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July 24, 2005
In brief
Tarikh ke Aine Main
By Lt. Col. (retd) Ghulam
Jilani Khan
Headquarters SSG, Cherat
520pp. Rs495
The book offers a comprehensive, candid and well-documented account of the army’s elite Special Service Group (SSG). It is about the only work written in chaste Urdu by an army officer based on painstaking research.
The preface of the book has been authored by General Pervez Musharraf, himself a thoroughbred commando and the colonel-in-chief of the distinguished fighting fraternity. He served with the group for seven long years and views it as a great honour and a privilege to have commanded the force.
In the words of Major-General Faisal Alavi, its serving GoC, SSG has always been the focus of civil and military attention both out of admiration and criticism. “While we have our lap full of all the praise and appreciation, we also have some thorns and burrs here and there,” says the GOC to illustrate a soldier’s down-to-earth approach to take the rough with the smooth.
Unlike a para-military or an irregular figure, the SSG commando is a regular soldier whether a general or a jawan. He operates in tandem with the regulars as their hidden hand. Commandos operate behind the enemy lines to disrupt his vital rail-road and cable communication networks and impose maximum damage on his strategic targets, ammunition dumps defence works, dams and power houses.
In the very early stages of the freedom struggle, Kashmiri guerrillas of the so-called Padam Party under the command of one Major Purdil Khan used to operate behind enemy lines with considerable effect. That continued until the disbandment of the Azad Kashmir irregular forces and the raising of the Azad Kashmir Regular Forces (AKRF) as a part of the Pakistan Army.
When so required, commandos would also act as a sort of fifth column to gather vital intelligence, demoralize enemy troops and where possible, arouse the general public against the occupation forces. The Pakistan Army’s Operation Gibraltar launched in August 1965 was one such operation. It was designed mainly to arouse the Kashmiris against the occupation forces. However, due to faulty planning it collapsed while half way through.
I was part of Gibraltar at the staff level along with the late Lt. Col. Sher Zaman Khan and a witness to the role of the SSG boys through the East Pakistan crisis in 1971. While the personal courage and spirit of sacrifice of the SSG boys remained above reproach all along, their acts of indiscipline and unofficer-like behaviour remained open to serious question. This was mainly due to the laxity and ineptitude of the higher command and their egregious folly in turning a blind eye to the excesses committed at the junior level.
SSG has a long list of battle honours and spurs won through a wide variety of operations ranging from Gibraltar to Kargil and Siachen. It has also actively spearheaded operations against hijackers and highway men.
Rich in informational content, the book also makes good reading free from superfluous rhetoric that goes with most official works about the army.
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