Every war has a political fall-out. Power positions are either strengthened or weakened. It’s never the same again. The 1965 war proved to be inconclusive and there were no victors. The bottom line was that the Kashmir dispute was no nearer to being resolved. Viewed from the vantage point of Pakistan, it was India that had crossed the international line and its armies had been repelled or driven back.
The Pakistan armed forces had given a good account of themselves, had shown great heroism. The Pakistan Air Force had kept the skies free, so much so that PIA had been able to resume some domestic flights. Given the disparity in military strength, the moral high ground belonged to Pakistan. The people of Pakistan had rallied behind the armed forces in ways that were heroic. Each one of us had walked straight and tall. It was not just an affirmation of our nationalism, but its triumph.
The war had caused no psychic damage. It had not been a bruising war, as wars generally are. Neither armies had penetrated deep into the other’s territory, there were some civilian casualties and these were in the nature of accidents, finding oneself at the wrong place at the wrong time. Neither cities nor civilian targets had been attacked. There had been no wanton acts and war crimes. The cease-fire, when it came, merely restored the status quo ante bellum. There was no reckoning of war, columns of refugees and other collateral damage, the human costs of war.
Yet, it was not a phony war. Who knows how it would have turned out had it gone on any longer, had it stretched beyond the immediate war-zone or had the initial thrust not been blunted and Lahore would have been occupied. It would almost certainly have become a bloodier war. Not only did Lahore not fall, but Lahoris were able to demonstrate their contempt by climbing on the roof-tops to watch the dog-fights. It was a patently foolish thing to do for what was happening was not some ceremonial air display but a real war. But it was a way of demonstrating that it takes more than bombs to break the spirit.
The war had been confined to West Pakistan. India made no attempt to open a second front. Given the logistics, East Pakistan appeared vulnerable and a soft target for the Indians. Was it then a political decision not to attack East Pakistan? According to General Choudary, then India’s C-in-C, East Pakistan was left alone for three reasons: “First it was politically important to show the Bengalis that India had no quarrel with them. Secondly, an extension of the war in that area was militarily over-expensive. Thirdly, an operation against East Pakistan could have produced a positive hostile reaction against India by Pakistan’s new friend, China.”
One can only conjecture about why India chose not to fight a war in East Pakistan. It is possible that there were hard military reasons for not doing so, and the reasons given by General Choudary were the right ones. There is method in the madness of ‘divide and fool’. What was magnified was Pakistan’s geographic oddity. East Pakistan was cut off. PIA, which provided the vital air link, now had to operate via Colombo, a circuitous and longer journey, more than doubling the flying time. For cultural and linguistic reasons, it was assumed (by the Indians) that the East Pakistani did not feel as emotionally involved about Kashmir as the West Pakistani did. Kashmir was remote and was not something that they would consider a matter of life and death except in an abstract, nationalistic way. I do not suggest that the people of East Pakistan were less enthusiastic about Kashmir or that the support of the people of East Pakistan was qualified in any respect. They were concerned and felt threatened. But it would be naive to believe that their isolation and vulnerability did not provide them with some food for thought.
Soon after the cease-fire, I went to Dhaka and it was natural that my friends there would want to talk about the war. Not just an account of battles and bravery, but the wider implications. Had their sense of belonging been weakened? I was told that it had not. But they felt more insecure. Would we leave them in the lurch? One of them said that they felt that it was China and not West Pakistan that was the guarantor of their freedom.
Still others, politically more arrogant, told me that the defence expenditure should be borne entirely by West Pakistan. “Why should we contribute for your defence?” Even PIA came in for criticism. The people of East Pakistan had gotten accustomed to the direct link. The route via Colombo somehow did not feel right. Something had been severed, not geographic but emotional contiguity.
At that time, we did not consider the observations and objections to be particularly relevant. But they would play a part when the list of grievances would be catalogued into demands. The war damage in West Pakistan could be quantified. The damage done to East Pakistan was psychological and intellectual.
What about West Pakistan? In no country in the world are the people privy to military matters. Not even in established democracies. There is, therefore, a wide gap between how the people perceive a war and how the military perceives it. Public morale had been high. The war, we had been told, had been going well, and if not that, certainly not badly. Pakistan had been holding its own and although no decisive battles had been fought, Pakistan’s steel resolve to defend its homeland had surprised not only India but the world. World opinion, too, seemed to favour Pakistan. Why then did Pakistan agree to a cease-fire?
Obviously, there were some hard military reasons. A protracted conflict would have put a severe strain on resources. One can only guess it. But the general public was certainly surprised and not overjoyed by the cease-fire. Perhaps, the propaganda had been too effective!
There were demonstrations in Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi. In Karachi, the demonstrations were transformed into riots and protesters shouting slogans swept through the streets. Angry anti-American feelings were running high. Why Americans? The people felt let down by the United States. Pakistan was an ally. It was a member of SEATO and CENTO. If, for whatever reasons, it could not support Pakistan militarily, there should have been some moral support. At the back of the mind of the people was the suspicion of American disapproval for what was, emotionally, a ‘popular’ war. The United States Information Library was set ablaze while the offices of Pan American Airways were ransacked. Was this an orchestrated demonstration? Or was it simply a case of letting off steam?
Pakistan had not been without friends. There was, first and foremost, China, and Indians remained wary of China’s intentions. There had been Iran and Turkey, and I knew that a PIA aircraft had flown many sorties to pick up war material. Asghar Khan had gone to Indonesia and he told me that when he met President Soekarno, he had told Asghar Khan to take whatever he liked, leaving behind only what was necessary for Indonesia’s own defence. It was a gesture of a true friend of Pakistan. Unfortunately, Soekarno would be deposed in a military coup, that had the fingerprint of the CIA.
The cease-fire came into effect and the guns were silenced. There were hawks on both sides who opposed the cease-fire. But the hard facts were that it was a pointless war, for it was obvious that there could be no military solution to the Kashmir dispute. The Indian hawks imagined that they could undo Pakistan, as if, Pakistan was a patched-up country that would unravel. Hawks on both sides were wrong. Though not an immediate casualty, Ayub Khan had been weakened. Bhutto’s star, on the other hand, was ascendant. He read the popular mood. In his speech to the Security Council on the night of 22-23 September, he had made an impassioned plea for the downtrodden people of Kashmir. “We will wage war for a thousand years, a war of defence,” he said in a voice charged with defiance and emotion.
Stanley Wolpert in his book, Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan, wrote: “Bhutto’s rhetoric thrilled every Pakistani who heard it, specially the men back home who knew that they had lost the war but whose dream of victory was being kept alive by the words carried by the wireless radio to Karachi, Pindi and Lahore.” In a sense, this popularity marked the end of Bhutto’s close association with Ayub Khan, and it was only a matter of time that there would be a parting of the ways.
When the leaders of both countries met at Tashkent, a summit midwifed by the Soviet Union, one immediate consequence was that the Indian Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, died of a heart attack. Another consequence was that Tashkent hastened the departure of Bhutto from Ayub’s cabinet.
G.W. Chaudhry in his book, Last Days of United Pakistan, makes a reference to Ayub Khan, mentioning that starting the conflict in 1965 had been the fatal mistake of his career. He blamed Bhutto and Aziz Ahmed, the foreign secretary, for having misled him. This seems to be a little too simplistic. Ayub was a strong leader and had a mind of his own. Whatever we were in for, some turbulent times and a whole cycle of events lay ahead that would see great changes in Pakistan. Interesting times lay ahead.
Normalcy returned, a kind of bandaged and limping normalcy and for me it was back to the routine of PIA.
