoirs: “Akhnur was a ripe plumb ready to be plucked, but Providence came to our rescue.” Suspicion falls on the sudden decision by the Pakistani GHQ to switch divisional commanders in the midst of the operation. The new commander, Maj.-Gen. Yahya (later army chief and president), claimed later he was not tasked with taking Akhnur. Was the Pakistani military prepared for an all-out war with India, a much bigger country with a much bigger military? Clearly not. It was the army’s war, since the other services had been kept in the dark. And it was a war planned without the expectation that the war would eventually pull the entire army into it. A quarter of the soldiers were on leave in September. They were only recalled as the Indian army crossed the border enroute to Lahore. The crossing was detected by five PAF fighters that were flying on the outskirts of Lahore. Maj.-Gen. Sarfraz was the General Officer Commanding of the No.10 Division which had primary responsibility for the defence of Lahore. Along with other divisional commanders in the region, he had been ordered by GHQ to remove all defensive land mines from the border. None had been taken into confidence about the Kashmir operation. The pleas of these generals to prepare against an Indian invasion were rejected by GHQ with a terse warning: “Do not provoke the Indians.” The gateway to Lahore was defended by the 3rd Baluch contingent of 100 men under the intrepid Major Shafqat Baluch. They fought to the last man till the PAF arrived to devastate the invading division. There could have been no doubt even in the mind of a Hawaldar that an Indian attack would come. But as one officer put it, “The ostriches at the pulpit had their heads dug in sand up to their necks.” In the 1965 war, the Pakistani army repeated the mistakes of the 1947-48 Kashmir war, but on a grander scale. No official history of the 1965 war was ever written even though President Ayub wanted one. Gen. Yahya, his new army chief, just sat on the request until Ayub was hounded out of office by centrifugal forces triggered by the war. Pakistan’s grand strategy was flawed. None of its strategic objectives were achieved. And were it not for the tactical brilliance of many mid-level commanders, the country would have been torn apart by the Indians. Ayub published his autobiography, “Friends not Masters,” a year after the war. But it makes no reference to the war of 1965. In the book, history ends in 1964. One is reminded of De Gaulle’s history of the French army which makes no reference to the events that took place in Waterloo in 1815. War, as Clemenceau put it, is too serious a business to be left to the generals. The writer can be reached at ahmadfaruqui@gmail.com